"ST:3 The Search For Spock" Effects Article

From issue #28 of Enterprise Incidents (after the format change and national distribution as a sci-fi movie magazine) from April 1985 comes this behind-the-scenes article on the making of the effects for Star Trek 3. I do remember that the anticipation in my mind was much higher for #3 than it was for #2... there seemed to be very little advance publicity for TWOK, except for the furor over the leaked death of Spock. But after the movie was released and so well-received, the fan excitement over the third one seemed to be increased and there was much more in the media about it as it was being made.

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This Kruge miniature was used for the scene where he plunges into the abyss on New Genesis... the cut between the actor and the animated figure was disguised by a flash of lightning.

Ah, the good ol' days of model work.

Below is a detail from the 2-page spread put back together. I didn't want to shrink down the spread by showing both pages connected, so I scanned in the one photo that went across both so you could see it in its entirety. The detail visible on the scale model of the Excelsior is interesting to see, since we didn't get to see it much on screen in the movie.

It was still an ugly ship, though.

1985 Interview with Nichelle Nichols

I'm back, after a short absence from posting, due to various mundane things taking up time from the fun stuff for a little while. From issue #30 of "SF Movieland" magazine (formerly "Enterprise Incidents" after it went mainstream), published June 1985, comes this article on the fetching Nichelle Nichols. Love that sassy pose... she is rocking that miniskirt!

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Bonus #1: an ad flyer from 1994 for a con featuring Nimoy.

Bonus #2: a publicity pic of Kirk and the shimmying (but ill-fated) belly-dancer Kara in "Wolf In The Fold." Her hootchie-kootchie dance was a memorable start to the episode, but to be fair some of the strength of the scene may have been due to the re-use of Vina's Orion Slave Girl dance music from "The Cage."

"How about dancing over here to my lap, gorgeous?"

Crossover Alert: Captain Kirk saves the day in the Cracked spoof of "Generations," to be found on "My Star Trek Scrapbook 2!"

1985 Cracked "Search For Spock" Spoof

Severin does his usual great job of capturing the actor's likenesses in this spoof on "The Search For Spock," from issue #209 of Cracked magazine, published January 1985. However, he does mix in uniforms from the first movie on the first page for some reason! No Trek cover artwork this time, sadly.

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Bonus: Below, a nice photo of the cast from the same movie, omitting Nimoy since at the time these were released it was supposed to be a mystery if Spock was in it or not. Was there ever any doubt? I was thrilled to see Uhura finally get her skirt back, thanks to Nichelle's request. Poor Chekov didn't fair so well with his wardrobe, however.

1985 Video Review article

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From the scrapbook pages this time come an article cut from the March 1985 issue of Video Review, a magazine dedicated to the increasingly-popular technology of VCRs, videotape and camcorders.

Bonus: scanned below is a great publicity photo, from a postcard, of the captain and the good doctor. Note the hi-tech magic drawing board being used (like on the kid's toy with the plastic cover you pull up to erase what you've drawn with the stylus).

"There she is, Bones... are those the best legs you've ever seen or what?"

Mystery Starship photo!

So you think you know your starships, from every movie and spinoff series, huh? Well, I have a challenge for you... can you identify the source of the starship design below?

Go ahead, guess... or tell me the answer in the comments if you know it! If you give the correct answer, you will win an imaginary Tribble friend... and you can hold him and pet him and call him "George." Look for the answer in my next post in a few days!