DigitalRoadtrip: December Roadtrip, Day 3...The Big Chair

Day 3

Sunday, December 3, 2022

Today's excursion is the true reason I came to the far south-eastern corner of Georgia. And it's all due to something I just came across by chance. More on that shortly.

First things first, sunrise along the St. Mary's River...

After a pretty decent breakfast at the motel, I still had some time to kill. I was headed to Kingsland at noon. It's the next town over from St. Mary's and extremely quiet on Sunday mornings.

I was looking for a place called Neutral Zone Studios. It's on the far end of Williams Avenue, though there are no signs from the street. It's a long, dirt driveweay that leads to a gravel parking lot and a building that once was, and definitely looks like a warehouse.

Ray Tesi owns the place and once a month opens the doors for Fan Appreciation Weekends. Inside, you'll find a working film studio containing sets designed to be as accurate as possible to the original Star Trek TV series.

Quite a few fan films have been shot here. The Paramount legal department doesn't have a problem with it. But, they do have stipulations. Each film has to be clearly labeled a "fan film" and thus not a Paramount property. Neither the films or the studio can make a profit from these films.

So, Ray can only charge a small fee to cover utilities and the building's rent over the course of the shoot. The rest is by donations.

Ray even admits some of these productions are pretty cringe worthy. But, he enjoys watching the fan's excitement as they create them. His favorite are a series called Star Trek Continues. Click on the link and you can watch their films.

As for the tour, it's free and access is limited. Let's face it, too many people in a tour wouldn't work. There's only so much room.

Ray himself leads the tours.

After a brief warning to please not climb on anything, he asked where everyone was from. Phil from Michigan came the furtherest, so he got the first look...

The doors opened to reveal, Main Engineering...

Ray talked about how the original designers created the set and used anything they could find simply to create what looked like it could be important, painted it and stuck it to the walls.

Next stop on the tour, Sick Bay...

The corridor outside was built with a curve for two reasons. One, the ship was round, and thus curved corridors made sense. Two, you could get away with shorter corridors. Change a few signs on the walls, as it looks like a different section of the ship.

The main transporter room. Actors would step up onto one of the pads, wait while the lights overhead were turned off and on a few times, then step off. The rest of the effect involved poking tiny holes in the actual film.

The main Briefing Room. Everything in the here is removable, making it a utilitarian space for numerous ship spaces.

Auxilary Control. I recently rewatched the episode "The Doomsday Machine" which used this room. Once again, the desk is removable, making it a utilitarian set space.

Captain's Quarters. Just like in the original series, that red wall art is removable. Stick a camera through it and you get the reverse angle shot of the room.

Inside the Turbolift...

And a Jefferies Tube. These were designed for access to circuitry, as well as a way to get from one deck to another. They're named after Matt Jefferies, set designer for the origial series.