Doing a Double Take – The AMT Enterprise at 55
by Glen Swanson
Visual effects artist Glenn Campbell shares a rare snapshot that was taken while he was working on the set of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in 1978. Campbell tells how the photo came to be: “Someone on the day shift set it up. Bob Friedstand and I just happened to see it on the night shift and took a quick shot because we thought it looked cool. Oddly, we seem to have taken the ONLY picture of this, as I have never seen any official pics of this set up. Honestly a mystery.”
The photo shows a built 18-inch AMT model Enterprise parked next to a quarter-scale 22-inch refit model. According to an interview with James Dow in “Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek – The Motion Picture” by Preston Neal Jones (p. 277), this one-quarter scale model of the refit was designed to be used in long shots with V’Ger. The model, which weighed less than two pounds, had all the same lighting functions that the large-scale model had. It reproduced everything that the big one could do. It even had a five-way armature in it. They were able to power all the lighting systems from any one of those five positions in the 22-inch model. Axel lamps were specially flown in from Japan for use in filming. These lamps were so incredibly tiny – they’re about the size of a ballpoint pen tip. The 22-inch refit model was one from which they produced a set of molds that they took to Milton Bradley which produced the South Bend toy Enterprise that came out in late summer/early fall of 1979 just before the premiere of the movie.
We have not been able to find an official explanation as to why the original AMT Enterprise model was built and staged next to the one-quarter-scale model refit. It may simply have been to visually compare the two models side-by-side. Or maybe this was for a possible filming sequence. Whatever the reason, I think everyone will agree that it is a neat shot.
This is one in a series of original postings created to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the very first Star Trek model kit. In June of 1967, Michigan-based Aluminum Model Toys (AMT) Corporation began selling an 18-inch injection-molded model of the starship Enterprise. Before the year was out, AMT would sell over a million copies of the kit. Since that first release, AMT and its successors went on to release at least 23 unique kits making it one of the longest running and most successful Star Trek licensees in the history of the franchise. A close-to-the-original 1:650 scale model kit is still being manufactured and sold through Round2 LLC, the current AMT licensee. Just in time to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the kit’s first release, Round2 has reissued the kit in the more commonly seen second long box (S951) form that first appeared in 1968 which features on the box top an assembled model kit orbiting the Earth.
