Matt Jefferies
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference
(written from a Production point of view)
Walter Matthew "Matt" Jefferies was born on 12 August 1921 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania; he died on 21 July 2003 in Los Angeles, California. He was the brother of fellow Star Trek designers Philip and John Jefferies.
He was the art director and designer in the original series who designed the original Enterprise with its saucer-shaped hull, engineering hull and two nacelles, as well as the type 1 and type 2 phaser designs we see in the original series, for which he did drawings.
In his honor the crawl spaces on all Starfleet vessels are named Jefferies tubes, a reference used throughout the entire Star Trek franchise. The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "First Flight" also mentioned Captain Jefferies, who was also named in honor of Matt Jefferies.
During World War II he was a bomber pilot (over Africa and Europe).
After the war he became an illustrator at the Library of Congress, and in the 1950s he was hired as set decorator at Warner Brothers.
In 1964, Gene Roddenberry asked Matt to design a starship for his new TV series. The design survived and influenced starship designs in subsequent Trek series. As influential was his bridge design. Apart from these he designed numerous sets, landscapes, props and other ships (most notably the Klingon D7-class) for the original series and was highly regarded by producers Roddenberry and Justman.
Though mostly remembered for his work on Star Trek, at the time, it was a small part of his career; before Star Trek he worked on productions as The Untouchables, Ben Casey and Mission: Impossible and afterwards on productions as Little House on the Prairie and Dallas. He particulary enjoyed working for Little House and was not willing to give up his job there when he was sounded out by Roddenberry to come back for the the Star Trek: Phase II-project, though he did some preliminary work on the redesign of the Enterprise.(Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 8, page 84)
Both Roddenberry and Jefferies died of congestive heart failure, after a fight with cancer.
[edit] More information
- Jefferies is featured in a 19 minute featurette entitled "A Tribute to Matt Jefferies" located on the Star Trek Generations (Special Edition) DVD disc 2.