Grand Marshal George Lucas
unarmed storm troopers only because they are bad shots to begin with!!!
stamps by Drew Struzen
first event to celebrate ST's 40th
2007 marked the 30th of Star Wars and to celebrate this historical year George Lucas himself was the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade and followed by a garrison of Storm troopers, January 1st started a glorious year of conventions, parties, and celebrations. In May of the same year the USPS released a sheet of exquisite stamps depicting characters from all the Star Wars films. The USPS also created a very special cancellation stamp to celebrate the anniversary. One year earlier, 2006 marked the 40th Anniversary of Star Trek. Star Trek is the grand mother of making Science Fiction as popular as it is today. 11 films and 6 series have been created and a world of loyal fans follow with eager anticipation of what is coming next. To celebrate the 40th, Paramount and CBS cancelled Enterprise at the end of it’s 4th season just a couple of episodes shy of the magic 100th show. Next they pulled from their warehouse all of the costumes sets, props and models that have been hidden away for years, but not to display or put them on a tour, but to clean house. Christie’s Auction house, and it’s a wrap Hollywood both set up auctions to sell off Television and motion Picture history with no regard to the significants or importance of the treasure that was entrusted to the new executives of the Studio. To end the 40th with a bang, a demolition derby would be the last hooray and what was left was bulldozed. It is a sad time when history has no meaning and is thrown away.
Various Trek sets
the torpedo launcher from the NX-01
the NX-01 view screen
OS bridge pieces
let the derby begin
I tried to stop this guy but he speak-a no english!!
torpedo room pieces
I was trying to get a truck over to try and and in less than two hours it was all gone!
and within two hours it was all gone
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
DUDE!!! The first half made me a little sad..Heck this blog seems to be a trek blog..But OMG…The sets.. God, why not give them to the fan????
This will make me sad all day.. 😦
You should have been there, I was notorious for a long time
Man, I remember the dvd extra with the huge warehouse. I figure that the major set parts where in the warehouse..Man the studio has no heart.
Also you would think from the auction of Kirk’s TOS chair, that someone at paramount would think that this stuff could bring in some cash?
I have a question, I am not sure if I want an answer to it. If a fan was told about this, would they be able to pick up this stuff?
In the city of Downey there was the North America/Boeing factory and air strip, Sometime in the early 2000’s it was sold and converted into a studio. I was working on Santa Clause 3 there and one day exploring came across about 4 acres of all the trek sets. Had I known that it was a count down to destruction I would have been taking a piece home everyday. I heard that they were going to bulldoze everything the day before and and went out the next day to see what I could get out and what sized truck I needed. I wasn’t there 10 minutes and the plows came thru and there was no time to save anything big. It was a secured studio so you had to have ahad a pass but if there would have been more time we could have saved all of this stuff!
Utter stupidity. As if selling those didn´t even cross the suits´ minds.
The´ve auctioned off stuff right down to rubber dog shit some extra once pretended to step in (jk) but thought it would be appropriate to just crush parts of the original bridge?????
Hats off for trying to rescue these items. Sadly it didn´t work out. 😦
OOOOOH this really burns my beads bad.. I came across these pictures yesterday and hesitated to post em because of how mad I was, but then decided that this travesty had be shared!
Oh man that wasn’t very joyful … I’m a great fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek and I simply can’t understand what they did that to Enterprise ! The 3rd and 4th season of Enterprise was the best stuff running on the TV at its time, maybe except for the Battlestar Galactica. It saddens me every time I think about Enterprise being cancelled while crap soap operas and even other, almost fan-made-garage-based-qality sci-fi shows still going strong …
Oh and the worst part is that all the stuff which has been made for the show just goes away and will probably won’t be mentioned again (just to think about it, people still go crazy about TOS but no one ever talks about Enterprise)…
Your right, It was finally finding it’s comfort zone, and the shows were getting awesome!!!
Oh man that wasn’t very joyful … I will have to keep this one!!!! Thanks
I was a walking example of how much Enterprise had turned around – I went into the show not expecting to like it and didn’t, stopped watching it entirely for a good year and a half, started catching some third season episodes, was pleased by the improvements, and by the fourth season, I was watching it every week and writing letters to try to save it. If someone had told me two years prior that I would have been doing *that*, I would have told them to get their head examined, but there I was, watching Trip and T’Pol mourning their daughter and crying like a baby right along with them. What can I say? I’m a sucker for good Star Trek.
Man too bad you could not save any of the large sets. But thanks for trying.
I just can understand paramount! You know what makes me even more sad…This happen to the TNG,DS9 and Voyager Set.
I used to walk the isles of these sets in storage and it was like a tour of history!!!! Everything was there!
When you told me about the view screen a while back, I was mortified, but to see all of this stuff in your pics…just beyond words (ridiculous comes to mind to start)!!! Well, thanks for the effort and being “notorious” in the name of Trek fans everywhere!
unarmed storm troopers only because they are bad shots to begin with!!!
This is a chuckle amidst the tragic devastation to come in the pics below… 🙂 So true, they couldn’t hit the side of an Empirical Cruiser.
HAAAAAAAA!!!
“The Fall of Rome” sure does say it.
Those sets were passed from series to series and after all that careful attention to them over the years they just bulldoze it down like that. Tell me you saved the Torpedo launcher.
The one good thing about Star Trek in 2006 though was news of a new Movie.
The folks at Downey really took great care of the sets and then when it was announced to destroy. i was no longer there!!! I just wanted to get everything out!!!
Those beautiful set pieces…!
This is one of the saddest things I’ve seen…
I want names.
Thats absolutly heart breaking. I always felt it sad that the set pieces were just in storage and not on display, but I’ll admit when the auctions weer announced I was also sad that some of Trek history was going to end up adorning some millionares hallway, but to hear that the sets were treated with such disrepect is horrable.
I mean seriously, there are media museums around the world that would kill to get some of that stuff, the set of the Enterprise to me is an icon as well, with Star Trek been such a major part of the 20th Centruy, so to just have it buldosed like this is beyond me.
Why didn’t they adleast have some foresight and release the inventory of what they had there to see if people wanted to buy it, maybe send the list to mueseums or something *sigh*
Atleast in this day and age we have CGI that can recreate everything, but a replica will never be the same as the original… man, such a waste 😦
I have found that commen sense is void in the minds of people in power. my 7 year old would have handled this with more practicality than what wound up happening!
I got a much needed chuckle from that quip!
Makes me angry. Good olde George know how to treat a frachise. Paramount/CBS, jerks.
I concur!
You’ve gotta love CBS. Why keep 40 years of TV history laying around when you can make a quick buck? A**holes. They didn’t seem to care what was sold and what was scrapped either, it seems. It looks like there’s a piece of the Enterprie-E warp core (or some such cool thingy) laying on top of that pile of stuff that the guy with the backhoe was about to scoop up, presumably for disposal.
At least George Lucas has the right idea. He doesn’t let the studio keep his cool things, he keeps his stuff at the Skywalker Ranch and various other places that he owns/has control of. I love that image with all the Stormtroopers in the parade, BTW. Even though their ranks are a little sloppy, that’s still cool. 🙂
I again concur,,,, I just saw “Catch me if you can” and that word totally made me laugh!
Hey John, this is my first time posting (I think). I love your work! Your contributions to the Trek universe certainly helped shape the vision. I could sit in front of the many countless Trek art books and stare at your drawings for hours!
On topic…You wonder what would happen if it was reported that Lucas was going to sell off the models, props, costumes, etc., of Star Wars lore.
I really have no love for Star Wars anymore. I used to enjoy the franchise, but lately it seems that Lucas is desperate to keep people interested (that, and episodes 1 through 3 weren’t all that special). Trek offers so much more if people can look past the ‘sci-fi’ aspect of the series…sure, I love the ships, I love the technology…when I was a lad, I used to watch TNG just for that reason alone. Now, the stories pull me in. Granted, Star Wars had stories, but Trek usually had a ‘make you think’ moment behind a lot of theirs.
It’s just sad that, at a point in time, Trek really was on the way out. Enterprise was gone, the Experience in Las Vegas was on it’s way out (with luck, the new Experience will open soon, I hope). I truly hope the new film gives Trek the resurrection it deserves.
Thanks for the comments and for stopping by!!!
I am a huge fan of star wars 1 and 2,,,,,,or I guess that would 4 and 5, the original and “Empire strikes back” and I do agree with you. Star Trek has an unusual magic about it on many levels.
Ok…I’ll have to give you episodes 4 and 5, but that’s all! 😛
Thanks Rick!!!!! HAAA!
When I saw it in 1977 it was called “Star Wars” and thus I refuse to call it anything else 🙂
Waaaaaaaa…… 😦
BTW John, six series, not four: TOS, TAS (too often forgotten), TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.
Eric: Makes me angry. Good olde George know how to treat a frachise. Paramount/CBS, jerks.
That’s because George is essentially an independent filmmaker (and collector (of his own stuff), and keeps all the stuff he (has) created. Paramount is essentially a business first-and-foremost, creating “product” to sell advertising and tickets. It’s run by “suits” that don’t even think about “legacy” or traditionalism, just the bottom-line: How can we use this studio (space) to make money? And storing a bunch of stuff from old productions does not make money.
My heart cries to see this too, like any Trekker, but I get the business aspect behind it too. Bottom-line: Trek (and all TV shows) are product to make money. If they aren’t doing that, their purpose is over-and-done. Suits are (most often) not sentimental collectors like us. Unless you count collecting $$$. And nothing wrong with making money, IMO. We would never have seen one second of Trek if it was not for the pursuit of making money, by selling advertising on TV. Cold hard truth of the matter is: That’s why Trek is made, not to make fans jump with joy.
I’m just glad they were cool enough to auction off what they did, with the thought of getting it to the fan who love it, and of course make a buck whole they were at it/ Trek is great product. Any good businessman can see the truth of that. 😀
LLP,
deg
I heard this thru the grape vine on the lot that this was a vendetta by one suit that was new and hated Star Trek with a passion. It was obvious when the only thing at the warehouse’s to be removed were the Star Trek stuff. It was told that it was to much money to keep all the storage facilities, but ONLY Star trek was pulled out, There are sets from Grease Two still there like that will hold some significance down the road!!!! HAAA! I have to laugh!
We’re on the same wavelength…you answered my comment while I was writing it!!
But wouldn’t it have made more sense to give folks the option to buy the stuff first? I can’t imagine the “suits” didn’t see any value at all (still stymied by that!) in these pieces.
I think Paramount just had a bad taste in its mouth for Trek, for whatever reason. Boo, Paramount suits!!!
deg, did you see my reply to your drexfiles post on Proteus?
Sorry for the hi-jack of the blog for personal use, John.
I´m pretty sure there´s also quite a few stories of Mike and Denise rescuing precious items from destruction by having them included in the auction back then.
I was so glad that the only good thing about all of this was that Mike and Denise were involved!!! They were the heart of everything good about the shows and films and I was so happy that they guided its end with pride and loyalty!
Wow. That’s amazing. An ad in Craig’s List or an Ebay posting and they could have made thousands while preserving a piece of Trek history in a way that was never done before. This makes no sense, no sense at all.
It has always been easier to destroy… than to create. It’s no wonder that this particular studio has a history of shooting its own foot.
Hey you!!!! please send me your blog address again!!!
The one you reach when clicking his nickname? 😉
As distressing as those images are (and they definitely have provided a downer to the end of my evening), the first thing I thought of was “I can’t believe the millions of dollars worth of production value they literally bulldozed and threw in the skip”. That totally blows my fragile little mind.
John, didn’t you do a cancellation stamp for the post office for something?
Just wanted a closer look at the Star Wars stamps…cool! I think I enjoyed the “first” trilogy because it gave the back story of Darth Vader…that’s mostly what I remember the movies for.
yeah I’ll put up the post marks tomorrow!! those are fun to do!
Kudos to Mr. Struzen on the artwork!! Lovely!
It would have been cool to have something like your nose art of Leia on one!
I’ll leave it again…
blog.darendoc.com
Thanks I found as soon as I asked!!! I am on your page as we speak!!! Awesome entries and love the Abyss stuff!!!
hey what’s with Wonderfest??? are you still going??
The callousness of Viacom is staggering….
Even this has been done and dusted; just seeing these pictures makes me so angry that
Paramount treated Trek with suck disrespect.
I never liked the Suits, most of the time when it comes to Sci-Fi they make the wrong choices. Fox are masters of it, and they are about to do it again with Terminator and Dollhouse.
At least Trek was on our screens constantly from 1986 to 2004. No other American franchise can say the same thing.
IT was Just EVIL!!!!
No joke! It’s amazing that the X-Files lasted as long as it did considering Fox’s record regarding those types of shows. I was so mad when [i]Space: Above and Beyond[/i] was cancelled after 1 season. I think that TV culture has become too much of an instant gratification field. Everyone is looking for those instant hits, like Lost and CSI. They forget that some shows need a little time to cultivate. I know of some pretty good books that are considered classics by many (i.e. Of Mice and Men) that when I initially started reading them, I didn’t think that I would enjoy them. The more that I read, however, the more interesting the story became and I wound up glad for reading it.
I recall many years ago,,, I don’t remember who did it but they sent a script around to the various production companies only to be brutally rejected by every single company. the script was the original “Casa Blanca” If that doesn’t say something about today’s movie execs nothing will!!!
I don’t know if I can go to Wonderfest after all… 😦 We’ll see…
To keep it simple – those pictures are heartbreaking and an insult to the creativety of the people that designed and the craftmanship of the people that built them. Paramount could have found better ways to dispose them. Putting them in some desert aircraft boneyard could have meant the chance of rescueing them in some 20 odd years.
this time no Cheers
Thorsten :_(
What? George Lucas destroyed the ENT sets? *In Darth Vader voice* Nooooooooooooooo!
It may appear that he walked is storm troopers over them, from the order of the pics, but alas it isn’t so.
Paramount was kind enough to have done that before the Rose Parade!
Freak, I just wanted to acknowledge Dollhouse, which has been so much better than I ever expected! It just keeps getting better and better!!
No, Fox, NOoo!!!
Trek was on our screens constantly from 1986 to 2004
It’s a cool perspective…Most of my adult life! Let’s hope in the future Trek will boldy go where it hasn’t before!!! We’ll see soon enough.
I just have to say that May 13th, 2005 was the worst birthday that I had had in my life. That was the day that the last two episodes of Enterprise aired. I was not a happy camper that day. Seeing this brings back those memories.
I can’t believe the disrespect that these sets were treated with. I can understand not liking a show, but being so vindictive as to order the destruction of the sets of that show – a franchise that had brought the company that is giving you that nice paycheck so much revenue – is among the biggest head scratchers in the world. Not cool in the least bit!
I’m glad to see that that stance has softened in recent years. Perhaps someone put a tack on the chair of that particular suit. 😉
i can hardly bear to look at those demolition photos. That make me so sad to see all of those set pieces destroyed like that. Why didn’t they just sell them or something? Fans would die to own even pieces of sets like that. I still can’t believe how much people paid for the items in the Christie’s auction – more money than I’ve seen in my life.
Oh wow the images are really sickening, I know Paramount was a bit disenchanted with Trek at the time, but come on!
Also this does go to show you that making an industry for yourself as Lucas did means he retained total control over his movies, and thus he can have the choice to keep things alive. Trek on the other hand belongs unfortunately to Hollywood “suits” and not any one real person.
Little old me can figure, hay lets set up a park where all the Star Trek stuff is on permanent display and charge a price for a visit. Think “Graceland” for Star Trek Fans. That couldn’t be done?
Hum money generated on a continuing basis, nah lets sell and scrap indiscriminately. Does that make sense in a bottom line way? Paramount is run by a bunch of tools.
They did, its called the Star Trek Experiance, in Los Vegus…and coincidently its getting shut down, I always wanetd to goto it ona pilgrimage as such, but it ain’t a cheap flight from Europe 😦
The Experience closed last September, unfortunately. The owner of a downtown establishment, Neonopolis, has been flaunting that a new deal has been struck to bring back The Experience on Fremont St. That was last March…no new developments (that I’ve been made aware of, anyway) have been reported, and it was their intention to re-open The Experience around the time the new movie was released.
Slightly newer information about The Experience from this February…
http://trekmovie.com/2009/02/26/cbs-confirms-contract-to-re-open-st-the-experience-in-may-new-stte-documentary/
When you’re a reasonable person, dealing with the decisions of, ahem, ‘unreasonable people’, is just the worst – they go through life with a whole different set of rules (not to belittle the far, far worse things going on in this crazy world than cancelling Trek, but you know what I mean).
The sad thing about Enterprise for me was that I’d stopped watching Voyager fairly early on as it just didn’t hit the spot for me, but then Enterprise came along and I loved it. I must admit that IMHO using the whole third season chasing around the Xindi was a mis-step (I just couldn’t get excited about it when I knew darn well the Earth was going to survive just fine 🙂 ), but then season four came along and everything clicked into place. Brilliant writing, lovingly crafted nods to TOS, the show was soaring – made it all the more baffling and frustrating to shoot it down when it had really found its wings (all those great ideas for a season five lost too).
I’d echo what Matt said about cancellations though, crazy how much good stuff gets cut without being given a proper chance – Firefly anyone? TNG took two years to hit it’s stride – it might have never got that far if it had been conceived these last few years). If there’s one good thing that’s come out of the global credit crunch it’s that I gather more shows are being kept on as it costs too much to start up new ones.
This thread also makes me that much more grateful to you John, and Doug, and others who kind enough to share your images, aketches, memories, and anecdotes. It keeps some of this material alive and shared for posterity even though, criminally, so many of the physical props are gone.
Mark, Firefly’s fan base is still actually growing, I believe. I didn’t even know about it really until last summer…a friend gave me the boxed set, which I watched in a week, I think. My daughter finally gave in and started watching it Sunday and will be done today. Tomorrow night I’ll get to enjoy Serenity (Firefly: The Motion Picture 🙂 ) with her for Friday movie fun night! An awesome series cut down in it’s infancy!! There are still browncoat meetings every year. Just think what could have been….
Definitely not a nurturing environment in Hollywood these years!! You make a good point with the global credit crunch…One good thing may come of it.
This all came down because of one or two people. the management of the lot comes in waves and sometimes it’s run by brilliant folks who know the value of what their in charge of while the next group doesn’t have any idea what they are doing. It’s like the government!!!!
the new knight rider was also getting it’s wings and shot down way o prematurely!!! Thanks for the compliments and comments too!
Is it for sure gone? I was just looking for info on it last night…btw I just signed for Serenity 😀
I found the whole Star Trek auction quite bittersweet. On the one hand I was pretty angry that they were sitting on this amazing, comprehensive collection of items (which they’d proudly shown off on the DVD extras) only to scatter them all over the world where we’d probably never see them again. On the other hand, it was great to see the images and even see in person some props and models which we’d never seen in such detail before. And hey, if people were spending bucket loads of money on these things then they’d be looking after them pretty well.
I never thought about the sets. 😦 Not to sound like an overly dramatic, obsessive Trek fan (wait, who am I kidding?!), but these images are really quite distressing. I know there are way worse things going on in the world, but it’s still upsetting to see the work you’ve admired for so long be treated with so little respect.
Not necessarily, the guy who got the Enterprise E has it sitting in his garage next to lawn chairs and his bench tools. But then again it all could have been bulldozed. So in the end sitting in someones garage or squashed flat, I have to say the auction was a good thing given those choices.
The sets are appalling, I could see that SFM thing Paul Allen has up here in Seattle making good use of those parts, even cut up to fit in a space it would have been fun to see it utilized as a environment with enclosures with displayed props in. Stuff gone now.
And yeah, I would’a ran out there and grabbed that “plasma conduit” dealie and ran pass or no pass. 😀
Not anything new to add in terms of outrage over the cavalier destruction of those sets, but what really blows my mind is how they blew a PR op. Even if they didn’t want to store or sell them, they could have generated some goodwill by shipping them off to the NEW VOYAGES people (sort of ‘our trek is over, but you guys keep going.’ I’m sure they could have tripled their production value immediately, and that is before even the first repainting of elements!
The way my frienda and I would reuse our spaceship set pieces, just getting a few new walls or consoles always made a huge difference (which is why I always check Hallmark stores and supermarkets that had hallmark racks in the 80s and 90s, since a lot of their card racks were absolutely incredible set pieces (very DS9-like, makes me wonder if Zimmerman had stock in Hallmark?)
Ow! That’s hard to watch!
Breaks my heart…
God, those pics just broke my heart. The moreso because I’m one of the many many many ENT fans who never bothered to watch it when it was on, and discovered it later through the DVD sets…
Friggin’ suits.
johneaves:
I heard this thru the grape vine on the lot that this was a vendetta by one suit that was new and hated Star Trek with a passion. It was obvious when the only thing at the warehouse’s to be removed were the Star Trek stuff. It was told that it was to much money to keep all the storage facilities, but ONLY Star trek was pulled out, There are sets from Grease Two still there like that will hold some significance down the road!!!! HAAA! I have to laugh!
Wow, some humans, eh. Must sux to go through life so full of pettiness and fear. Hopefully that suit will gain some higher more love-based perspective one day. We all do out best, eh. And mine is not to judge. I try best to just tend to the log in my own eye.
And, plenty of nice folks out there too, even more I would say, like yourself John and all here. So thank goodness for that. 😀
LLP,
deg
You ended this story ever so elegantly. Well done DEG!!
Who has all the original archatechtural drawings from the shows? As long as they exsist they can be recreated…
With enough money right?
Come on lucky lotto numbers!
Seeing these pictures fills me with anger.
To know that only Star Trek sets, props and miscellania were singled out for destruction, sale and trash realy pisses me off.
So much history has been shrugged off and put in the trash. And we are powerless to do anything about it.
Seeing these Pics tells me that the Trek we know and love is gone.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was down to one single jackass in a suit who simply did not like Star Trek.
Something similar happened at the BBC. A new Director came into power at the end of the 80s and promptly cancelled Doctor Who as he could not stand the show.
It only takes one guy!!!! in the 60’s Gilligan’s Island was a huge hit. the new season had new shows and it came down to canceling Gunsmoke for the new programing to begin.The exec loved Gunsmoke which at the time had ratings lower than Gilligan’s Island. Because of his POV Gilligan was canceled!!!
Ah Gilligan…RIP (the show, that is)! Well, we’ll have to see about the future of the Trek Universe.
It is alive for now…I just snagged opening night tix at the Harkins on Scottsdale!! It didn’t specify Cine Capri, but they’d be crazy to open it in any other theater!!! I saw Star Wars originally in the original Cine Capri and hope to welcome the “new” Trek there, as well. 😉
Dammit.
What else to say?
Just wanted to drop by and say hi
I read your blog and I really do agree that the lack of respect for history is truly amazing. It’s a really great example of how business school mba’s seem to be running everything now. Everything is about bottom line and cost-cutting. It’s a shame and a little discouraging when you start thinking about the path things will take in the future. I was really sad to see that the shooting models of the all the ships were sold off. It’s hard to imagine the enterprise-d sitting in somebody’s living room. Interesting focal piece for the room I guess.
Anyway,
I also wanted to mention that I had the opportunity to meet Michael Westmore. He was speaking at my school and it was just really cool meeting him.
Hi John. Longtime fan of your work, I’ve been reading and looking at the technical guides and the Star Trek magazines since I was a kid because I wanted to go into your line of work. I haven’t designed an all out ship for years, but I’ll occasionally sketch out an Oberth class while bored at work, haha.
Anyways, its a complete shame that Paramount’s executives would do that to such important pieces of television history. This is not only a slap in the face to the fans but to the people that designed and built these set pieces. Its a disappointment that no one has an appreciation for their importance. I was also saddened by the closing of Star Trek the experience, but that’s mostly because I never got to check out the bridge of the Enterprise D or hit on Orion slave girls while drinking Romulan ale at Quark’s bar.
So yeah, I’m glad I came across this blog (Thanks to I09.com) and can find out some more of the behind the scenes details of the creative process. It’d be really cool too if you’d post some rejected ship designs, just so we could see what might have been.
Peace and hair grease,
Stevo
Thanks Stevo for the very nice comment!!! be sure to send over your work,,, It would be great to see. If you have just gotten on go check out some of the older posts because there are a few rejected ship drawings put up in the last few weeks. I could use some hair greese but first I need the hair!!!
Seeing those pictures of the sets being demolished was downright painful. Sad, very sad.
I know I’m why late, just discovered that sad and astonishing crime.
I would have made the trip across the pond by swimming, to get my hands on some ENT sets for some good money. Not to mention many other fans, collectors and muesums.
So basically these ENT sets were out of wood, with somekind of paint over them and it looks metalic?
Is there a book or so how it was done and with what materials, since I would love to create my own ENT theme designed room (the living room)
A bitter irony that they spent a shitload of $$$$ putting together U.S.S. Kelvin sets… the corridors of which looked exactly like those aboard the NX. 😦
I honestly cannot find the words for what I feel here. Why wouldn’t you want to make a buck off of selling those pieces? I just don’t get it. Even if you hate Trek, why not at least get some quick cash for them? Heck, what about the various fan productions? They would have loved to get thier hands on these things. They could have posted a notice and told everyone it’s cash and carry….
John, do we know what was there besides what you have already pointed out?
I truly don’t know what to say, I feel like they leveled my own house.
Hello Everyone,
I’m Colin Warde, former project manager for the It’s a Wrap! Star Trek Auction. I can’t say that I’ve read every single comment on this blog issue or that I expect to be able to answer even a fraction of the questions anyone might have, but I’d love to comment on one or two issue that I see.
First, I no longer have any affiliation with CBS/Paramount or the company It’s a Wrap! so I’d like you all to know that my comments are mine and mine alone. However, I would like to thank both companies for allowing me to head up the job that I was able to do.
I think we can all agree that the emotion behind every Trek fan is part of what makes this franchise great. Loyal, impassioned fans come back time and time again to see characters and events in this universe portrayed on television and as feature films and will do so as long as the material is produced. It is because of this and other reasons that CBS/Paramount made available the props, set dressing, and wardrobe of the Star Trek franchise.
While the Christies Auction of October 2006 was impressive in its monetary takings, so too would be the It’s a Wrap! Star Trek Auction. The difference was what would be available. While Christies put together 1000 lots of items (thus many hundreds more items more than a thousand, but refined to multiple items per lot), the IAW Auction would be allowed to auction whatever else was available.
I was given this excellent responsibility. Following a stint working with Mike and Denise Okuda on the Christie’s Auction, albeit in an ancillary capacity, it came down to almost solely my judgment as to what we were going to be able to rescue and auction. There were many factors pressuring this equation and the decisions were sometimes hard to make, sometimes heartbreaking. I recognized the materials I saw in the Downey Warehouse as mostly set dressing pieces fabricated exclusively for Enterprise. Reused items like the Defiant viewscreen from DS9 repainted for that of Commander Dolim’s Xindi-Reptilian cruiser, the rounded window appearing in engineering on the Enterprise-D and later as part of Voyager, and wall panels and windows making the set of the observation lounge on the Enterprise-D, not to mention what amounted to the entirety of the Enterprise NX-01; all of these were present and the harsh reality was some of it was going to be auctioned and some of it simply couldn’t be saved.
In those summer months before the auction started, I struggled with the major parts of the aforementioned equation. We had one giant warehouse that was divided into two, and we were going to have to compress what was there into just one side of that location. We had six known warehouses of material to sort through and compress into that one side of one warehouse. The material, of all sizes and of varying states of fragility, had to be transported to this one warehouse. And all of this had to be performed with the utmost secrecy. Why one warehouse? Because it was the one where all of the costumes were, it was the one with the greatest number of hand props, and it was the most secure and cost effective.
I could go on and on about why CBS/Paramount decided to auction these things rather than store them, but remember one thing: They didn’t destroy everything outright. They did make them available for auction. This was a blessing. Not only were they allowed out into the public to continue existing, they were scrutinized in agonizing detail by myself and my research staff to ascertain where they appeared, in what episodes, who used them, etc. We didn’t always cover all the bases, time was never on our side, and the pressure to produce information was extraordinary, but it’s there for everyone to see, catalogued, photographed, loved.
We talked about items and shipping or freighting them to people in terms of their size. We had smalls, hand items, large, giant, and colossal items. We had one complete and two-thirds of the shuttlepods from Enterprise because the front of one was sold at Christies. We had the Suliban Cell Ship, Borg alcoves built on steel frames, Vulcan wall paintings, whole wall panels from the Scimitar in Nemesis, consoles from the bridge of the Enterprise-E, entire beds that were reused in everything from The Next Generation to Voyager, and enormous model pieces from V’Ger and the Spacedock from which the refit Enterprise 1701 was launched. And all of it had to be either something we could move, store, reassemble and disassemble, clean, photograph, measure, cover, and package to the fans and buyers. We had chairs and couches from Deanna Troi’s office, the bridge console panels from the Enterprise NX-01, missiles and photon torpedoes. They were giant, but they were what we could store and move and freight. And how many people did we auction these things to who actually paid for them right away? How many balked at the estimates on what they were paying for as far as freighting the items to them? When you added the cost of what an item went for in any given auction, how much added cost was it to ship something to someone? Was it any wonder that people asked for in store pick up at our Burbank retail location?
I’m sorry I couldn’t bring the Enterprise NX-01 viewscreen to auction. I have a picture of me next to it; my expression is terse because I loved Enterprise and I wasn’t going to be able to save out this colossal item that was part of the ship that saved Earth from the Xindi! I wept openly, in front of my crew, on the rumor that someone was trying to rebuild a duplicate of the Enterprise-D bridge and we had, a month prior, abandoned the curved window sections of that observation lounge. I spent far too long gazing in awe of the copper paint on the first warp five reactor wishing to God that James Cromwell had fulfilled a single line of dialogue in an Enterprise episode and signed the thing someplace “Zephram Cochrane”. And you know what? The reactor was already cut into three pieces for ease of removal from the sound stage at Paramount. Why? Because it’s a set piece.
It’s all a product. It’s all part of a show.
But it isn’t that to us is it? That’s why it hurt us to see these pictures and read that they were destroyed. How many of us have the space in our apartments and homes to properly store a single piece of this show the size of a cufflink let alone a Borg alcove let alone a bridge console? How many people have the money to get it home to them? There were plenty. Some of the brighter fellows rebuilt their entire basements to house these things in a loving environment. Some of them had to just put it out in the garage. Some of them ended up trying to sell it off again. It’s impractical to keep. That’s why CBS/Paramount allowed us access to it in the best way they could.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save every last iota of material for everyone. It was an impossibility. It was an honor for me to be there. I felt like the thousands of dollars and years of my life that I put into being a Star Trek fan finally paid off in my even being able to be a part of the job (and it was all quite coincidental!). And I would have saved it all to auction it to you if I could have because it was a good gig and it would have lasted even until now, I’m sure. Tens of thousands of lots of items… wow. I have plenty to say about this, plenty more. I love to talk about it, but this is 1346 words and I don’t know how many the blog will allow.
A bit old on this posting because I just saw it, and this might have been covered already. I didn’t read all the replies, but the cost of storage on these large pieces is outrageous. I have bought large pieces in the past, and they are a deal in most cases because it isn’t cheap to send out a crew to crush them, and haul off the trash. The items I have are stored inside except 1 item, and it won’t weather much over a long period of time, and does clean up real nice, and easy. Now if I move because of storage issues I might have to toss these things myself. No one wants them even though people would love to have them, but where do you put it. For the most part unless you have a dedicated warehouse you own, or have free storage you will go broke unless your a person with endless means in your pocket book. I am sure Prop Houses were contacted about liquidating the inventory, but like many Prop houses in the Hollywood area they are suffering, and at a great price, or even free it cost to store it, and if your not able to rent your large pieces out it is a money pit. It is a total shame to crush it, but what else do you do with it?
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