Original Star Trek Enterprise Discovered And Returned Home
Passionate collectors and lovers of all things Star Trek will be pleased to hear that one of the biggest mysteries in the space-centered franchise’s history has been solved and corrected as the original Star Trek Enterprise model is now safely back where it belongs – in the hands of Gene Roddenberry’s son, Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry. It was decades since the tiny replica was last spotted until it drew international attention after appearing on eBay at the end of last year. Luckily, the community got to work, alerting the sellers that they had a prop that had been missing since the 1970s, with those offering the model immediately taking the listing down.
Model Enterprise Back Where It Belongs
Now, just a few short months later, the Star Trek Enterprise model has soared its way back to Eugene Roddenberry thanks to Heritage Auctions who not only helped bring it home but also confirmed that it was the real deal. The story behind the prop’s disappearance is unclear, as Eugene Roddenberry remembers it sitting on his father’s desk when he was a child before it seemingly vanished into thin air.
The accepted theory is that the tiny ship was simply lost in the shuffle, likely during the production of the first film to spawn from the beloved TV show. As the story goes, Gene Roddenberry lent it to the creators of Star Trek: The Motion Picture when they were hard at work on the title in the ‘70s, and they simply lost track of it, with no sinister or greedy intentions suspected.
It Belongs In A Museum
With this in mind as the accepted belief, it’s even more miraculous that the Star Trek Enterprise model would resurface after all of these years. After it was slapped with the stamp of approval – or rather, authenticity – from Heritage Auctions, the ship sailed over to Eugene Roddenberry’s possession, but the businessman says that he doesn’t plan to keep it for himself. Rather than putting it on display and holding onto it as a memento from his childhood and of his father’s legacy, Roddenberry plans to get the figurine “restored” and find it a permanent home, perhaps in “a museum somewhere” as was done with the larger model which fans can catch at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
Helped Get The Originial Series Made
The model clocks in at around three feet total and was most notably used in the original show’s opening credits. The Star Trek Enterprise figure was with the production for just as long as stars like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, as it was used during the pilot episode, which would wow the network into giving the creative team the go-ahead to move things forward at the pace of light speed.
The Mystery Is Still Being Investigated
Now that the Star Trek Enterprise has returned safe and sound to the Roddenberry household, Eugene Roddenberry can take a sigh of relief knowing that a piece of his father’s legacy is safe and sound. While he reiterated that he believes it was lost because of a human error, Eugene Roddenberry still would like to investigate exactly what caused the model to go missing in the first place. We’ll keep you posted on where the prop will come in for a permanent landing—hopefully for the public to view.
Source: ABC News
