Many of you may not know that Gil Hibben is the official “Klingon Armorer” and he designed the edged weapons use by the Klingons and others in the Star Trek movies. If you visit the “Star Trek Experience” in the Hiltom Hotel in Las Vegas you will see many of his knives on display.
If you buy the “Generations” DVD, one of the added features is about Gil and the knives he designed for the Star Trek Movies.
In 2023 it was revealed that the Gil Hibben made, Paul W. Ehlers knife design named the “Black Widow” was the inspiration for the “Shrike” starship in Picard S3. Check out the Picard gallery below.
“Even the design of the villains’ starship, the Shrike, was inspired by old work: master Hollywood knife creator Gil Hibben’s blade for Tom Hardy’s character in “Nemesis,” with its pronged side-spurs curving forward like pincers.”
– Dave Blass, production designer
What about the villain Vadic’s ship? What was the inspiration for its design?
“Terry said he wanted a ‘predator’ ship — something that you instantly looked at it and knew it was the bad guy and also one that you wanted to buy the model and put it on your desk. It had to be badass… but really what does that mean?”
“Then you start designing and it has to ‘feel’ like Star Trek, and not some generic ship. It can’t feel like a Star Wars or a Babylon 5 ship. So you start playing around and coming up with concepts. We had every designer who works with us and then a bunch of others take a crack at it. Finally, we had Darek Zabrocki come up with something that we liked. That was given to Doug Drexler who then worked with that adding some more aggressive details. Gil Hibben makes some amazing knives and a few have been used in Star Trek. He has a knife called ‘The Widow’ that I loved the shape of. We combined Darek’s ships with Gil’s knife and Drexler’s magic and came up with something cool.”
For our “Trekkie” friends, here is a link to the entire story