How The Roddenberry Archive is preserving ‘Star Trek’ history

September 29, 2025
Recreation of the U.S.S. Enterprise bridge from Star Trek (2009) © 2025 OTOY, Inc.

A new podcast with OTOY’s Mark Spatny.

Mark Spatny.

Today on the befores & afters podcast, we’re chatting to Mark Spatny. I’ve enjoyed interviewing Mark over the years about his VFX supervision roles, and he’s now VFX supervisor and VAD supervisor at OTOY.

Specifically, he’s been working on The Roddenberry Archive. This is an archive dedicated to preserving the legacy of Gene Roddenberry, who of course created Star Trek. The archive is a collaboration between Roddenberry’s estate and OTOY.

With Mark, we talk about the various photoreal re-creations that are now inside the archive, and how they are made. There’s some very fun stories in there about ships, shoots and fun Easter Eggs to look out for.

This episode of the befores & afters podcast is sponsored by SideFX. Looking for great customer case studies, presentations and demos? Head to the SideFX YouTube channel. There you’ll find tons of Houdini, Solaris and Karma content. This includes recordings of recent Houdini HIVE sessions from around the world.

Listen in above, and below, check out some images and clips from The Archive.

Recreation of physical models from Star Trek: The Motion Picture © 2025 OTOY, Inc.
Recreation of the U.S.S. Enterprise bridge from Star Trek (2009) © 2025 OTOY, Inc.

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