Toys, Game Electronics, Bread Makers and Composters

August 28, 2017 11:37 AM

Present-day devices as props in Star Trek
posted by figurant (34 comments total)

If memory serves me correctly -- perhaps I read it in David Gerrold's memoir about writing "The Trouble with Tribbles" -- Dr. McCoy's laser scalpels were really futuristic salt and pepper shakers.
posted by Gelatin at 11:42 AM on August 28, 2017 [11 favorites]

Riker's MANUAL CONTROL steering device in Insurrection was extra funny because prop happened to be the exact same joystick I had at home.

Still not as funny watching Phantom Menace and realizing Qui-Gon's communicator was actually my mom's razor handle painted silver.
posted by thecjm at 11:46 AM on August 28, 2017 [7 favorites]

I love this stuff, but my fave is a Star Wars one, where much lore grew from one man rescuing an ice cream maker.
posted by mobunited at 11:47 AM on August 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

one man rescuing an ice cream maker.

we all got priorities, man
posted by entropicamericana at 11:57 AM on August 28, 2017 [10 favorites]

If you want more, here's the tv tropes Off the Shelf FX section. The one I remember most is the Wham-o air blasters they used in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians... I don't think they modified them at all, they looked and worked just like the one I had at home.
posted by Huck500 at 11:57 AM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I got such a thrill when Dr. Crusher asked the replicator for a glass of water, and it was served in the same cup that my mother had in her kitchen cupboard.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:58 AM on August 28, 2017 [10 favorites]

I always assumed the scanners they take on away missions were gameboys. (I should probably admit that I never had nor played with a gameboy). Am I wrong?
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:09 PM on August 28, 2017

also: so many travel mugs in DS9, suitable for Raktajino.
posted by exogenous at 12:12 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

"Star Trek" does not have an exclusive on repurposing things as props. I seem to recall that in "Blake's 7", the navigational control of someone's spaceship was a fancy Euro-style steam iron turned around so than handle faced out. And, of course, the original Dalek probe arm was indeed just a toilet plunger painted up.
posted by briank at 12:34 PM on August 28, 2017

The excellent Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY had a recent exhibit of props used in science fiction films and TV shows. The ingenuity of props departments' repurposing blew me away. I recognized a plastic device sold years ago as a substitute for clothing detergent, an old Panasonic answering machine and several children's candy containers that had been painted, truncated or glued to something else.
posted by kinnakeet at 1:11 PM on August 28, 2017

I prefer how every single alien culture in trek seems to have horned melons.
posted by Ferreous at 1:22 PM on August 28, 2017 [5 favorites]

I remember in Battlestar Galactica seeing the same Ikea bed that we had at home at the time. I think that they'd painted it a different color but other than that unchanged.
posted by octothorpe at 1:51 PM on August 28, 2017

It may not have been meant to be taken seriously, but most of the props in Dark Star were things one could easily find around the house (including space suits made from styrofoam cooler lids, control panels made from ice trays, and of course the utterly terrifying beach ball alien life form).
posted by jackbishop at 2:11 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

The prop is almost definitely a twin-bladed asparagus peeler.

The real revelation here: Some people peel asparagus?
posted by Sequence at 2:19 PM on August 28, 2017 [8 favorites]

Dr. McCoy's laser scalpels were really futuristic salt and pepper shakers.

Not only that, they were futuristic salt and pepper shakers that were originally acquired to serve as salt and pepper shakers, but were rejected as being too futuristic to be recognizable to the audience as salt and pepper shakers. So they became surgical instruments.

Salt and pepper shakers. Hadn't quite said that enough yet
posted by Wolfdog at 2:53 PM on August 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

I remember this Trek episode where Kirk packs an American Tourister suitcase to prepare to leave the ship.
posted by octothorpe at 3:25 PM on August 28, 2017 [5 favorites]

I just remember, years ago, at a party, someone had 16mm print of the Trouble with Tribbles episode. Seeing the show on a much bigger screen and a little better resolution, I was shocked to see that the wrist stripes on the uniforms were Ric Rac, a ribbon material my grandmother liked to sew on things.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:21 PM on August 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

They missed the obvious barcode scanners in the Star Trek reboot movies.
posted by tresbizzare at 6:32 PM on August 28, 2017

Here someone has gone to the trouble of identifying various glassware used in the Star Treks.
posted by Pyry at 8:27 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Omg I have found my people
posted by Hermione Granger at 11:57 PM on August 28, 2017 [5 favorites]

The show Dark Matter uses a grubby Novation Launchpad as part of their piloting console.

Everybody who's done music production since 2009 recognized it instantly.
posted by MrVisible at 5:31 AM on August 29, 2017

Very much a part of this: Game of Thrones reuse of Ikea rugs as capes.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:37 AM on August 29, 2017 [4 favorites]

This case the admiral is carrying in TNG episode "Conspiracy" was an off the shelf "Stuff It" binder similar to a Trapper Keeper. I had one in jr high, which I begged my mom to buy. It was overpriced and slightly too small to hold normal folders, which meant you had to buy their custom size folders.

Found the TV ad!

It was, of course, a piece of plastic crap and fell apart halfway through the school year and I ended up getting a regular Trapper Keeper for my stuff.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:04 AM on August 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fleebnork In my little Minnesota town there was a ban on trapper keepers. Every single school supply list, every single year, had one prohibition: NO TRAPPER KEEPERS. I went to both public and private school and it was the same at both places. I never even figured out what a trapper keeper was until following the links in your comment.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:09 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

That seems like a strange thing to ban. It was just a binder with some pockets.
posted by Fleebnork at 11:05 AM on August 29, 2017

Reasons for banning Trapper Keepers:
1. They had tables and things printed in them that could in far-fetched theory be cheat sheets of a sort.
2. There were off-brand versions of them that were too big to fit in desks, and people making policy didn't know the difference.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:22 AM on August 29, 2017

Plus, in the eighties, probably satanism somehow.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:25 AM on August 29, 2017 [8 favorites]

I think Wolfdog's #2 is correct. I recall I sort of thought of them being a type of metal box, over which you could not close your desk top. Possibly because of the word "Trapper" in the title.

To think I could have been a satanist if I had been permitted a trapper keeper! I must settle for mere atheism.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:38 AM on August 29, 2017

I dunno about satanism, but that rainbow spurting unicorn on my Trapper Keeper was a helluva gateway drug to hallucinogenics.
posted by lumpenprole at 12:21 PM on August 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Re: Trapper Keeper bans - there may have been a bit of egalitarianism there, as well. ISTR a wide variety of designs and price points. The ban(s) may have been intended, in part, to prevent "ha-ha, your family can only afford the plain blue Trapper Keeper" teasing.
posted by hanov3r at 2:25 PM on August 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

The reason behind the Trapper Keeper ban.
posted by sebastienbailard at 8:21 PM on August 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

In "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country" we can glimpse pencil markings on the inside of an access panel.

I don't think this is anachronistic. Pencils (and cousins like mechanical pencils, lead holders, carpenters pencils, china markers, soap stones etc.) are cheap, durable, lightweight, don't require a power source, and create erasable markings that none the less persist if not actively removed. It's hard to imagine an improvement let alone one that would be cheap enough to lose like a standard pencil (replicator technology not withstanding).
posted by Mitheral at 11:57 PM on August 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's hard to imagine an improvement ...

previously.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:13 AM on August 30, 2017

Sure, but it is pretty obvious that none of the Trek ships are running full or partial pressure pure oxygen atmospheres so the advantage of a $20 pen over a regular pencil doesn't apply.
posted by Mitheral at 12:22 AM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]