(Clockwise from the bottom) Model shop supervisor Steve Gawley, effects co-supervisor Ken Ralston, camera assistant Sel Eddy, and stagehand Bill Beck unpack the model of the refit Enterprisefor use in the filming of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. The 1/120th scale model was originally used for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and had been built by Douglas Trumbull’s Magicom under the supervision of Jim Dow.
According to Susan Sackett’s The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, building the Enterprise was a costly endeavour in time and money — it took 14 months and $150,000 to build (around $600k in 2022) — but advancements in plastics allowed the highly-detailed 8-foot-long ship to weigh in at just 85 pounds, making it quite a bit easier to position for filming. For comparison, Dow said, the Millennium Falcon miniature used in filming Star Wars had been roughly four feet by four feet in size and weighed over 300 pounds.
That said, it was still massive, with Industrial Light and Magic’s Ralston telling Kay Anderson from Cinefantastique: “I hate the Enterprise model. I think it’s made out of lead. It took eight guys to mount it for a shot and a forklift to move it around.” (He would work out some of that anger with the ship later.)
It was also finicky enough that, Trumbull revealed in an interview with American Film magazine, ILM reached out to him to help get its lighting up and running again. This vindicated the special effects pioneer a bit; his company had underbid ILM by $1.5 million for the Star Trek II contract but had lost out because Paramount had wished to seal their relationship with Lucasfilm after the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
(Of note to some nitpickers like myself is the fact that some contemporary behind-the-scenes accounts, including the one from which this photo was taken, there is talk of the model being made of metal. There’s enough evidence to contradict this in various interviews from people who worked on the films over the years that I feel comfortable saying that they’re wrong.)
Photo scanned from my personal collection. It originally appeared in the July-August 1982 issue of Cinefantastique.
