The name Stephen Edward Poe is not immediately recognizable to most people. Star Trek fans might remember him under the name Stephen E. Whitfield, the author of the landmark work, The Making of Star Trek (1968), perhaps the first behind the scenes book dedicated to the creation of a new television series.
For that book Whitfield had unparalleled access to executive producer Gene Roddenberry, a man who had no problem talking about his creative process and lionizing himself in the process.
In the introduction, Poe (as Whitfield) talks about his job working for an advertising agency that had scored an account with the AMT Corporation, “a manufacturer of scale model plastic hobby kits.” AMT had famously scored the rights to produce scale models based on the ships seen in Star Trek, and Poe was assigned the job of “working closely with Desilu Studios and NBC-TV in order to generate publicity that would reflect favorably on AMT and, hopefully, future sales of the Enterprise model kit.”
Poe would soon find a friend in Star Trek‘s art director Matt Jeffries, and have an inside scoop on Star Trek‘s creation from that source as well.
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| AMT Model Kit |
What Poe doesn’t talk about in his book is the extent to which AMT was involved with the show. Part of the reason AMT could afford to purchase the Star Trek modeling rights is because they agreed to construct the studio model of the Galileo Class F shuttlecraft through their subsidiary, Custom & Speed Shop, headed by master prop builder Gene Winfield. The same subsidiary would build the interior and exterior to the shuttle, and also design and build the Klingon starship featured in the series from the second season on.
The association between AMT and Star Trek went both ways. The first season episode “Galileo 7” was created to showcase the work of AMT, and of course, help sell more model kits. (Interesting side note: when watching the episode, notice that the set for the interior of the ship is bigger than the prop used for the exterior.)
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| Interior |
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| Exterior |
In the first season of Star Trek there is an entire episode dedicated to a war with the Klingon Empire (“Errand of Mercy”) and we never see a single Klingon ship (until the episode was recently “remastered.”)
By season two, because AMT wanted a model that they could sell along with their Enterprise, appearances of Klingon ships were common. In fact, by season three, the Romulans were using Klingon ships, as seen in the episode “The Enterprise Incident.”
AMT’s relationship with Star Trek went even deeper than that, though. Star Trek was an expensive show to produce, so any chance to cut costs was seized upon eagerly. In the second season episode “The Doomsday Machine” the Enterprise encounters another ship, the USS Constellation, wrecked in a recent battle. To produce this effect the special effects crew took a blowtorch to an AMT Enterprise model. The call letters of the Constellation, NCC-1017, are simply the Enterprise call letters rearranged.
Over time AMT was acquired by ERTL, and the company continued its Star Trek association for quite some time, right up through Star Trek: The Next Generation and several of the movies.
Perhaps the most intriguing model kit AMT produced in the early days of their association with Star Trek was the Interplanetary U.F.O Mystery Ship, also known as the Leif Erickson. From Memory-Alpha:
In 1974 AMT included an Interplanetary U.F.O. Mystery Ship into the Star Trek line, thereby suggesting that the design was part of the Star Trek universe, though it was not, its combined advertising on the box sides, pamphlets and catalogs of the time notwithstanding. It did have however, had some behind-the-scenes connections.
First off, the U.F.O. Mystery Ship was originally designed as the Leif Ericson by Matt Jefferies (with the forward bridge module having more than a passing resemblance of the conning tower of the SS Botany Bay) for an abandoned Sci-Fi project named, “Strategic Space Command.”
The concept was thought up by Jefferies together with his friend Stephen Edward Poe.
There’s Stephen Poe again, having learned about creating a series from Roddenberry, he and Matt Jeffires were apparently teaming up to do their own series, and hoping to use a series of AMT models to help launch it.
AMT’s idea behind backing the project was–buoyed on by the success of their first Star Trek model kits–to release a series of Sci-Fi kits accompanied by a worked-out “mini” background story and eventually create a Strategic Space Command universe, beefed out with an accompanying line of model kits. AMT eventually released the model in 1968 as kit No.S954.
The background story included with the first kit can be read here. Reading the story, one can’t help but feel that Poe was inspired by the oft-repeated idea that Star trek was conceived as a sort of Hornblower in space. Each model kit after the first (which were never produced) would feature a story concerning Lancer Scott, who in this first story is a seventeen year old midshipman. It’s easy to see that each succeeding ship would advance Scott’s rank and career, just like the series of Hornblower novels.
Secondly, according to Michael Okuda the design, being a Jefferies design, was seriously considered to be part of the Star Trek universe, though that never came to fruition. The original kit was considered a commercial failure and the project fell apart. In a ploy to recuperate their investments, AMT re-released the model kit twice, now designated Interplanetary U.F.O. Mystery Ship, molded in fluorescent plastic (to achieve a glowing-in-the-dark effect), and was trying to marry the ship into the Star Trek franchise through combined advertising, though it would never appear there. The re-releases were timed to coincide with the airing of the Star Trek: The Animated Series, where the design was briefly considered to make an appearance, already showing up in several preliminary story boards.
That’s not the end of the Leif Erickson, though. The long forgotten and never produced George Pal War of the World’s TV series utilized the talents of Matt Jeffries for its art design, and the Leif Erickson was instantly re-imagined as the Hyperspace Carrier Pegasus in pre-production designs.
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| Leif Erickson, top, and the reimagined Hyperspace Carrier Pegasus |
Perhaps the best place to find out everything known about the Leif Erickson is here.
When a property is licensed, the continuity of the property is expanded. Suddenly the story morphs in directions no one could have suspected. George Lucas probably never envisioned selling stuffed teddy bears when he wrote Star Wars, but by the time he was making the third film in the series he was in the business of selling toys in a big way.
Considering the unexpected ways merchandising can affect a commercial property is now the job of media consultants and image control specialists.
But way back in 1966, it was more like the wild west, where anyone with gumption and a scale model plastic hobby kits manufacturer account could have a lasting impact on a popular franchise.
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