Geoffrey Mandel

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Geoffrey Mandel

Geoffrey T. Mandel (born 26 August 1959; age 64) is a production artist and designer who was the scenic artist for Star Trek: Insurrection, the sixth and seventh seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, and the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise. Prior to this, however, he was a production assistant in the art department of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1994 and was also involved in the production of Star Trek Generations. More recently he was a graphic designer on 2009's Star Trek.

Career

As a graphic designer, Mendel has worked on various genre shows, including The X-Files, Space: Above and Beyond, and the 2005 film Serenity, a spin-off the cult sci-fi series Firefly. He was also a graphic designer for the series V.I.P. and the films Spider-Man 2 (starring Kirsten Dunst), Yours, Mine and Ours, and Lucky You (starring Eric Bana). His other graphic design credits include the TV shows JAG and NCIS and the films Mission: Impossible III (directed by J.J. Abrams) and Blades of Glory.

Other projects on which he has worked include the films Jingle All the Way, X-Men (starring Bruce Davison, Famke Janssen, and Patrick Stewart), Solaris, Timeline, and Soul Plane, the TV shows VIP, Arli$$, Kingpin, Numb3rs, and 24, and the TV movie The Pentagon Wars. He most recently worked on the FX series Dirt, on which he is credited as the show's graphic designer.

In addition to the above, Mandel directed his own short film in 1991, called Kill the Director. In 2000, he was the production designer on an independent film called Alcatraz Avenue for Lather Rinse Repeat Productions.

Star Trek

Mandel first worked on Star Trek as a production assistant in Deep Space Nine's art department during the show's third season. He then worked in the art department of the seventh feature film, Generations. Several years later, he was a credited scenic artist on the ninth film, Insurrection, along with Doug Drexler, Anthony Fredrickson, Kurt Hanson, Alan Kobayashi, Denise Okuda, and James Van Over and under the supervision of Michael Okuda.

Afterward, Mandel became a scenic artist on Star Trek: Voyager during the latter half of the show's sixth season, beginning with the episode "Fury". He continued working on the show throughout its seventh and final season, after which he moved on to Star Trek: Enterprise, working on that show's first season before departing the franchise.

On both Voyager and Enterprise, the scenic artist credit was rotated weekly between Mandel and his fellow scenic artists on the show, meaning that Mandel worked on more than just the episodes for which he is credited. For example, on the first season of Enterprise, the scenic artist credit rotated between Mandel and Anthony Fredrickson, yet both contributed to every episode of that season. (See the credits section below for a list of episodes in which Mandel received credit.)

Just a few of Mandel's Trek contributions include the Risa logo for VOY: "Inside Man" (see here), a map of the Milky Way Galaxy seen in VOY: "Endgame", interior panels for the Vahklas for ENT: "Fusion", and prop books such as The Handbook of Exobiology and The Cosmos A to Z.

In 2007 Mandel contributed approximately two months of work to the production of J.J. Abrams' re-invigoration of the Star Trek film franchise, simply titled Star Trek.

Other Trek contributions

His involvement with Star Trek fandom dates back to the mid-1970s, when he ran the fan club UNISTAR in New York City and penned and published his own detailed blueprints of vessels from both the original series and the animated series. It was during this period that he met Doug Drexler, who was running his Star Trek store in Manhattan, New York - "The Federation Trading Post" -, and with whom Mandel compiled one of the first technical reference works in Trek history: the USS Enterprise Officer's Manual.

Before he started working on Star Trek, in 1980, he collaborated with several people on the Star Trek Maps. In 2002, Mandel wrote and illustrated the Star Trek: Star Charts, which could be considered an update to the original Star Trek Maps.

Besides his work on canon Trek productions, Mandel was also the graphic designer for the video game Star Trek: Borg.

Mandel appeared in the 1997 documentary Trekkies.

Bibliography

• General Plans USS Independence NCC-F1300, 1976
• Star Trek: Space Station K-7 Blueprints (with Kenneth Altman), 1976
• Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual (with Eileen Palestine, Doug Drexler and Anthony Fredrickson), 1977 – Co-author
• Star Trek Fandom Triumphs (with Doug Drexler and Ron Barlow), 1979
• USS Enterprise Officer's Manual (with Doug Drexler), 1980
• USS Enterprise Officer's Manual - Revised Edition (with Doug Drexler), 1980
• Star Trek Maps (credited as Astronomical Artist), 1980 – Co-illustrator/Editor
• "Animating the Turbolift Graphics", Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 15, July 2000, p. 112
• "Designing Graphics: A Klingon control panel", Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 24, April 2001, pp. 48-52 – Author/Illustrator
• Star Trek: Star Charts, 2002 – Author/Illustrator
• Official Serenity Blueprints, 2007

Credits

• Star Trek: Insurrection
• VOY
  • Season Seven
• ENT:
  • "Unexpected"
  • "Breaking the Ice"
  • "Cold Front"
  • "Shadows of P'Jem"
  • "Fusion"
  • "Fallen Hero"
  • "Shockwave"

Star Trek interview

• VOY Season 6 DVD special feature "Star Mapping the Final Frontier", interviewed on 15 July 2004

External links

• GeoffreyMandel.com - official web site
• Template:IMDb-link
• Geoffrey Mandel interview at TrekWeb.com