Animated Star Trek articles

When the new animated series premiered I embraced it with open arms. Short of a new live-action show, it was the most exciting development that had come into being so far. Unless you lived through that time, when there was no new Star Trek except for the Gold Key comics (and they were silly), you can't relate to how starved we fans were for "real" new adventures.

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Even a cartoon, done as well as it was by the original show's creators and producers, was a welcome sight. I was right there in front of the TV set when it premiered on Saturday morning, Sept. 8, 1973. And I loved it! I never missed it as far as was possible, and those that I did miss I caught in re-runs.

All too soon, after only 22 episodes from one year of production, the series was cancelled (see article below). The sting was lessened somewhat by the rumblings of a new movie, perhaps followed by a new live-action series, but we would have to wait another five long years. The animated series was, with it's faults, "real" Star Trek to us fans of the time. Watching it now on the recently-released DVD set really takes me back to those days!

Here's a great site devoted to all aspects of the animated series. And here's another one!

Below is a pencil drawing I did of M'Ress in the late 70's. I thought she was kind of cute.

"All right, who's the wise guy that left a flea collar in my seat?"

1976 Leonard Nimoy Article: Why I Believe In UFOs

Last time we had Shatner proclaiming his belief in UFO's, and here "Leonard (Star Trek) Nimoy" (which he probably fears will be on his tombstone) joins in, in an article from a 1976 issue of The National Enquirer.

Below, not to be outdone by Bill's ESP experiance, Leonard tells of his own, and the article references his TV show "In Search Of," which began airing in 1976.

Below is the German Heineken Beer ad that so incensed Nimoy. He sued the company and had the offending ads removed. I don't blame him for being upset! But it is funny.

(Thanks to John Hudgens who commented below and kindly left the link to a better color version, I have replaced my original b&w scan with his better one.)

1974 article by Shatner: "Why I Believe In UFOs."

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"The National Enquirer" tabloid was one my Grandma always got when we took her shopping, and there was very often some kind of Star Trek article in it, which I immediately harvested upon having them passed along to me. These articles came from the 1974 to 1975 time frame, but I didn't make a note of the dates so I'm not sure.

Apparently after writing the above article, Shatner went from second-hand sightings to a personal experience with a UFO, as told in the story below.

Below, a retelling of the ESP/UFO incident, this time from "The Star."

Next time: Nimoy on why he believes in both UFO's and ESP!

And above we have a photo of my picture display wall. I went to my thick binder ST photo notebook and picked out some of my favorites to display around the beautiful VHS video-release promotional poster from 1986. On the right are some autographed photos, on the bottom are three cast portraits from Andrew Probert. I ordered those prints from Roddenberry's Lincoln Enterprises in the mid-70's. Probert worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture later on, actually designing the new upgraded Enterprise and the other ships seen in the movie. He went on to design the new Enterprise-D for The Next Generation, and much more. These paintings represent some of his early work, done when he was in his mid 20's.

And on the left you can see some pictures from another love of mine, the Apes movies.

Article: Mr. Spock Took Me Over

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"Happy Leonard Nimoy has left Mr. Spock behind," says the photo caption in the article, clipped from the National Enquirer around 1975. How wrong they were! But who could know that the old show would return in such a big way in the future? Leonard would even write another book titled "I Am Spock."

Of course, the stoic influence of playing Mr. Spock helped him suppress emotion very little when it came to a life-threatening situation. He felt very un-Spock-like fear when his oxygen ran out during a diving expedition, detailed below in another Enquirer article that I clipped in 1977. Air is like sex; it ain't important till you aren't getting any. Suddenly that little-considered next breath is the most important thing in your life.

The article references "The Coral Jungle," an underwater nature program narrated by Nimoy. I even taped an episode on cassette because he was doing it. Was I obsessive, or what?

The small cartoon to the right I tore out of a New York Times newspaper sitting in a dentist's office in the early 70's (I can see some patient coming in later and looking through the square hole left in the paper). It looks like Spock has some gum on his ear?

Star Trek In The Comics:

1975 Time Article: The Trekkie Fad

The Scrapbook opens this time to:
The Time Magazine, Sept. 1975 article
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Fads may come, and fads may go, but we just keep on Trekkin'! And back in the early and mid-seventies, the get-togethers known as conventions kept us going. Big, as the one reported above in Time, or smaller, as reported on below. In Florida particularly there were a lot of small "mini-cons" as they were called, in colleges and hotels all around the area. I got to attend a few, but mostly I collected their promotional material, such as newletters and flyers. I'll feature some of those in future posts!

I was rabid about saving anything that even mentioned Star Trek. Below is a local TV Guide ad I clipped in the mid 80's. Notice the all-too-frequent mistake: " Doctor Spock." How that used to get on my nerves! Almost as bad as people calling the show "Star Track." Aargh!

I used to draw a lot more than I do now. Here is a early-80's pen and ink drawing I made of Kirk and Spock.

1975 Article: The Day Star Trek's Monsters Invaded The City

The Scrapbook opens this time on:
"The National Star" Jan 25th, 1975 ST Convention article
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The Kiss concert goers, in a drug-addled fog, accidentally came to the convention hall on the wrong date; and they didn't know the difference. The Star reporter apparently didn't either.

This article, clipped from "The National Star" tabloid, is the absolute worst (but typical) of the kind of scornful write-up that the Trek fandom phenomenon received in many publications.

Look at that opening line! "Like lemmings clawing and squirming to be the first to drown, almost 15,000 true-blue Star Trek fanatics swarmed over New York Americana Hotel last week." Insulting, and just the kind of ammunition my parents liked getting to ridicule me for being one of the fans. But, that kind of writing is the bread-and-butter for most tabloids, back then as well as now.

Reading between the lines, it seemed that everyone had a good time at the convention, especially those that enjoyed grokking the slinky Green Orion Slave Girls. And I bet the fan that won first place with the Horta costume still treasures the memories, and shows pictures of the event to the grandkids.

Below, another convention article, this time for one in Chicago.

Star Trek In The Comics:

"Star Trek: Don't Leave Home Without It!"

1975 Article: The High Priest of Sci-Fi

The Scrapbook opens today on:
The 1975 "Circus" rock music magazine article.
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Remember when I said that as a teen I was constantly on the lookout for Trek information, no matter what type of publication it might be in? This one proves my point; a rock music magazine like "Circus" was certainly not on my list of regular reading material. This one I found while waiting in the doctor's office in Macon, GA where we had taken my Grandma for a regular visit. I trust that the next readers coming into the office didn't miss the four pages that mysteriously vanished from it! I know, I was bad... but I was a Trekker in love.

Once again, Gene discusses his plans for the movie; going back to show how Kirk and Spock met and how the crew all came together before the TV series start; which is the focus of the new movie coming out in 2009.

The article explains: "People have been asking me for years how the whole thing came about," Roddenberry said. "How did Kirk and Spock meet Scotty? How did the whole crew get together?" What Roddenberry has in mind is tracing the lives of the major members of the crew of the Enterprise from their beginnings until they reach the point where the television series began.

So it appears that the new Trek will be exactly what Gene had envisioned from the earliest days of thinking about bringing it back. I think he would be pleased. (Update; well, I've seen the movie, and it might not be exactly what Gene envisioned... being a reboot rather than recounting the actual history; but at least we get to see the characters when younger, and the casting is excellent.)

As a bonus, below are scans of the front and back of a great ad slick for the second set of episodes in first video release of the series on VHS in 1985. Nice! I bet you still have a couple of these tapes somewhere in your closets.