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By Richard A. Coyle The book "The Art Of Star Trek" by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens is an extraordinary work and my attempt to clarify its deficient areas in the art of hand props is done to help complete their work. I can only hope to achieve its scope and quality in my own efforts. But sadly the book contained numerous errors and mis-attributions of pictures. From the classic show, of the four Phasers depicted on page 36, not one is a copy of a "hero" prop. Three of them are background or secondary props, one is a stunt dummy. The shots are taken from the dull side, no Dilithium crystal is visible. The pictures are smaller than most of the other prop shots. The smallness obscures detail, and the main point, I would think, of wanting these in is reference work in the first place. I speculate that pictures were diminished so that this book would not embarrass Playmates toy version and the Franklin Mint pewter reproduction of the Phaser. These companies have obviously been mis-informed about the details. Hero Phasers have only four ribs at the rear, devoid of screws on the left side. There were no gold trim or detailing on any Phaser whatsoever. Both Playmates and Franklin Mint had misshapen Phaser bodies. Comparing these inept reproductions to the real thing could have revealed these changes. Of special disappointment, there are no shots of the Doc McCoy's hypo, medical scanner, field reader or even Mr. Spock's ubiquitous science scanner.
Of special interest, the tiny Cardassian contraption on page number 128 is,
in reality, one of Greg Now we arrive at the most grievous errors. These errors are so bad, so wrong
that they are what inspired me to write this article. Many a collector and admirer
of the props will be as confused and dismayed as I was that such an authorized
work as this would have so many details incorrect. When this book came to the
art of the movies, they seemingly lost their way. On the "Motion Picture",
there were no pictures or real drawing of actual props used within the film,
so they resorted to showing early design drawings. On the "Wrath of Khan", they missed the target by light years. On
page 204, two pictures of two black and blue objects were identified as updated
communicators. The quote reads "For the second film outing, the wrist communicators
of the motion picture were replaced with an updating of the original series
design." All well and good, only false on all counts: 1) Cdr. Chekov and Cpt. Tirell both had wrist comms. 2) The communicator actually
shown is one of the designs made by 3) The picture on the right side is of that prototype communicator, but the picture on the left is of the prototype of the Phaser one from "Search for Spock". Wrong film, wrong props. Do they think we won't notice these things? 4) There was a box communicator, but it was in silver and black.
Note: To check this out, beside this picture of the Starfleet Tricorder, there
is a still of Merritt
On "Star Trek 1V - The Voyage Home", there are no pictures of the
real props, as is usual and on I bring these errors to people's attention because so many people who are already confused about the fine details will have a tendency to refer to a book such as this as the definitive authority on matters Star Trek. People would assume that the facts in it would be checked and re-checked by Paramount's masters and historians? This was apparently not the case or no one there is such a master or historian. And who am I? Just a propmaker who happened to work on Star Trek(s) 2,4,5,6, who has spent the past twenty years studying and learning everything he can about all props. And cares about keeping the records correct. Table Of Contents |