cjh (01/04/83)
In response to your message of Tue Jan 4 00:12:02 1983: Your recollection does not match the production photos I recall seeing, although that was quite a while ago. More important, it seems questionable that they would want to film with a random noisemaker on-mike. (David Gerrold, in THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES (a book about the writing and shooting of that episode of STAR TREK), notes that the moving tribbles were made by putting a tribble shell over the works of a mobile toy dog, and that this meant that all the dialogue in those scenes had to be looped in afterwards because of the noise made by the works.) Also, to be blunt, I just don't believe that you could get that much power into a handle of that size. I'm familiar with what can be done with an electric drill and find it implausible that you'd get anywhere near the velocity with that size of shaft to cause significant frictional heating. The handle would probably self-destruct first---or at least shake enough to give the actor using it visible trouble (note how carelessly and easily Luke handles the light-saber when introduced to it, and imagine doing the same thing with a cat held by its tail).