Review: 'Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier'

There are plenty of reasons to dig Star Trek, but the thing that hooked me after decades of laboring under the assumption it was boring (I was roughly 69% wrong) was the way it looked. Despite taking place during the 23rd century, the original series is a display case of fab mid-twentieth century design. Between the tulip-style Burke chairs by Knoll on the bridge, sharp John Follis planters in the botany bay, Madison swivel chairs, and shapely Empoli decanters in Uhura's quarters, I would not mind living on the Enterprise at all. And when the crew beam down to Balok's ship, which he controls with a modified lantern by Malcolm Leland, or zip back to 1968 when Gary Seven sat behind a fab Boomerang Executive desk by Osvaldo Borsani, the style got even wilder. 

Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire pay tribute to the impeccable style of Star Trek in their new book Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier. They highlight particular items decorating the sets by explaining their roles in particular episodes and giving some background on the items and how Star Trek's set-design crew modified them. Gorgeous full color pictures of the original items, the neat advertisements hawking them, and where they ended up in the given episodes illustrate the entries. An index of these items in the back of the book is titled "catalog," which may tempt you to do a little shopping. I was shocked to see that someone was selling that tulip-style Burke chair on ebay for a very reasonable $250. Alas, local-pick up only! Beam me down to Macon, Georgia, Scotty.