Star Trek: The Original Series Art Prints - Set 8

We've taken the voyages of the starship Enterprise one adventure further with a series of original movie-style art print sets commemorating every episode of Star Trek, the iconic American television series that aired from 1966 to 1969.

The Original Series has become a cult classic, and its leading-edge plot lines and mores have influenced many science-fiction TV shows and movies that have followed.

Designer/illustrator Juan Ortiz talks about the inspiration for our eighth set of Star Trek: The Original Series Art Prints, which includes:

• Episode 46: A Piece of the Action. For this episode on planet Sigma Iotia II, whose culture is modeled on 1920s Earth gangsters, Ortiz depicts a one-eyed extraterrestrial cradling a Tommy gun. 'I reimagined the Iotians as shape-shifters,' says the artist. 'The phaser-Tommy gun melds the two eras together.'
• Episode 52: The Omega Glory. Ortiz says, 'This is one of maybe two [chances] where I paid homage to the red shirts.' He finally got his opportunity with this episode in which the crew of the U.S.S. Exeter is wiped out, and the ship's surviving captain violates the prime directive by interfering in a war on Omega IV. Ortiz added the American flag as a shout-out to the U.S. Constitution, which comes into play.
• Episode 54: Bread and Circuses. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are captured on a planet whose oppressive government is a 20th-century version of Earth's Roman Empire. Here, Ortiz has fashioned the Enterprise's saucer into a gladiator's shield. The art print's text is neatly aligned on all four sides. Says the artist, 'The stacking was meant to evoke a Roman column without actually illustrating one.'
• Episode 63: For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky. His romance with a priestess from the asteroid Yonada puts a black-and-white McCoy smack in the center of this rainbow-colored design. 'This is the type of poster that maybe would have been found in an issue of Dynamite [a monthly children's] magazine back in the mid-'70s,' says Ortiz. 'It has a nostalgic warmth to me.'
The Star Trek: The Original Series Art Prints - Set 8 consists of plated-printed lithographs on 100-pound, aqueous-coated, satin-finish paper. Each print measures 18 inches x 24 inches.

The set and all others in this series will be available for a limited time only. None will be repeated or reprinted after they're gone.