This week, Star Trek: Lower Decks brought into canon one of the most delightfully weird and long-running pieces of Star Trek memorabilia: the Hamilton Collection’s line of Trek collector plates, a tradition that has been part of fandom since the ‘80s. In celebration of Boimler’s very own Tom Paris plate — from VOY! — here’s 10 of the weirdest real collector plates around.
Star Trek: First Contact Hex
OK, so these aren’t weird for the art or anything — shout out to the Borg Queen and Data making out bottom left though — but this series of seven plates interconnecting into a Hex grid just makes it kind of brilliantly bizarre, really. If you thought your Star Trek plate collection couldn’t get any less practical!
Star Trek: Starships of The Next Generation: Starship Enterprise of the Future
No wait, they could. It was not enough that this actually rather lovely painting of the sixth-best Enterprise existed on a plate, but the decision to morph this plate to include the prongs of the Starfleet delta for little reason at all certainly was a choice.
Star Trek: The Movies Collection: The Voyage Home
It’s got the whales on it. What more could you want?
Star Trek: The Voyagers: Ferengi Marauder
There’s nothing particularly wild about this plate, other than the fact that I’d actually really love to meet the Star Trek fan who’s like “you know, screw all the other ships, if I want a Star Trek ship on a plate, it absolutely has to be the Ferengi Marauder.” But I do want to point out the rainbow of colours here that is both very Gays in Space and yet also something I would’ve loved to have seen on the cover of a Trapper Keeper as a child.
Star Trek 20th Anniversary: City on the Edge of Forever
It’s one of the best Star Trek episodes ever. One of its most heartbreaking takes on the ethics of time travel. And now, you too could own the moment that Captain Kirk is forced to leave a woman behind to be hit by a car, in plate form.
Star Trek: First Contact: A New Dimension Borg Cube
You should probably not eat off any of the Star Trek collector plates, mostly because they are, presumably, intended for display rather than as viable homeware. But consider even attempting to eat something off this one. Also, the weird goop that acts as a stand, why???
Star Trek: Generations: Worf’s Ceremony
There’s certainly some… things that can be documented in a plate collection based on Generations (please look forward to some of them appearing a little later here!). But the framing and emotion here is just remarkable. The uneven perspective of the holodeck’s recreation of the Enterprise, and that everyone just looks slightly annoyed to be here, are captured so well. Beautiful.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Lt. Commander Data
If you were to think of Data’s most iconic moments to fit on a plate — perhaps three of the most iconic — are any of the moments above ones you’d pick? If so, are you out of your mind?
Star Trek Generations: Meeting in the Nexus
JEAN-LUC PICARD IS A HORSE GIRL. Art. Art.
Star Trek Voyager: Life Signs
Look, I’m even at more of a loss for words here than I was with Picard and Kirk and their ponies. Even as someone whose very first encounter with Star Trek was with the Vidiian’s debut in Voyager, I don’t think I’d ever want a plate with some plague victims on it. Let alone a plate recreating, in disturbing montage form, that time the EMH gave one dying Vidiian he liked a holographic body so they could date while he, y’know, scanned her plague-ravaged flesh like we see it above.