What Color is the Seaview? part 1 by Gary Kerr

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Gary Kerr has offered up the following comments regarding the color of the Seaview. Gary is an established researcher and authority on filming miniatures, with a large collection of reference materials and studio plans. He was a consultant for several Star Trek related projects including the Polar Lights model kits and Master Replica’s USS Enterprise miniature. He has been consultant on the Moebius Models kits. Gary has known Dave Merriman for year. He has examined two of the existing 3 foot Flying Sub miniatures, and the 17 foot Seaview at Dave Meriman’s, as well as the bow of the 8.5ft Seaview.


Be very, very careful when trying to derive color schemes from old, color-shifted photos or videos. Just because the Enterprise appears pink in Star Trek episodes on your old, broken TV, doesn’t mean that the studio miniature was actually pink.

I’ve gone through all the ‘Voyage’ DVDs that have been released (through season 3), plus some season 4 episodes on VHS tape, and I haven’t noticed any change in the Seaview’s basic color scheme: very light gray below, medium “muddy” gray above, with darker blue-gray accents on the deck & sail (plus some sprayed-on shadows). As far as I can tell, the 8.5ft & 17ft Seaview models were repainted a much darker shade of gray sometime after production of ‘Voyage’ wrapped, but I haven’t been able to establish exactly when that occurred.

When you see studio miniatures in person, they usually appear darker than they did on TV or the movie screen. In person, the Seaview miniatures probably appeared somewhat darker than they do in my screen caps, but if I were painting the Moebius model, I’d lighten the colors slightly to account for scale effect.

Gary Kerr

Check out the follow up  to this article