Commercially available chairs in Star Trek

[bjpirt]

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

[slg]

I think the most famous/beloved/notorious version of this is the guy in Star Wars running around with a completely unaltered off the shelf ice cream maker.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Thatsabooklight/comments/bf20dp/i_p...

I just found that link through Google, but that is apparently a whole subreddit devoted to this type of use of modern objects getting repurposed as some fantastical movie/TV props.

[Stratoscope]

My favorite example is in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, where one of Captain Pike's hobbies is cooking. Real cooking with fresh ingredients, not replicated food.

Pike grew up on a ranch in Montana, where his family used Lodge cast iron pans. Cast iron isn't perfect for cooking - the heat distribution is mediocre - but one thing you can say about it is that it will outlive you.

Even if it gets rusty from neglect, you can sand it down, re-season it, and it will be as good as new!

I don't know if they make it explicit in the show, but I have a feeling that Captain Pike's pans were handed down from generation to generation, so naturally he brought his family's old cast iron pans with him on the Enterprise.

https://www.foodandwine.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-kit...

[QuercusMax]

The Galactica miniseries had a scene near the beginning with a futuristic looking alarm clock on a nightstand. I had that exact same alarm clock, as it was given as a cheapo christmas present to all the student employees in my department at the university.

[cryptoz]

FWIW Star Wars is set a long time ago, not in the future ;)

I've always liked to imagine any similarities between Star Wars and humanity on Earth is because Star Wars is set so indeterminately long ago that it seems 'plausible' that Star Wars is all really true, and if we build the right telescope and point it at the right galaxy, perhaps we can watch the Rebels fight the Empire IRL!

[coumbaya]

In The Expanse, a painted Ikea "washcloth hanger" that looks like an octopus is actually a game for special childrens. Also a 3d connexion space mouse is used to control the rocci. I kind of hate spotting them tho.

[russdill]

One of my favorites was seeing my toy chest from when I was a kid in Wrath of Khan

"Little Tikes kid’s Apollo Space Capsule Toy Chest." - https://third-wave-design.com/2018/11/30/houston-we-dont-hav...

It also pops up in a ton of other places.

[CollinEMac]

I can't really imagine a future without Tupperware to be honest.

[ebergen]

I love these to. The manual control for Moya in Farscape is a Logitech TrackMan.

[dboreham]

Vintage Tupperware mug.

[DHPersonal]

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.

[harimau777]

Arg! I can't find it now but a while back I read an amazing article discussing the set design on the original series; particularly for the alien planets. From what I recall, their overall assessment was that the set designers used strong color design and bold shapes to compensate for their lack of budget. In that respect, while later entries in the series had much "better" sets, TOS had the strongest aesthetic.

[charlieo88]

Lighting in black and white movies was much more important where you didn't have the additional dimension of color. My understanding was the Star Trek lighting team came with black and white experience.

[hammock]

I notice in old James Bond movies (and others) the lighting was rather simplistic. A big spotlight casting harsh shadows on the walls behind the main actors that don't make any sense if you stop to think about it. It seems more thought / technique is put into lighting design these days and it's probably better, though of course our current age has its own cliches (the Twitch dungeon style for example)

[JKCalhoun]

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:

https://youtu.be/H4ZBPz4DinU?si=OM5TOpkumyNwPOvG

[jccooper]

One of the benefits of Hollywood is rental and studio stock. Many of these sets are one-off or occasional, and the furniture would return after the shoot.

[ascagnel_]

Less so than you may think, at least for the initial run for the show. Most mid-century modern furniture was designed to be cheap enough for the middle class/upper-middle class (although the show did tend to use more-expensive leather variants), which brought it relatively wide popularity. That popularity would later cause an increase in price as they became notable objects.

[Cthulhu_]

I also presume there's huge furniture rental places for movie studios in the neighbourhood.

[hef19898]

They sure had a tremendous furniture budget! I guess the wardroom department was jealous!

[Jeff_Brown]

And yet others, at least in isolation, don't look very futuristic at all. At most just kind of awkward.

[ChrisArchitect]

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)

[TeMPOraL]

I'm surprised they don't seem to have an entry for one of the more recognizable mug from Star Trek - the one they drank coffee from on the Defiant in Star Trek: DS9. It was present in many episodes of the Dominion War arc.

The mug itself (a Thermos mug from the 90s) is an absolute pain to find anywhere, but I've managed to secure two of them last year (with shipping prices that would embarrass even a Ferengi) and did the necessary conversions:

https://fosstodon.org/@temporal/109690528747856580

https://fosstodon.org/@temporal/109677869270157594

I gave one out as a gift, the other I've been using every day for over a year now. Got so used to it, I don't know how I'll ever be able to replace it.

[cbm-vic-20]

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.

[vlachen]

I cannot fathom how someone has the attention to analyze these shows to note the chairs being used. Frankly, the Stokke Globe Garden is so far in the background of the Lower Decks screen capture that I can't understand how someone picked up on it.

[queuebert]

For added aviation realism, the shuttle seats should have been worn and stained and covered by fake sheepskin seat covers.

[_moof]

Indeed, with paint flaking off the instrument panels and label-maker labels stuck everywhere!

[hef19898]

At least the set designers had style! Some nice designs there, for sure! If only someine would have thought of, I don't know, seat belts...

[donatj]

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.

[Aardwolf]

Is it the Omnific Chair? It looks bog standard and mentions Enterprise-D courtroom

[michaelteter]

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?

[cout]

A long time ago, someone gave me two boxes like this: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-9744GR/

I was tickled when I saw two red-uniform officers carrying them around on TNG.

[tzs]

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?

[vikingerik]

Mostly, the meetings didn't happen on the planets, instead the aliens came onto the Enterprise - so they were using the existing sets and chairs rather than building and buying new ones every week.

[jccalhoun]

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...

[hyperific]

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/...

[anilakar]

As a kid, it was fascinating to see Picard drinking tea from the same Bodum glassware we had at home.

[apricot]

My parents had the same octagonal glasses used in TNG. I still have a couple, and often think of the Enterprise when I use them.

https://star-trek.design/glassware/octime-double-old-fashion...

[cratermoon]

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.

[wtfmcgrill]

I got one of the cups from DS9 and it's by far my favorite mug

[Arrath]

I've wanted one of those for years

[wrs]

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...

[tifik]

Cute model names for 'Prosim Sedni' and 'Prosim Sni', which means 'Please Sit' and 'Please Dream' in Czech.

[sambeau]

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.

[anjel]

Hugged to death so: https://archive.ph/20231019204516/https://rarehistoricalphot...

[stewartjarod]

this is fantastic. I can tell that Star Trek has had a little bit of influence in the chairs that I like.

[clockworksoul]

This is so obviously the product of a labor of love that it's impossible not to admire it.

[zingababba]

I have a HÅG Capisco, nice chair.

[Vaslo]

Random statement but no arm rests on many of those. My arms awkwardly dangle

[donatj]

I was literally asking my wife last Thursday “Do people actually use arm rests? What are they for besides getting hooked on stuff?” I was talking desk chairs specifically.

Apparently some people do!

I have an exceptionally tall torso and normal arms though so it’s quite rare for my elbow to actually reach an arm rest.

[Jeff_Brown]

That's because I. the future people ... uh ... someone please finish this sentence for me.

[dingosity]

FWIW. This is still the coolest thing I've seen on the web this month.

[UberFly]

I agree. One of those gems I wasn't expecting. Thanks again HN. The comments are great too.

[vunderba]

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.

[masswerk]

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.

[tempodox]

So cool. Do any of these have inertial dampening built in?

[tanepiper]

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.

[robg]

Any call outs for ones that are especially comfortable?

[twelfthnight]

Mentioned elsewhere, but the Hag Capisco is a great chair. Sadly it has risen in price and isn't a particularly good value anymore, but is a cool piece of furniture nonetheless.

[thisisauserid]

Sweet. I gotta get me one of those Worf sex chairs.

[ericfrazier]

Now this is what I come to HN for.

[charonn0]

I never realized that Worf's weird chair with the round things was an actual chair.

[ant6n]

Theres this weird little seen where he just sits in it, his parents come in and he stands up.

[gumby]

McCoy’s instruments were a salt and pepper shaker taken from the cafeteria.

[rabbits_2002]

Who was giving the set designer so much money lol

[mrexroad]

Loved seeing the Opsvik chair in Lower Decks.

[anonymou2]

Why would they ever need chairs in zero g !!!

[RedShift1]

Artificial gravity. It's like real gravity, but artificial.

[SV_BubbleTime]

The 60s were so wild. What happened?

[Thrymr]

They got replaced by the 70s.

[MaikaDiHaika]

The dedication is just insane haha!

[pmarreck]

This was unexpectedly fascinating.

[streakfix]

Indeed

[WarOnPrivacy]

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?'

[bombcar]

This is the kind of niche old content the Internet was know for!

Kudos.

[donatj]

This! This is what I want from the internet. Obsessively complete lists that seem unnecessary at a glance but will actually one day help you settle some weird argument or issue.

I remember quite vividly a Geocities page that had wiring diagrams for a ton of Realistic brand CB radios my friend and I used to build an adapter for the DIN microphone.

[RedShift1]

I miss the era where if you're bored you would just go to a website and then spend half the day going over every nook and cranny of it.

[gdubs]

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.

[parl_match]

Despite Lower Decks' jokes and loose adherence to any "hardness" of its sci-fi, I've found it to be one of the most casually optimistic of any star trek in a long time. The first few episodes are a bit rough, but I actually really enjoy it now.