[harimau777]

Arg! I can't find it now but a while back I read an amazing article discussing the set design on the original series; particularly for the alien planets. From what I recall, their overall assessment was that the set designers used strong color design and bold shapes to compensate for their lack of budget. In that respect, while later entries in the series had much "better" sets, TOS had the strongest aesthetic.

[dragonwriter]

> From what I recall, their overall assessment was that the set designers used strong color design and bold shapes to compensate for their lack of budget.

I thought it was specifically because of (1) the color film process used at the time required it for faithful (-ish) reproduction, and (2) the need to make something that looked good on both black and white and color TVs, as lots of people were still using black and white.

[arp242]

It's also just an artistic design choice. They tried very hard to make things look "alien" and "otherwordly" as much as possible, ranging from the set design to the costumes to the music to Starfleet sideburns.

For example sky can be any colour except blue, and doors can open every which way (except downwards, because that would require digging a hole in the set) and they make all sorts of sounds – as long as they're not "just" doors (they're "alien" doors!) They used those awkward holsters for phasers because pockets looked too "common".

Other more technical factors probably played a factor as well, but this also worked two ways and limited creativity: IIRC the origin skin colour for Vulcans was supposed to be red, but was changed to the off-white because the red didn't work on B&W.

[shiroiuma]

Another thing I read somewhere (not sure if it's true) is that TOS used a lot of wacky colors because color TVs were new then, and so they were trying to get more people to watch the show by making it a bit of a showcase, much like "Planet Earth" was popular when FHD TVs were new because it showed the real potential of the technology.

[aidenn0]

As to the latter, my mom watched it on B&W originally, and then when it was rerun she had a color TV and was astonished that the skies on the alien planets weren't blue!

[rapjr9]

The original Star Trek sets made a lot of use of gobos, patterned metal shadow casters placed in front of lights. You can see some uses of them in pictures here:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/mudds-gobos.276831/#post-113...

https://startrektour.com/photo-gallery/our-beautifully-recre...

and you can take the above tour and see them in use yourself. They were made of metal because the lights were hot. Some sources for them, if you want to play with your own, are old metal pot holders and small cast iron table tops. They usually welded a rod to them to attach them to the light fixtures using standard lighting rod clamps so they'd be stable. Cast iron is heavy, aluminum pot holders are preferred and they disippate heat better.

[justsomehnguy]

> to compensate for their lack of budget

of the scanlines wink