hi this is Jim from Trek world and today we start out our video by acknowledging just how important something as simple as a chair can truly be now in the HBO television series Game of Thrones they understood what it meant to have power you see there were 27 houses there were seven gods but there was only one iron throne and sitting on the Iron Throne will strategically important you can have the largest army win the most battles but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the iron throne so join us after the break as we look at a prop from the original Star Trek series that carries a similar significance to this very day please be sure to check out these other popular videos about season one on our series covering Star Trek in the 1960s and also please be sure to hit that like button below the video so that YouTube
will recommend this video to other folks who have not yet discovered it if you have photos videos or other documents that you would like to submit to us you can put them into our blind Dropbox on the web at submit.trek-world.com now in Star Trek they had their own Throne the captain’s chair is something every Star Trek fan is intimately familiar with on a Starship the captain’s chair is sort of like the brain of a central nervous system from that position the captain determines what steps to take next based on the inputs that he’s received the symbolism of the captain’s chair goes far beyond its mundane function as a piece of furniture to sit on it is also a sign of respect for those who sit upon it Enterprise is the first warp 5 vessel in human history the pride of the fleet and you’re sitting in a chair they’ve been using on work two ships for over a decade you deserve better I’m gonna
build you a throne now although there have been many versions over the decades this right here well that’s the chair that started it all this is the actual chair that Jeffrey Hunter sat in during filming the cage in late 1964 and was thereafter used by William Shatner through the second pilot and the original TV series run for the next few minutes we will take a look at that chair and the various changes that have been done to it during the mid to late 1960s and along the way we will look at the iconography The Prestige and the significance associated with the chair now our favorite chair began in its life in the late 1950s as part of the Madison Furniture company’s Dimension 24 collection produced and sold only through 1962 and 1968. that chair was chosen by Matt Jeffries to be the basis of the captain’s chair utilizing a black vinyl cushion covering
he stained the wood slightly darker and then encased the entire chair in a console made of plywood then the chair was fitted with a spring-loaded swivel on a platform the result became such a cultural icon that now almost 60 years later it is still recognized all over the world even my folks who were never Star Trek bands now before we go much further we need to talk about one of the most dramatic differences between the cage and where no man has gone before and the TV series namely the gooseneck viewer now Rosemary had these things all over the place in the cage basically just about any console the crew had to operate would have a gooseneck viewer on it what he didn’t consider originally was the amount of optical printing that would be needed each week to insert footage into each episode sort of like the way that you see Spock here in the lower left hand corner as he delivers a line to make matters worse no stock footage could be used because every
insert would be unique to the script of the show so here you see two fairly good pictures of the captain’s chair in the cage with a gooseneck viewer let’s do a little digital magic to get a closer look shall we but my favorite is this little photo here because I think it’s actually perfect for seeing the initial design of the chair note that the chair could swivel but at this point it was also at the same height as the Helmsman and Navigator chairs in front of it you know as we move from the pike area in Star Trek to the Kirk era let’s take a quick look at what Christopher Pike had to coach a young Jim Kirk on in the 2009 Star Trek film pertaining to the responsibility of sitting in that chair you don’t comply with the rules you don’t take responsibility for anything and you don’t respect the chair you know why because you’re not ready for it but Kirk did end up getting his shot at sitting in the captain’s chair and by the time the second pilot was ordered
Pike was out and Kirk was in and Kirk would again Pay It Forward when he gave his advice to Picard about how important that chair is when it comes to feeling like you can make a difference you know maybe this isn’t about an empty house maybe it’s about that empty chair on the bridge of the Enterprise ever since I didn’t start I haven’t made a difference going back to the second pilot now as you can see the gooseneck viewer is still on the right arm of the chair for Captain Kirk now another change in this scene is the addition of a lettering plaque onto the side of the chair just above where the gooseneck mounts these engravable signs were very popular on Star Trek and I actually remember seeing them in Corporate America right up until Y2K however we had a slight problem one Shatner would sit in the captain’s chair you see Bill Shatner was only five foot nine inches tall at his Peak which was
three inches shorter than Jeffrey Hunter so to hide the height difference between Shatner and the two actors in front of him they put the chair now on a platform when it came time to begin filming the TV episodes they decided to remove the gooseneck viewer entirely instead opting to put a media reader and speaker on the right arm to compensate for the loss of the video intercom system these two photos the captains chair during the actual series run do a pretty good job of showing off that platform height boost that they gave to Shatner’s captain’s chair the captain’s chair in Star Trek was far more than a symbol of strategic importance it was also a privilege to be able to be seated in it as you can see here in this clip from Star Trek 3 The Search for Spock where Captain styles of the Excelsior warns Kirk that his actions could result in him never sitting in the chair again let’s do this you’ll never sit in the captain’s chair again
finally this overhead shot gives a brilliant photo of both of the control panels in the arms additionally we have a shot of the added detail menu stickers and unique screenshot from Court martial now I gotta really speak to this at first I thought it was somewhat dated that you would see that those stickers were literally labels that were printed out but I do have to admit today 60 years later we still use labels that look like that so I guess people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones finally a rare image of the bottom right hand corner which shows the chair from the dead center of the stage but from the behind now since the original captain’s chair was built for the original series there have been a multitude of captains chairs on which various ships of each of the TV series spin-offs have taken place here you see just a few of them having been used not only in the TV shows but in the film adaptations as well notice
the captain’s chair in the bottom right from the JJ Abrams 2009 Star Trek reboot of course I did edit out all the lens flares all of us have learned in life as we get older that change is always inevitable in this particular case Kirk’s captain’s chair changed several times during the making of the first original Star Trek films apparently while change may be inevitable it is not always a welcome change for the better as Kirk confides with McCoy in this scene from Star Trek 5. let’s manage him I miss my old chair that’s okay Jim your chair misses the old Captain Kirk now when the series ended Paramount dismantled sets in late 1969 in preparation for just scrapping everything however the captain’s chair was rescued or taken which way you look at it by an unnamed individual and turned out much later in the 2002 profiles in history collection from Bob
Justman it sold for 304 750 the largest single Price ever on an item from the original Star Trek television series here you can see where the actual chair has been since it was subsequently placed in Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Museum of pop culture in Seattle Washington now a funny thing about Captain’s chairs is that in Star Trek there is a Mystique associated with sitting in them obviously for characters on the show but also amongst visitors and co-workers visiting the sets where the TV shows are filmed every one of these captains would be fiercely protective of his chair but it would take almost 60 years for a situation to arrive where a captain would be shown on screen commenting about it on screen I’m only going to tell you this once get the hell out of my chair our newest perhaps oldest Captain
Christopher Pike played by the incredible instant mount holds no punches as he confronts someone who is where they should not be please be sure to check out these other popular videos about season one on our series covering Star Trek in the 1960s and also please be sure to hit that like button below the video so that YouTube will recommend this video to other folks who have not yet discovered it however if there is only one video that you watch at all today on YouTube I recommend this one