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Richard D James - Production Designer on The Next Generation and Voyager

Designing Star Trek
  Describe the job of a production designer.

The production designer is responsible for everything you see on the screen, except the actor. And the actor is under the direction of the director, and make-up and wardrobe. Usually, the production designer is involved in all aspects of the visual.

Within the art department of Star Trek I had an illustrator, an animation artist, for computer animation, two graphics artists, two video feed technicians, two set designers, an art director, and a set director and his crew.

Glue ‘n’ glitter starfields.
  How long did you actually work on Star Trek and what were the biggest changes during that period?

I came to Star Trek: The Next Generation at the beginning of the second season as a temporary production designer. As it worked out I became permanent. We were having troubles in several areas. One was the star fields.

I had worked on Battlestar Galactica so I told the producers, "The only way you’re going to get star fields that you’re going to be happy with, is you’ve got to go with black velvet, and you’ve got to glue on the glitter by hand." They were doing star fields made out of black duvetine which they would spray with mastick, 3M, I think it was, and throw glitter at, and then take a broom and brush some of it off.

It wasn’t working because in the first place, black duvetine doesn’t absorb light like black velvet. They said "You mean, we’re going to put glitter by hand on these enormous, er, star fields?" And I said, "Yeah. It can be done."

How big are we talking?

Well, they’re twenty-five feet to thirty feet high, and maybe eighty to ninety to a hundred feet long. I did a diagram because we were going to see these all the time. I didn’t want anything to look like constellations that were noticeable, or any kind of grouping that would catch people’s eyes. It had to be very generic.

We used three different sizes of glitter and they were very successful. That’s what they still use for their star fields.

The next generation of colour
  Did you ever watch the original series in the 60s? Were you impressed by it?

I had watched a limited amount of it. They didn’t have a very large budget, and I thought that was very obvious. I loved science fiction, but I was not really big on the original series.

You told me Rick Burman issued an edict that you weren’t allowed to use any colours that appeared in the original series.

He made it quite clear that in no way was it to look like the original series in style or design or colour. Purple was especially taboo.

Voyaging ahead
  What was the difference in look between The Next Generation and Voyager?

The difference between the Voyager design and The Next Generation ship was the Voyager ship was more a scientific exploration ship. The Enterprise was like a luxury liner in comparison. Voyager was more sleek and more advanced technically. I went for a much cooler look whereas the Enterprise for The Next Generation was a much warmer palette.

What colours did you choose for Voyager?

We would go with greys and blues, that type of range of colours. Some green, but a very bluish green, and those colours were repeated throughout the ship. There was a continuity of colour. All consoles were the same colour and they had silver powder in them, so that there was a little bit of a glint to them and they were textured.

I wanted a metallic look on some things. I wanted it to look like a certain alloy, so we would add silver dust. You tried not do too much of that, because it’s hard to touch up anything with silver dust, and being a series going on for seven years, you’ve got to do a lot of re-touching.

A remarkable contraption
  What are the gadgets and equipment that you found most entertaining?

Over the course of thirteen years we’ve done some remarkable pieces and some of the things that came out of the special effects shop are quite beautiful.

I’m not sure I can say it’s my favourite but what certainly came to mind when you asked me the question was the computer that we put together for Elementary, Dear Data, a hologram episode. It was Moriaty’s computer, for when he got on line and started interfering with the ship’s computer. It had a very, very Victorian look to it. I enjoyed that episode tremendously.

I did a tremendous amount of research, and I was in contact with one of the Sherlock Holmes museums. You’re dealing with something that has such a following, and so I had the bullets that Sherlock Holmes shot into the wall of his apartment, and the Turkish slipper and all of these elements we pulled into the apartment.

Holodeck horrors
  Were the holodeck episodes more challenging because you had a very short amount of time to make them work?

They could be, and generally speaking, the holodeck sets were usually the most elaborate, because the writers got the idea that the holodeck really worked, and so it was "But it’s the holodeck, you know," and you’d go "Hello, it’s a set."

It was funny but usually the holodeck sets were elaborate. Sometimes I was given pre-information up front so that I could develop a set, because it was going to be a running gag. So we had sets like Leonardo Da Vinci’s lab set for Janeway or Dixon Hill with Patrick Stewart.

One of the most fun sets and one of the most fun episodes that we did was Bride of Chaotica. The black and white episode, a Tom Parris hologram episode featuring a rocket scientist, Captain Proton. It was great fun to do that.

Suffering for your art.
  Did you work on a Fistful of Datas?

Yes.

Was that fun to do?

Yes. It was very hot. I felt very sorry for the actors on that, because we were over in the valley, and in a back lot at Warners. It was way over a hundred degrees, and they were in make-up. Michael Dorn was in that Klingon make-up so I asked him how he was doing. I won’t repeat what he said.

Factor Seven
  Women’s costumes, short tight skirts, etc. Do you have any input in that kind of thing?

Basically no, but if the actress would be in high heels, and my floor is going to be something that that’s a real problem, we’d have to work that out. There are occasions when I might have a ladder in the set and a female is going to be wearing difficult clothes.

Jeri Ryan wore very high heels and so on…

That’s kind of what came to mind. There were times when it was a factor, that she was involved in high heels.

She’d ruin your flooring?

Well, sometimes. It was very hard for her, because of the costume, to do some of the things that they were asking to be done. They would have to accommodate that because the pinched corset and high heels were not easy for her.

She said it was quite difficult to move.

It was, it was very hard. We would pick out slopes that were very gradual if we went on location or anything, so that she wasn’t in any way endangered from taking a tumble or something.

Creating the Collective
  Tell me about designing the Borg.

We didn’t know what we were getting into with the inital description in the script. The description was that the Borg ship was not in chambers like our ship, it didn’t have a bridge, the Borg are very powerful, they are part organic, and part mechanical. They are a collective, they think as one unit. The ship and the Borg are a unit. And the ship was described as a vast endless chamber of Borg, as far up as you could see and as far down as you could see and as far forward as you can see.

I thought, well maybe we’ll do this all by mirrors. I spent a week by myself at the studio, and I felt if I did something that looked the same high up as it was far down and from side to side, and endless forward it would work, and so it was just a repeat. Everything on the set was repeated over and over and over. It was a series of alcoves where the Borg would plug in and become part of the ship.

The ship had to look part organic and part mechanical, as well as the Borg themselves, so that they blended together. Duranda Woods was the costume designer, and she picked up elements of the flex hoses that were in panels and in the alcoves. She reinforced the costumes with that, so that once they got plugged in they became part of the set.

On one element which was for over the head I used an antique art deco hair dryer as the base. It looked kind of like a helmet. That was the mould, and I repeated that, so that it looked like it got to the brain. Then the actors literally would plug in to the set. It was a way to make it graphically look like they became part of the ship.

A very small Collective.
  How many real life Borg did you have to work with?

Because costuming was very, very expensive,one matte was used over and over. When Picard was kidnapped by the Borg it was used then. Later on, it was modified with a more expansive look. Originally, there were probably no more than about six, if that many.

Everyone knew that when it was all done this would be increased over and over and over. There would be no giveaway that there were only six Borg, because it would look like thousands when it was finished.

Did the actors themselves look impressive when they came out?

Oh, very much so. They had adapted the Borg walk and Borgs don’t laugh or smile or any of those things.

Why are the Borg so successful?
  The Borg are the most successful alien. Do you think people find the combination between engineering and biology so appealing?

Well, they were a very successful and very popular enemy. Interesting things were explored with the Borg by the writers, like the humanity of Seven of Nine, and even with Hugh, which turned out to be a very interesting concept. Individuality. I think it spoke about the forms of government that keep people in the same costumes, the same mindset, the same kind of control where people lose their individuality.

Assimilating the Borg into Star Trek
  What’s the most difficult set you had to create?

I would say the Borg presented us with a great deal of imagination. You have to rely on trying to be creative in a short amount of time. When we started out with the Borg, we certainly never did expect them to be such a recurring theme. Given that factor, we might have done some things a little bit different. The Borg were always very time consuming, whatever episode they might be in, they were always difficult.

So if you’d known how often they would reappear, it would have made your life easier?

I don’t know. The sets were actually pretty flexible over a period of time.

What became difficult was what I had in mind when I flashed on the idea of the Borg being a collective, and thinking as one. So they didn’t need to have monitors. Because their thoughts are all their thoughts they’re not spelt out somewhere on a screen. That became a problem in the sense that I had to introduce Borg consoles later on, because they did need to have communication with other species.

With the Queen, when she’s communicating with Janeway and so forth, the audience needed to see what she sees, and what she’s thinking. So we did her screen. Because of the sets being organic as much as possible we tried to make the consoles for the Borg appear more organic and very, very different than what you normally would see as a console. So that was an element that was always a challenge.