Animated M'Ress Bio

In her brief appearances M'ress managed to show more tail on the bridge than Uhura did, and that's saying a lot.

Last time, we looked at one of two bios of the new alien characters from the animated series that I bought in the early 70's from Lincoln Enterprises. We've seen Arex's dossier; now let's look at the other, for the intriguing cat-like M'Ress. A quick Google-image search for her name will reveal that quite a few fans found her sexy and worthy of much fan art depicting her in various poses, uniforms, and stages of undress. Here's a forum thread with M'Ress appreciation as its topic.

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Below, a pencil drawing I made of M'ress sometime in the mid 70's, when I was about 16 or 17. I've posted this before, but thought considering the topic it would fit good here in case some had missed the earlier entry.

"Okay, who's the wise guy that put the flea collar on my chair?"

Bonus: Below we see the cover of the second Blish original Star Trek novel, started by him before his death and finished by his widow, Judith Ann Lawrence, who often co-wrote his books with him and had in fact finished the last adaptation, #12, when Blish sadly passed away before completing it. "Mudd's Angels" was published in May of 1978. The cover art is by one of my genre favorites, Bob Larkin, who invokes the feeling of the earlier adaptation covers depicting the starship in close proximity to similar alien planet surfaces.

"Ahh, th' pimpin' life is good, me lassies!"

Below is the back cover, continuing the style seen in all the other direct adaptations in the series.

"ST VI: The Undiscovered Country" review

From the scrapbook comes this positive review of the last original-cast film, clipped from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper, published on or near December 5th, 1991.

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It's funny how two different reviewers can have such wildly conflicting opinions on the same film, based on their perception of the source material. Here is another review, from the Miami Herald, which I posted earlier.
Bonus: Below, from the scrapbook is a popular publicity shot that many fans are familiar with!

Bonus #2: another of the wackily-captioned 1967 Leaf cards, this one particularly head-scratchingly strange.

Below is a photograph of a poster-sized pen-and-ink drawing I did in my senior year, 1976. The photo reduction is all that remains of it, the original having been wrecked during various moves. The dark shading over the text was a photo developing error by the friend in school that took it, they were not shaded in the original.

1967 Popular Science article

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Originally published in the December 1967 issue of Popular Science.

Star Trek's technology, grounded as it was in scientific theory and mixed with imaginative and logical design, ignited a burning interest in the viewers to know more. Unusual for a show of the time period and even long after; how many articles did you see on the science of "Lost In Space"? I was captivated by the ships and gadgets also; the first picture I ever drew of the show was the Enterprise, and I continued to do so for years as I became more familiar with it. It really was one of the stars of the show as far as I was concerned.

I loved that kind of thing so much, that one day in 1974 I wore my newly-acquired AMT Star Trek Exploration Set to school... the phaser and communicator on my belt (attached with velcro, just like the show) and a hand-made insignia pinned to my shirt. Yes, I was a geek before people knew what to call them, but it did attract the interest of a couple of like-minded students who became my Trekker pals. (Nowadays, it would result in being suspended for bringing a "weapon" to school and possibly triggering an evacuation and SWAT Team incident). But, to a small group of other teens I was cool since I was always bringing fun mags like Famous Monsters and The Monster Times to school with me, which they all gathered around and read in study hall. My drawings were always passed around with exclamations of their coolness.

Bonus: Below, a painting of our lovely lady by Andy Probert, from the set that you could buy in the early 70's from Lincoln Enterprises. You can see some others as they are in frames on my wall, in the picture here. Andy, of course, went on to design the movie version of the ship based on drawings by Matt Jefferies, the ships' original creator.

And below, from a far less accomplished artist (namely, me), a drawing of the ship from memory, made one day in 1974 (when I was 15) as I sat in the library at school during lunch break. The Klingon ship I did have a reference for, as I looked at the illustration in "The Making of Star Trek" a day or two later, adding it to the drawing.

I was a relative late-comer to the show, but like many people, came to know and love it during the re-run popularity it began to have in the early 70's. One early exposure was the Gold Key comic book, and the first issue I ever bought, #20... the cover of which I scanned in for you below. It further whetted my appetite for the real thing, as did the James Blish books, causing me to start sneaking in any episodes I could catch on TV when I could, and saving any magazine or newspaper articles I found... which is what this blog is all about sharing now.

Man, this takes me back... to when I bought it in September of 1973, to be exact. Nothing quite as exciting as a zero-G fight using vacuum cleaners!

The crew reacts as the young Kirk gets the snot beat
out of him again in the new movie about their exploits.

Marvel's ST:TMP comic adaptation

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In 1979, Marvel published their comic adaptation of the new movie, and it was a major item for me when I found it at the corner convenience store near our home in Savannah, GA. Bob Larkin's fantastic painting emulated and updated the famous James Bama original promo art for the TV series (posted below for comparison), and I've wished for a poster of the art ever since.

Below is the title page artwork...

And below is a page scanned in from a scene deleted from the film, where Kirk follows Spock into the memory core of V'Ger and has to be rescued. Since it was put together from only a script and stills, the artists had not seen the film when drawing the adaptation, so there is a disconnect whenever a scene was depicted that required effects from the film. The movie's visual effects had been finished only at the last minute, so the artists had nothing to go on for those many scenes but script notes.

Bonus Stuff : Below is an ad scanned from a December 1977 issue of the Miami Herald. Nimoy had to do something to pay the mortgage, the movie was still several years away!

And next we have a black and white glossy photo from the old scrapbook. I had gotten this from a newspaper presskit (passed along to me by the Entertainment Editor who knew I was a fan), to help promote the series as it ran in syndication in the mid-70's.

And we have below another drawing by me... this was done in pen and ink, a little larger than life-size, as part of a quickly-done banner used for something in the high school cafeteria. My goal had been to capture the likeness with the fewest possible lines drawn. When they were done with it, I cut out the section with the Spock drawing to save.

It was 1974, I was in the 10th grade in South Broward H.S. in Ft. Lauderdale, FL at the time, and I saved my lunch money in order to buy books from the school bookstore (further contributing to my skinniness). I would order paperbacks through the kindly lady there, and that's where I first got my copies of "The Making of Star Trek," "The World of Star Trek," and "The Trouble With Tribbles" making-of book. I was in hog heaven reading them, truly! It's hard to express just how much these books meant to me at the time, and even today when I take those same copies out of my collection case, they take me back to those times.

T.J. Hooker TV Guide article

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The cover of TV Guide from August 14, 1982.

(SALE ALERT! I will sell this TV Guide for $15 plus Priority shipping if you are interested in adding it to your collection! Email me through my blog profile and let me know if you are interested. Once sold, this notice will be removed.)

Snipped from the TV Guide out the week of the premiere.

Premiering on March 13, 1982, "T. J. Hooker" was Shatner's first successful starring role since Star Trek. It's no accident that T. J. is the reverse of J. T., the first two initials of Captain Kirk, as it was intended as an homage to the character and a nod to his many Trek fans.

Below is the two-page-spanning ad for the episode that co-starred Leonard Nimoy, which was aired on Feb. 5th, 1983. Nimoy not only guested in, but also directed the episode, titled "Vengeance is Mine".

I was never actually watched this show more than a time or two, I really only cared about his work as Captain Kirk. But I still collected the pictures and things about any actor on the show whether or not it was directly Trek-related, and it was good to see Bill getting a series again. On the other hand, I do own "Kingdom of the Spiders," "The Devil's Rain" and "Incubus" on DVD because he starred in them, so I suppose I didn't watch "Hooker" mainly because cops shows never did much for me.

And below, more of the self-serving part of this blog, another personal drawing. I know, these matter only to me and no-one else, but they do serve to show my interest and fan efforts, so I post them. This one was done when I was in high school, about the 11th grade, in 1975. I was 16 and living in Ft. Lauderdale, which happily gave me the opportunity to add much to my collection, as more and more Trek-oriented items were coming out. Not all was official; many of the photos and such were unauthorized, and many of the magazines were fan-produced, like the excellent "Trek" and "Enterprise Incidents." I'm telling you, it was a good and exciting time to be a fan living in Florida!

You can see that I was into the Franz Joseph Technical Manual, also!

It was in the same year that videotape came out, and the school's audio-visual department, which naturally I was involved in, acquired a reel-to-reel videotape recorder/player. (I still recall the smell of the videotape!) It was there I made my first videotape of an episode off the air, the second half of "The Menagerie."

Every day for a week, me and some fellow Trek fans would gather in a room off the library and watch that one black-and-white tape. As others saw what we were doing, they joined us, and by the end of the second week we had a packed roomful each lunch period, re-watching that one episode! The fight on Rigel 7 was a popular and exciting scene, as was the laser-cannon assault on the knoll on Talos 4; but the biggest reaction was to the dance by Vina as the Green Orion Slave Girl. Everyone was so into that, cheering, clapping and catcalling! Finally, the library staff made us quit since the crowd was getting too big and noisy. Fun memories.

Since we're talking about "The Menagerie": Above is a clipping (circa 1985 or so) from a video store trade publication, with the Great Bird being presented with the original painting of the beautiful art for "The Cage" poster. I'm fortunate to have a copy of that poster advertising the video release.

Aug. 7, 1978 Star Trek Report from Starlog

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Scanned from Starlog issue #18 in December of 1978, this article relates the events of the first day of filming on the new movie. Each month Susan Sackett, Gene's assistant, would contribute a column to the magazine keeping fans apprised of the movie's progress, and this insider's view was one of the main ways we Trekkers kept up on the details of how this long-delayed project was coming along month to month.

The photo in the article was too good to pass up using for a captioned humor piece...

Gene tries to convince Bill that he can't pose like that due to the film's "G" rating.

Bonus: Early Mike Minor pre-production painting for the aborted Phase II series before it became refined for ST:TMP.

Below: The crew gets together for the grand opening of the new Star Trek display at the Hollywood Movieland Wax Museum, circa 1978. Sadly, the museum was closed in 2005, and the figures sold off. Read about what happened to the bridge crew here... it's a happy ending with lots of pictures.

Spot the real Bill Shatner and ignore the fact that Nichelle went braless that day.

And finally, below is the first drawing I did of the good captain when I was 15, in 1974. Shatner was always a hard one to get right for some reason, as the many action figure face sculptures will attest.

Space Race: Trek vs. Space:1999

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Seriously; which ship and crew would you rather be a part of?

It was 1975...I was in the 11th grade in Ft. Lauderdale, and there was this show about to come out that had the temerity to try to "replace" Star Trek! The unmitigated gall! No show could do that! I was against it before I ever saw it for that reason (although I did watch it when it came out and kind of enjoyed it). I didn't realise that all the "Trek replacement" talk was only generated by the articles being written about it, not the show's producers. You hardly read an article about "1999" without there being a reference to Trek in the headline.

"Enterprise to Eagle One... have you seen our moon anywhere lately?"

The article posted this time came from the teen-oriented "Smash" magazine, and true to form it placed the two programs in competition against each other, although one was new and the other nearly ten years old. It was to Trek's credit that it could hold it's own and even be superior to a program coming out a decade later. The article is really more about Trek than the new show, which is recognizes as having problems, but on a TV schedule mostly barren of science-fiction, any new show done halfway decently would be welcomed.

Below is the first article about the show that I ever saw, and it did the most to predjudice me against it. This was clipped in the summer of 1975 from the Macon Herald.

Bonus (as such): Below is my very first Star Trek drawing of any kind, done when I was 11 years old, inspired by my only exposure to the show up to that point, the Gold Key comic. You are free to feel superior.

If Number One and Yeoman Colt had arrived five minutes later...

New Dimension For Star Trek

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Clipped from the Miami Herald on Sunday, November 19, 1978.

Below is my very first-ever Star Trek character drawing, circa 1971. Please allow for the fact that I was 12 when I did it. You can see the tape where I had it in my scrapbook. Heretofore my interests had been more along these lines... Yes, I was starting to grow up. Slightly.

"Oh, my...!" Takei-toons!

Another look back at a recurring theme from the original series with a new insight provided by George himself... (NOTE: for those sensitive to certain topics, I won't display these on the site. I believe in freedom of speech, but I won't put it in anyone's face out of respect. For those who think these are a hoot, it's here as a link. Click only if you are able to laugh without being offended by good-natured fun poking at George's antics.) Other captioned photos, having fun with various other original series characters, (such as this one and this one)I will continue to post on the main page, since no-one seems to have a problem with those. Satisfactory?