The recent release by Paramount of Original Series remastered DVDs (indicated by "RM" in the photos below); the First Season also in High Definition ("HD," a now-defunct format), has given us the impetus to go back and review all the information on our pages.  They have also given us enough clarity in screen caps to make some wonderful new discoveries that fully flesh out all of Wah's ten communicators.

These new DVDs, off the original negatives, have truer color and show fewer digital compression artifacts (the messy "noise" seen when zooming into individual pixels).  While the differences do not lend universal improvements in all cases, in most instances even the standard remastered DVDs are a worthwhile improvement over prior releases when examining tiny details.  Below are the significant findings as a result of our study of them.

We cover seven topics here, with lots of corroborating images and details for those prop geeks who like that kind of thing:

It should be noted that in determining a true rhinestone color from screen caps, favor was given upon any stone version already confirmed on a found original comm when it was amongst several possible matching jewel candidates.  This because we have seen that Wah had more than one of some colors to use on multiple versions, so that should logically extend to others.  Plus it minimizes the number of different jewel types you need on hand to accurately replicate the entire fleet:

1.  Epsilon's Jewels (and Gamma's, Kappa's & Beta's too)

We start here because it affects other analysis further below.  There are few things more easy to slip up on than, of all things, figuring out with certainty the actual rhinestone colors on the communicators when they are the Aurora Borealis ("AB") coated variety, which Wah had some of.  Even when you have the very prop in your hand, it takes multiple viewing at different angles under varied light sources (daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, direct/diffuse, front-lit/back-lit, etc.) to determine the base color of glass underneath.  Only one of our consultants had the chance only once to examine Epsilon for a brief time, and from that singular viewing of the left jewel, which shone then a rich magenta, he thought it was Amethyst AB.  However, after a review of all available photo (taken with different lighting at different angles and exposures) it can be concluded that while in the ballpark, that early color call was in error.

The composite below of Epsilon's two outer jewels taken from modern photos gives a sense of just how many different looks the same AB-coated rhinestone can have in person or in screen caps:

What we have on Epsilon's left side is almost assuredly Black Diamond AB (flatbed scanned at left <<).  This rhinestone's glass is actually colorless, or more descriptively... grey.  The AB coating causes internal refraction that emphases violet and light amber.  And of course the AB also creates a reflective outer surface that shines cyan.  Epsilon's right jewel, also reviewed here, looks indeed to be the same Emerald AB (at right >>) that has been previously named on our site.

Going on our earlier-stated premise that Wah probably had a limited range of colors that got used repeatedly throughout his props, we've re-examined from scratch other well-photographed comms.  Were the bluish-greenish jewels seen in Gamma, Kappa and the Beta hero also Emerald AB instead of the lighter-colored Blue Zircon we had earlier assumed?  The answer is a likely "yes" to all.  Here is a sequence of Gamma from Assignment: Earth, with at right an added close-up from the 1976 Ballentine calendar cover.  As you can see, all colors below can be found in the Epsilon shots above.

Next up is Kappa in The Omega Glory, with an added close-up from when Scotty throws the switch on The Enterprise Incident...

... and lastly Beta from The Day of the Dove and Dagger of the Mind:

We have changed our reference for these jewels on these three communicators to Emerald AB.  You will also see this color and the Black Diamond AB in some of the other comms analyzed below.

2.  The Inside Details of Eta

No single challenge has been more vexing to us for such a length of time than finding and identifying the key attributes of the Eta communicator.  The nine others fell into place easily enough before our site's launch in 2006, but the tenth comm has been nearly impossible to find in screen caps.  So difficult is it to spot that at first we had it wrongly ID'ed as the vintage Epsilon (the way it looked prior to its recent GJ refurbishment).  Once informed of our error, we pooled together odd shots that didn't match any others and they all nicely stitched together.  But those images were just of the outside, like that from Spock's Brain (>>), but nothing of the all-important control well.  Big question marks - literally - remained on our simulation of what it might look like today (<<), and we could provide no guidance whatsoever to you for your replica builds.

Until now.

Eta's odd antenna, with its flattened sides, left solder spot and full flip-back swing gave us a few distinct features to look for.  That along with a lengthy process of elimination allowed us to recently ID it as the one with some great antenna close-ups in Shore Leave:

Of greatest significance in this find was the knowledge that Eta had made the trip for on-site filming during that one episode.  It has been our observation that typically only two or three communicator props would be brought to such locations, and then those few would show up again and again in that particular show.  Sure enough, in Shore Leave we see just two others; Iota and Theta (>>).  That narrows the choices and thus makes the identification in each screen cap all the easier.

So based on the photos above, Eta was placed specifically in the scene when Kirk first meets Ruth and also when Sulu was fleeing from the Samurai over the hill towards Kirk's position.  Focusing on the first scene, at long last were found a few fleeting hazy glimpses into Eta's control well.  What we do see clearly is a moiré pattern with an odd distinct bright patch in the center, a low-mounted bezel ring, plus a bright bluish AB left and a red-tinted center jewel:

That moiré white dot is there again when McCoy is first calling the ship to report seeing a rabbit (below left).  The antenna isn't swinging back all the way because a finger is holding the hinge wheel steady.  Later is the Kirk/running Sulu sequence (below right):

In these outdoor scenes the outer jewels are bright at any viewing angle, indicating AB coated rhinestones.  The left reflects a rich blue and the right a bit more green-cyan, but what base colors are they?  Looking at Epsilon under similar lighting in This Side of Paradise (<<) gives a clue.  It too has a blue-shining left and a greener right jewel.  So, yes, we figure that Eta could have a left Black Diamond AB 20ss and right Emerald AB 20ss as well.  Along with a bright red center - Hyacinth 16ss (?) - means Eta's rhinestones might very well be exact same as Epsilon's (the only time that would happen in any comm).  As far as confirming a rock solid positive ID, nicely the knob positions and generous left-side midplate exposure, seen in the bottom right image in the composite picture above, match up perfectly to Eta's sighting in Spock's Brain.

Expanding the search for any of these features gets us, in all other episodes during three years, only one more hit; in Tomorrow is Yesterday when Sulu is handing his belt over to the unwitting guard (Eta >> and Kappa are both swinging from the belt in his hands).

Editor's Note (Feb. 2010):  The analysis of Eta's moiré pattern has been consolidated and moved to A Moiré Story page.

We thus pick up here from the end of that chapter...

So, compiling all known elements from all sources allows us to create the most probable appearance of the long-lost Eta communicator, given the 75% likelihood that we've got the correct pattern:

This cool prop was worth the wait, wasn't it?  It is easy to imagine that ready-made moiré pattern being just irresistible to Wah.  Unfortunately be aware the analysis of these details is probably as complete as it can possibly get, unless the actual item is found.  The screen caps used are already from HD DVDs; there is no more data left to mine.  The end of the road.

We also cannot deduce any reason why it doesn't show up more often, since we're fairly sure it made it all the way into Season 3.  There it suffered the indignity of being dropped to the floor by "Kirok" (The Paradise Syndrome) in the obelisk's control room.  Note the bright outer jewels and the antenna tarnish blotches (>>):

3.  Confirming Theta's Moiré Pattern and Jewels

Editor's Note (Feb. 2009):  The analysis of Theta's moiré pattern has been consolidated and moved to A Moiré Story page, whereas the review of Blu-Ray HD Season 2 screen caps has necessitated alterations in the center and right jewel color choices.  Thus this chapter is obsolete and has been omitted.  The current assessment of its appearance is below:

4.  Finding Iota's Right Jewel (& Clarifying the Moiré Pattern)

Editor's Note (Dec. 2009):  The review of Blu-Ray HD Season 2 screen caps has necessitated alterations in the observations and the conclusion of Iots's right jewel color previously reached here.  Those paragraphs and images now obsolete here have been omitted...

We've shown for some time the left and center rhinestones on Iota to be Peridot AB 20ss (our call because it is light green at all angles and lighting conditions) and Hyacinth 16ss respectively; this determined from its great close-up in Miri (near right >).  Figuring out what the right jewel might have been, thought, has been a lot harder.  We get only two brief distant views of it, again in Miri (below) and in A Piece of the Action (below and far right>>):

Current analysis suggests the right jewel is Vitrail Light, as shown in the simulation below.

As for Iota's moiré pattern, we've had all along the right source and general locale, but we've been able to fine-tuned what we think to be the exact spot it came from.  Again, we start with the Miri close-up that has the circle at a low angle.  Methodically "re-circling" it (restoring it to its actual shape and orientation) shows darker and lighter patches in the "bunching" lines.  Nicely one spot in the wavy "Fall" picture on The Science of Moiré Patterns book cover mirrors very closely each of the dark/light spots:

You'll find this revised printable image of Iota's moiré pattern in the download page along with the two other new patterns shown above for Eta and Theta.  In total, here is what the prop would conceivably look like today:

5.  Alpha's Center Jewel

The discovery of the Alpha hero communicator has been an invigorating event in our hobby, inspiring a new wave of super-accurate replicas.  Every possible detail on the original has been studied, tied back to screen caps and vintage photos, and can now be faithfully reproduced by fans worldwide.  But some of those pictures do show one feature that is different than what we see today; the center jewel.  Now it is the color Hyacinth (>>), a vibrant light orange-red, just like the center rhinestones in Epsilon and Zeta.  Nobody thought twice when it was found in Alpha too.  But in its two great close-ups, first in Friday's Child and later in Season 2 in Patterns of Force, there is a much darker red, like the Siam in Delta, sitting there.  In Season 3's For the World is Hollow..., it can't be seen that well.  But then certainly in the two off-screen photos where it is held by a muscular hairy hand and with its midwheel midplate already missing, it clearly shows a lighter more-orange jewel.  Is it just lighting, or was there a long-forgotten switcheroo in Alpha's past?

The best way to gain a confident sense of how much the lighting could play tricks on color is to experiment with both jewels where the conditions can matched to a vintage photo.  The easy answer is the Friday's Child close-up, taken in the shade under a blue sky.  While Alpha has already re-visited Vasquez Rocks to recreate the famous shot, both our lighting was not exact (some extra right fill light was added on Star Trek) and no Siam rhinestones were present then for our staff to photograph for comparison.  So we've done the next best thing by using a high-quality modern shell, gluing some Swarovski rhinestones onto loose interchangeable Aurora hubs and taking it outside in the shade on a sunny day where some diffuse sunlight could be thrown back in.  The evidence is undeniable:

Yes, Alpha had at first a Siam 16ss rhinestone as its center jewel.  Might it have been the same incident that knocked off both that jewel and the midwheel midplate?  We will never know, but what is highly likely is that given the lack of replacements the studio had, they robbed a Hyacinth off of one of the dummies to maintain the hero in camera-ready shape.  It certainly explains the extra smear of Ambroid on the hub beneath it now.  For your authentic-styled replica, you now have a choice of the two colors!

6.  Gamma's Extra-Lengthy Antenna

Here's something no one has ever reported before... this communicator has the antenna extending beyond the control well when it closes.  This is due to two reasons:  the perforated brass sheet is a total of 28 hole rows long (27 intact and two half holes at the ends) instead of the usual 26½ -27¼ total, plus the antenna assembly is glued further into the control well than most.  This extra axle clearance distance is what also gave the midwheel midplate enough room to stay glued in place, whereas most fell out early on (this is also true for Delta and Iota).

For those longtime readers of our site, it should be noted that our black & white image of Gamma from the original Stephen Whitfield TMOST photo, which has been up since our launch, had a few tells digitally masked.  At that time, our editorial board did not know just how wildly difficult and expensive it would be to create a perfect forgery, so they kept a few odd spots private to discourage any illicit attempt at this comm.  One of those tells was the faint antenna impact line, even though the evidence for the length has been in screen caps (those above) all along.  Two and a half years later, we can now have up the raw unedited version of the TMOST photo with the full confidence that all the other myriad impossible-to-recreate tells buried deep in authentic comms keep the hobby safe and secure from monkey business.

7.  Beta's Moiré Bezel Ring Grooves

Of the two hero communicators, Alpha has always gotten all the attention.  Besides the great screen caps and being the main inspiration for replicas for decades, that one of course has also been found and fully examined.  On the other hand, Beta still remains in the shadows, figuratively and literally, what with it being filmed in poor lighting and usually at a distance.  One of the details that has never been teased out of screen caps is the grooves that may or may not be carved into the side of the bezel ring.  Since the other hero and at least six dummies have these grooves, it is reasonable to assume Beta does too.  So we went searching, and sure enough there was something to be found:

It is fair to say that interpretation remains open as to what exactly is there, but it is also fair to say that at least there is something there to interpret.  Especially in Day of the Dove, where Beta was zoomed in on for sixty frames, a few of the most steady (where both the camera and Shatner's hand were done moving) show two distinct side-by-side linear features entirely indicative of grooves (highlighted by the ovals).  Whether, though, any given light or dark line is a groove or the outer surface right next to one is at this point impossible to determine.  However, given the size of the surface area in relation to how some of the dummies' rings were carved, plus what little detail there is to see on this one, we figure then there are very probably two medium grooves, pretty equally centered on the side (>>).

In a couple years we all get to revisit this particular topic with the expected release of Season 3 in high definition Blue Ray DVDs.  Until then, this is all there is.

Enjoy.

We would be remiss without acknowledging the significant contribution of Bob at TrekCore, who accepted the commission to obtain for us a large number of select frames in the Season One HD-DVDs.  You see the happy results above.  Many thanks, sir!

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