TOS Special Effects: Sliding Doors

While automatic sliding doors are commonplace in today’s shopping malls and supermarkets; this was not the situation when Star Trek: The Original Series first aired on network television – as audiences witnessed the technology aboard the Enterprise respond incredibly quickly and smoothly in anticipation of the crews movements. Herb Solow, Desilu’s Executive In Charge of Production for Star Trek, discusses this aspect of TOS special effects in “Inside Star Trek: The Real Story” (Pocket Books, 1996) …

Superior hand-eye coordination was necessary for brain surgeons, prestidigitators, and the guy responsible for opening the various doors on the set. He accomplished it by standing out of sight of the camera and running the “mechanisms.” The mechanisms consisted of wires attached to the sides of the doors and threaded through a series of pulleys. The assistant director, standing behind camera and watching the scene, would trigger a red light that cued the offstage guy that the moment had arrived for him to open the doors. He would yank on the main wire. This activated the wires running through the pulleys and opened the doors just in time for Kirk or Spock to enter or exit.

The mechanisms always worked; the people responsible weren’t as dependable. Sometimes the cue would be given too early, and the doors would open long before the actors reached them. This “magic door” syndrome usually brought an enthusiastic laugh from everyone except, perhaps, the director, who was usually behind schedule. To him, it wasn’t funny.

Sometimes the cue would be given too late and the actors, trusting souls that they sometimes were, bounced off the unopened doors. This almost always brought an enthusiastic laugh, especially from the director. De Kelley was overheard to remark, “You can get killed walking to the coffee shop aboard this ultra-modern space cruiser.”

Later, when a builder in Santa Barbara, California, wrote to us asking for ideas on how to build sliding doors that work as quickly as those aboard the Enterprise, my recommendation to Bob was to tell the builder to get a different assistant director and a faster offstage guy.