25th Anniversary articles from the Official Fan Club Magazine

Wow, Star Trek's 25th anniversary doesn't seem like it was so long ago when I remember it. It was in 1991, and this issue of the Official Fan Club Magazine covers it with an article on the stars titled "Star Trek: Past, Present And Future." The inside cover has a couple of interesting behind-the-scenes images from the filming of "The Cage."  The cover, by artist Keith Birdsong, portrays the good captain, along with some unnamed (and villainous-looking) bald guy in the background.

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Below: From the same issue, a first look at "The Undiscovered Country."

Bonus: below, an ad from the back of Starlog for one of my favorite plate paintings, celebrating the 25th Anniversary.

Bonus: below, an unusual (and very smug) photo of Captain Kirk, who presumably just completed successful first contact with the Deltan ambassador.

"It's true... bald IS beautiful!"

Fan Club Magazine article on Nichelle Nichols

Anyone visiting here even casually is aware of my Uhura fixation; blame it on my imprinting on her at the emergence of my puberty in 1973, I guess. Anyway, here is an article on Nichelle from the April/May 1990 edition of the Official Fan Club Magazine. First, the cover of the issue, which is from one of my favorite publicity photos, which places Uhura where I felt she should have been, one of the four main characters.

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Notice that Spock is not objecting to what would be an invasion of space from anyone else.

Bonus: Below, another rare pre-Trek photo of Nichelle putting her best foot forward. Lovely, but I actually prefer her with a few more pounds on her as we saw her during the series.

Bonus: Just for fun, a couple of photoshop manips where I put Uhura in the "U.F.O." Moonbase uniforms and purple wigs... doesn't she fit in wonderfully? She's mod, baby!

Bonus: Below, from the same issue of the fan club magazine, is a one page review of the (then) latest Trek novel "The Pandora Principle."

1986 Official Fan Club Magazine article on Nichelle Nichols

From issue #51 of "Star Trek: The Official Fan Club Magazine," comes this cover article on my favorite mini-skirted African-American Communications Officer; clarifying "favorite" because their was another. (Did you know that? I'll be doing a post on that subject soon.) Anyway, this interview with Nichelle Nichols was conducted a couple of months before the release of "The Voyage Home," in which she had a larger role than the previous films.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Bonus: below, a lovely publicity shot of Uhura from a set of photos in the official newspaper press kit. I got quite a few press kits back in the day since I was friends with the lady that worked at the newspaper who dealt with them.

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.