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In The Motion Picture, V'ger creates or extends a walkway between himself and the saucer section of the Enterprise, allowing Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Decker, and the Ilia probe to walk down the hull in order to communicate with V'ger in person.

This walkway consists of hexagonal columns, closely packed but with irregular heights.

enter image description here

It is very reminiscent of the Giant's Causeway:

enter image description here

Did the film's design personnel and/or Robert Wise (director) and/or Alan Dean Foster (screenwriter) take any inspiration from the Giant's Causeway or other well-known columnar eruptions?

(If the answer is "Yes", please provide a source.)

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    It can be very difficult to track down where artists get inspiration from, since an idea could easily be influenced by some picture they saw years ago. Short of an official statement, we have no idea whether they got inspiration from X or Y or Z.
    – Omegacron
    Commented Jul 14, 2015 at 14:43
  • The filmmakers might be more likely to have visited The Devils Postpile. And it could have been inspired by any basalt column formation, which are unusual but not super-duper rare.
    – Junuxx
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 16:56
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    just an FYI your screen shot is from the 2001 directors cut edition, it originally looked like this, schnittberichte.com//www/SBs/2400/130.jpg a giant field instead of just a path. but digging through 10 pages of google leads me to believe it was the artists that came up with this, with no cited reference.
    – Himarm
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 14:07

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While artists may have drawn some ideas from the Giants Causeway after extensive googling i can find no verbal recognition of this influence.

Another possible reason for this look is because original design ideas for V'Ger were for it to be very metamorphic. where the whole ship could move, create, morph as needed to accommodate other ships or needs.

"It would have 'morphed' and on the inside the walls would have been iridescent and changed as the Enterprise moved past them. You would have seen images of the Enterprise along the walls because it was being analyzed by V'ger and there would have been parts of walls that would break apart like a flock of birds or a swarm of insects," explained Taylor. "The swarms would go from one place to another and reassemble. You could think of the particles as digital energy or digital information. I wanted it to be a very metamorphical and very mysterious place

memory alpha, art team

While some of these ideas never panned out they were also incorporated into the final version of V'Ger.

Also the picture we are seeing from the question appears to be from the newer directors cut, and this picture shows how it was originally intended to look (theatrical release) a field instead of a bridge.

enter image description here

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    "how it was originally intended to look" - was it originally intended to look like that, or was the director's cut how it was originally intended to look, while the theatrical release contains what they could come up with based on the SFX budget and technology at the time the movie was done?
    – O. R. Mapper
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 17:20
  • @O.R.Mapper it wasnt a graphic fix it was a scene fix, they narrowed it into a bridge instead of being a platform otherwise it still looks the same. both versions could have been done in the original tech.
    – Himarm
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 17:22

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