Adam Savage Builds Perfect Replica of Captain Kirk’s Chair

When industrial designer Adam Savage, famous as one of the hosts of Mythbusters, ordered a replica of Captain Kirk’s chair from the original Star Trek TV series he was left disappointed, calling the seat “totally sad and not accurate”. His solution? Build his own.

The video below shows Savage’s gorgeous duplicate of the iconic Captain’s chair in its full glory, and it has already garnered one important fan:

@donttrythis I'll think about it. Wait…you had Hadfield sit in MY chair before me? #WhatDidYouDo pic.twitter.com/zL2roLKBSR

— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) May 15, 2015

The chair, as exact to scale as Savage could make it, is based on the version that appeared in the two pilot episode of Star Trek, the unaired The Cage, which featured Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike (and a female first officer, which proved too progressive for CBS), and Where No Man Has Gone Before, which marks the first appearance of William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. As such, the chair features a viewer mounted near the right armrest, included because Savage “wanted it to have a feature that no other chair has.”

Savage built the chair from scratch, including the upholstery, based on a number of plans remaining from the Sixties TV show, and photos of the original chair that is housed at the EMP Museum in Seattle. “I’m not going to say it’s 100% accurate, but it’s pretty freaking accurate,” Savage says.