Commercially available chairs in Star Trek (opens in new tab)

That's addressed in the comments, it's probably a Sunbeam rather than a Hamilton Beach

This is the dream, cast iron pans well seasoned and looked after will last practically forever and are a joy to cook with. Heck, even poorly looked after pans can usually be brought back to a long and delicious life. I envy you!

IIRC, the doctor grows the fresh ingredients for Pike. There's a recent episode where he goes to meet the doctor (for other reasons I think) and he gives Pike some fresh greens. So essentially many tiny green houses.

now that you mention it, I can't think of anything more futuristic than using magnetic flux to induce current into an iron pan

a sous vide bath of vacuum sealed meat is rather dull in comparison to a good sear

Set phasers to “fry”.

Not especially, I worked in an IT support lab and most of the guys set their own schedules.

One of the real skills of commercial model and prop making is know all the corners you can cut, and things you can reuse.

To take an example from Aliens, the ship is only seen from one side, so the model only has one finished painted side, and the interior sets scavenge loads of bits and pieces from computer cases and whatever.

You also shouldn’t underestimate the tradition of hiding Easter eggs in models and sets.

A good Belter never wastes anything.

they used a Thule or Yakima (don't remember) car roof box (something like that) https://www.thule.com/en-us/cargo-carrier/car-top-carrier/th... as a casket :D

lol, I have that! I never noticed it on the show.

It's also just an artistic design choice. They tried very hard to make things look "alien" and "otherwordly" as much as possible, ranging from the set design to the costumes to the music to Starfleet sideburns.

For example sky can be any colour except blue, and doors can open every which way (except downwards, because that would require digging a hole in the set) and they make all sorts of sounds – as long as they're not "just" doors (they're "alien" doors!) They used those awkward holsters for phasers because pockets looked too "common".

Other more technical factors probably played a factor as well, but this also worked two ways and limited creativity: IIRC the origin skin colour for Vulcans was supposed to be red, but was changed to the off-white because the red didn't work on B&W.

As to the latter, my mom watched it on B&W originally, and then when it was rerun she had a color TV and was astonished that the skies on the alien planets weren't blue!

My daughter made me watch Nosferatu (1922) on a hundred year anniversary of the movie. Very interesting use of shadows.

The networks were just switching to color en masse around the time that Star Trek came out and the penetration of color TVs was still pretty low--well under 50%.

I recall B&W TVs still being available as a budget option in the early 80s, though by then most middle class homes had a color TV.

(raises hand)

In the old studio days when they were cranking out a lot of films--many of which were probably fairly similar in style (e.g. Westerns)--it probably made more sense. I assume Netflix is mostly just writing checks to independent production companies. There's an overhead to storing and cataloging a bunch of props and I'm guessing there isn't a lot of return for Netflix to do so.

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.

DS9 had a wardroom, Sisko got promoted there

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Wardroom

Ah, but the quality was not on par with, say, Garak's works!

You're certainly not wrong there.

ST has a warehouse full of that stuff. Pictures, actual props, inventory lists and who to rent from, and original purchase orders. It is pretty detailed what they have access to for star trek especially after TNG. There are a few youtube vids where they show a very small sampling of what they have. Now some of the ToS stuff is more reliant on fan info. As a lot was cleared out in the 70s/80s for space for other things. A show like lower decks is all nostalgia type items so they are probably going thru that stuff very heavily.

I wondered if that was a part of it, but this particular Lower Decks entry makes me wonder. It seems like an amazing level of consistency between very different forms of production.

On the other hand, I suppose there could be a "Chairs of Star Trek" design handbook within the organization. This would be under the "Weird Shit" section.

People get tossed out of their seats every other episode in star trek. I'm sure I've seen multiple "medical team to the bridge"s due to someone getting knocked loose by the ship shaking and hitting their head on a console.

Course, given the accelerations in Star Trek you are red smudge without them anyway. But then there is all the flowing around around the bridge, engineering, everytime a ship is hit... Maybe a seatbelt wouod have helped!

Or some space space suits, proper footware for away missions. Alongside clothing...

Ah, so the Enterprise-E got some safety upgrades as well!

Drumhead (where the warp core is sabotaged and there's a mcarthyist style investigation) had the infamous chair

This podcast was inspired by the chain in The Drumhead

https://trekmovie.com/2021/06/02/the-shuttle-pod-crew-takes-...

I've had a tan one since I was a kid. I know we had it by the late '80s, dunno exactly when my parents got it. It shows no signs of wearing out, at least 35 years and a bunch of moves (plus some hard use—it wasn't just a toy box when I was a kid, but a toy itself! And a table, and a chair...) later.

If the new ones are still made like that, I'd love a few more at that price. But I have a feeling the plastic's been CAD'd down to as thin as possible to meet some minimum spec, like with everything else.

[EDIT] Oh, mine's slightly different: the handles aren't a molded element of the outside, but holes through the box itself, with finger-shaped curves. They're great, very secure to hold, though that does mean small stuff can fall out, and they can be tricky if the thing's packed too full.

Starfleet technology at its finest.

On more ergonomic/modern office chairs, the arm rests can be adjusted forth and back for that reason (look for “3D” or “4D” arm rests).

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).

Not having arm rests is hardly dystopian. The chair I've used for approximately a decade now came with arm rests, but I chose not to install them, because they just get in the way and provide only negligible benefits. There are many other ways to rest your arms: on the table, on your legs, by crossing your arms, etc.

Starfleet is supposed to be filled with the most intrinsically motivated, hard-working, determined, smartest people in the Federation. For every Starfleet officer there are probably 100 people on Earth taking it easy and enjoying their post-scarcity utopia, but some people are just not wired that way.

I mean, there's an entire TNG episode about how Picard begrudgingly takes a vacation on the tropical "pleasure planet" of Risa and is completely miserable until he gets caught up in a wacky Indiana Jones type adventure. And an entire DS9 episode where Worf goes to Risa and decides he'd rather help some nutjobs sabotage the weather control system. These are not people who like to relax!

> it suggests people will relax so much less that arm rests are unnecessary

Or they relax SO often, that they don't need arm rests (because their arms are never tired, because they aren't working much)

I guess it is only a design choice. Not so sure about the positive outlook so. The federation is militaristic to the point of the military, Starfleet, running diplomacy. And the objectively bad stuff starfleet does, the prime directive for examole can amount to genocide by negligence, is done in the name of moral superiority. Throw in some hero worshipping and personality cult, after all rules only apply to certain people, never the heros... The Klingons are welcome allies, despite all the shit they did during the various wars with the federation, while the Romulans are the evil, honorless villains... Reading between the lines, there is a lot of cold war stuff in the universe going on.

Not mine and the site has sadly gone down, but enjoy this archive of The Indeed Project: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112020739/http://www.skulld...

(Every time Teal'c says the word "Indeed" throughout Stargate SG-1)

No, nothing of that sort. I've got a couple websites still up with content back to the early aughts but they kind of just transformed into blogs as the years went on.

The comedy gets better. It's also a much lower stakes show - they're ensigns, not captains. That allows it to be a little more flexible.

No it stays heavy on the comedy.