1980 Interview with Gene Roddenberry

From issue #40 of Starlog, published in November of 1980, comes this interview with the Great Bird about the Star Trek: the Motion Picture, in which he looks back on what it turned out to be. The points he makes about the differences between a movie and a TV show are still valid when applied to the recent movies by JJ Abrams. Great pic of Gene in the Captain's chair!

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Bonus: below, "Men In Tights,"  a b&w production shot of Kirk and Charlie Evans about to wrestle in the gym. When watching this scene, it might seem like Kirk is bullying him, but he is just trying to teach him social interaction skills and how to take competition without getting angry. Charlie fails to learn the lesson.

Bonus: Another page from one of the coloring books that were put out to tie-in with ST:TMP, but seemed to be recycled material from earlier TOS versions. Can you figure out what they are looking at?

1977 article "Spirit Of Star Trek"

From the great third issue of the short-lived "Media Spotlight" (which was a descendant of "The Monster Times" newspaper, except in magazine format and focused more on science fiction than monsters) comes more material. I have posted some from this issue in the past, and will continue until all the Trek content is available. You can view the cover here. View all the Media Spotlight magazine posts here.

This time the article is titled "The Spirit of Star Trek" and addresses the philosophy behind the series. Written by the (now) late Hal Schuster, who wrote loads of articles for magazines plus authored and published many unauthorized Trek books (those that were not officially published by the holders of the Trek copyrights).

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"Allowing Lisa Frank to design these spacesuits was not logical." 

Bonus: Below, a couple more pics from the "Official USS Enterprise Officer's Date Book," a "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" tie-in from 1980. You can find other posts from it under the "calendar" tag. The first one highlights the embarrassingly-designed costume pants that lets everyone know what kind of mood you're in. But since these are Bone's own clothes and not a uniform, we can only assume that they don't wear underwear in the future. And they're not ashamed of it.

 

"Why yes, Jim-boy... I AM happy to see you. Why do you ask?"

"Leonard Nimoy Dropped From Star Trek!"

From the magazine "TV Picture Life" comes this 1970's article about one of the close calls wherein we almost saw Leonard replaced by another actor in the Spock role. This one was over a script; the other time, according to the book "Inside Star Trek" was over him wanting a raise. Fortunately, the conflicts were resolved. Can you imagine someone else in the role? Actor Lawrence Montaigne (Decius in "Balance of Terror" and Stonn in "Amok Time") was their backup plan if negotiations failed, and even Mark Lenard was considered. How weird would that have been?

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Bonus: Below, a behind-the-scenes shot from the first episode filmed when the series began production, "The Corbomite Maneuver." Note Uhura's command-gold uniform, the only time she wore that color. I liked her in red better. (Update: an asute reader pointed out in the comments that she still wore gold in "Mudd's Women," which was the next episode filmed after "Corbomite." Thanks!)

1977 article "The Return of Star Trek"

From the low-rent magazine "Space Wars" comes this October 1977 article on the return of Trek. Just goes to show that I bought anything related to Trek back in those days, eager as i was for the slightest morsel of new info. Not that this article contained any; but I bought it anyway. The article is only titled on the index page.

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Bonus: Below, a page from the book "Charting The Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI."