One of the true talents of Trek, Greg Jein has passed away.
Back when
@Harvey and I had lunch with Dorothy Fontana three years ago, just six months before she passed, she mentioned that Greg had been ill. So this is unsurprising, but nevertheless sad.
I never got to meet Greg in person, but back around 1995, when I was working on video game pitches for Playmates Toys/Playmates Interactive, I got Greg's number and called him to inquire if he had any photos of the model Earth-Romulan War Romulan ship model he'd built for The Star Trek Chronology, because one of the game pitches related to it. He didn't, saying he handed the model over to Mike Okuda without photographing it.
During the course of our conversation we chatted about a number of films and shows he'd worked on, and he mentioned that at the end of
The Motion Picture they had all these leftover miniatures built for VFX shots, notably the Spock Walk, and Paramount didn't want to pay to store it, so he said, "People would visit and we'd say 'here, take a planet!'"
The funniest part of the conversation happened when I asked him about models for
Flesh Gordon. The exchange went something like this:
GREG: I recently bought back one of the small flying phallus rocket miniatures. I'll try to sneak in the next time they do a spaceship graveyard scene on
Star Trek.
ME: So, it'd be the U.S.S. John Thomas?
He cracked up.
RIP Greg.