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Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

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Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#91

Post by parl_match »

gdubs wrote: post #82

One thing I really love about Strange New Worlds is that they finally realized that fans love the beautiful, comfortable looking ships of the earlier series. For a solid decade it was like all Star Trek ships felt like some "alternate timeline" from Next Generation in which the Federation is an endless war, and the ships are all dim and militaristic. A huge part of the show was about exploration. And doing it in styl…

Despite Lower Decks' jokes and loose adherence to any "hardness" of its sci-fi, I've found it to be one of the most casually optimistic of any star trek in a long time. The first few episodes are a bit rough, but I actually really enjoy it now.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#92

Post by Night_Thastus »

parl_match wrote: post #91
gdubs wrote: post #82

One thing I really love about Strange New Worlds is that they finally realized that fans love the beautiful, comfortable looking ships of the earlier series. For a solid decade it was like all Star Trek ships felt like some "alternate timeline" from Next Generation in which the Federation is an endless war, and the ships are all dim and militaristic. A huge part of the show was about exploration. And doing it in styl…

Despite Lower Decks' jokes and loose adherence to any "hardness" of its sci-fi, I've found it to be one of the most casually optimistic of any star trek in a long time. The first few episodes are a bit rough, but I actually really enjoy it now.

I bailed partway into the first or second episode I think. I've heard it's good trek though.

Is it like the Orville where it tones down the comedy a bit later on? Orville felt like a parody of trek for the first few episodes, then just became trek for the rest of its runtime.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#93

Post by philwelch »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #74
jccooper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the benefits of Hollywood is rental and studio stock. Many of these sets are one-off or occasional, and the furniture would return after the shoot.

I read that one of HBO MAX’s key advantages over Netflix is that WB has a century worth of costumes and props in the archive that are available and catalogued for any new production. Whereas Netflix shows pretty much throw away everything when a shoot is done.

This is also a long standing production strategy for Star Trek.

One of the reasons the original series had so many episodes where they went to a planet that was just like Earth in some specific time period was the availability of props, costumes, and even sets. Entire episodes were written around this conceit: there's the episode where they land on a Nazi planet, the episode where they land on a Roman Empire planet, another episode where they meet an alien who turns out to be the literal Greek god Apollo, an episode where they land on the planet of the Prohibition-era mobsters, and an OK Corral episode just to name a few. From TNG onwards, the holodeck was used for similar purposes.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#95

Post by dragonwriter »

harimau777 wrote: post #77
DHPersonal wrote: post #34

As I looked through the shots of the chairs in the episodes, I noticed that the old shows had some wild lighting: sometimes like a Halloween set, sometimes like a task light was just set up on a tripod next to the camera, and sometimes like a cube farm. The new shows all seem to go for web developer's / Twitch streamer's dungeon with no overhead lighting, wall-mounted spotlights, and RGB rim lights everywhere.

Arg! I can't find it now but a while back I read an amazing article discussing the set design on the original series; particularly for the alien planets. From what I recall, their overall assessment was that the set designers used strong color design and bold shapes to compensate for their lack of budget. In that respect, while later entries in the series had much "better" sets, TOS had the strongest aesthetic.

> From what I recall, their overall assessment was that the set designers used strong color design and bold shapes to compensate for their lack of budget.

I thought it was specifically because of (1) the color film process used at the time required it for faithful (-ish) reproduction, and (2) the need to make something that looked good on both black and white and color TVs, as lots of people were still using black and white.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#96

Post by philwelch »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #55
bentcorner wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do The Riker Maneuver[1] if chairs have armrests. [1] https://youtu.be/lVIGhYMwRgs

Supposedly this "maneuver" was due to a combination of the early seasons using spandex and the actor having back issues (because they sized the costumes too small).

The version of the story I remember is that Jonathan Frakes had a bad back because he used to work as a mover before he made it as an actor. But the costumes almost certainly didn't help matters.

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#97

Post by [deleted] »

donatj wrote: post #27
Aardwolf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the Omnific Chair? It looks bog standard and mentions Enterprise-D courtroom

Sure looks like what I was remembering! The listed `TNG: "The Drumhead"` also sure looks like the courtroom I remember but is not the episode I was referring to. I may have been remembering the wrong courtroom episode, I was thinking it was from “Measure of a Man” but all my Googling only shows red more interesting chairs in that episode. I’ll need to do some digging through the episode when I’m out of this meeting!

[deleted]

Re: Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

#98

Post by slg »

bjpirt wrote: post #67

This is one of my favourite distractions when watching Sci-Fi films set in the future - spotting objects from now. For example: - In Luke's home in Star Wars IV there's a lot of Tupperware - https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2014/02/in-praise-of-t... - In Alien, Ripley drinks from a Tupperware mug - https://twitter.com/EverRotating/status/1156650673972363264

I think the most famous/beloved/notorious version of this is the guy in Star Wars running around with a completely unaltered off the shelf ice cream maker.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Thatsabooklight/comments/bf20dp/i_p...

I just found that link through Google, but that is apparently a whole subreddit devoted to this type of use of modern objects getting repurposed as some fantastical movie/TV props.

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