Saturday Film Club: How Star Trek's Original Phaser Prop Was Built

Film and TV props, especially older ones, fascinate me. Once, when looking at some from Red Dwarf , I commented that they were more basic than I'd expected. The builders agreed, but pointed out that they were on screen for a fraction of a second, and people were more interested in the story than the details of the gizmo being waved around by the actor. Well, until the advent of DVDs, and sci-fi…