These props were only ever used in season 1 of the TNG, it's just one of the many things that were wrong with that season. Owning a prop that highlights a major flaw is not my idea of money well spent.
Inoperable Phaser Will Run You $500
- Thread starter vansau
- Start date
I remember reading that when putting together TNG, the politics of Roddenberry and his wife were getting the better of them. Despite Gene passing on, he had a lot of say in how things were developed and were going to look. The design of the phasers were something people commented on from the very beginning, and I remember hearing that making them look like dust-busters was intentional because he wanted to give the impression that the phaser was more of a tool that could be used offensively than a dedicated weapon, so he wanted to change the design to seem less gun-like.Cowabungaa said:
One has to understand that Star Trek is fairly disturbing when you look at it beyond the obvious. When Gene passed on a few writers subtly "went there". The fundemental idea is a hard core socialist future, with the idea that "big brother" actually is benevolent. Of course this is more or less unworkable despite the pie in the sky view of some of it's creators. A few things you might have picked up on (which were there for this reason, and apparently involved some arguements) are things like Star Fleet (which you see everything through the eyes of) recruiting only the best and the brighest of each generation on each planet. Despite the character being... obnoxious, Wesley Crusher was supposed to be the Davinci of time, space, and energy or something and he FAILED to graduate Star Fleet Academy the first time (stop and think about this for a second). When you see civilian planets you see situations with people walking around in matching drone jumpsuits, living as peasant yeoman farmers (Picard's brother), or existing in dystopian urban hellholes like the planet Tasha Yar came from or Picard visited while undercover as a mercenary. So basically your looking at an enviroment of what amounts to elitist military oppression.
The point isn't so much to argue those points, but simply that when this was all being conceived, and Roddenberry was in debates with other writers about how this was all supposed to work, he very much decided that he wanted to try and change some of the imagery, to hopefully move people away from those thoughts. Of course when he was gone people progressively jumped on it and showed things that he tended to gloss over.
Allegedly the whole flashback scene to Tasha's homeworld was something he didn't approve of, and while it came later firing her was supposedly a matter of politics, and not just the Playboy spread (the politics continueing after Roddenberry was gone).
Supposedly the politics involved, both actual, and interpersonal, are also one of the big reasons why Viacom doesn't want to mess with Star Trek and has tried to pull away from it so many times. It's not just fans, but also the fact that if they approve any project they will get a whole differant faction of people all over them screaming murder. Apparently it got to the point with some of the later episodes that writing was taking place by committee.
Or such is what I've heard.
At any rate all of this rambling about the Phaser aside, I imagine with a $500.00 price tag that this is a collectible that will increase in price. Doubtlessly aimed at hard core collectors with a limited production run, in a couple of decades people will probably be willing to pay ten times what this thing costs now.
Haha, I hadn't even thought of that, and the original television show had a low budget, so the original thing was probably a pile of crap that cost 10c to construct and was held together with prit stick and string. Though by now it's probably residing in some very old fan's basement with an approximate value of $78,942.NickCaligo42 said:
I can almost garentee the prop was made of, like, cardboard or something. You'd be shocked at how cheap-looking the props on a show WITH a budget actually are when you see them in real life. Those desks on news shows? In a lot of cases it's cheap plywood that's been hastily painted over. My kitchen counter is made of better stuff than they use on CNN. That desk sure looks good on the camera, though, doesn't it? Same with other props, and I'm willing to bet the Phasers were no different.Baron_BJ said: