Ray Cole's Star Trek Museum Page

Welcome! The following items are scans from my personal collection of Star Trek memorabilia. They are posted here for your amusement, but they are not for sale.

Preproduction drawings from Star Trek: The Motion Picture

These are original pre-production drawings created to help visualize the design of various props and sets. The "ASTRA" stamps on the drawings stood for "A Star Trek/Robert Abel" production. They were created at Robert Abel's special-effects house for the first Trek movie.

Large Medical Scanner: This drawing, by Gil Keppler, is dated June 15, 1978. It is an early design drawing of the sickbay medical scanning bed that Dr. McCoy uses to scan the Ilia probe. I scanned in this one as a large jpeg, so you can see the detail on the drawing. Click on the image to see the full-sized jpeg scan:

Tricorder and Gimick Props for Kirk's Desk: Both of these drawings were done by Greg Wilzbach for the first Star Trek movie. Better photos of them can be seen in the recent book, The Art of Star Trek. They are actually about the same size as the Medical Bed drawing, above. I've just used reduced-sized images here to keep the strain on my bandwidth (and yours) down.

[Tricorder] [Gimick Props for Kirk's Desk]

I had originally attributed the two Wilzbach drawings to Andrew Probert, because The Art Of Star Trek says Probert drew them. However, Andy Probert saw this Web page and was kind enough to e-mail me the correct information:

"The two drawings which you gave me credit for were actually done by Greg Wilzbach. He and Gil Keppler were at Abel's to help me with some concepts. Greg ended up contributing a lot, like: the Klingon weapons, Starfleet wrist comunicators, a ton of bridge animated graphics, and so on. Gil contributed a lot too, including the new phasers. I ended up being the designer of the tricorder (among other things) but we were all sketching everything." [August, 1996.]

Thanks Andy!

Signs from Star Trek: The Motion Picture sets

The following are signs created for the first Star Trek movie. They are of surprisingly high quality: not just paper or photocopied signs, these are actually made of metal foil on a paper backing. They were designed by Lee Cole (no relation to me).

Cargo container label sign: (It was a little too tall for my scanner, so the top and bottom of the image have been cropped a bit. Sorry.)

[Cargo Sign]

Deck Numbers, used to number the Enterprise-A decks:

[Enterprise Deck Numbers]

Preproduction Drawing From Star Trek: Phase II

I think, but am not sure, that this drawing is by Mike Minor and was drawn as a preproduction illustration for the unproduced 1970's TV series, Star Trek: Phase II. This was the series in which Paramount was going to bring back most of the original cast to weekly television adventures. But then Star Wars became a big hit, and convinced the studio that a movie would be a better way to go. They ended up producing Star Trek: The Motion Picture instead.

However, since there is no signature on the drawing, and the auction I purchased it from didn't have any additional information, I am not certain if it is from Star Trek: Phase II, or if it is by Mike Minor. The color scheme, and the layout of the control panels on the walls both bear a striking resemblence to the Mike Minor Star Trek: Phase II drawings documented in The Art of Star Trek, so I'm pretty sure, but not positive. If you are someone associated with the show who'd be in a position to positively identify this drawing, please let me know what you know about it.

Update: I brought this painting to the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, where the folks there verified for me that it was a pre-production painting of McCoy's office. They built the set and used it in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the sequence where Kirk and McCoy are speaking as the Ilia probe bursts through the door. It's almost certainly a Mike Minor work.

Click on the image to see the full-sized scan.

Saurian Brandy Bottle

The original Saurian Brandy bottle, which featured prominently in the "classic" Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within", actually began life as a commemorative Whisky bottle! The George Dickel company issued the distinctive bottles in a variety of sizes to commemorate the re-opening of the George Dickel plant. The Star Trek prop department apparently got ahold of one and, with a little dressing up, turned it into the famous Saurian Brandy bottle that the "evil" Kirk drinks from in the "The Enemy Within." Another such bottle evidently appears in Quark's bar in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, according to the book The Art of Star Trek. The picture of the DS9 bottle, as it appears in the book, has darker leather, and gold alien writing on the glass. Perhaps if I can locate another commemorative Dickel Whisky bottle, I'll turn it into the DS9 prop. But I've turned my current bottle into a recreation of the Saurian Brandy bottle from the old series.

Here is a photo from The Art of Star Trek of the prop as used in "The Enemy Within" episode, followed by photos of my Dickel Whiskey bottle before restoration and after:

[Saurian Brandy Bottle] [Dickel Whisky Bottle] [Restored Saurian Brandy Bottle (left view)]

William Ware Theiss Costume Sketches from Star Trek: The Next Generation

All the sketches in this section were drawn by Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation costume designer William Ware Theiss. They are all done in pencil on tracing paper -- the rougher sketches on yellowing tracing paper; the more polished outline sketches on non-yellowed tracing paper.

Click on any sketch to see a larger scan of the image.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Dress Uniform

These sketches show some of Bill Theiss's early ideas for what became the Star Trek: The Next Generation dress uniform.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Dress

These sketches show variations on a dress design done for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Female Costumes

These sketches show various female costume designs done by Mr. Theiss for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Various Star Trek: The Next Generation Male or Unisex Uniform Sketches

These sketches show some preliminary ideas for what became the unisex Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform jumpsuit.

Other Star Trek Museum and Related Sites

My article, I Want Captain Kirk's Chair, about the two Profiles In History Star Trek auctions held in December of 2001 and June of 2002, published at the GreenCine online video rental service web site.
Prop-maker Richard Coyle's incredible RACprops Web site. Wow! This site has some of the best, most detailed information (including detailed pictures) of the original series props I've ever seen. A must for collectors and/or modelers.
Star Trek propmaker Ed Miarecki's site.
Star Trek designer Andrew Probert's Web site.
Classic series communicators at HeroComm.com
Computer graphics artist and 3D Animator Carl Hooper's VisionArt site. Carl has been responsible for many of the Odo morph effects on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and his site has some behind-the-scenes info about the process that is pretty interesting.
The Wonderworks site, the Emmy Award-winning company where Brick Price has worked on many Star Trek miniatures.
An interview with costume designer William Ware Theiss.
William S. McCullars' extremely detailed site, The IDIC Page contains good-quality photos of the Star Trek ship miniatures from nearly all incarnations of the show, even tracing the "restoration" stages that the original series Enterprise model has gone through. Great resource for modelers!
Mike Trice's Star Trek Page -- contains many photos of the original ship miniatures used in filming various incarnations of Star Trek. Most photographs on this page were taken from displays at a Science Museum in London.
Star Trek -- The Exhibition
An original Star Trek Phaser prop from the National Museum of American History.

Legal notice: Star Trek, Star Trek: Phase II, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and related marks are trademarks of Paramount Pictures Corporation.

rayc@raysplace.oldkingcole.com