Kirk's Reddish Monster Statue

[tharpdevenport]

Kirk's whole quaters in that picture, is weird. Let's jsut look at it:

* Some weird pointless jewelry box in the corner.

* An old artifact which seems to hold no sugnificance to him.

* A weird blank six-sided thng hanging up on the wall behind him.

* A human skull.

* A potted plant next to a window where this is no sunlight.

* A window with a grill.

* An oddly shaped desk which just seems to be odd for the sake of being odd, with no fuctional purpose.

* Some weird thing in the wall to his left behind him which looks like a futuristic dishwasher from the 1960's by way of a World's Fair showcasing what a dishwasher may look like in the year 2000.


And then you look at the bigger image from the "Star Trek: Continues" set, and it's barron of any personal artifacts, too. There doesn't seem to be anything of importance to him in there. That's a complaint for most Trek shows -- it looks like some whiz-bang set designer threw something together to look futuristic, but it has no humanity to it.

 

[The Old Mixer]

* An old artifact which seems to hold no sugnificance to him.

There doesn't seem to be anything of importance to him in there.

How could any of us possibly know that? Those might be souvenirs from some very memorable early planetary expeditions that he counts among his most prized possessions, for all we know.

Also, what I think you're referring to as looking like a dishwasher (to his right from our perspective) is his safe, which was used in at least couple of episodes.

 

[GSchnitzer]

A reproduction of Kirk's sculpture done by Dale Morton for the Star Trek New Voyages set (now the Star Trek: The Original Series Set Tour):

 

[GSchnitzer]

I think Deela said it best in "Wink of an Eye:"

DEELA: Your quarters are quite like you, Captain: austere and efficient, and in their own way, handsome.

KIRK: A room should reflect its occupant.

We have some jewelry-type box of some unknown function:

We have some kind of humanoid skull in "Obsession." (It may or may not be an actual human skull.) It's actually the skull from "Mirror. Mirror"--accidentally left on the set from when it decorated the Mirror Universe's Kirk's quarters:

* An old artifact which seems to hold no sugnificance to him.

"* A weird blank six-sided thng hanging up on the wall behind him."
* A potted plant next to a window where this is no sunlight.

Not really a hexagon; it has a curve on the top. Classic Matt Jefferies: you can tell it's the future--it's an odd shape. And not really a window; just a grille-like room divider.

"An oddly shaped desk which just seems to be odd for the sake of being odd, with no functional purpose."

Not "odd for the sake of being odd;" odd for the sake of looking "not contemporary." So, not "odd" so much as "futuristic."

"Some weird thing on the wall to his left behind him which looks like a futuristic dishwasher from the 1960's by way of a World's Fair showcasing what a dishwasher may look like in the year 2000."

Not a dishwasher; a "futuristic" push-button combination-locked wall safe with a sliding door containing the official Command Pack, his final orders, and at least two of Kirk's medals--and a communicator (if not other things as well).

 

[scotpens]

The "Parthenon" thing (I've always thought it looks more like Washington, DC's Kennedy Center) is just a jewelry box-type container.

Actually it looks more like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles.

 

[Spock's Barber]

It looks like a Buddha but it isn't one.

I agree it looks like (or is meant to look like) a pre-Columbian artifact from S. America.

It's a Klingon Good Luck Charm, meaning Kirk is lucky if it doesn't blow him up, disintegrate him or eat him.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I think Deela said it best in "Wink of an Eye:"

DEELA: Your quarters are quite like you, Captain: austere and efficient, and in their own way, handsome.

KIRK: A room should reflect its occupant.

We have some jewelry-type box of some unknown function:

So, in other words, useless.

We have some kind of humanoid skull in "Obsession." (It may or may not be an actual human skull.) It's actually the skull from "Mirror. Mirror"--accidentally left on the set from when it decorated the Mirror Universe's Kirk's quarters:

So, in other words a screw up by the prop department. This only furthers the oddness of the room and apparently what little effort was put in to make it personable.

"* A weird blank six-sided thng hanging up on the wall behind him."

Not really a hexagon; it has a curve on the top. Classic Matt Jefferies: you can tell it's the future--it's an odd shape. And not really a window; just a grille-like room divider.

Pardon the mistake -- the photo from page one has the top cropped off some,so I assumed it was the same thing on top to a degree.

"An oddly shaped desk which just seems to be odd for the sake of being odd, with no functional purpose."

Not "odd for the sake of being odd;" odd for the sake of looking "not contemporary." So, not "odd" so much as "futuristic."

That's exactly what I measnt to say -- it's odd for sake of being odd, and iin this case the oddness was "Hey, it's angled and weird -- must be futuristic! We'll just add that to our 1960's Batman hippie lighting and it'll be all futuristic and shit."

"Some weird thing on the wall to his left behind him which looks like a futuristic dishwasher from the 1960's by way of a World's Fair showcasing what a dishwasher may look like in the year 2000."

Not a dishwasher; a "futuristic" push-button combination-locked wall safe with a sliding door containing the official Command Pack, his final orders, and at least two of Kirk's medals--and a communicator (if not other things as well).

Your knowledge of it is more than mine. But it's what it looks like to me.



Kirk's quarters dont' reflect him at all. Nothing in there says "Kirk", not even down to the color scheme. It's so interchangable with other spaces on the ship, you just take away the random set decorator nick nacks and it's the potential for almost any space on the Enterprise. Picard's ready room was more personable than this, and he wasn't one to share right off the bat; a model of the class ship he was on, a book (as we know he loves to ready), his fish, and a place holder for anything else I have forgotten about.

 

[GSchnitzer]

So, in other words, useless.



So, in other words a screw up by the prop department. This only furthers the oddness of the room and apparently what little effort was put in to make it personable.



Pardon the mistake -- the photo from page one has the top cropped off some,so I assumed it was the same thing on top to a degree.



That's exactly what I measnt to say -- it's odd for sake of being odd, and iin this case the oddness was "Hey, it's angled and weird -- must be futuristic! We'll just add that to our 1960's Batman hippie lighting and it'll be all futuristic and shit."



Your knowledge of it is more than mine. But it's what it looks like to me.



Kirk's quarters dont' reflect him at all. Nothing in there says "Kirk", not even down to the color scheme. It's so interchangable with other spaces on the ship, you just take away the random set decorator nick nacks and it's the potential for almost any space on the Enterprise. Picard's ready room was more personable than this, and he wasn't one to share right off the bat; a model of the class ship he was on, a book (as we know he loves to ready), his fish, and a place holder for anything else I have forgotten about.

I know that 50 years after Trek, the Star Trek The Original Series Set Tour is a going concern--recreating the original Stage 9 Desilu TOS "touchstone" sets. It will interesting to see if the TNG sets have similar longevity and such timeless/universal appeal 50 years after *it* went off the air. Will it have such cultural significance that there will be a Star Trek The Next Generation Set Tour studio set recreation years from now?

Much like the NCC-1701 model is in the Smtihsonian Institution, while the NCC-1701-D model is not, I think there is a cultural significance to the TOS art design--including its sets and set decorations--that TNG lacks--as good as it is. Time will tell.

 

[Christopher]

It will interesting to see if the TNG sets have similar longevity and such timeless/universal appeal 50 years after *it* went off the air. Will ut have such cultural significance that there will be a Star Trek The Next Generation Set Tour studio set recreation?

The problem there is that most of the TNG sets had previously been the TMP (and later movie) sets, and were subsequently the Voyager sets. So there's no single configuration to recreate.

 

[Vandervecken]

It's an early Horgon:

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Prime Kirk snatched the skull, not realizing that Mirror Kirk would probably blame one of his crew for it and mete out undeserved (at least in this case) punishment to the "offender". Who was probably part of a plot to kill him anyway.

 

[UnknownSample]

The entire design idea of Star Trek was based on asymmetry-- strange shapes and angles. It wasn't just Kirk's desk, but his desk was a typical, unremarkable example of it.

 

[Kor]

To me, the TOS interiors look like a futuristic extrapolation of the modernist designs in vogue at the time. I would love to live in a space that looked like that.

Kor

 

[MAGolding]

Wibble said:

I think I just found out its type is "Zapotec" (?) rather than Aztec or Maya, which may be a separate tribe. In what other shows has it appeared?

It looks like a Buddha but it isn't one.

I agree it looks like (or is meant to look like) a pre-Columbian artifact from S. America.

If it is Zapotec it is what archaeologists call mesoamerican, not South American. The ancient Zapotec civilization was in Mexico.

 

[Push The Button]

Kirk's first cabin, on "deck 12" had a window, set into the angled outer wall. It is barely noticable in Mudd's Women, but it is there. His later "deck 5" cabin does not have the window.

 

[plynch]

Regarding Jeffries' shapes, I once did a thread called Spot the Trapezoid or somesuch. They're everywhere. Seeing that Dorothy Chandler picture reminds me how not futuristic TOS often looks, since it really looks like a product of its time to me: the 50s/60s trying to break with earlier design tenets. Like JJ Trek looks like an Apple store.

2. how do his quarters NOT look like Kirk? Specifics please. What is specifically Kirk-like that is missing? What is non-Kirk-like that is there?

We know from early S1 he can be reflective, though later script efficiency pared that out. But a skull maybe reminds him of mortality. The monster was a gift from Ruth. I just got a tacky foil painting of a wolf for Christmas and I love it! But people who know me probably wouldn't think it would be my sort of art (in fact it does not go with anything in the house ... but I still love it. I truly wonder why).

So again, specifically what seems Contrary-to-Kirk in the cabin?

 

[Christopher]

I've always assumed that the decorations Kirk had in his cabin were souvenirs of the various alien worlds he'd visited in his years as an explorer.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Kirk's first cabin, on "deck 12" had a window, set into the angled outer wall. It is barely noticable in Mudd's Women, but it is there. His later "deck 5" cabin does not have the window.

Well, the window we can just barely make out in "Mudd's Women" is right where one of those trapezoidal wall hangings is placed in later episodes. So possibly it's not that his later cabin doesn't have a window so much as the window is covered with one of these wall hangings. The hanging might slide up to reveal the window--much like the wall hanging in "Mirror, Mirror" hides the Tantalus Device underneath.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I'd like to see a short story collection where each author picks out a never-mentioned prop like this and gives us a new adventure story about how it was acquired.

 

[plynch]

Holy cow, that's a good idea. Any of our writers here wanna take that suggestion to PocketBooks?