TV Sci-Fi Monthly 1976 article: Trek Aliens

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When I caught sight of this terrific cover, a dollar and seventy-five cents (plus tax) and I were quickly parted.

The British publication "TV Sci-Fi Monthly," which I've featured here before (and will often again) was a real find. Say what you will about the tea-swilling Redcoats, they sure could put out a good genre mag. The only place I could get them was my favorite haunt when I lived in Ft. Lauderdale in the 70's, the comic book/movie collectables store named Starship Enterprises. In the near future I'll do a post on it with some photos, inside and out. It was such a cool place, run by cool people, with lots of cool stuff. Even the air conditioning in it was cool.

Anyway, here's another scan from it, of the first article from Issue #3, printed in 1976, which was a two panel deal that you read when you opened up the newspaper-format magazine. I loved the large pictures that this format enabled them to print, although it does make it harder to scan, as I have to put the pieces back together in Photoshop. But it's worth the time to share these with you.

As an aside, I'm amused by the fact that the shackles holding the crew in "The Gamesters Of Triskelion," pictured below, were obviously so loose they could have slipped their hands out with no problem. In fact, it would be hard to keep them in place without your hand falling out!

Uhura was grateful for her Starfleet regulation-issue uniform panties, and for the fact that she wore them that day.

Bonus: Below, a promotional shot taken during the filming of "The Galileo Seven" with Nimoy hefting a prop weapon, which if made of real stone, would have been too heavy to lift like that... even for a Vulcan.

Nimoy briefly considered using it on Shatner unless he admitted who was the real star of the show.

Talented trekker from way back John Ellis (read about him in an earlier post here) sent me the great artwork below that he did for the cover of a Florida 1976 convention booklet. I tell you, those were the good old days when Trek really belonged to the fans, and most of the good stuff coming out was by them, in unofficial publications. I'll be posting more artwork and goodies from John in the near future, but in the meantime, visit his site about his special pet project, the 1958 Steve Canyon TV series DVD set!