Three-dimensional Chess - Star Trek Tri-Dimensional Chess

Star Trek Tri-Dimensional Chess

Probably the most familiar 3D chess variant to the general public in the middle 20th and early 21st centuries is the game of Tri-Dimensional Chess (or Tri-D Chess), which can be seen in many Star Trek TV episodes and movies, starting with the original series (TOS) and proceeding in updated forms throughout the subsequent movies and spinoff series. The game even assumed a fairly significant role in the TOS episode "Court Martial". (Captain Kirk is put on trial for negligence in the death of a crew member. Spock, who had programmed the Enterprise's computer to be unbeatable at the game, plays five matches with the computer and easily wins each one, proving the machine—the source of seemingly irrefutable evidence confirming Kirk's guilt—had been tampered with, thereby destroying its credibility in its account of the incident.)

The original Star Trek prop was crafted using boards from 3D Checkers and 3D Tic-Tac-Toe sets available in stores at the time (games also seen in TOS episodes) and adding futuristic-looking chess pieces. The design retained the 64 squares of a traditional chessboard, but distributed them onto separate platforms in a hierarchy of spatial levels, suggesting to audiences how chess adapted to a future predominated by space travel. Rules for the game were never invented within the series – in fact, the boards are sometimes not even aligned consistently from one scene to the next within a single episode.

The Tri-D chessboard was further realized by its inclusion in the Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph, who created starting positions for the pieces and short, additional rules.