New Details in Season 2 Blu-Ray

Dec '09 - Paramount released this past autumn Season 2 on high definition Blu-Ray, and while no new major discoveries have resulted from their examination (none were expected), we have been able to make refinements in some small areas of interest:
	1. Kappa's Unique Middle Jewel 2. Gamma's Slanted Middle Jewel 3. A Return to Theta's Inside Details 4. Screw Types - More Variety? 5. Action Sequences from Various Episodes 6. Proof from "Friday's Child" of Alpha's Authenticity
1. Kappa's Unique Middle Jewel
We've long noted that this comm's middle jewel, as per the undated (but presumably 3rd season) film clip from Lincoln Enterprises (courtesy of John Kious), does not have the look of a Swarovski flatback rhinestone like all the rest. Note how tall and rounded it is compared to a regular faceted rhinestone: HD caps from The Omega Glory confirm that it doesn't behave like the Emerald rhinestone to its side. No facets brighten up. While the green jewel flashes a different surface with the slightest of movement, the red one maintains a steady sedate glow until held at just the right angle where a bright inner-refracted highlight comes out: What we're looking at here is instead a "cabochon," a generic term for a smooth-surface gem. A cabochon can be square, oval or round, but in this case the shape is a round "bullette" (or "bullet" if being coarse), and based on the Lincoln clip, it appears to be 3mm in diameter and about that tall. At first blush, this might seem an inexplicable item, but there is a sensible lead as to what the true source was. Wah's two tricorders, assembled a month after he built the communicators, used intact cabochon watch crowns (and in fact one of them was red!): Since Kappa's bare cabochon is mounted directly atop an Aurora hub, we postulate that Wah excised out from a watch winder crown (easy to do) the gem (a hand-cut ruby or garnet; all differ in shape slightly but are 3mm wide at the base) and then simply glued it down on the comm:
2. Gamma's Slanted Middle Jewel
The evidence for this next little discovery has been starring us in the face for more than three years, right there on the original photo plate used in The Making of Star Trek book, but again HD caps from Assignment: Earth solidified it. The pictures below require no further elaboration: We wonder who will be the first hobbyist to show off their Gamma replica made more fully authentic by gluing the middle rhinestone off-kilter. One other item regarding that rhinestone... we had earlier pegged the color as Hyacinth because that specific variety has been positively identified in Alpha, Epsilon and Zeta. It seemed a healthy pattern worth following. But that shot directly above from "Assignment: Earth" does not reveal even a hint of bright orange amidst the red that always goes with that stone. Thus our call now has it as "Light Siam" instead.
3. A Return to Theta's Inside Details
Editor's Note (Feb. 2009): The analysis of Theta's moiré pattern has been consolidated and moved to A Moiré Story page. All paragraphs and images now obsolete here have been omitted: A moiré detail somewhat resolved itself in these Blu-Ray caps from "Bread and Circuses"... the odd featureless grey smudge along the bottom of the pattern inside the bezel ring. That patch is there in every frame, consistent in shape even as the comm spins around after hitting the floor. The only plausible explanation is that it is a big smear of seeped glue. If so, this mess may explain why he abandoned using a two-layer moiré system in any of his other dummies. We also knew the jewel colors might need adjusting, and that in fact is the case. HD reveals slightly different highlights that shift our best guess as to what they are. Below is a composite image off every single useful glimpses of the rhinestones. Of course the left gem is clearly orange-red (16ss Hyacinth), the only comm where red is not in the center. But the middle and right always manage to hide from easy view: Starting with the right jewel, it looks bright green (image 9) even under dim lighting, yet shows an internal color (images 2, 3 & 5) of yellow. Image 7 inexplicably has it revealing no color at all. It doesn't seem anymore like Black Diamond AB as we thought before (that type is too dark and rich in color); it's more like Peridot AB (as is also our call on one of Iota's). The middle jewel is even more peculiar. It looks in Image 9 to be a purple or red with a darkness and saturation similar to the hyacinth. But Images 3, 5 and 6 make it colorless. This contradiction would be unsolvable where it not for the existence of Light Vitrail, which has a clear glass base with a violet-colored coating on just the flat octagon top. Viewed straight down, that look of violet spreads throughout the gem. But at a shallow viewing angle it becomes lighter and more clear: Despite our efforts, we have been unable to verify whether this color type was available from Swarovski in 1966. But it is the only one that works based upon the scant evidence available today (at right > is the only other image of this comm's jewels - pretty useless). Bottom line for Theta - our investigation of this prop is done, as there are no more images to be found of it anywhere in the series. What you see is all we've got. Its rediscovery is needed to ever know any better *** * * * * * Iota** has the same issue with one of its jewel colors. The right jewel looks dark pink at one point but lights up clear and bright elsewhere. Earlier we had guessed Crystal AB, but this Vitrail Light works here too. That gives Theta and Iota, according to our analysis, the same colors but just with a different order. Cool!
4. Screw Types - More Variety?
Last year a comprehensive review of all screen caps available concluded the one screw type Wah prevalently used in his communicators was a 2-56 brass slotted oval head (at right >). But Alpha had some steel round heads, and the first owner indicated those came with it in 1969. What other original screen-used variants can be found now in Season 2 HD caps? It had been asserted earlier by others that Zeta had brass round heads, but any such surviving screws have not been directly observed in open forum. However, the "barrel" scene from Patterns of Force now suggests that in fact that different screw type may be factual. Focus on the highlight (pointed at by the red arrows) on the screws from a low-angle front-right light: The round head screws recreate the highlights perfectly. The oval heads do not. Fairly conclusive. It is not known if the round head is a slotted or a Philips. One other oddity is visible on the underside of Gamma in Assignment: Earth. The rear left screw looks to be a steel flat or oval head, as there is no yellow at all in that metal. And while you're looking there, also observe the dome-shaped highlight off the rear right, which might indicate yet another round head: So in conclusion, four types of 2-56 screws were probably used in the ten communicators, while still of course the most abundant were the brass slotted oval:
5. Action Sequences in High Definition from Various Episodes
In Assignment: Earth, Kirk and Spock, in pursuit of Gary Seven, get apprehended at a missile launch base. Their strange accoutrements are confiscated and placed on a console just in front of where they stand under guard. The first cap below shows off the glue blobs in Kappa's front edge, along with a kink in its antenna, and of Gamma's extra-long antenna (hitting outside the control well). The two hero-model P1 hand phasers can be positively identified and matched to appearances in other episodes by the jewels atop them - the nearer P1 with a blue watch crown is also famously pictured in "The Making of Star Trek" (TMOST) book, and the red flatback rhinestone on the further phaser was also held by Nona and offered to the villagers to escalate A Private Little War: Seconds before the landing party gets sprayed by machine gun fire at the end of Bread and Circuses, the mortally-wounded Captain Merrick tosses into a jail cell the Theta communicator. It is a great opportunity to see both top and bottom of this prop, along with flashes of antenna solder, all in a single scene: At the end of The Omega Glory, Spock mind-melds from across the room with a young woman, who in a trance grabs and opens up (with the clever bend of a finger) one of the communicators. This is the best view we ever get inside any dummy communicator; in this case Kappa: The famous barrel scene in Patterns of Force was for decades our only hint of what was inside Wah's communicators. In the coolest of coincidences, these two comms are the very ones that Greg Jein owns today; Epsilon (assembled in Spock's hands) and Zeta, in pieces then as it is now. No back-of-the-page printing can be made out on Epsilon's moire pattern, suggesting the thin book paper was backed by the same manila cardstock as in Zeta's ring. Another construction similarity is the apparent lack of glue holding down the jewel hubs. However, the line of glue that secured Zeta's mic grill material, visible here, has since been removed by Mr. Jein. The two holes drilled in Epsilon's top shell under the control panel match up with the original knob placement, but a reasonable purpose for those holes has yet to be postulated:
6. Proof from "Friday's Child" of Alpha's Authenticity
This fun topic has already been discussed at length on its own page, but since the proof was made possible by examining the HD caps from Friday's Child, its mention is included here as well, just in case you earlier missed it. This sequence of Alpha from 1967, in full native HD size, is thrown in to show off the rotation of the moiré pattern and a bit more of the Kydex shell texture as the comm gets moved around by hand. And lastly, to demonstrate that Blu-Ray HD screen caps can't help when an item is just plain out of focus, here is Alpha again along with Beta (in the background) in the only time both hero communicators are seen together. In standard DVDs, Beta showed almost no useful details. Now with nearly five times the pixilation, it still doesn't:
All Blu-Ray HD screen caps above are courtesy of TrekPropZone member Deck5. A big serving of "Thank You" goes out to the fine fellow!