Hey, I never noticed that before....

From this angle, it looks just like a plastic ice scraper for use on auto glass in the winter. In southern California, maybe that was a fairly exotic and unfamiliar-looking item, so it seemed prop-worthy.

 

Yeah, I thought about that before getting distracted by Ferris's smarmy look and its resemblance in color to those common red plastic cups. Enh, maybe not - it's more orange than the cups. But maybe somebody went to Dairy Queen or the UFP equivalent.

Well, you're right; the ice scrapers are actually something of a novelty out in these parts, indeed. But they're not unheard of - ski resorts where they come in quite handy are nearby - and wouldn't the prop folks have realized that the show was being broadcast to many more areas beyond the filming location, where ice removal was very much a thing?

And what's the white thing on the top, above what looks like a black rubber circular rim? Or is that actually part of Ferris's spiffy attire?

 

The white part could just be stage lights reflecting on the hard plastic blade.

 

Thanks, guys. Now I GOT to know what that damn thing is.

 

Maybe it is a squeegee and it is that guy's job to clean off all those screens on the consoles

 

The red thing in his other hand appears to be a red box Scotty has on the shuttle.

Shots were flopped deliberately. You can't do it accidentally because the optical soundtrack down one side would give it away. The usual reason shots are flopped is to fix mismatched looks and fix directional continuity errors. In "The Enemy Within" the flopped shots on the planet at the start appear to have been to fix a directional continuity mismatch. Unflopping them "fixes" one thing while breaking the thing they were intended to correct in the first place.

I wrote about this in the Fan Productions forum and used a flopped shot in "The Way to Eden" to illustrate why it was done (link).

 

Thanks for the info! I'm pretty sure the scene I noticed in The Omega Glory was flopped for directional continuity because it made Kirk look in the direction that fit the established scene IIRC.

 

It looks less like an ice scraper now. That thing could be a paint brush, a whisk broom, or possibly a novelty flashlight. Maybe a photographer's light meter, or an electric flash attachment for a professional camera. The red and white colors might have been a prop man's paint job.

 

I prepared a response to this without noticing all the replies it already had! Oopsie.
Anyway, I went to the trouble of clipping some shots so here they are:


Whatever he's carrying is certainly paintbrush in shape, but only the handle is red. The while oval on the black "bristle" area make me think it's actually a prop, maybe a scanner of some sort (if the white oval is a screen). It's too consistent in shape to be a mere reflection IMO.
I wonder if it turned up anywhere else?

 

Yeah, upon reflection (), that white part is no reflection. @Mytran is right; the shape stays the same. And so much for my dumb theory that it was part of Ferris' raiment. The guy holding it also has a pretty rigid grip on it, keeping it in the same fixed position relative to his evidently clenched hand as he dramatically strolls between Kirk and Uhura. Given his direction of travel, it's as though he was taking advantage of Spock's absence to paint the library computer station.

 

Ok, we possibly have a paint brush with a bright red/orange handle and white bristles with residual black paint on the bristle tips. The base of the handle has some sort of tip or different color on it. Maybe for hanging on a wall peg? You'd think that retouching the paint on a starship would be a function for a red shirt crew rather than a gold shirt.

 

Oh absolutely. In all those cases I knew it was done for continuity or some other reason. I just never found out why they did it for Enemy Within

 

I'm almost afraid to ask: what happened to Greg?

 

It looks like a labelmaker(?)/tape applier.

 

Not just paint on the tips, but on the side and base of the bristles too.
To my eyes It's more like black bristles with a splodge of white on one side.

He should at least be dressed in the TOS coveralls, right?!

 

That's very sad. I don't know how I missed it, but thanks.

 

Brightened up.


Zoomed and cropped.


An ice scraper for heavy ice locations is my guess. The pointy nubs help break thick ice. The serrations carry on to scrapers today.

 

If the white part is the scraper, what do you make of the black border around it?

 

I think we're looking at more than one thing. It's probably a commonplace paintbrush handle with the bristles removed or covered, and the top part could be as simple as a piece of packing Styrofoam™ that's been painted up to suggest some detail. Call it a hybridized or compound prop.

Also, if it were meant to be noticed, I think I would have noticed it during the 25 years I never missed an episode in syndication, give or take a day. It was meant to register unconsciously at most, to suggest a bit of background detail for realism.