Nearly 50 years after it went missing, the original model of the USS Starship Enterprise from the hit show Star Trek has finally found its way home.
The 33-inch model - the same one that appears in the opening credits of the original series - is now back with Eugene Roddenberry Jr., the son of the show’s creator. “After five decades, I’m thrilled that someone happened upon this historic model of the USS Enterprise,” says Roddenberry. “I remember how it used to adorn my dad’s desk.”
The model hasn't, of course, been missing in outer space (and the Captain's log has been checked!) but its whereabouts has been unknown since Roddenberry’s father, Gene Roddenberry (who died in 1991), lent it to the makers of 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first Star Trek feature film. Unfortunately, he never got it back. What happened to it at that point is unknown. But it recently popped up on eBay with a starting price of $1,000.
Surprised by the deluge of interest, the seller contacted Heritage Auctions to see if it really was the real McCoy. It was! The model would “easily” sell for over $1 million at auction as it’s a “priceless” piece of television history, says Joe Maddalena, of Heritage Auctions.
Since Star Trek’s debut in 1966, the Enterprise has become an instantly recognizable image -and a pioneering design that inspired many other fictional spacecraft. “We didn’t want the Enterprise to look like something currently planned for our space program,” said Walter Jefferies, the Star Trek art director who designed the fictional craft, in the 1968 book The Making of Star Trek. “We knew that by the time the show got on the air, this type of thing would be old hat. We had to go further than even the most advanced space scientists were thinking.”
Whilst there is no word on how much money changed hands to get the space craft back in to Eugene Roddenberry's possession, Trekkies will be very pleased to know that it "is not going home to adorn my shelves,” Roddenberry tells the Associated Press. “This is going to get restored and we’re working on ways to get it out so the public can see it, and my hope is that it will land in a museum somewhere.”
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