Alleged Screen Used Hero TOS Phaser up for auction (now the aftermath)

[Gregatron]

There are four lights!, er, Phasers!

 

[Gregatron]

I believe this is the last filmed hero in the series from the third season, they would not have been painted again after this. Paint job not even close to being as sloppy as we see on the GJ or the auction phaser.

View attachment 1472790

And that would be the TMOST hero, I believe.

 

[genZOD]

Personally, I’m willing to believe that a hero P1 & P2 we’re both separately beat up and hastily repaired during the 2nd or 3rd season’s production. I suppose that I’m even willing-ish to believe that another hero P2 had Velcro that was later replaced with modern Velcro. I find it very hard to believe that Wah Chang would make repairs that look worse than GJ’s prop. It’s even harder to believe that this happened to a P2 that nobody has documented before… And that a similarly undocumented P1 was also found. Again, each thing can be explained away, but taken together they raise real questions.

 

[Gregatron]

Personally, I’m willing to believe that a hero P1 & P2 we’re both separately beat up and hastily repaired during the 2nd or 3rd season’s production. I suppose that I’m even willing-ish to believe that another hero P2 had Velcro that was later replaced with modern Velcro. I find it very hard to believe that Wah Chang would make repairs that look worse than GJ’s prop. It’s even harder to believe that this happened to a P2 that nobody has documented before… And that a similarly undocumented P1 was also found. Again, each thing can be explained away, but taken together they raise real questions.

And we must again ask ourselves how the hero(es) could end up in such lousy shape—with worse paintjobs than the surviving midgrades (the true workhorse props of the second and third seasons)—when their usage in the show had dropped to a minimum by the end of the first season. The heroes were just pulled out of storage every once in a while for static closeups during seasons 2-3. A handful of shots, nothing more. Whereas the midgrades took all the abuse.

 

[Jintosh]

And that's it...isn't it ?!?!?!

We feel that they are trying to make us believe something that we know is NOT true. And they're trying to make us feel bad for believing the truth.
FOUR phasers !

 

[USS Endeav]

I believe this is the last filmed hero in the series from the third season, they would not have been painted again after this. Paint job not even close to being as sloppy as we see on the GJ or the auction phaser.

View attachment 1472790

Agreed, this examples paint looks very nice.

The dilithium crystal side dial though, does appear to not intersect the side cooling fins. Other heros seem to have the side dial intersect the lowest one or two lines, no?

I'm watching the auction like how I watch the price of BTC. I have a feeling it will be a similar if not diametrically opposed feeling of shock.

 

[Vaderman]

Well, I’m not buying it.
I mean, I can’t afford to even bid on it.
However, just for the sake of adding information…

In the mid 90s, Viacom was working on the store in Chicago that was to be the flagship for others of its kind.
The top floor (of three floors) was devoted to all things Trek; TOS through VOY. They had new merch as well as make-up prosthetics painted by Micheal Westmore and props used on Voyager, usually with signed photos of an actor using the prop, etc. (Viacom got these by paying to have new ones made to replace them for the production.)
So, for the original series, they got some large spaceship models, like those used in DS9’s “Trials and Tribulations”.
They also reached out to Wah Chang, John Dwyer and Matt Jefferies. Wah still had several pieces in his possession: a set of Gorn hands and a “Salt Vampire/M113 creature” mask, as I recall, as well as a few other peices.
Now, I only mention this because it seems odd to me that someone would have sought him out for a damaged phaser and not also recovered the other items in his possession. He did not have any phasers, communicators, tricorders or other highly sought props at the time.

 

[Apollo]

Thats what is strange about Greg vetting this, surely he knew about what Viacom was doing....

 

[WinstonWolf359]

The story just doesn't make any sense. The studio contracted Wah to repair just the P-II part of the phaser, but the show was cancelled while it was in his possession, so he just kept it?
If he had been contracted to do work for the studio, they were obligated to pay for the work regardless.
But the studio had an in-house prop shop...that had already thrown a fit over over the producers sending work to Wah. Why would the studio do that again anyway?

So Wah has a P-II that he didn't return, and someone just pops by his house in the late 60s?!? and says "hey, can I buy that?"

So now this mystery person has a pistol, but no P-I to make the prop complete. Presumably this person would have been on the lookout for a P-I, right? But no rumors ever popped up about someone with just a P-II looking for a P-I? For the last 50 years? Never in all that time did they think "should I just sell this?" Not in the late 80s/early 90s when was Trek was big again on the heels of Star Trek IV and The Next Generation? Or the mid-late 90s when Trek was everywhere? Or maybe after the Jefferies auctions pulled in huge money and it seemed like Paul Allen had unlimited money to fill up his sci-fi museum with Star Trek props?

But the P-II owner seems to have ignored all of that and quietly looked...and found...on his own...another person that just happened to have a hero P-I?

So let's talk about the P-I story...

It supposedly walked off the set at the end of season 2. Just the P-I. An ugly P-I with Velcro on the side at that. If you are going to borrow/steal a prop, why take an ugly one? Why take a prop that was always paired with a whole pistol, leave the rest of the prop, and only take the P-I?

And my same questions about the owner looking to sell any time in the last 50 years holds true on the P-I too...even more so since it reads a little more "complete" than a pistol without the P-I.

But now...now that these two owners have finally found each other, against all odds and after decades of searching and holding out for the right time, they're finally ready to sell? Yeah, right...

Circling back to the actual prop again...

Did Wah actually repair the P-II before he sold it? What was the damage that needed HIS specific talents to repair? If he did work on it, why did he not strip and repaint it? Or if he hadn't finished yet, why doesn't the pistol still have damage needing repair?
The story seems to want to have it both ways...It looks rough because it's old and had been abused and repainted many times...but if any details don't seem quite right...that's because Wah Chang fixed it.
Now, P-I looks pretty rough too, even though it spent less time on set compared to the pistol, but more importantly why does its roughness seem to match the roughness seen on the P-II?

 

[USS Endeav]

↑ because it's a FAAAAAKE!

Just sayin...

 

[Gregatron]

The story just doesn't make any sense. The studio contracted Wah to repair just the P-II part of the phaser, but the show was cancelled while it was in his possession, so he just kept it?
If he had been contracted to do work for the studio, they were obligated to pay for the work regardless.
But the studio had an in-house prop shop...that had already thrown a fit over over the producers sending work to Wah. Why would the studio do that again anyway?

So Wah has a P-II that he didn't return, and someone just pops by his house in the late 60s?!? and says "hey, can I buy that?"

So now this mystery person has a pistol, but no P-I to make the prop complete. Presumably this person would have been on the lookout for a P-I, right? But no rumors ever popped up about someone with just a P-II looking for a P-I? For the last 50 years? Never in all that time did they think "should I just sell this?" Not in the late 80s/early 90s when was Trek was big again on the heels of Star Trek IV and The Next Generation? Or the mid-late 90s when Trek was everywhere? Or maybe after the Jefferies auctions pulled in huge money and it seemed like Paul Allen had unlimited money to fill up his sci-fi museum with Star Trek props?

But the P-II owner seems to have ignored all of that and quietly looked...and found...on his own...another person that just happened to have a hero P-I?

So let's talk about the P-I story...

It supposedly walked off the set at the end of season 2. Just the P-I. An ugly P-I with Velcro on the side at that. If you are going to borrow/steal a prop, why take an ugly one? Why take a prop that was always paired with a whole pistol, leave the rest of the prop, and only take the P-I?

And my same questions about the owner looking to sell any time in the last 50 years holds true on the P-I too...even more so since it reads a little more "complete" than a pistol without the P-I.

But now...now that these two owners have finally found each other, against all odds and after decades of searching and holding out for the right time, they're finally ready to sell? Yeah, right...

Circling back to the actual prop again...

Did Wah actually repair the P-II before he sold it? What was the damage that needed HIS specific talents to repair? If he did work on it, why did he not strip and repaint it? Or if he hadn't finished yet, why doesn't the pistol still have damage needing repair?
The story seems to want to have it both ways...It looks rough because it's old and had been abused and repainted many times...but if any details don't seem quite right...that's because Wah Chang fixed it.
Now, P-I looks pretty rough too, even though it spent less time on set compared to the pistol, but more importantly why does its roughness seem to match the roughness seen on the P-II?

Also, there were only four heroes, and, from what we can tell by looking at screencaps, there didn't appear to be much--if any--mixing and matching of the different P1s and P2s. The Jein P1 can be seen in what appears to be the Jein P2 body during "Shore Leave", just as it still is, today. Same with the TMOST in "Court Martial" and then later in "The Cloud Minders".

Giving away 25% of their valuable and expensive hero phaser props while the show was still in production would have been idiotic. And somehow separating the two units, ostensibly to give them to souvenir-hunters, would be strange. Who would want just a P2 body, with no P1? And why would someone give away a P1 while its matching P2 was off for "repairs"?

 

[USS Endeav]

Also, there were only four heroes

This cannot be asserted to the degree you imply. There may yet exist a secondary invoice for "x" number of additional props. The fact is, we simply do not know for certain. I'm inclined to agree with you as ordering additional heroes when the existing ones were not being fully utilized would be an unnecessary expense. I'm just clarifying that for all their dubious misleading claims, Heritage can safely fall back on what we don't know and we don't know if additional props were ordered.

 

[Gregatron]

This cannot be asserted to the degree you imply. There may yet exist a secondary invoice for "x" number of additional props. The fact is, we simply do not know for certain. I'm inclined to agree with you as ordering additional heroes when the existing ones were not being fully utilized would be an unnecessary expense. I'm just clarifying that for all their dubious misleading claims, Heritage can safely fall back on what we don't know and we don't know if additional props were ordered.

Can't it, though? There's not a single shred of evidence that there was ever more than the four heroes built and inventoried for the show.

 

[USS Endeav]

Can't it, though? There's not a single shred of evidence that there was ever more than the four heroes built and inventoried for the show.

What you're suggesting is to disprove a negative. Just because such evidence has not surfaced is not an indication it does not exist anywhere.

 

[Gregatron]

What you're suggesting is to disprove a negative. Just because such evidence has not surfaced is not an indication it does not exist anywhere.

I'm not suggesting we disprove a negative. I'm saying that if I drop a hammer on a planet with a positive gravity, I need not see it fall to know that it has in fact fallen.

The simplest explanation is usually the correct one! All signs point to four and only four, and the existence of some extraordinary piece of evidence which would prove otherwise seems unlikely.

 

[USS Endeav]

I'm not suggesting we disprove a negative. I'm saying that if I drop a hammer on a planet with a positive gravity, I need not see it fall to know that it has in fact fallen.

The simplest explanation is usually the correct one! All signs point to four and only four, and the existence of some extraordinary piece of evidence which would prove otherwise seems unlikely.

I am not disputing the memo and "all signs point to four" can only apply to that memo.
Can you state unequivocally that no other such memo exists, anywhere?

You cannot.

Therefore you cannot state there are only four heroes, to do so discounts any possibility of an uncirculated memo supporting "x" number of additional heroes. Ergo, disproving a negative.

 

[Jintosh]

I am not disputing the memo and "all signs point to four" can only apply to that memo.
Can you state unequivocally that no other such memo exists, anywhere?

You cannot.

Therefore you cannot state there are only four heroes, to do so discounts any possibility of an uncirculated memo supporting "x" number of additional heroes. Ergo, disproving a negative.

If the Government says they minted 10 million state quarters in the Denver mint in a particular year, there will be a literal criminal investigation if 12 million quarters show up when the records say ONLY 10 million were made.

In the legal system, written records are taken as FACT unless proven otherwise. And the FOUR phaser record has not been proven otherwise, therefore it is taken as fact.

**********************************************************************************************************
What you are saying is that a WILL is a legal and executable, unless another will shows up with a LATER date on it.
While what you are saying is true, in and of itself...One cannot ASSUME there is a later dated will if there is not any
proof of such a will. The currently known will must be upheld as true.

 

[USS Endeav]

If the Government says they minted 10 million state quarters in the Denver mint in a particular year, there will be a literal criminal investigation if 12 million quarters show up when the records say ONLY 10 million were made.

In the legal system, written records are taken as FACT unless proven otherwise. And the FOUR phaser record has not been proven otherwise, therefore it is taken as fact.

**********************************************************************************************************
What you are saying is that a WILL is a legal and executable, unless another will shows up with a LATER date on it.
While what you are saying is true, in and of itself...One cannot ASSUME there is a later dated will if there is not any
proof of such a will. The currently known will must be upheld as true.

This logic is flawed on so many levels, it is simpler to say it flawed on all off them.

You cannot assert that, perhaps Dixon Hill living in San Francisco has in his possession both a cashed check from Michael Dann and the invoice signed by Gene Roddenberry for the purchase of a hero phaser which the funds were allocated for. Perhaps he is a very solitary and private man and has decided not to come forth with this proof, though he never owned the Phaser this invoice references.

His silence cannot be used as a supporting fact for your argument, if it could, a charge of murder where a body is not located wouldn't be a prosecutors worst nightmare.

And again, the statements construed from that circulating document can only be used to assert that claim, it cannot be used to the exclusion of any other possibility. Two things can be true at once.

 

[wayouteast]

This logic is flawed on so many levels, it is simpler to say it flawed on all off them.

You cannot assert that, perhaps Dixon Hill living in San Francisco has in his possession both a cashed check from Michael Dann and the invoice signed by Gene Roddenberry for the purchase of a hero phaser which the funds were allocated for. Perhaps he is a very solitary and private man and has decided not to come forth with this proof, though he never owned the Phaser this invoice references.

His silence cannot be used as a supporting fact for your argument, if it could, a charge of murder where a body is not located wouldn't be a prosecutors worst nightmare.

And again, the statements construed from that circulating document can only be used to assert that claim, it cannot be used to the exclusion of any other possibility. Two things can be true at once.

Oh, for heaven's sake! I have no skin in this game. I've been following this debate purely because it's interesting... in all sorts of ways, historical and psychological! I have nowhere near the expertise and knowledge of others on this thread on the topic of Star Trek props in general and phasers in particular. But I do know a logical fallacy when I see one.

It's actually you who are demanding proof of a negative. Not the (for want of a better word) sceptics.This is why.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That's axiomatic. And the onus of proof is on the person making the claim.

I could claim that I have the true Ark of the Covenant in my back bedroom. That's an extraordinary claim. Which it's up to me to prove. I can't just say 'no, you prove that I haven't'. That's not how it works.

As I understand it, there is existing documentation in the form of an invoice that four hero phasers were commissioned and built. That's inarguable. Those four hero phasers have been identified and seen on the show, and their distinguishing marks have been traced back to four known physical props (counting P1 and P2 as 'one prop'). Also inarguable.

So, all the available evidence is of four hero phasers, all of which are accounted for.

Now, the claim is being made that a fifth hero phaser (both P1 and P2) exists, additional to, and different from, those documented four. Again, as I understand it, there is no known contemporary documentation to support this fifth phaser, and this fifth phaser has never been identified visibly on screen. Nevertheless, this 'extraordinary claim' is being made. It may be so; it may not.

So it's up to those making the claim to prove that claim. In the absence of incontrovertible evidence (not imaginary shy residents of San Francisco), the onus of proof is on you.

Yet, when asked for the proof for your extraordinary claim by those who are doubtful in the face of the lack of any such evidence; when asked to prove that this fifth phaser exists, you're the ones saying 'no, you prove it doesn't'. You're the ones asking others to prove a negative.

 

[Gregatron]

Oh, for heaven's sake! I have no skin in this game. I've been following this debate purely because it's interesting... in all sorts of ways, historical and psychological! I have nowhere near the expertise and knowledge of others on this thread on the topic of Star Trek props in general and phasers in particular. But I do know a logical fallacy when I see one.

It's actually you who are demanding proof of a negative. Not the (for want of a better word) sceptics.This is why.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That's axiomatic. And the onus of proof is on the person making the claim.

I could claim that I have the true Ark of the Covenant in my back bedroom. That's an extraordinary claim. Which it's up to me to prove. I can't just say 'no, you prove that I haven't'. That's not how it works.

As I understand it, there is existing documentation in the form of an invoice that four hero phasers were commissioned and built. That's inarguable. Those four hero phasers have been identified and seen on the show, and their distinguishing marks have been traced back to four known physical props (counting P1 and P2 as 'one prop'). Also inarguable.

So, all the available evidence is of four hero phasers, all of which are accounted for.

Now, the claim is being made that a fifth hero phaser (both P1 and P2) exists, additional to, and different from, those documented four. Again, as I understand it, there is no known contemporary documentation to support this fifth phaser, and this fifth phaser has never been identified visibly on screen. Nevertheless, this 'extraordinary claim' is being made. It may be so; it may not.

So it's up to those making the claim to prove that claim. In the absence of incontrovertible evidence (not imaginary shy residents of San Francisco), the onus of proof is on you.

Yet, when asked for the proof for your extraordinary claim by those who are doubtful in the face of the lack of any such evidence; when asked to prove that this fifth phaser exists, you're the ones saying 'no, you prove it doesn't'. You're the ones asking others to prove a negative.

Well said.

Also, let’s say that the auction piece is not some theoretical fifth phaser, but rather one of the three non-Jein heroes, yet “repaired” in such a way as to alter its details in such a way that it no longer matches any screencaps.

Why would Velcro be added late in the game to another hero when the midgrades had fully taken over as the workhorse belt-hanger props by the end of the first season? The claim is that this piece was sent in for repairs during the second season, but, by then, there would be no point in adding Velcro to another hero prop. And arguably no point in even repairing it.

As noted, the heroes had been retired from active duty by the end of the first season, appearing only for the occasional close-up after the midgrades were built. And, even then, midgrades were also used for close-ups, from time to time. Why would a “damaged” hero be sent in for repairs when there were three others which could easily be used for a closeup shot? And why even bother taking a closeup shot of a hero “repaired” with such a sloppy paintjob, thus defeating the entire purpose of a hero prop to begin with?

The TMOST phaser appears in “The Cloud Minders”, late in the third season, and it still looks great. Nice, smooth paint, no visible damage. The auction piece, with its “repairs”, actually looks worse than the midgrades seen in closeups during “The Omega Glory” and “Spock’s Brain”.