20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
6. I Miss My Old Chair
The Bridge on the Enterprise-A looks very different from its previous appearance in The Voyage Home. There's a very good reason for this, as most of it was a complete rebuild and redesign for the movie. The original plan was to use the set that featured as the Enterprise, Reliant, Grissom, and Saratoga over the first four films.
However, between productions, there were a couple of contributing factors as to why that set was ineligible. First, while in storage, it had been exposed to a windstorm. This caused sufficient damage to require a new set. Sources differ on this, as another potential reason was that much of it was stripped for use in The Next Generation.
Chekov and Sulu's station, the turbolifts, and the handrails are among the only pre-existing parts of the bridge to return. Kirk's joke is a nod to this though, to be fair, the new chair does look far more comfortable. We are all about armrests at TrekCulture.