A Couple Of "Search For Spock" Reviews

Here's a good review of "The Search For Spock," clipped from The Washington Post, dated June 2nd, 1984. It does manage to give away a major surprise, that of the Enterprise being destroyed, as well as basically tell you that Spock is found alive and well, only not in so many words. Granted, that was pretty much a given, but the ship's destruction was supposed to be a shocking moment that was best left unspoiled by reviewers. Oh, wait, you didn't already know about that? Oops, sorry!

(Click on images to view larger.)

And below is the Time magazine review of the film, clipped about the same time. I'm throwing in the "Ghostbusters" review as a freebie.

Bonus: the last of the four TOS coasters in the Newfield set... this time, featuring that flying butterdish named "Galileo II."

Bonus: The next of the "Trek Talk" features from "The Monster Times," dated January 1976, issue #45. (View all these I have posted by using the "Trek Talk" tag on the sidebar.) It makes note of the passing of James Blish, which was a sad bit of news to those of us that read and re-read all of his adaptations. These time capsules of Trek history are neat to read now, aren't they?

1986 Grace Lee Whitney interview

Our archives open up this time to feature pages of issue #51 of the "The Official Star Trek Fan Club" magazine, published in August of 1986. At this time the magazine was in a smaller digest size, handy for rolling up and shoving into your jacket pocket to read during recess. Nah, just kiddin,' I'm sure everyone saved their copies in perfect condition like I did mine.

In this interview with everyone's favorite yeoman, conducted by superfan Dan Madsen, (read the Memory Alpha entry on him here and a Trekcore.com interview here) we find out a little more about this leggy actress.

New "space-age" material lifts and separates!

"Why, captain... you so seldom come to my quarters after hours."

 

Sadly, the green flashlight did not work out as a sellable toy tie-in.*

Bonus:below is another of the Leaf 1967 cards, this time featuring our damsel in distress.

Below, my autographed photo of Grace in a memorable pose!

"Did I mention I like having my legs looked at?"

Some earliers posts with Janice Rand photos can be found by using the Grace Lee Whitney tag on the sidebar.

Bonus: below is another of the four TOS coasters in the set, this time featuring the Romulans.

Bonus #2: continuing the Romulan theme, below is another of the Skybox Masterpiece Series, depicting the famous first encounter with the Romulan Bird Of Prey.

The card back, below, is in error concerning the number of appearances in the original series; the Romulans also appeared in it in "The Deadly Years." Later, it was further depicted as one of the ships that captured the Enterprise in remastered episode "The Enterprise Incident."

*The jokey caption in no way confirms that the flashlights were or were not some kind of spec phaser by a toy manufacturer as some are speculating (see the Trek BBS post here). I just like to add funny captions and this one coincidentally seemed to back up the argument. I have no idea if they were or were not, but if I were to weigh in on it, I would say that the flashlights, as well as the other equipment that they held in this pre-series photo session, were just odd props gathered for it, and not specially prepared in any way.

1969 Star Trek Critique Article

Via a trip through the Guardian of Forever, from out of the dim past of the year 1969 (near the end of the show's first run) comes this article from issue #14 of the terrific magazine "Castle of Frankenstein." (Read an earlier post of the CoF #11 Star Trek article here.)

(Click on images to enlarge.)

"Castle of Frankenstein" was a monster/genre mag written on a more mature level than any of the other such publications of the time, and the graphic layout was bold and exciting. Covering science fiction as well as horror, and TV as well as film, the magazine was a real treat.

Above is a detail of the cover photo, corrected for the picture's reversed state.

Now, before you dig into the article, expecting to read details not seen since 1969, a word of caution; it's not a pro-Trek article. In fact, it's a printing of a letter sent to the editors by someone with not just a bone to pick with the show, but a whole skeleton. Reading the diatribe, one truly wonders if they are talking about the same show we know and love. But hey, the pictures printed with it are good!

I think you'll be amazed as you read the things they write about some of the episodes, several of which are now regarded as among the best. His insults of the various facets of the show, calling DeForest Kelley 'a hack," for example, and the makeup artists efforts "abominable," are laughable to me. His example of the "failure" by the makeup artists by "having to bring in John Chambers" to get Mr. Spock's ears right is wrong as far as I can determine; Fred Philips saved the day from another makeup artist's poor efforts by working many late hours making the ears as we saw them in "the Cage." Although John Chamber's contribution of the ears is a popular bit of trivia, neither the "Making of Star Trek" nor Nimoy's books "I Am Not Spock" and "I Am Spock" mention him as being involved in the difficult process. (This is backed up here.) The book "Inside Star Trek" does mention that Fred Phillips designed them and had them made in John Chamber's makeup lab; but the results that came back were still too crude, and Phillips had them sent to someone else at MGM to do them. Be that as it may, right or wrong, it has little impact on the sweeping charges brought by the irate writer that "the makeup is beyond belief, it is so bad."

Calling the ground-breaking exterior design of the Enterprise "lacking in grace and sleek beauty," (whu-u-u-u-t?) and the interiors "disgustingly bad," on the level of the old "Flash Gordon" serials, he compares the art design unfavorably to three of Irwin Allens' shows. That particular statement boggles the mind, because most of Allen's sets consisted of blinking lights and reel-to-reel computers against a black background. His criticism of the show's legendary, memorable musical scores is the final straw. I think it must have been Irwin Allen himself writing under an assumed name.

The photo above represents the writer's attack on the show.

Mr. Spock prepares to launch a counter-attack against the illogical critic and open up a can of well-deserved Tal-shaya.

Well, it was interesting to learn in historical hindsight that some saw this outstanding effort at bringing believable science fiction to the tube as greatly lacking; but as Captain Kirk said, "there's no accounting for taste." The editor's weak "rebuttal" at the end did nothing to argue against some of the more ridiculous statements, but the show itself is the strongest argument. It has stood the test of time and then some! If I had been the editor I would have filed this letter under "crank" and wrote something worthy of the magazine.

Update: The name of the writer is Craig Reardon, and I wonder if he is the same Craig Reardon that became a movie makeup artist? If so (and it seems likely since they are both from Inglewood, CA), this might explain his extreme criticism of that facet of the show's production (which was way off-base in my opinion, in any event). It would be ironic if this were the case, since he went on to do the makeup on one of the Star Trek spinoffs, Deep Space Nine! He would have been close to 16 at the time of the letter... so it's possible. I wonder if he still feels the same way about the original series now? It would be interesting to find out.

Below is a small writeup about the looming cancellation of the show from the same issue, which makes for fascinating reading. Too bad some other network didn't pick it up, give it a bigger budget and restore Roddenberry to producer status.

Bonus: below, the next in the series of four TOS coasters referenced in the last post. I never used these four to hold my drinks; I reserved that for the four Voyager ones.

Bonus: Lastly, another of the Random House Star Trek greeting cards from 1976. The inside text says "Let's keep in touch!"

"Oh, man... dude, it's like, it's like, I can totally feel the color of this paint! Seriously, you gotta come feel it! And bring the Fritos."

Consider that card's sentiment of "let's stay in touch" to be an invitation to comment about this post! I truly do enjoy hearing from my readers.

1980 article on ST:TMP from "Superstar Heroes"

The time leading up to and around the release of "ST:TMP" was exciting, and a great period of collecting for me, since magazines and articles in any place were what I looked for. Below is the January 1980, issue #11 of "Superstar Heroes," which was on the stands in December of 1979. This publication was a step above in quality "Media Spotlight" but several below "Starlog." This extensive article on the new movie has some great pictures and info, but there are several inaccuracies concerning production on both the new movie and the original series. Oh, and thanks, writer, for totally exposing the plot twist of what V'Ger was. Way to blow what little suspense there was!

(Click in images to enlarge.)


Nice view of the model for the orbital dockyards office... possibly the best photo you'll see for examining details.

"Alright, for the next scene we'll have them stare in awe at the viewscreen for 20 minutes straight."

Bonus: Below is the first of some coming bonus images covering the 4 original series coasters in the set released in 1998 by Newfield Publications. Newfield offered the set of 16 coasters (four from each of the Trek series) for free when you tried out their subscription for card pages that went into Trek database notebook binder. (Here is the Memory Alpha page on it: Trek Giant Cards.) I didn't subscribe to it, I just got the binders and the first set of cards for it. But I will post what I do have, those pages on the original series that are interesting, as time goes by.

And another bonus, one of the nicely-painted cards in the Skybox ST Masterpiece Series put out in the 90's. Of course I'm starting out with one of my favorites from the series.... wonder why?

The kiss may have been forced by the Platonians, but the tongue he slipped her was all his idea.