Star Trek Designer Syd Mead - Episode 117

70s Trek: Star Trek in the 1970s

On this episode of 70s Trek, we’ll discuss the man who designed V’Ger. Syd Mead was brought in to do one job: That was designing something strange and unusual for the alien craft seen in Star Trek The Motion Picture.

What he created was actually the second V’Ger model. The first was made by Abel and Associates. It didn’t turn out so well...just like so much that was connected with this film. The model was only four-feet long and looked like a submarine.

After Abel and Associates were fired, the new visual effects supervisor, Douglass Trumbull, hired Syd Mead to do a new design. The resulting model was 68-feet long! Big enough to show on screen how large and imposing V'Ger was meant to be.

His creation looks like it has organic origins, like it was grown, rather than built. Unfortunately, we never get to clearly see the whole model in the theatrical version of the film, only sections up close.