Exhibiting Star Trek Tendencies

Matt’s family are big Trekkies. They have been since the very beginning. In addition to seeing the first time around, Matt’s dad grew up on the old Star Trek reruns. When The Next Generation launched, taping and then watching the weekly episode became something of a central rhythm of Matt’s childhood. He probably missed a few of that series, but not any of Deep Space Nine. That was his favorite. Maya had only ever seen a few episodes at most and knew of Star Trek more from ceaseless parodies and pop-culture appearances than from the shows themselves. Even Matt had never seen all the episodes of Star Trek. Well, since it is such a cultural icon and since Matt’s dad owns them all on DVD and we have been watching out way through them for a while. We took a whole CD wallet full of Star Trek with us last time we were home. The most recent episode we watched was “The Lights of Zetar” (#73 in production order). Just a few left, now.

One morning while getting ready for work, Maya saw that an exhibition of Star Trek props, costumes and sets was going to be in town. Matt didn’t even know about it as he doesn’t watch the local morning news shows on account of usually still being asleep at that time. Well, Maya decided we should go and, of course, Matt had no opposition. It was at the Arizona Science Center. We had to pay admission to the museum and then admission to the exhibit on top of that so it was a little steep, but it’s not everyday that you can see so many phasers, ship models, Starfleet uniforms and latex alien heads all in once place.

First, a quick note about the Science Center itself. It’s basically your run-of-the-mill science museum. There’s the how-the-body-works area with the cut-away diagrams of the digestive tract, simulation heartbeats you can listen to with a “real” stethoscope and the comparison of bones to the steel frame of a skyscraper. There was the physics area with all the standard roll-the-weighted-wheels-down-the-ramp, lift-yourself-up-using-pulleys and play-the-giant-panpipes exhibits. Seriously, all science museums must shop at the same supplier. There was an “immersive” theater in the Earth science room which was pretty cool. The floor shook as the effects of an earthquake were shown on large screens, the hurricane blew water at you and there were heat lamps to accompany the volcanic eruption. The most impressive thing in the whole museum (how silly is this?) was the display featuring dancing iron fillings. That’s right. The filings were sprinkled over a series of electo-magnets (we suppose). The magnets fired in series in time to music and the filings around each magnet would all stand on end when they did. The moving filings and the shadows they cast created this very bizarre undulating grid of dancing metal. Very cool to watch. Mesmerizing almost.

Star Trek: The Exhibition was much cooler than anything that is regularly in the museum. A lot of the props on display were replicas but a few of them were the actual used-on-set props. The costumes were all real. Ruk’s costume from “What Are Little Girls Made Of” was there as well the amazingly revealing one of Kara’s from “Spock’s Brain.” There were costumes from all of the main characters in The Next Generation. Most of the stuff, actually, was from that iteration of Star Trek. Pieces of sets, such as most of La Forge’s Engineering and a couple beds from Crusher’s Sickbay, were set up so you could wonder through them. The set of the NCC-1701-D bridge was the most amazing of these sets. It was impossible to tell if it was the “real” set or if it was something assembled to resemble the set. The control panels looked authentic. The data readouts showing on the screens at the rear of the bridge were the real thing for sure. Matt found it strangely disconcerting how familiar those pulsing purple lines mapping the pressure of the matter/antimatter chamber could be. Those read-outs take him right back to all those hours spent watching the show.

Throughout we were impressed by the difference between what looks good in real life and what looks good for the camera. There were lots of good signs and videos about the “making of” aspects that emphasized this. Some of the props are very detailed (like the “wooden” boxes for keeping the Bajoran Prophet orbs in) and some are little more than rubber tubes (some of the prop disrupters). The same is true for the sets. There are scuff marks and screw-holes everywhere. That could be just an artifact of mock-ups traveling in this particular moving exhibition, but the camera (at least those they filmed with back in the day) wouldn’t have picked out all those details anyway. That’s one of the biggest shocks of seeing the stuff from the shows up-close. As real as the world of Star Trek seems in the mind of a fan, it’s really just an old TV show built from painted plywood, plexiglass and ordinary carpet. One of Shatner’s Kirk uniforms was there. It’s just thin, cheap material. About like a high school graduation robe. Totally impractical as clothing for today’s active captain. But Kirk is just a figment of the collective imagination. Costumes aren’t motivated by any other realities than the budget and what they’ll look like on the small screen. Also, those Starfleet jumpsuits look really weird hanging there with no one inside them. Limp and deflated.
A particularly impressive effort (and we weren’t the only ones to think so) was the timeline wall. The relationships, interconnections, and chronological overlaps of the five different series and the ten movies are all mapped on copiously-illustrated, wall-sized panels. You can trace a figure like Khan from his Earth empire days through his appearance in “Space Seed” to Star Trek II. Or follow Tuvok’s various appearances, or Montgomery Scott’s. It’s amazing that a body of fiction crated over multiple decades, involving hundreds of creative folks can be as consistent and coherent as it is. Or maybe they just left out the confusing parts…

In any case, after being so immersed in the world of Star Trek, our interest in the original show and all the many world’s it hath spawned is (re)piqued. Matt wants to watch all of DS9 again. Maya is thinking she’s interested in a little more than just the Star Trek series after all. Maybe the first six movies, maybe more after that. Maybe.

[Since cameras were not allowed in the exhibition we’ve taken the images for this post from a slide show about the exhibition on the website of the local version of LEO or from the quite comprehensive Memory Alpha.]