As I looked through the shots of the chairs in the episodes, I noticed that the old shows had some wild lighting: sometimes like a Halloween set, sometimes like a task light was just set up on a tripod next to the camera, and sometimes like a cube farm. The new shows all seem to go for web developer's / Twitch streamer's dungeon with no overhead lighting, wall-mounted spotlights, and RGB rim lights everywhere.
Someone in the props department had a massive furniture budget. I love it.
It reminds me how the "chair" is one of those objects supposedly so hard to classify for things like machines, a little easier for humans. Although may of these designs cause even my brain to struggle with, "Is that a chair?" Some reminded me of the Wood Allen bit from Sleeper:
Related: Star Trek + Design https://star-trek.design/
(That's what came to mind from a few years ago, and I see in the credits this page was inspired/originates from it)
That's quite a comprenensive list. I like that some of the Lower Decks designers include some of these, too! A nice touch of detail.
For added aviation realism, the shuttle seats should have been worn and stained and covered by fake sheepskin seat covers.
Appears to be missing the painfully bog-standard office roller chair used in the center of the court in the courtroom episode of TNG where Data needs to plead with Starfleet not to be disassembled for research.
It might be on there, it’s a huge list, but I could not find it.
I remember my suspension of disbelief being challenged in Star Trek TNG (my favorite) when they started using my Dansk cutlery and also my crystal highball glasses! What are the odds?
I wonder how they chose chairs.
I would guess that at least for the most used chairs, like the Captain's chair and the other chairs on the bridge, they had an overall look they were going for on those sets and picked chairs specifically for that.
Did they also do that for all those other chairs, or if they needed to have say a meeting take place on some new planet with a new race and needed 5 chairs did they just send someone off with instructions to go round up 5 identical chairs, maybe adding that they should look futuristic or something like that?
Did they have chair rules, like this species likes round chairs and that species likes angular chairs?
I love the creativity of the set and prop people using existing things like this. I remember seeing the same kind of cassette case that I had used as a prop on TNG (and apparently DS9) https://www.yourprops.com/Starfleet-Carry-Case-Large-replica...
I love that lists like these exist. Like the Internet Movie Firearms Database[1], or the list of split diopter shots[2].
[1] https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page
[2] https://letterboxd.com/lubber/list/split-diopter-shots/page/...
As a kid, it was fascinating to see Picard drinking tea from the same Bodum glassware we had at home.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Chair is a timeless classic and it could very plausibly be in a future Earth home, as could any Mies van der Rohe design. It'd be worth a small fortune in that condition. The Emeco Navy Chair is another one that could plausibly appear in a future Earth setting. Putting the Goodform Model 2123 in the offices of the alternate future/past in "Assignment: Earth" is a nice touch.
I have a hard time believing anything from IKEA not have fallen apart in a couple of centuries.
I got one of the cups from DS9 and it's by far my favorite mug
This is a good book about the influence of midcentury modern design on TOS specifically, including interviews with the production crew and specifics on all the commercial items the authors were able to track down.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Star-Trek-Designing-t...
Cute model names for 'Prosim Sedni' and 'Prosim Sni', which means 'Please Sit' and 'Please Dream' in Czech.
It's amazing to think that Charles Rennie Mackintosh's late 19th Century chairs made it all the way through to the late 24th Century.
Hugged to death so: https://archive.ph/20231019204516/https://rarehistoricalphot...
this is fantastic. I can tell that Star Trek has had a little bit of influence in the chairs that I like.
This is so obviously the product of a labor of love that it's impossible not to admire it.
I have a HÃ…G Capisco, nice chair.
Random statement but no arm rests on many of those. My arms awkwardly dangle
FWIW. This is still the coolest thing I've seen on the web this month.
Good thing members of Starfleet have excellent medical benefits, because 90% of these chairs look like they'd give you an instant case of sciatica within minutes after sitting in them.
Marginal nitpick: The image for the Artifort F549 Tulip Midi shows Pierre Paulin's Little Tulip, 1965 for Artifort. The stills, however, do show the Tulip Midi.
So cool. Do any of these have inertial dampening built in?
I just visited the Vitra Design Campus on Monday! It was a pretty awesome experience and I'm sure a of these chairs are in their overall collection too.
Any call outs for ones that are especially comfortable?
Sweet. I gotta get me one of those Worf sex chairs.
Now this is what I come to HN for.
I never realized that Worf's weird chair with the round things was an actual chair.
McCoy’s instruments were a salt and pepper shaker taken from the cafeteria.
Who was giving the set designer so much money lol
Loved seeing the Opsvik chair in Lower Decks.
Why would they ever need chairs in zero g !!!
The 60s were so wild. What happened?
The dedication is just insane haha!
This was unexpectedly fascinating.
This has internet-time-sucked me like it was 20 years ago.
At least now I can put a name to 'What the frak is Worf sitting on?'
This is the kind of niche old content the Internet was know for!
Kudos.
One thing I really love about Strange New Worlds is that they finally realized that fans love the beautiful, comfortable looking ships of the earlier series.
For a solid decade it was like all Star Trek ships felt like some "alternate timeline" from Next Generation in which the Federation is an endless war, and the ships are all dim and militaristic.
A huge part of the show was about exploration. And doing it in style. I love that about Strange New Worlds. It has captured a lot of great elements — another notable mention being the more episodic nature, and a return to more diplomatic narratives.
This is one of my favourite distractions when watching Sci-Fi films set in the future - spotting objects from now. For example:
- In Luke's home in Star Wars IV there's a lot of Tupperware - https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2014/02/in-praise-of-t...
- In Alien, Ripley drinks from a Tupperware mug - https://twitter.com/EverRotating/status/1156650673972363264