Travel pod model Only mentioned as being a travel pod in of the script of , the design of the diminutive travel pod did had a long way to fulfillment . Though having made its first appearance in " The Motion Picture " , it had already been envisioned to appear in the pilot episode of the television series " " , " In Thy Image " . Nevertheless , when that project was upgraded to a full - blown movie project , a redesign was called for . In the end it resulted in the fact that the design was one of the designs debuting in a " Star Trek " live - action production that , until the re - invented film of 2009 , introduced the most new space faring designs at once , nine in this case . Design . The latest script requirements of " In Thy Image " , the pilot episode of the television project " Star Trek : Phase II " , did provide a inspection tour by Admiral Kirk and Scotty . As such , per - visualization art was dutifully provided by Production Illustrator Mike Minor . His concepts , however , echoed the more conventional shuttle designs , as has been seen before . The early concept paintings he created for " Phase II " , showed a travel pod numbered " 4 " . ( " The Art of Star Trek " , pp . 152 - 153 , 168 - 169 ) Once " Phase II " was upgraded to , the design work , including that of the travel pod , reverted to Robert Abel and Associates Design Studio ( RA & A ) , or rather Astra Image Corporation as its art department was formally known as . Art Director Richard Taylor took on the task of redesigning the various vehicles , but became somewhat frustrated by Gene Roddenberry ' s visual view dictates for the project , " For example , he said the doors on the " " are 12 feet in diameter and round . I said " A round twelve foot in diameter door ? That ' s just monstrous ! " then he said we want this shuttle to dock with the " Enterprise " . And I said " so , you are telling me I have to design a shuttle with a 12 foot in diameter door ? " And he said , " Yes , I want these big grand doorways to open up onto the Enterprise " . I said , " can these doors iris open ? " " No , they can ' t iris open " . I said " how can this little shuttle have a door that big and open it if doesn ' t iris open ? " So , I finally came up with a solution that the doors when docked with a station or other spacecraft open or slide into the walls of the adjoining craft . ( . . . ) Yes , well I designed that shuttle . The first shuttles that I designed were really cool , but it just turned uglier and uglier until it had what I call that " guppy " look because Kirk had to fly around the dry - dock and " see his mistress " and you had to see Kirk and Scotty in the window while they are flying around ; he had to have a big panoramic view , and it had to have a 12 foot door at the back to dock with the Enterprise . It ' s one ugly little spacecraft as far as I ' m concerned . " By that time Taylor had brought in Andrew Probert to help him out with the design work , " " All of those models Andy Probert and myself designed . I drew the original blueprints myself and I had those blueprints before Andy came on at all . Then Andy came on and he worked on some more details and he made some suggestions and we went back and forth exchanging ideas . " " Eventually , the design of the pod evolved out of another requirement of Roddenberry to have the orbital office complex designed as a cluster of many offices . " " Part of his reasoning for that was to provide a cinematic surprise when one of the smaller offices broke away from the others , becoming a small space ship called , in the script , a " Travel Pod " . This was the small engineer ' s inspection vehicle that Scotty would use to ferry Kirk over to the " Enterprise " for his ( and our ) close inspection of the new ship . My early " pod " concepts were very close to the office shapes , as required , but when Roddenberry introduced " further requirements " – " i . e . " , made changes – it evolved to what was eventually shown on screen . " " , co - designer Probert explained . ( " Starlog photo guidebook Special Effects " , vol . 5 , p . 90 ) On his thoughts behind his design work he later elaborated : " My original concepts had a docking hatch at the rear and a docking ring off - set ( like the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon ) to the right . Gene wanted the ring moved to the back as a single entry / exit with auto - docking taking the worry out of backing into a docking cavity . When I opened a discussion about the doors , he said that receiving structures would have mechanisms to pull the doors open . . . connecting to those three recesses in the ( lighter ) gray doors . Prior to that , after the pod backs in , over twenty latches rotate to an attitude perpendicular to the ring , protruding into a receiving groove . They all move forward , pulling the pod into a hard docking against its black sealing - ring . As for the single ' belly - band ' light . . . that was my original concept , having the entire area around the pod illuminated . Being , basically , an Engineers ' inspection car , I thought a lot of light was appropriate . Douglas Trumbull wanted to break that space up and have little dividing panels on them so “ they would flash , like the saucer lights in Close Encounters , as it went past camera ” . As for the tiny signage , after looking at real military aircraft , I realized a lot of their surfaces were covered with various instructions , labels , and warnings . I went out and bought a bunch of models decal sheets and we all covered that model with what felt right . I knew most of them wouldn ' t be ' seen ' . . . but they would be ' felt ' , helping to make it a bit more realistic . " While the design worked out eventually , Probert was ultimately not entirely satisfied with the craft ' s appearance . " " I was sort of forced into that design solution , " " he explained . " " I would have preferred something a little more ' Probertesque . " " Full scale mock - up . As with the previous incarnations ( and subsequent ones ) of small scale ships , a full scale set was constructed of the travel pod , albeit only the first forward ⅓ of it . It was used to film the live action footage of Admiral Kirk and Scotty in the travel pod as it was heading toward the " Enterprise " . According to Probert , the mock - up was built and filmed on Paramount Stage 9 , though Construction Coordinator Gene Kelly has indicated that the set was constructed on Paramount Stage 17 at a cost , in conjuncture with the office complex interior set , of US $ 60 , 000 . ( " " , p . 95 ) Rick Sternbach , who at the time was a lowly uncredited production illustrator remembered an incident involving the pod , " The story that I tell people most often is that one morning I came to work about 15 minutes late and found a note on my desk saying , " " Robert Wise wants to see you immediately . " " I thought , " " Oh no , what did I do now ? " " I went down to Stage 17 where they were filming the sequence when the travel pod leaves the office complex to head out to the drydock . I said , " " Mr . Wise I got your note , what can I do for you ? " " He was very quiet , he said , " " You designed the controls in this pod , right ? " " I said nervously , " " Yes , can I help you with something on that ? " " He walked into the pod where Jimmy Doohan and Bill Shatner were standing around . This is like a thousand dollars a minute production time , and they were waiting for me . So , Mr . Wise stepped up to the back of the pod and he said , " " Tell Scotty what to do ! " " Jimmy was right behind me , and I said , " OK , Jimmy , when you first walk in there ' s like a systems activation panel , and the lights came on . So he hit the panel , and the lights came on . Then he walked to the front of the pod and got the propulsion system started and the thrusters and the artificial gravity and whatever else , and then he pushed the button to make it go . Mr . Wise thanked me and I went back to work . " ( ) Studio model . An actual physical studio model was eventually constructed at Magicam , Inc . , where it was worked upon by among others model maker Chris Ross , though Richard Taylor remained less than enamored with the eventual outcome , " " Roddenberry insisted that the Enterprise have 12ft . in diameter circular doors . Yeah , that ' s right , massive circular doors ! I asked if the doors could iris open ? ' No ' was the answer . So all craft that docked with the Enterprise also had to have 12ft diameter doors . Do you realize how big a 12ft circular door is ? So the travel pod and the Vulcan shuttle had to have 12ft doors on them . It was a silly demand and totally impractical in every respect . It also made the Shuttle that Scottie and Kirk took on the grand tour of the Dry Dock and the New Enterprise a silly looking space shuttle . It had that giant circular door as the whole rear end of the thing . " " ( " " , pp . 102 - 103 ) Taylor and Probert were not the only ones who were less than happy with the way the travel pod turned out to on Roddenberry ' s insistence , as Chief Modeler Jim Dow clarified when he was handed the construction plans for the model , " I ' m proud of all the models and of our participation in the film , but I wish we could have redone the travel pod . It was a ridiculous design from the beginning , it would never have looked that way in reality . I don ' t know where it came from . That design was sent to us from the Richard Taylor group , but I don ' t think anybody is willing to admit that he designed the travel pod . I thought it was extremely ugly in relation to the design of the " Enterprise " , which was very sleek , the design of the Klingon s , the work bee – obviously much different from the design of the work bee – it just didn ' t seem to have any logic , to me . Actually , I question why they felt it was needed at all . The need of transferring from the air tram in San Francisco to the travel pod , which would then transport them to outer space , to the office complex and shuttle them then from the office complex to the drydock , to the " Enterprise " and so on . . . it just seems that there ' s a much better way to do it , I ' m sure . In an age where they ' re supposedly able to transport the way they do , they should have been able to do it without the vehicle . " ( " " , p . 202 ) Apart from the master studio model , at least one very small miniature was constructed to go with the drydock model , where it was seen parked inside the structure . As far as the main model was concerned , Dow has stated that the scale was 2 " = 1 ' ( " " , issue 27 , p . 30 ) . Upon completion of the model , Andrew Probert lent a hand in the finishing , as he added the weathering onto the model . , after which the model was turned over to Dick Singleton for effects filming at the Astra site . " " It didn ' t turn out to be the first model to be filmed , but the first model to be completed was the travel pod . Dick Singleton was the head of the Seward facility , and he took it down proudly to Stage 9 , where they were shooting the full - scale mock - up and all the " Enterprise " interiors . " " , Probert elaborated . ( " " , p . 203 ) If Astra ever had shot footage of the model , none of it was used , due to the in late February 1979 , after which RA & A and its subsidiary were released from the movie on 22 February . The travel pod studio model was subsequently handed over and ( re - ) shot for " The Motion Picture " on one of Trumbull ' s stages at Future General Corporation ( FGC ) . ( " " , p . 206 ) Preparing the travel pod model for re - filming involved Photographic Effects Cameramen Hoyt Yeatman and Alan Harding . ( " The Making of Star Trek : The Motion Picture " , interior color photograph section ) Though the long shots of the pod were taken with footage of the model with figurines in it , there were shots in which live footage of the actors were composited into footage of the model , or as Trumbull has stated , " " The live - action footage was shot in a stage against a black velvet and then rear - projected into the travel pod . The model , which was a couple feet long , had a hatch in the rear that was removable ; so for the scenes where you see Kirk and Scotty inside . The rear hatch was taken out and the pod was mounted along with a rear projection unit on a rig which allowed both of them to travel down a track together . So what you ' re seeing is a rear - projected image through the window . " " ( " Cinefex " , issue 1 , p . 15 ) Not all long shots of the travel pod required the technically challenging use of rear projection of the actors in the cockpit . For the long shots where discernment of the characters in the cockpit was less of an issue , in - scale figurines of Scotty and admiral Kirk were constructed by figure sculpture specialist David Sosalla , that could serve as stand - ins for the actors , as Dow clarified , " " They finally ended up rear - projecting Kirk and Scotty into the shuttle pod , because it was just more effective for that particular sequence . But when we built the model , we made a little Kirk and a little Scotty and put them in there " " . Yet when Singleton presented the model with the figurines , Scotty performer James Doohan had an observation to make , as Probert remembered , " " Everybody was pleased and impressed with the miniature , but James Doohan looked at it and said it was inaccurate as far as he was concerned , because he has one of his fingers missing and the Scotty in the model had all of his fingers . Everybody got a good laugh out of that and I think perhaps Dick even removed a piece of a finger from the miniature Doohan . " " ( " The Art of Star Trek " , p . 170 ; " " , p . 203 ) Some of the exterior footage shot of the model , was reused in . Shots of the actors in the cockpit of the pod , taken for that feature , were presented full screen , so that there was no need of rear projecting newly shot footage into the model . For its appearance in , the travel pod studio model was refurbished and reused . ( " " , p . 122 ) Model Shop Supervisor Jeff Mann stated , " " We added a back half to [ it ] . " " ( " The Making of the Trek Films " , 3rd ed . , p . 68 ) The modifications , performed at Industrial Light & Magic , entailed the removal of the backplate with the large circular airlock door , that had irked Taylor so much . It was replaced with a ribbed plate with a like - wise ribbed center back - spine strut ( reminiscent of the back of the orbital shuttle , that accompanied the pod in the movie ) that held up a protruding bottom thruster nozzle , though , ironically , the modification was not visible in the feature . In this feature scenes of the crew in the cockpit of the pod were rear - projected in the model . Not having been reused afterwards , the model , in its refurbished form , has escaped the " " and " It ' s A Wrap ! sale and auction " s , and has been retained by CBS Television Studios as a tour exhibit display piece , having been on tours such as " Star Trek World Tour " , " " and " Star Trek The Exhibition " as late as 2012 .