1991 article: "The Undiscovered Kirk"

 More from the 25th Anniversary issue of Starlog, issue #175, this time featuring an interview with Shatner about the newest movie "The Undiscovered Country." Besides the excitement over the film, Shatner talks a little about the last one which he directed, and explains why he felt it didn't go over as he had hoped. I don't blame Bill for everything wrong with the movie... he was a fair director, and with a better script he could have had better success. But, as with his Kirk character in ST 6, the responsibility for anything that happens on the ship falls onto the Captain... so he shoulders the burden for the relative lack of success of "The Final Frontier." This time, the ship was back under the command of Nick Meyers, who brought it back on course for one final glorious voyage.

(Click on images to enlarge; once it opens, you may have to click again to view full-size.) 

Bonus: Another variation of the "Spock with test tubes" shot from a photo session taken after the second pilot but before the first regular episode filmed.This whole set of pics made him look more like a chemist than a science officer, but at the time, a table full of test tubes and bubbling beakers was the fastest shorthand to suggest that a character was a scientist, "doing science." At least they didn't hand him a clipboard and stick him in front of a bank of old IBM computers with reel-to-reel tapes like "Lost In Space"!

 I still get extra nostalgic seeing pics from this session, since one of them was the first photo of Spock I ever clipped for my scrapbook, or even recall seeing.

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.

(Click on images to enlarge; once an image loads, you may have to click on it again to view full size.)

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!"

1977 article "The Return of Star Trek"

From the low-rent magazine "Space Wars" comes this October 1977 article on the return of Trek. Just goes to show that I bought anything related to Trek back in those days, eager as i was for the slightest morsel of new info. Not that this article contained any; but I bought it anyway. The article is only titled on the index page.

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

Bonus: Below, a page from the book "Charting The Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI."

USA Today Articles on ST VI

From the Friday, December 6, 1991 edition of USA Today comes this nice article and positive movie review of "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country." It seemed fitting that the last original crew movie would premiere so close to the date of the first movie, "The Motion Picture" which came out in 1979 on Dec. 7th.

First, the review, which was highest up on the USA Today "Life" page...

(Click on images to enlarge.)

And second, the article, which was right under the review. I split the picture and the text so that both would be bigger in the scan.

The second part of the article, however, was long... almost from the top of the page to the bottom. I had to scan it in two sections and put them together in one image. Sorry for the smallish text, but it couldn't be split up or it would separate some lines of text. As usual, Shatner sounds the most clueless of the cast, with his odd "dust man" comment. The rest comport themselves well, all making the typical statements according to their personalities that we've come to expect over the years. From George's bubbly self-promotion to Walter's morose musings on the smallness of his part, the gang's all here.

"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.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

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.

ST:6 "The Undiscovered Country" review

From December 7th, 1991 comes this Miami Herald review of the sixth Trek outing, the last with all the original cast. Written by someone that is obviously not a fan, it is a lukewarm review that manages to denigrate the entire series of movies. Take it with a grain of salt, as I did when I read it. You can tell when a reviewer is prejudiced against a film's source material to the point that they can't write a fair review.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

One of the most laughably ridiculous phrases is when he writes that the movie "zips and snorts and wheezes past sets and situations that seemed new when George Lucas invented them for Star Wars in the 70's." O-o-o-kay, we know where you're coming from now, Bill.

Bonus: Below, from around 1981 comes a clipping from the kid's section of the Sunday paper (from Beckley, WV) about Leonard Nimoy...

Bonus #2: Below is another of the Random House Trek greeting cards that came out in 1976, which I picked up at the store Starship Enterprises from this display. Needless to say, I didn't give these to people for their birthdays or any other occasion; they stayed in my collection.

Below is the inside of the card.

Bonus #3: Below, another page from one of the Trek coloring books from the late 70's.

"Nyota, what say we get together after our shift tonight?"

"Your cabin or mine, sugah?"

Enquirer Star Trek 6 Preview

Warning: if you haven't seen "Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country," DON'T read this sneak preview by The Enquirer. At least, that's how the first sentence should have read in the fall 1991 article, because they don't just preview it; they give away every single plot point in the entire blamed film! By blabbing the whole story, they ruined any potential surprises for a lot of fans who read the article. Typical, but this was really one of the worst examples of spoilerage just for the sake of sensationalism. Nice photos, though. One plot point they got wrong was that Spock falls in love; Valeris was not a love interest, only a trusted protege.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Below is a newspaper ad for the movie that I clipped from the Friday, Dec. 6th, 1991 edition of the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. This movie premiered only one day before the first Trek movie did, Dec. 7th, back in 1979 (reposted from my other blog "Held Over!").

Below is an interesting Trek-themed ad for the sound system in one of the theaters showing the new movie. Apparently Vulcans (or merely fans in rubber pointed ears) are accomodated in this theater. The shape of the ear is all wrong, however.

Bonus: Below are a couple of pages I got in a newsletter/catalog from Dage Co., (run by Tribbles author David Gerrold) during the summer of 1974. Interesting article by David about the efforts to revive the series, and already you could see the seeds of what would become "The Next Generation" being planted.

Bonus #2: a 1976 ad flyer for some high-class UV-reactive posters on black velvet, "suitable for framing." Anyone out there get any of these?

I'm alone for a few weeks, maybe more, as my wife is out of state visiting her sick mother. So, with not much to do, I've been enjoying this afternoon by taking my magazines out of the cabinets and organizing then better. Here's how it looks right now, and that's not even all of them yet, I still have the third cabinet to get them out of. Here's another pic, closer up, so you can see some of the covers better. It was taken from the same angle, only closer, but I flipped the photo so you can see them without craning your head around. It does make you dizzy to look at anyway, though.

Beam Me Up, Gorby!

(Click on images to view larger size.)

Scanned from my copy of the USA Weekend insert magazine, published November 29th, 1991, this writeup on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was not an interview with Nimoy, but an article actually written by him. An interesting read and look back at the last original cast film.

Below, a clipping from a USA Snapshot feature on Spock's appearance on ST:TNG, mentioned in the article above and around the same time.

Next, a clipping from the local Ft. Lauderdale newspaper TV guide section about the episode.

Bonus content: Below, the cover of the ST Postcard book, a large-format publication that came out in 1977, and printed on glossy card stock. In it were 8 pages of detachable postcards, six per page, for a total of 48 different cards. Back in the day when photos from the series were hard to find, this was a great item!

Below: a cartoon scanned from a 1989 Starlog magazine that's good for a real chuckle. At least he finally did get to be a captain in ST 6 (and an episode of Voyager.)

More recognitions: I just discovered, way after the fact, that MovieSet has this blog at the number one spot on their list of top Trek blogs! Cool...