Star Trek seeks to transport viewers to a utopian future full of fantastically different worlds and events, but achieves this in part by relying on furniture from our own earth’s mid-century past. But how are ready-made pieces of furniture from 1920’s-80’s earth used to create this retro-futurist Trekkian vision? This paper seeks to explore pieces of modernist furniture used in Star Trek (with guest appearances by furniture from other science fiction television), from Charlotte Perriand’s Cassina LC7 to Eero Saarinen’s Tulip chair – linking the usage of these pieces on-screen to their more down-to-earth history. Through these links we seek to explore how real-world knowledge of these pieces of furniture allows us to develop insights into characters, races and situations on screen and how in turn modernist furniture on screen shapes our understanding of and relationship to this furniture and the time it was designed.

This talk can be viewed on YouTube here.