A Star Trek Costume Heist Led To A Desert Stand-Off Every Sci-Fi Fan Should Know About

Jonathan Frakes, who played Commander William Riker on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," stole his uniform. As covered in a previous /Film article, the Starfleet costumes on "Star Trek" were highly valuable, and Paramount was typically careful to ensure all uniforms were returned to the costume department before the actors went home. At the end of "Next Generation" in 1994, the actors would have been allowed to buy their uniform costumes ... for a hefty sum of $500 (about $1,100 in 2026). LeVar Burton, who played Geordi La Forge on "Next Generation," said that he wanted his uniform and would have happily paid the $500, but was never actually told about the deal. Instead, he had to hand over his uniform to a Paramount rep who actually came to his house. Frakes, meanwhile, merely wore his uniform to the "NextGen" wrap party, and no one ever questioned it. 

The costumes, by the way, sometimes turn up at auctions. They sell for thousands of dollars. In 2006, Christie's auctioned off a lot of "Star Trek" memorabilia, and a Captain Kirk uniform sold for $28,800. A screen-worn Starfleet uniform may be one of the most coveted items for wealthy collectors. 

With that in mind, one might not be surprised to hear of the great Starfleet uniform heist. This doesn't seem to have been covered by the news, but Frakes revealed, on a recent episode of the "Dropping Names" video podcast, that $82,000 worth of "Star Trek" uniforms had been stolen from the Paramount lot. As Frakes recalled, the heisters called the studio and demanded a very peculiar ransom in exchange for the uniforms' return. As Frakes related it, the thieves wanted KITT, the car from the TV series "Knight Rider." 

As all Gen-Xers might be able to tell you, KITT was a black, modified Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am equipped with a pulsating red light in the front. In the universe of "Knight Rider," KITT was also a high-tech marvel, outfitted with all kinds of advanced, James Bond-like crimefighting equipment. KITT was also sentient, having been given an artificially intelligent computer brain, voiced by William Daniels. For boys of a certain age, there is no car cooler than KITT. Sadly, that "Knight Rider" movie never happened.

The "Star Trek" uniform thieves must have felt the same way. As Jonathan Frakes related the story, the thieves made their demands, and even a prop exchange was arranged. Naturally, the Feds broke everything up. As Frakes tells it, "$82,000 worth of 'Star Trek' uniforms, in a semi, they were stolen off the lot of Paramount [...] And then the FBI was called in, and the great Merri Howard tracked them." He continued:

It turns out, they found out how they were, and they were having a meeting to swap the $82,000 worth of costumes for the KITT car from 'Knight Rider,' in the desert. So Larry Dukes, a Teamster, takes Merri Howard and the FBI down to the desert. They got binoculars looking down at the desert. The two semis back up to each other. The uniforms come out of some semi, and the KITT car comes out of the other semi, and the FBI approaches and arrests everybody. True story." 

Merri D. Howard, by the way, was a producer and assistant director on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" from 1991 to 1994, credited on 53 episodes of the series. That will give you an idea as to when this heist took place. 

Brent Spiner, who played Data on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," co-hosts the "Dropping Names" podcast, and he added to Jonathan Frakes story that another key item went missing multiple times from the "NextGen" set: Captain Picard's chair. He said that "the captain's chair was stolen several times." Frakes added that the chair was "ergometrically designed [for] Patrick [Stewart]. And we'd come to set, and the hole in the middle of the bridge ... Someone came in on the weekend and stole his chair!" 

Naturally, Spiner referred to the security on the Paramount lot as "really bad." Spiner and Frakes then went off on a tangent, reminiscing about how they would hang out outside of the set between takes and smoke cigarettes. "Those were the days." They make it sound haphazard and lawless. 

Sometimes, "Star Trek" props reappear after being missing for decades. One might recall the 2024 story on /Film about "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry's scale model of the USS Enterprise, used in the show's opening credits. It seems that the 33-inch model sat on Roddenberry's desk in the 1960s, according to Roddenberry's son. Gene lent the model to the makers of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1979, but he never actually got it back. Eventually, the model turned up on eBay after someone found it in a warehouse. It eventually made its way back into Roddenberry's son's hands. 

Luckily, the stolen uniforms were recovered right away, and KITT was never driven away. Frakes' story had a happy ending. The perpetrators of the heist were not identified. 

But to Paramount: I have a great idea for a heist movie.