Happy Birthday, Nichelle!

Lovely Nichelle Nichols is 83 today. We hope she has a wonderful day of love and appreciation, and that her New Year has much health and happiness. We love you, Nichelle!

Celebrate by reading some or all of the entries I have made of the past few years, right here.

Happy ST:TMP Day!

On this date in 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture premiered across the country. How well I remember the excitement that I, and many other fans, felt! It was to us back then, what the new Star Wars movie is to fans this December. Today's post is devoted to the memories we have of this red-letter date in Trek history. Read a few, a lot, or all of the ST:TMP related posts I have made on this blog by clicking here.

Happy Birthday, Walter!

Today, September 14th, is Walter "Chekov" Koenig's 79th birthday. Hope he has a great one!

In honor of everyone's favorite Russian accident-prone screamer, read over all the previous posts about Walter from this blog!

1984 Mike Minor Interview

Mike Minor made some significant artistic and production design contributions to the original series third season, the aborted Phase 2 series, ST: The Motion Picture and ST II: The Wrath of Khan.  In this extensive interview from issue #14 of Enterprise Incidents, published February of 1984, we find out the extent of his involvement. (See his Star Trek wiki page here.) As you may recall, I posted another article on Mike earlier from Starlog, but this one goes much more in-depth. He worked on many other genre productions, not the least of which was Star Wars. It's tragic that he passed away so young in 1987 and we never got to see what he might have done since then.

(Click on images to enlarge. Once open, you may have to click again to view full-size.)

Bonus: from the same issue of EI, comes this fan drawing of the Mutara Nebula battle.

Bonus #2: Publicity photo of Kirk once again baffling Spock with his propensity for somehow inexplicably winning against the Vulcan.

"How does he DO that?"

James Horner, We Will Miss You!

Tragic news this morning, as we learned that composer James Horner has passed away in a plane crash at age 61. Read an official announcement about it here. Horner composed the iconic "ST II: Wrath of Khan" score, and so many other memorable soundtracks, and his genius will be missed. My friend and past collaborator Jon Lawhon, who is an even greater soundtrack buff than I am by far (and more eloquent) has written a tribute to Mr. Horner, which I am featuring below as a guest post.

An immense talent of a man has been silenced.

I can recall emotionally stirring moments from Apollo 13, Braveheart, Field Of Dreams, Star Trek 2 and 3, Glory and Titanic, all of which were certainly due to the performances of the actors and the directors' skills; but a significant factor in the creation of that emotion was the music accompanying the scenes.

The man responsible for those wonderful scores has been tragically taken in a plane crash. James Horner has been in my top tier of favorite film composers for many years. In addition to the aforementioned films, he scored Avatar, A Beautiful Mind, An American Tail, Jumanji, Batteries Not Included, and many others.

The news made for a mournful afternoon for me. Much of his music has become a part of my DNA, and I feel a loss inside. But thanks to the practically everlasting recording mediums available to us, his heart will go on. I have posted one of his most amazing and beautiful pieces.

I will miss you, James.


 


 To quote the title of a track from his "Deep Impact" score; "Goodbye And Godspeed."

Robert Fletcher Interview

When "The Wrath of Khan" director Nick Meyer wanted a more nautical look and feel on the ship, he started with a dramatic (and to many, a welcome) redesign of the uniforms. Often, if a director on a sequel doesn't like some aspect of the design on the previous movie, he hires another person to come in and do what he wants. Fortunately, instead of going to someone else Meyer asked ST:TMP Costume Designer Robert Fletcher to return. Here is an interview with Fletcher from the pages of Enterprise Incidents (the news stand edition as opposed to the earlier fanzine version), issue #18, published June, 1984

(Click on images to enlarge. Once open, you may have to click again to view full-size.)

Bonus photos: Leonard Nimoy in a very early 1967 promotional appearance in costume and makeup at a parade. He never appeared in public in character again. Here is a link to an article about it.

"The Cage" Artwork

Not much to post this time, but I wanted to spotlight a couple of images I found around the web. First, an amazing painting of 'The Cage" found at www.SpaceboyComics.com! They do a fantastic job of combining all of the most iconic images from the pilot. One of the things I like about "The Cage" is that is gives the universe we know from the series a sense of history; that there was a crew before the one we are familiar with. Although largely an issue of practicality (to use the expensive footage and to stave off deadlines where no other scripts were ready), the way it was used in "The Menagerie" made the most of having the footage, and incorporating it into the history of the characters was done in such a way as to make it feel entirely planned (more naturally than George Lucas' retroactive decision to make Luke and Leia siblings and Darth their father). Gene's idea for doing this, in the way he did, was pure (if pragmatic) genius, and as a result we have the series only two-parter (which really felt like "an event") with a special story and feel. 

(Click on images to enlarge. Once open, you may have to click again to view full-size.)

Bonus: I have found this photo only one other place, in an article that I posted awhile back. But here is the photo itself without the cheap magazine paper degrading the image. This is a special photo made behind the scenes of "Plato's Stepchildren." Wow!

Bonus link: Speaking of Lucas, here is a well-done video mashup bringing the Enterprise and crew into conflict with the Star Wars universe!