A More Obscure Star Trek II Prop

cylandprops 2016-05-20 19:07:32 UTC #1

The white arrow:

The earliest I can find it is in The Greatest American Hero:

and it shows up again in Ice Pirates:

Again in STII:

It was remodeled and parts were added the handle was filled in with a numbers display and a slide open door.
Then seen in Knight Rider up on the shelf under the TVs:

The movie Ghost Warrior:

Eliminators with Denise Crosby:

And in Total Recall:

Here it is today:

And a video of it in action:

norbauer 2016-05-20 20:59:06 UTC #2

Well, you’ve topped yourself on that one. You can almost see two whole molecules of it in TMP. I love this stuff.

Buddahaid 2016-05-20 21:27:42 UTC #3

Yep. Those switches along the bottom are the same ones used by Sequential Circuits for their Prophet 5 synthesizer. The first polyphonic performance synthesizer. I think the mfg. is Shadow.

cylandprops 2016-05-20 22:26:35 UTC #4

The main body is some kids toy or radio, whatever it was it’s red, The switches were/are pretty common I have a nice big bag of them. The inside again has tells you can see where the original switch hole was filled in, you can see the original grey paint on the inside.
When I first saw this prop in person about 15 years ago it was working and when I picked it up a couple years ago the prop company that sold it said it was non working. So I got a deal on it. Turns out the only problems it had was the charging plug was busted off in the port, The rechargeable batteries were long bad and it had a couple bulbs burnt out. It’s one of those props from that era that was just cool. Although it doesn’t have a main role in Star Trek II, it’s killer to know this was on set with some of the other stuff I have, an ingredient in the whole cake as it were. Being in Knight Rider is another cool fact. I’m still looking for more. I have another one here made by the same guys just not used in Star Trek, I don’t think, it’s been in a few movies but again I’m looking.

NickDaring 2016-05-20 23:44:44 UTC #5

The definition of obscure!!

Buddahaid 2016-05-21 00:15:34 UTC #6

Some say you can still hear it calling on quiet night…

OK, I’ll stop now.

That is pretty cool and I love the motorized hatch.

EDIT: Was this prop made by the same as the TWOK tricorder? The screen graphics are very similar overall.

Hijacking the volume, and some other pass filter, sliders for the clock rates makes perfect sense. What a cool prop!

cylandprops 2016-05-21 02:39:46 UTC #7

Yep same guys. I don’t understand the last bit there, this was scratch built back in the day it wasn’t a high jacked synthesizer.

cylandprops 2016-05-21 05:33:29 UTC #8

The big board there is the original board that ran the “grey” version of the prop. Under the blue paper is/was more batteries I replaced them to make the prop portable again.

This is a shot of the bundles of wire and board that run all the new stuffs

Buddahaid 2016-05-21 17:00:48 UTC #9

Wow what a nightmare. The circuit design looks like the same people made this as also made the Argo cannons. Sockets for the DIP chips and wire wrap connections. I’m wrong about the wire wrapping on second look.

Thanks for sharing.

zredthunder 2016-05-21 22:17:52 UTC #10

It really does look like the same mess!

cylandprops 2016-05-22 05:20:35 UTC #11

This was built sometime in 1980 or so and one of the two who built it died in 1991 the other is doing stage hand work in theater. Most of the stuff they built was one offs.This is just a fun little prop. They also made what is being call the Microscope prop or something like that, that shows up in STTNG a couple times as well as V, Robocop II, Airwolf, Knight Rider…: