Customer Reviews

Star Trek: The Original Series: Classic Captain's Chair Replica

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They just delivered this thing yesterday. When I opened it up, the first thing I noticed was that 2 of the white buttons on the right arm of the chair had "fallen through" the arm and were laying in the bottom leaving 2 exposed holes. No way to acces them as the arm of the chair is one piece and is essentially sealed. Worked like crazy to fish the "buttons" out and finally got them to pull through. The glue was bad that held them in. By the way none of the buttons on the right arm actually push down. They are static. There for looks only. Not true to the original chair as seen on tv. The rest of the chair looks fairly accurate, but I question the $3000.00 price tag. I called Amazon and told them about the problem and they were very gracious about replacing the chair. It is on it's way. Hopefully in better condition.

This is not a "real" chair... it is a replica of the original Star Trek command chair from the bridge of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. I personally would never buy a fan merchandise item at this price point, but I had the opportunity to see one first hand. I am critiquing it from that perspective.

First off, it certainly looks like Captain Kirk's command chair. It's rather impressive in that regard. However, the build quality is not commensurate with the cost of the item. You could not put this chair in your living room and let people sit on it as if it were any other piece of furniture, expecting it to last. Close examination reveals some deficiencies. As others have mentioned, the maker did a lousy job with the right side button panel, of which the glue used is not sufficient to hold against much pressure. What is really most surprising is that pushbutton modules were not employed for any of the right arm buttons. This wouldn't have cost much to do, and would certainly guard against anyone putting undue pressure on buttons that are static in nature--everybody expects you should be able to press buttons. If you don't have an assigned purpose for a button that would have been static, just use a button tone sound effect from the series. The sound effects exist and the hardware is inexpensively obtained. But at the very least, make sure this is screwed into the arm panel instead of simply glued.

This beast weighs in at 215lbs, so it will certainly stay put and be a bit of a pain to move yourself. But the quality of the wood and leather doesn't match the price point. Given the effort that went into this chair, why did they stop there? If you're going to set a price that high, why not make it $3500 and put in seriously good quality leather and cushioning, to make this thing really last? And while you're at it, put in a drink cooler into the non-functional right arm, accessible by flipping open the top of the panel? :-)

Seiously people why would you buy this for 3k. If you really loved the show that much, build your own for less that 3k or pay someone to build it your way. I would bet you could get real working buttons and some furniture shop to build it for less than 3k.