Walter Matthew "Matt" Jefferies (12 August 1921 – 21 July 2003; age 81) was the art director and production designer on all three seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series. He was the brother of fellow Star Trek designers Philip and John Jefferies.

He was the art director and designer in the original series who designed the original Enterprise with its saucer-shaped hull, engineering hull, and two nacelles, as well as the type 1 and type 2 phaser designs seen in the original series, for which he did drawings.

In his honor the crawl spaces on all Starfleet vessels are named Jefferies tubes, a reference used throughout the entire Star Trek franchise. In addition, the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "First Flight" mentioned Captain Jefferies, who was also named in honor of Matt Jefferies.

During World War II Jefferies was a bomber pilot (over Africa and Europe).

After the war he became an illustrator at the Library of Congress, and in the 1950s he was hired as set decorator at Warner Brothers.

In 1964, Gene Roddenberry asked Jefferies to design a starship for his new TV series. The design survived and influenced starship designs in subsequent Trek series. As influential as his starship designs was his bridge design. Apart from these, he designed numerous sets, landscapes, props, and other ships (most notably the Klingon D7-class) for the original series and was highly regarded by producers Roddenberry and Justman.

Jefferies worked as production designer on the two Star Trek pilots, then became both production designer and art director, starting with the first season in 1966. He worked with fellow art director Rolland M. Brooks on the first season and the beginning of the second. After Brooks left the series, Jefferies became the sole art director for Star Trek.

Though mostly remembered for his work on Star Trek, at the time, it was a small part of his career; before Star Trek he worked on such productions as The Untouchables, Ben Casey, and Mission: Impossible (from which he was unexpectedly pulled by his then employer, Desilu, only to find himself working on the new show Star Trek), and afterwards on productions such as Little House on the Prairie and Dallas. He particularly enjoyed working for Little House and was not willing to give up his job there when he was sounded out by Roddenberry to come back for the the Star Trek: Phase II project, though he did some preliminary work on the redesign of the Enterprise. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 8, page 84)

Both Roddenberry and Jefferies died of congestive heart failure, after a fight with cancer.

More information Edit

• Jefferies is featured in a nineteen-minute featurette entitled "A Tribute to Matt Jefferies" located on the Star Trek Generations (Special Edition) DVD disc 2.

BibliographyEdit

• Beyond the Clouds: The Lifetime Trek of Walter "Matt" Jefferies, Artist and Visionary

External links Edit

• MattJefferies.com - official website
• Matt Jefferies at Wikipedia
• Matt Jefferies at the Internet Movie Database