Here’s today’s flashback: Nichelle Nichols gets a decent 1-page article in that new-fangled People magazine about her NASA Career. Now if only they could have given her a cover! It should be noted that Trek stars, despite their wild popularity in in the seventies, pretty much never got any covers in weekly glossies. A shame too, they deserved a little more attention than, say, Donny and Marie, but such it was.
Tomorrow: Nimoy in Equus
Here’s today’s flashback: A shout out to Majel Barret-Roddenberry for giving Gene the idea for his TV Pilot ‘Spectre‘ — Sounded like a good idea but it’s funny that at the time CBS declined his pilot because ‘no one is interested in the supernatural’ –But Gene was ahead of his time by about 20 years (Remember the craze X-Files started?) Now to be honest, I wasn’t into supernatural much either, but I bet this would have worked. Also a quick blurb about the Star Trek phenomenon and a listing for another Roddenberry movie “The Questor Tapes”. Gene kept busy during the 70s, a shame none of his projects took off the way he hoped. (I think Genesis II would have made a great series). And look at the babes in the photo upper left. I bet these little starlets were thinking “Wow, we’re in a Gene Roddenberry picture! We’re gonna be stars!” Dream on girls.
Posted in My Star Trek Scrapbooks
Tagged Majel Barret, Questor Tapes, Roddenberry, Spectre
Here’s today’s flashback: A 1977 review from Starlog magazine of Nimoy’s new weekly documentary series “In Search Of...” ( I can still hear the theme song) And more delays on that supposed Star Trek movie. Roddenberry wanted a script that would please the fans, but Paramount found his original script “too much like a TV series”. Unfortunately, the final result was too much like a a very slow, very boring documentary, not like the original at all, (and don’t get me started on those hideous footie-pajama uniforms!) Glad Wrath of Khan came along in ’82 as of much better representation of what Trek should be. In Search Of… was an interesting series, although I’m sure much of its info is outdated now. The episode that really bugged me was about a cult around ‘St Germaine’; creepy. As a youngster, I was willing to believe that there was a Loch Ness Monster, and maybe even that ancient civilizations etched big pictures into the deserts to communicate with aliens, although I mostly watched for the Nimoy segments. In a later episode, Nimoy ‘searched’ for Vincent Van Gogh, and cleverly plugged his new one-man-show Vincent. 
Here’s today’s flashback: From April o f1977. Movie magazines were getting wise to the renewed Trek phenomenon that was everywhere and actively sought related news that would make good copy (I suppose they couldn’t resist a girl in a chain-mail bikini too) I was just happy to have a pin-up of Nimoy, even if it was in that silly Tholian Web spacesuit (I bet those six costumes broke the production bank that week!) They were much more sophisticated than the shower curtain get-ups from The Naked Time!) Love the pensive podium picture too.
Posted in My Star Trek Scrapbooks
Tagged Kirk, Movie Magazines, Nimoy, Roddenberry, Shatner, Spock, The Naked Time, The Tholian Web, Trek
Here’s today’s flashback: From 1977, an interesting mix of articles…upper left is an ad for the syndicated episodes of ‘Marcus Welby, M.D.’ but for some reason back in the 70’s, when repeats of currently airing series were shown in syndication, they were not called by their original names. ( I recall Bonanza in syndication was called Ponderosa) Maybe it was a legal issue, but anyway, in this episode with William Shatner, it’s is called “Robert Young, Family Doctor‘ which is a total misnomer, since Robert Young is the actor playing Marcus Welby, but not an actual doctor, and for some reason, it’s a picture of Bill Shatner as Captain Kirk, which nothing to do with the episode, although he does play a pilot with clipped sentences! Here’s a pretty hilarious scene, listen to Bill shout “Whoooa look at that green patch down there!” Then, a postcard from the (then) new National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, where they exhibited the original Model Enterprise! I went to see this, and forget about The Spirit of St. Louis! This was the ENTERPRISE! However, the engine nacelles were painted bright red, not frosted as I thought they would be. No matter, it was thrilling to see the real thing. In other news, there’s another Q&A about which TV show has smarter viewers, Star Trek or Mary Hartman? A mention of TV space parody that ‘Trek fans will hate” and a great note about Nichelle Nichols turning her typecast image lemon into lemonade, and she daylights as a NASA spokeswoman, making promotional films about the space program and hosting tours – Good for her! I wonder how many kids ended up in the space program because of her? More on Monday!
Posted in My Star Trek Scrapbooks
Tagged Air and Space Museum, Mary Hartman, NASA, Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek, WIlliam Shatner
Here’s today’s flashback: From March of 1977, James Doohan appeared locally at Binghamton University (then known as Harpur College, SUNY Binghamton) and amazingly, I did not go to this show! (at least I don’t remember going!) Maybe seeing him at the NYC convention was enough? This is a charming interview, and Jimmy is humble and happy with his life. He says that people wouldn’t want him to spout Shakespeare, but I think he would have been great in Macbeth or The Taming of the Shrew! Great guy, well missed. 😦
And more questions, this time wondering if Bill Shatner liked that newfangled english Sci-Fi show –Space 1999? (Anyone here watch that? it was fun)
Here’s today’s flashback -sorry it’s late – I had to sub today, and just remembered that I hadn’t posted a daily here! Today we see more Q&A about a possible Trek movie, questions wondering if Nimoy and The Shat were rivals, a mention of Gene Roddenberry’s Specter ( I still haven’t seen that) and a quiz from another middle school weekly, seeing if you can recall everything in the picture of the Enterprise being tossed like a salad.
Here’s today’s flashback, and it’s a big one, kids. From the December issue of Crawdaddy magazine, a great multi-page article by writer Ed Naha on Star Trek, it’s incredible phenomenal rebirth, and it’s million dollar merchandising. It asks teh question “Can Star Trek Be Put Back Together?” And Bill Shatner on the cover being his best Bill self! – lookin’ cool Bill! (and the quality of his hairpiece has improved!) I also love the picture of him inside, holding a broken model of Enterprise. There’s also a sidebar about the Star Trek album,Inside Star Trek, that featured Gene Roddenberry interviewing Shatner, Deforest Kelley, and even Mark Lenard in character as Sarek! I still have this album although I have to find a turntable to play it on — maybe I can find a recording of it online somewhere , if I do, I’ll share it. A shame that Nimoy wasn’t on the album, would have love to hear his deep rich voice. But it’s lovely to have Gene, Dee and Mark on it, sages of Trek lore.
And on a side note, I wish I kept the entire magazine, I would have liked to have read the interview with John Lennon!
Posted in My Star Trek Scrapbooks
Tagged Crawdaddy, Enterprise, Star Trek, WIlliam Shatner
Here’s today’s flashback: November 12, 1976, from our local daily tabloid The Sun-Bulletin (which was later merged with The Binghamton Evening Press — yeah, we used to get two daily local papers, how times have changed!) Now, we didn’t get the Sun-Bulletin at our house, but the neighbors did, and when I got the chance, I’d either bike down to the local drugstore and check the dailies or sometimes take papers from my neighbor’s trash on Sunday nights (but only if they were on top); I’m pretty sure I bought this one, but Dear Lord, is it any wonder I never had a date in High School? What a goofball!
Anyway, at this point, the talks are heating up about a new Star Trek, and Nimoy ‘reveling’ in his Trek association. But with all this hype, it would still be three years until an actual movie was released. I remember wondering why, when my paper ever posted articles on Trek that they always used promo stills from the earliest episodes of the series, often with Kirk or Spock in their all gold uniforms. I didn’t realize then that papers have a deadline and stock photos are just the ticket for these types of articles. And speaking of paper management, note that this was the ‘lifestyle’ section, a section that used to be in both daily papers every day, but these days you only get it on weekends. Will we even have newspapers 5 or 10 years from now? We can only wonder.
Posted in My Star Trek Scrapbooks
Tagged 1976, George Takei, Kirk, Leonard Nimoy, newspaper, Press, Spock, Star Trek, Sulu, Sun Bulletin, Trekking, WIlliam Shatner
Here’s today’s flashback: The 70’s were a busy time for Star Trek people, actors and producers alike. Here’s a bunch of TV Guide listings for non-Trek projects — The Trek people kept their families fed in the drought between cancellation and the first movie. Nimoy was the most active, in Catlow with Yul Brynner, (small but sexy role as ‘Miller’,) TV movie The Missing Are Deadly, (which I don’t remember at all) and his popularity was booming so quickly he even got his own interview special in 1976 on PBS, The Man who Played Spock with Bill Varney. I remember Mom letting me stay up to watch this, it was on at 10, and I recall Varney at one point asking Nimoy to give him a ‘mind-meld’, and Nimoy fondly obliged. Shatner’s movie, The Tenth Level was a fine psychological thriller about how far one would go to inflict pain on a stranger. Both Shatner and Nimoy would appear on Dick Clark’s “The 10,000 Pyramid” Then there were the two movies Gene Roddenberry made, the (unfortunately) failed TV Pilot, Genesis II, and its sequel Planet Earth. Looking back on it, Genesis was the better of the two, and a great adventure story. Of course, fans were still wondering when Star Trek would be revived (see question), and finally below, my sister Kathy (I had 5) went to California in ’76 and saw the new Star Trek wax figures at the Movieland Wax Museum — see her postcard-oh I envied her!
Back on Monday with more memories! Let me know what you think!
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Memories & Musings of a Mature Star Trekker, and home of StarTreKomics!
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