Memory Alpha
Don't have an account?
Register
Advertisement
Register
Memory Alpha
Memory Alpha
57,147
pages
in: Deceased production staff, Art directors, Production designers, Emmy Award nominees
English

Matt Jefferies

Revision as of 14:55, 19 March 2014 by Sennim (talk | contribs) (→‎Career outside Star Trek: grm.)
Sign in to edit

Template:Realworld

"Some day, I'll fly away, way, way beyond the clouds!"
– Richard Jefferies, brother, 2008, citing a childhood statement Matt Jefferies made [1]

Walter Matthew "Matt" Jefferies (12 August 1921 – 21 July 2003; age 81), brother to fellow Star Trek designers Philip and John Jefferies, was the art director and production designer on all three seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series, and has done some preliminary work as such on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (or rather its immediate predecessor, Star Trek: Phase II), albeit uncredited.

Serving as art director and designer for The Original Series, it was Jefferies who designed the original Enterprise studio model 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, along with brother John, did the design drawings. His involvement in the Star Trek franchise started in 1964, when Gene Roddenberry asked Jefferies to design a starship for his new TV series. His signature design survived to influence starship designs in subsequent Star Trek productions. 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.

Jefferies came to the attention of Roddenberry after the latter saw the 1957 Cold War movie Bombers B-52, on which Jefferies, as one of his earliest motion picture contributions, had served as a production designer, albeit uncredited. It was on the initiative of Roddenberry that Jefferies was released from his then employer, ABC, to start work on the first Star trek pilot, "The Cage". (The Making of Star Trek, p. 79) Upon meeting in early spring 1964, both men took an immediate shining to one and other, as they shared a common history. Both men had served in World War II as Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber pilots, though Roddenberry had served in the Pacific theater, while Jefferies had flown over Africa and Europe.[1]

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. Very much one of the most influential production staffers on the visual look of The Original Series, Jefferies was held in high regard by producers Roddenberry and Robert Justman throughout his tenure at the franchise, since then attaining a near legendary status, at least where the Star Trek community is concerned.

In 1977, Jefferies was sounded out by Roddenberry to rejoin the franchise for the Star Trek: Phase II television project that was under development. While he did some preliminary work in June on the redesign of the Enterprise, using as starting point the ship he designed for the Original Series, he ultimately decided to decline the offer as he was unwilling to give up his then job at Little House on the Prairie. In his stead, he recommended Joe Jennings, his assistant during the original second season, for the position and who was subsequently hired as art director. (Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series, p. 26: Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 8, p. 84)

The series of interviews with Jefferies for the 2000 run of the publication Star Trek: The Magazine were the most elaborate ones, he has given on his work on Star Trek, and has helped to clear up some of the misconceptions that had evolved over the years on some of his work in Star Trek lore, such as the origins of the USS Enterprise's registry number and the raison d'etre for the D7-class studio model. Jefferies, along with his brother John, sold off virtually all of their Original Series production items, including all of his design art, still in their possession in the Profiles in History The Star Trek Auction of 12 December 2001, in order to raise funds for the charitable organization "Motion Picture & Television Fund". Prior to the auction, most of Jefferies' Star Trek design art, much of which previously unseen, was published in Star Trek: The Original Series Sketchbook and the interview issues of Star Trek: The Magazine.

Matt Jefferies has confessed to a lack of enthrallment for all post-The Original Series reincarnations of Star Trek, having stated in a BBC interview, shortly before his death in 2003, in regard to The Motion Picture, "I went to the first movie. I was invited to the screening. I fell asleep. John Dwyer noticed it from across the screening room and said, "Matt, wake up." Fortunately nobody else in there knew me.", and in regard to Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Gene asked me how I liked the show, and I said that he had taken the bridge of my ship and turned it into the lobby of the Hilton. And I have just never watched any of them since. I’m lost." [2]

Nevertheless, it was in his honor that the crawl spaces on all Starfleet vessels are named Jefferies tubes, a reference used throughout the entire Star Trek franchise. Likewise, the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "First Flight" mentioned Captain Jefferies, who was also named in honor of Matt Jefferies. Aside from this, Jefferies became revered by numerous later Star Trek staffers, especially by those working in the art and visual effects departments, such as Doug Drexler, Michael Okuda (with whom Jefferies developed a close friendship later in life), Bill George and many others.

Career outside Star Trek

Hailing from the East Coast, Matt Jefferies developed a passion for aviation in the interbellum years, and joined the United States Air Force to serve a bomber pilot over Africa (famously, surviving a mid-air collision with a German fighter plane) and Europe during World War II. His war time services earned him the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. His brush with death in the war did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for aviation after the war, and he personally restored his own plane, a 1935 Waco YOC. Its registry, NC17740, has in Star Trek lore given rise to a decades long myth that the USS Enterprise received its registry from his plane, a notion Jefferies finally dispelled himself in 2000. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 10, p. 26) Directly after the war Jefferies became an illustrator at the Library of Congress, and in the 1950s he was hired as set decorator at Warner Brothers.

Though mostly remembered for his work on Star Trek, at the time, it was but a small part of his career, and he has always considered it just as any other job, albeit one he tackled with professionalism. It was aviation that has always remained his true passion. Before Star Trek he worked as art director on such productions as the movies, aside from the above mentioned Bombers B-52, The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), as well as the television shows The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible (for Desilu Studios), and Ben Casey, the series from which he was unexpectedly pulled, after he returned from a holiday, by his then employer ABC, only to find himself working on the new Star Trek show. Afterwards he worked on productions such as the 1970s-1980s television series Little House on the Prairie and Dallas, with the television movie The Killing Stone (1978, and like Little House a Michael Landon production, with whom Jefferies enjoyed a close working relationship) his last recorded motion picture work. He particularly enjoyed working for Little House, which, apart from being a higher paid job and his close working relationship with Landon, also resonated with his childhood during the Depression Era, according to his brother Richard, and it was therefore that he choose not to return to the Star Trek franchise.

Both Roddenberry and Jefferies died of congestive heart failure, after a fight with cancer. Matt Jefferies had a third, by eighteen months younger, sibling, the aforementioned Richard, who has written a biography on his brother, published in 2008 (see below). He was spurred on to write the work, not only by Star Trek fans, but by aviation fans as well, he met after the funeral of his brother. On its title, Beyond the Clouds, Richard had stated, "When my brother was a little boy, he said, "Some day, I'll fly away, way, way beyond the clouds."" [3] His beloved Waco YOC airplane is currently owned by the Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society and resides at the Virginia Aviation Museum, Richmond, Virginia, whereas the famous starship he designed, is residing in the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Emmy Award Nomination

Matt Jefferies was the only television Star Trek production illustrator of visual effects ever considered as such for an Emmy Award, even though the title did not yet exist in the franchise at the time, due to the fact that the distinction between visual effects and special effects only came into being during the early 1990s.

  • 1969 Emmy Award nomination for TOS Season 3 in the category Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction and Scenic Design, shared with set decorator John Dwyer.

Star Trek interviews

Further reading

External links

Footnote

  1. ↑ For other pilots among Star Trek personnel, see Gene Roddenberry, James Doohan, Franz Bachelin, Michael Dorn, and brother John Jefferies.
Deutsch Español Français
Community content is available under CC-BY-NC unless otherwise noted.
More Fandoms
Advertisement

Fan Feed

More Memory Alpha