The Black And White Models

By Richard A. Coyle

The Star Trek classic phaser came in a variety of colors and flavors.

We will take a look at the first of these models, the black and white phaser in this first article. In future issues we will examine the other variations of phasers and other props from the classic Trek show as well as props from other science fiction TV shows and movies.

 The classic ‘60’s Star Trek was a work in progress and went through many changes as the writers and producers figured things out. Some ideas came in the form of new scripts and later just embedded into the main story line.

For me, these changes were some of the endearing things about the early show. I ended up watching the classic episodes again and again to observe how it grew and changed right before my very eyes.One of these “growth” shows I have always loved is the episode “The Corbomite Maneuver”, not only for being a great first contact with aliens story, but also for the big change that happened in all episodes following.

In this episode, our heroes first identified themselves as “The United Earth Star Ship Enterprise” and Balok identified himself as the Captain of the Fesarius of the “First Federation”.

The First Federation?? Great idea, we should join this Federation, we should have thought of it first, let ‘s just take it over…So…

In all the episodes thereafter, our heroes would identify themselves as the United Federation Starship Enterprise.

 Most of the weapons and equipment went through similar growing pains. For now we will start with the first phasers and later back track in future articles and cover the first and second weapons, the hand laser (from the first pilot “The Menagerie) and the phaser rifle (from the second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before“).

the TV screen, all the eye sees is a nondescript gun-like thing. There is the white handle, the black upper body and the silver barrel with the clear tip. It did not look very good on the show and didn’t even seem to belong for there was so much color everywhere else, bright color, gold shirts, blue shirts, red guard rails, etc.

Even in close-up, there is little detailing visible. Even the brass plate on top of the phaser one was painted black. The detailing of all the props varied a great deal, from prop to prop and season to season. With the pistol phasers, the only constant was the top cap just in front of the phaser one. Nearly as constant have been the muzzle and the knob-like thing on the side of the main body.

Even with these details I have observed three or more distinct models for both the muzzle and the knob. Almost all of the rest of the detailing changed greatly from phaser to phaser.

Let us study this model from “head to toe,” starting at what some would call the “business end,” the front of the phaser, right at the tip of the emitter. The best of these tips appear to be machined acrylic cut into a long tapering cone shape and tapering to a blunt end. The crudest of these tips was simply a piece of plastic tubing mounted into the barrel/muzzle.

A few of the working models had tips that were drilled out with two sizes of holes with the rear one large enough to hold a grain-o’-wheat light bulb installed for a lighting effect that could fire out a smaller hole drilled out to the front of the tip. There is one visible in the “Making of Star Trek” paper back book.. These lights are believed to have been installed to aid the special effects artist who would then key in on these lights when they drew the animated beam of a phaser firing.

Current custom is to leave out tip lights, for example the phaser in “Star Trek – The Search For Spock” had no tip light. Animation is charged by the frame and an actor firing for three seconds is cheaper than a ten second blast, plus he might be aiming it wrong when he does fire or worse, fire at all the wrong times. (See a note about bloopers, later in this article.)

 Next, behind the clear tip, is the machined aluminum muzzle. So traveling back along the tapering tip, we come to a flat section at right angles to the tip. This is a recessed cut into the face of the muzzle about 1/8″ deep and is a 3/4″ flat wide section with the clear tip bored right into the center.

The number two version of this muzzle is the same as the first one but with a cone cut in place of the flat section around the clear tip. It looks a little like a flashlight reflector, which may explain why there is only one seen so far. The people on the show may have felt this appeared a little too much like a current day flashlight to use on the show.

winging around up from this recess, but still on the muzzle we then find there are several levels of rings that look like three steps. Then a longer area or flatter section of rings, or cuts, that look like rings. Moving back we come to a center ring which is the largest and widest ring. This center ring has sections that are divided by a mix of flat plane sections cut into a lined rounded part of this center ring. There are about six to seven fine lines cut into the rounded sections between the flat cuts, and these run all around this center ring. There is a flat section, then a section with lines followed by a flat section, alternating these areas all round this part of the barrel‘s ring.

  An added feature on the “hero” model of these muzzles is that the center ring is a rotating ring. Possibly this mechanical effect is intended to suggest an adjustment feature for the actors to use in a scene where they needed to select a special setting, ranging from wide beam to a laser point. We never see this demonstrated though there are several scenes where Cpt. Kirk does place his forefinger alongside the muzzle. Was this a modern day “finger off the trigger“ pose or…was he intending to adjust the beam width or setting? And one early scene had Scotty cutting exactingly through a bulk head with a tight beam.

 There was a special feature involving the clear pistol tip and this “hero“ muzzle. As the phaser one is loaded into the pistol body, the front of the phaser one engages a pocket in the pistol body then has to push forward as it is set in. This socket is connected to the tip and spring loaded so that when the socket is pushed forward, the tip telescopes or is pushed out of the muzzle. When the phaser one is removed, this action would, of course, retract the tip. At rest, without a phaser one, the clear tip was retracted in the pistol body muzzle.

As a point of interest to nitpickers and fans of bloopers, there are a couple of scenes where you can see that this part failed to engage or failed to hold and the tip pocket has slipped under the phaser one and the tip has withdrawn into the muzzle. Check for this in a scene from “The Conscience of the King” and other episodes.

These muzzles are one of the most complex parts of the phasers and they appear to have been made at about the same time and possible by the same man and/or shop. I expect that they went ahead and did a large run of these muzzles at the time ensuring the show would have many spares to harvest for later use .

This would also help explain how these black and white models are still around today, since it is normal policy in Hollywood to refinish and repaint props, sets and everything, as needed. Having spares of some of the most difficult and costly parts to make would allow them to easily build new replacement props.

Another reason they may have chosen to replace rather than refinish could be that they had to carry on with the filming of the shows and had to use what was already on hand. When the new models arrived, these old black and white ones could have been simply put into storage.

Or perhaps the models were lost before they could be repainted and refinished. This is unlikely for if losses were to be the saving factor, then only a few would have survived and the rest would have been repainted and refinished. The few that did “escape” would be a lot rarer today. But we do seem to have the full accounting of most of the black and white phasers for, by noting small details, we believe that we have been able to match and count these models from show to show and then, from the show to the hands of collectors.

Either way, the fans are the benefactors as this model of phaser did indeed survive to this day and everyone can enjoy them, check them out and study these pieces of Star Trek history.

 One of the first models I held and photographed may even have the grand-daddy of them all, for, unlike the majority of the models, this one was made out of wood. Almost all of the other standard models appear to have been cast out of fiberglass. There was a corner on the handle where you could see that the paint was worn away from the edge and what was underneath seemed to be wood. When I held this model in my hand it also felt like wood. I did not probe it as I did not wish to mar it, so I can only relate what I saw and what the owner said. Also, there were a set of lines cut into the rear section, deep fine lines. These lines were cut into the body at the same place that on later models you would see either a lowered area painted silver or a set of four aluminum fins. Again, these were clean straight cuts, the kind you could only make in a soft material like wood.

 Continuing on our tour of the phaser, from the muzzle moving up and over the top you come on to the metal top cap just in front of the smaller phaser one. This is one of the only parts that seem to be the same on all pistol phasers. You can see them shiny and silver on each and every phaser.

There is a belief that the one and two phaser combo were in fact planned to be a part of an even larger weapon’s system. The phaser one was able to plug into the pistol body. This resulting pistol body was intended to plug into a rifle stock to make a phaser rifle. There may have been a plan to fit a longer barrel onto the front of the pistol or it might have been part of the rifle stock. This styling and design idea was later used in the show “V“ where the pistol fit into a shoulder stock, had a barrel extension added and a scope mounted upon the top to make a mean looking assault rifle. Yet, this was never done in Star Trek. The phaser rifle from the second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was a stand-alone and used only in this one show, never to be seen again.

The pistol body would give the little phaser one more power, more range and control through the larger beam control muzzle and longer firing time due to the larger power pack. The phaser pistol body was like the “Linear amplifier“ currently used by radio operators to boost a low power radio by feeding its low powered output into a special amplifier made to handle a smaller amp output and then increase this input to a much greater and higher amplified output.

 Current custom is to leave out tip lights, for example the phaser in “Star Trek – The Search For Spock” had no tip light. Animation is charged by the frame and an actor firing for three seconds is cheaper than a ten second blast, plus he might be aiming it wrong when he does fire or worse, fire at all the wrong times. The problem with animation of the tip light or beans is clearly seen in the episode of “The Enemy Within” when Lt. Sulu has to fire the phaser the warm the rocks.

The trouble was as Mr. Sulu fired the phaser he also was moving in back and forth, but the prop rocks were rigged to light up all at once, evenly , so they animated the phaser firing three to six beans to cover up this little discrepancy. It does make for a cute scene.

Right below the top cap and to the rear of the muzzle on the left side (your left if you are holding the weapon muzzle pointed away from you) is a detail that looks like a knob in/on the main body. This has become known as the dilithium cap though there is no evidence that it was ever called that on the show. I believe it was Franz Joseph who first called this part the dilithium crystal cap in his book “The Star Trek Technical Manual”.

On some of the “hero” models this knob was hooked to a five position switch and it would snap loudly into each of the five settings. On the dummies most of them were just glued on.

On one true wooden black and white model, the side cap was simply a flat section cut off a round aluminum rod that had several cuts crossing the face, leaving a small thin section across the front forming a small bar that looks like a knob. This also appears to have simply been glued on.

The other two styles of these little side caps are nearly identical. They are the ones made up of three parts. The first is center which was a cut off section from a round aluminum rod (again) with a V cut into one end that had a small hand made bar shaped to make the center knob that sat into the V cut. These were then placed into round tubing and there were two versions, one with thin wall tubing and one with a thicker tubing.

 Just above this knob on the main body are three ribs raised on the side of the body. These were the same color as the main body.

Below this knob we see the trigger. This part was made in many shapes and sizes and placed in several angles. One constant was that all were aluminum.

Inside the working models the propmakers had made their own home-grown switch with the aluminum button fastened to a brass bar to give it the spring back ability which, when pressed back, made contact with another brass bar making the electrical connection to light the tip bulb. (I would have bought a pushbutton at the store but back then it is possible that there were few switches small to enough to fit in those tight spaces.)

The trigger is mounted in a small housing that seems to have been tacked onto the main body then blended in to both hold the trigger and to allow mounting the handle to the main body. .

The handle of this model this was painted white. At first this seems a little odd to have the handle stand out with an eye catching and contrasting color compared to the rest of the phaser which was mainly black.

There does seem to be a reason for it, however, because later in the series they do show these handles as detachable power packs and some of the hero models even had removable handles, so they had planned to show this feature as needed.

And this did fit into the plot of the story of episode #52 “The Omega Glory” where Mr. Spock shows Cpt. Kirk depleted phaser power packs. These were made to look just like the handles.

There were two styles and five color schemes for these handles. The two styles were the first and second season model which were the same but for using three colors and a third season version that was shaped differently and again three colors.

This is a list of the color combos seen in the classic shows: first were the black and whites, then the black and blue/grays, followed by the dark grays and gray models, a gray, gray and black models, a gray, gray, gray and finally, a black, gray and black. This color nomenclature is identifying phaser vintage based on their “coats of many colors“ referring respectively to the handle, the main body and the phaser one, to use the second example. By this system, the Black and White would be listed as: white, black, black, as in white handle, black main body, and black Phaser one. In later issues, I will to do articles on all of these models and include pictures.

The white handles were a basic compressed oval shape, rounded ends with a flat center section. The flat center section had two side plates side by side traversing the length of the handle, stopping just about 3/8″ short of the bottom. On the working hero models, this bottom 3/8s was where the end cap was located, removable to change the batteries. The handle on the working models were actually the real power packs as they put the batteries for the functional tip light in these handles.

 This end cap was a bit overdone for there was a small cover held on by two small screws. With the cover removed, underneath was a nut that they had cut a slot in for a blade screwdriver to turn to loosen. Maybe a socket wrench would not have fit. When loosened, this nut would remain trapped within the cap but would allow the end cap to be removed to allow the removal and changing of the batteries. Trapping this nut was done by having a hole too small for the nut to fall out of but big enough for the screw driver to reach through.

This effort and cleverness was not carried through to the system to make these handles removable. They settled on using a simple old two prong twist locking electrical extension cord plug and socket. This was so “household” and everyday familiar that I am sure it is why we never see anyone unlock and change the power pack. Having attempted to make this feature myself, I understand how difficult this simple trick is. Nothing I found would work either.

Next moving rearward and up behind the phaser one but still on the left side of the main pistol body, there is the little brass rod that sticks out from the side. When I first watched the shows, I remembered Captain Kirk telling the crew to lock the phasers on stun and for a long time believed that was what this button was for, to lock the setting knob into place.

In the real world, it was the lock release for the removable phaser one. The non-working, non-removable models simply had a cast phaser one glued into the pistol body and dummy brass rods which were inoperative.

On top at the rear we find the pistol setting knob. On the black and white pistol, these were all simply different-sized aluminum rods glued into the bodies, nothing more. The better knobs did not show up until the later models.

 The final detail to describe is the rear radiator section. On the black and white models there was a little detailing that consisted of cutting six or more lines cut or molded into the side, back and around to the other side. On the true wood model, they were deep straight cuts but on the fiberglass model, they were ribbed like sections that were not even painted.

— End The First Phasers