STAR TREK (1966)

I’m one year older than Star Trek. Of course, as memories of my early years are lost to the fog of infancy and toddlerhood, I don’t recall really becoming aware of its existence until I was about nine years old, when, in 1974, the Star Trek animated series became a staple of my Saturday morning cartoon viewing. Around the same time, I received a Mego Captain Kirk action figure for Christmas. Other random Trek toys – and a few James Blish paperback novelizations – followed, and for Christmas of 1976, my favorite cousin gifted me with a copy of Bjo Trimble’s seminal Star Trek Concordance.

You’ll have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the original series as yet, and that’s because, in the early Seventies, Trek rarely appeared on any of the four television channels our rooftop aerial was capable of snagging out of the ether. So my love for Kirk, Spock, McCoy, et al, was first nurtured via the cartoon and Blish paperbacks. When I got the Concordance, with its encyclopedic coverage of the classic series, I was able to familiarize myself with the episodes I had not yet seen, whetting my appetite to the point of nigh-insatiability.

Of course, eventually, I saw the entire series (although a few of those episodes eluded me until my sojourn to art school in Jersey in the early 80s, where I finally received a TV channel that aired the show nightly), and, already well-indoctrinated in the mythos, found my passion for the 23rd century and the crew of the U.S.S Enterprise continuing to grow and thrive. Then came The Motion Picture, The Wrath and The Search. There was a Voyage Home, a somewhat disappointing detour into The Final Frontier, and an emotional denouement on the shores of an Undiscovered Country.

Other treks followed, with next generations, lost voyagers and denizens on the edge of deep space, but it was always the (sadly truncated) original Five-Year-Mission that inspired and informed the person I became.

I learned the value of reason and logic from an alien with pointed ears and a Satanic visage. I learned the nobility of humanity and compassion toward all life, regardless of shape, color or form, from an anachronistic Southern medic. And, most importantly, I learned about the worth of boldness, courage, and tempered wisdom from a charming leader with a confident swagger sporting a gold tunic. Kirk was a fighter, a diplomat, a philosopher - and a libidinous wolf – but in my eyes, he was the best of us as a species. He wasn’t perfect – and to his credit, usually admitted his flaws and acknowledged his mistakes – but he was also a man of intelligence and action, who sought out brave new worlds and always had his eye on the future.

I have aspired to all of these things, and usually fallen woefully short. But Star Trek continues to fire my imagination, fuel my creative efforts, inform my social conscience and drive my personal ambitions. To me, it’s not just a television show, and apparently, many, many others feel the same way. If that wasn’t the case, then we wouldn’t be celebrating the anniversary of its debut fifty years ago today. The brand wouldn’t be gracing new movies and TV shows (regardless of their relative merits) on our screens, large and small(er). And Star Trek wouldn’t still be sparking imaginations and inspiring so many people, of all ages and backgrounds.

May Gene Roddenberry’s vision of humanity’s future live long and prosper... and the U.S.S. Enterprise and her valiant crew go boldly on forever.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) TV Guide Ad

It took nearly a decade for Stanley Kubrick's mind-blowing 2001: A Space Odyssey to air on U.S. network television, finally making its broadcast premiere on February 13th, 1977, on NBC's "Big Event." I remember it clearly, because I begged my folks to let me stay up and watch it (spaceships), but they only agreed to let me watch until my regular bedtime, as I had school the next day. On the east coast, it started at 8 PM, and my bedtime was nine (hey, I was only twelve!).

So... I only got to see the whole "dawn of man" sequence and maybe the PanAm shuttle docking with the space station before being hustled off to bed.

Now, at the tender age of twelve, I probably would have struggled mightily with the deliberate pace of the film and lack of action, but I was already a spaceship special effects junkie (thanks to Star Trek and Space: 1999), and was deeply disappointed that I didn't get to see more of the actual "space odyssey."

I didn't actually see the entire movie until I was at art school in '83 or '84, watching it in pan & scan on my tiny portable B&W television set. I didn't see it widescreen until it came out on DVD.

Coolest Toy Ever - Mattel SPACE: 1999 Eagle 1 (Holiday Re-Post)

This is the fifth in a series of special re-posts for the holidays, remembering the coolest sci-fi toys of the Space: 1970 era. Hope you enjoy these "reruns" and have a great holiday season. Merry Christmas!

On Christmas morning 1976, I received one of the greatest gifts of my entire childhood. Better even than my Star Trek and Planet of The Apes Mego figures. It was Mattel's two-foot long Eagle Transporter playset from Space: 1999.

This thing was a monster and came with small action figures of Moonbase Alpha's John Koenig, Helena Russell and Victor Bergman in their bright orange space suits. There were also tiny accessories like little laser guns, helmets and other bits of exploratory equipment. The cockpit opened and could hold two figures, and the passenger compartment was large enough to reach in and move them around. There was even a hatch in the bottom with a working winch!

The nose section and red engine section were detachable and could even be joined together to make a small reconnaissance craft. It was, without a doubt, the coolest spaceship toy ever.

Sadly, this is not a photo of my Eagle (I wish!) - all that remains of the one I received all those decades ago is the main chassis and nothing else; all the other parts having been lost or destroyed through years of dangerous space missions to the alien planets of my backyard. Oh, the perils I used to subject that tiny crew of Alphans to!

Obviously, I got an awful lot of fun out of that thing, and if my fortunes ever turn around, I'd love to hunt down an intact one one day.

Of course, I later had the Eagle (and Hawk fighter) model kits, and they were cool, too, but once built, there really wasn't much you could do with the ships other than display them. That didn't actually stop me from playing with mine, though... which is why they no longer survive!

Second-Coolest Toy Ever: Kenner's 18" ALIEN Action Figure (Holiday Re-post)

This is the fourth in a series of special re-posts for the holidays, remembering the coolest sci-fi toys of the Space: 1970 era. Hope you enjoy these "reruns" and have a great holiday season.

In my opinion, the legendary 18" Alien action figure from Kenner is a close second for the coolest toy of the Space: 1970 era - though I'm sure that many other Star Kids would rank it at #1.

And I might too, if I'd actually owned one. I do remember seeing one in the store in '79 and being both fascinated and frightened by it. I hadn't seen the movie - only coverage of it in Starlog and Fantastic Films - but I did ask my folks to buy it for me. Unfortunately once my mom glimmed the price tag and got a good look at the sheer grotesqueness of the figure, there was no way she was going to pick it up for me. Instead, I'm pretty sure I got a Moonraker space shuttle model kit... and, you know, I was pretty happy with that.

Still, over the years, I've kept my eye out for one of these treasures, but alas, I've never found one I could afford. I have, on occasion, had an opportunity to inspect other people's Aliens, though, and I'm rather astounded by the level of detail that Kenner managed; I'm sure that's part of the reason for the larger-than-usual scale. I'm also amazed that Kenner got away with marketing a toy like this to kids, not only because it's so scary, but because it was derived from an R-rated horror film.

Ahhh... the Seventies.

Third Coolest Toy Ever: Kenner's BIONIC BIGFOOT Action Figure (Holiday Re-post)

This is the third in a series of special re-posts for the holidays, remembering the coolest sci-fi toys of the Space: 1970 era. Hope you enjoy these "reruns" and have a great holiday season.

The third coolest toy of the Seventies was, without a doubt, Kenner's Bionic Bigfoot from the Six Million Dollar Man.

Unlike the terrifying-but-desperately-coveted Kenner Alien, I did own one of these beauties for a while, although, oddly, I never had a Steve Austin action figure. This meant that Bigfoot usually battled my Mego Superman or teamed up with the Planet Of The Apes Gorilla Soldier against Captain Kirk. Man, those were epic backyard confrontations! Bigfoot wasn't particularly well-articulated, but at a towering 15" he was damned imposing - especially when pitted against the smaller-scale Megos.

On a related note - which Bionic Bigfoot did you prefer - Ted Cassidy or André the Giant?

Fourth Coolest Toy Ever: Mego STAR TREK Communicators (Re-post)

This is the second in a series of special re-posts for the holidays, remembering the coolest sci-fi toys of the Space: 1970 era. Hope you enjoy these "reruns" and have a great holiday season. 

When I was in fifth or sixth grade (circa 1975-76), my pal Mark Usher and I formed a short-lived Star Trek "club." There were four of us in all, as I remember, and once a week, we'd all go over to Mark's house after school and basically play Star Trek all afternoon. He lived on an old farm, and his parents cleaned out an old outbuilding for us to use as a clubhouse - or, in our case, "starship." His father even made a sign that said "U.S.S. Enterprise" and placed it over the door. (I vaguely recall that he misspelled it somehow, but I could be misremembering.)

His mother was an artsy-craftsy sort, and she wanted to make sure that we weren't getting into trouble, so she actually created Trek-themed projects for us to do. We made plywood "control panels" for our "ship" - including a "transporter console" with sliding levers (wide beads on strings) - which Mark's father mounted on the walls of the shack. We made uniforms out of appropriately colored tee-shirts, which his mother helped us draw insignias on with fabric paints, and we made papier-mâché planets, which we suspended from the ceiling of our clubhouse/starship with fishing line.

But mostly, we role-played being crew members of the Enterprise, and explored the alien cornfields and woods on the Usher property. We kept in touch with the Mego Star Trek Communicators, which were - as the advertising proudly exclaimed, "real, working walkie-talkies!" But unlike the other walkie-talkies we had as kids, these had flip-up lids, just like the ones on TV. Of course, they were considerably larger than their television counterparts, colored blue, and had telescoping antennae - but they worked.

If you didn't wander too far apart, anyway.

Mark also had the "Command Communications Console," which was a nicely Trek-styled base set tuned to the same CB frequency, and the only actually working piece of equipment in our ramshackle starship. It didn't get used much, as I recall, because no one wanted to be the Communications Officer and stay behind "on the ship" while the rest went exploring.

Happy (Belated) Life Day!

Yesterday marked the 36th (!) anniversary of the much-derided Star Wars Holiday Special, which aired on CBS in 1978. Sure, I've kicked the bizarre variety special around some myself over the years, but I admit that I was watching it that night, sitting on the floor about two feet from the tube, and fourteen year-old me enjoyed the hell out of it. And if truth be told, whenever I pop in my bootleg DVD to torture the wife each holiday season, I still enjoy it.

Well, parts of it, anyway.

That awesomely strange cartoon, of course, introducing to the universe the intriguing Boba Fett. Some (very little, admittedly) of the domestic wookiee stuff. (And the Stan Winston wookie suits are fantastic and full of character.) Mark Hamill's heavy makeup. Harrison Ford, trying to stay in character and keep a straight face amid the nonsense. And I genuinely enjoy Bea Arthur's musical number - and whoever thought I'd admit that?

The less said about Carrie Fisher's singing, on the other hand, the better.

When the only Star Wars was Star Wars, (and the Marvel comics) even this bizarro Seventies artifact was something to look forward to and even celebrate. Have yourselves a happy (belated) Life Day and may the Force be with you, Star Kids!

Trek Into Space History

On this day in 1976, NASA's prototype space shuttle Enterprise was rolled out of its assembly facility in Southern California and displayed before a crowd of several thousand. Among those in attendance were most of the officers of Star Trek's starship NCC-1701, including Leonard Nimoy, future Internet superstar George Takei, an apparently sleepy DeForest Kelly, and a gloriously bearded Jimmy Doohan.

MAN FROM ATLANTIS: My Review From '77

Apparently, I was destined to author this blog. On a recent visit to my parents' house, my mom presented me with this recently unearthed, Junior High-era essay that I wrote in the Autumn of 1977, reviewing the Man From Atlantis television series. Attached to this grammatically-challenged document was a first place ribbon - so, obviously, this was written for some sort of classroom competition.

I think my grammar is slightly better these days, but I'm surprised at how otherwise familiar my writing style appears here. I'm also quite pleased at my note that the show had a lousy time slot; at 13, I was clearly reading enough TV Guides and Starlogs to understand the role of scheduling on a series' success or failure.

Re-post: My Enterprise Incident

I'm re-posting this article from 2011 because I actually found the photo mentioned in the story, and have updated the post accordingly. I also discovered that I had the year wrong - in the original post, I remembered these events taking place in 1976, but from the date stamped on the back of the photograph by the developer, it was actually the Spring of 1980.

Not my photo...

Back in the Spring of 1980, when I was 16 years-old, my family took a vacation trip to Washington D.C. with a side trip to the Amish country of Pennsylvania. I was particularly excited to visit the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum because I knew that the original U.S.S. Enterprise model, used in the filming of Star Trek, was on display there. Everything else about that trip was pretty much of secondary importance to me. What really mattered was getting to see that iconic starship with my own eyes.

Also not my picture...

Upon our arrival at the Air & Space Museum, I dragged my family right past the Spirit of St. Louis and the Wright Bros. plane - though I did stop briefly to examine the Apollo capsule they had on display - and headed for the "Life In The Universe?" exhibit, where, suspended from the ceiling, was the Enterprise in all her glory. With my little Kodak camera, I took almost a dozen photos of the starship, from just as many different angles, and marveled at being in the ship's presence. Eventually, my parents dragged me away, and I enjoyed the rest of my visit to the museum.

THIS is my photo!

Unfortunately, when I had my film developed after our trip, I discovered that the camera had jammed, leaving me with a single print - of a dozen superimposed images of the Enterprise from a dozen angles. Oddly, the camera worked fine before and after I tried to shoot the model. Hmmm....

 I understand that the Enterprise is still on display at the Air & Space Museum, although it's been repainted a few times and moved to the Gift Shop. One of these days, I hope to get back there and visit the great lady again....

The Second Coming of KING KONG (1976)

"He was the mystery and the magic in their lives. In a year, that'll be an island of burnt-out drunks."

I'm going to put my reputation (such as it is) on the line here and publicly state for the record that I do not believe that Dino DeLaurentis and John Guillermin's King Kong (1976) is quite as bad as everyone says it is.

The film retells the story of the 1933 movie, updating it to 1976. The satirical screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr, (Flash Gordon, 1980) includes references to the mid-Seventies energy crisis, the rising concern over the environment, "dope," and even Deep Throat! A young Rick Baker plays Kong in a truly remarkable ape suit, but unfortunately the process work is so poor (even for the era) that his achievement is severely undermined.

The musical score for the film, however, by Space: 1970 favorite, John Barry (The Black Hole, Starcrash) is outstanding and memorable, and Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange both give very good performances, no matter how badly their characters are written.

Perhaps the reason I'm so generous toward the movie is because my own history with it is so fraught with disappointments - none of which have anything to do with the movie itself.

It started with a comic book advertisement for a King Kong poster magazine, probably around February of '76, when I was eleven years old. It promised a "giant-sized poster" as well as articles detailing the history of Kong, from the original Thirties film (which I had not yet seen) to the forthcoming "blockbuster" remake. It cost $5, and I only got 25¢ a week in allowance. So I saved my allowance for a few weeks, and then begged my dad for an advance, which he grudgingly granted. Then I had my mother convert my change to a $5 bill, which I placed in an envelope with the filled-out order coupon, and then sat back to eagerly await my King Kong poster mag.

You can see where this is going, right?

As the weeks passed, my eagerness metamorphosed into anxiety as I checked the mailbox every day and never found my copy of the magazine waiting for me. Finally, I went to my mother and expressed my concern, and that's when I was enlightened as to the dangers of sending cash through the mail. If she'd known why I wanted that $5 bill, she would have written me a check instead, but no - I was being all grown-up and buying something expensive (!) for myself, and hadn't told her why I wanted the money.

Flash-forward to December. All summer and autumn, I'd been seeing King Kong on the cover of virtually every magazine that I (Dynamite, Cracked) or my parents (People, Time) read. The spectacular John Berkey poster art was everywhere. My mother bought me an illustrated paperback novelization of the 1933 Kong film. There was no way I was going to miss this cinematic event.

Except, of course, when you're twelve, you really have no say in such things.

My parents were going on a snowmobile vacation in Canada that Christmas week, and my sister and I were left in the care of my older cousin Jayne. Which was fine; we loved Jayne. She was an adult, but not "old," if you know what I mean, and she always seemed to "get" me and my interests. Before my parents had left, I had extracted from my mother permission to have Jayne take me to see King Kong at the local 6-screen multiplex (the Waterville Cinema Center), and I got extremely excited about it, counting the hours and minutes until we'd get to the theater.

The day finally arrived. Jayne bundled my younger sister and I up in our heavy winter coats, scarves and hats and loaded us into the car. I was restless in my seat, eager to get to the show. When we arrived at the theater, Jayne noticed from the marquee that Kong was - oh no! - rated PG.

PG.

Yeah, sure, it's laughable now, but this was 1976, and Jayne was uncomfortable taking 12-year old me and my 10-year old sister to a PG film without my parents' permission. Never mind that I had permission - she was certain that my mother hadn't been aware of the film's "adult nature," and took us to see the only G-rated film at the theater that week. Even then, I was screwed - apparently Disney hadn't gotten an animated re-release out that year; instead, we were dragged to a showing of In Search of Noah's Ark, a tedious, Sunn Classics religious "documentary."

As we know, deLauerentis' Kong wasn't a blockbuster. It wasn't really a flop, either, but with the money that Paramount had spent promoting it, and the fact they'd had to turn over the foreign rights to the film to Universal (a story I'll tell one of these days), it fell far short of their Jaws-like expectations. Fans of the original RKO Kong - and most critics - derided the film for its tongue-in-cheek tone and its then-contemporary setting, and it garnered a generally bad reputation among fans of of genre cinema for decades to come.

I finally saw Kong a year or two later, on a portable television on a rainy camping trip to Canada. The reception was poor, the image was small, panned, scanned, and B&W, there were edits and commercials... but I finally saw it. Of course, I've seen it many times since, and over the years my appreciation of the film has risen and fallen with my perspective. These days, I tend toward liking it.

The 1976 Kong  is not a classic. It's not even a particularly good movie. But I would argue that there's a lot in there to appreciate, and for those of us who remember the era, it's a pretty good time capsule of what the world was like in the mid-Seventies.

Books In The Basement

So... the other night I was poking around in my parents' basement and found a box of books that I thought were long lost and/or I'd forgotten I had. In the first category, was my near-mint first printing of Donald Glut's Empire Strikes Back novelization from the Spring of 1980 and nearly a dozen volumes of The Best Of Trek - a series of paperbacks published by Signet Books that collected fan-written Star Trek articles from G.B. Love's seminal fanzine, Trek. In the "forgotten I ever had" category was the fourteenth and final Battlestar Galactica paperback from Berkley Books, Surrender The Galactica!

That latter discovery was especially fortuitous, because, as I've noted elsewhere on this blog, I've been slowly filling in my collection of Berkley Galactica titles, buying them piecemeal from various online dealers, and Surrender has proven to be the priciest of the books in good (or better) condition. So, what a pleasant surprise to discover I already owned a copy - and in like-new condition!

As a Star Kid, I didn't collect a lot of toys/action figures - I had model kits - but, being a voracious reader, I did collect a lot of books and magazines. All these years later, it's still the books that really spark my nostalgia and the only Space: 1970 "collectibles" that I still hunt down and buy.

The Interplanetary U.F.O. Mystery Ship

My best friend in elementary school was named Robert. He was an only child, and his parents were divorced. Needless to say, he got a lot of the toys and model kits that I desperately wanted and never had. Among them was AMT's "Interplanetary U.F.O. Mystery Ship," which was, undeniably, the coolest starship model that wasn't actually based on a TV show or movie. And it glowed in the dark.

Man, I coveted that model. AMT put its picture on the boxes of the Star Trek kits and as I watched my Enterprise nacelles droop on their pylons, or the neck of my Klingon battle cruiser sag under the weight of the command "bubble," I'd look at that picture and wish I was building that ship. What graceful lines, what implied power... and no damned pylons! (Let me be clear: I was thrilled to have those Trek models; I just wasn't a good enough model builder to assemble them correctly, and I knew it.)

I didn't know then that it was a slightly modified re-issue of a 60's kit called the Leif Ericson Galactic Cruiser, nor that it was actually designed by Matt Jeffries, designer of Star Trek's own U.S.S. Enterprise. All I knew is that it was an awesome-looking spaceship model, and that I really wanted one of my own to build and hang from my ceiling on fishing line.

Well, now I do. Or soon will, anyway, when the kit I ordered from Round 2 Models shows up here, hopefully in time for Christmas. Thanks to my mother-in-law's holiday largesse, I was finally able to score one of these awesome model kits (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) for myself. Round 2 also offers the non-glow-in-the-dark Leif Ericson, but I wanted the one that most closely resembled the 1976 version I remember.

Of course, now comes the hard part: finding time to build it... and then, somewhere to display it when I'm done. Or I could just put it into storage with all the other unbuilt model kits I've bought over the last ten years....

The Space: 1970 Holiday Wishbook

It's the first of December! Time to crack open the family Sears or J.C. Penney Holiday Wishbook catalog and start planning your list for Santa. Lots of Mego action figures, maybe a model kit or two, a radio-controlled TWIKI... and a "Space Case" to carry your figures around in.

Here are some of the most eagerly-desired holiday gifts of the 1970s.... which ones did you have under the tree?

You can find more Space: 1970 Wishbook memories HERE and HERE.

Post #600 - Same As The First

This marks my 600th post since I started this blog on the first of November, 2009. Since that time, the readership of this site has grown to then-inconceivable size, and I still can't quite believe that anyone cares enough to stop by here regularly to read my silly remembrances and ramblings. But a surprising number of you folks do, and I thank you. To commemorate this (and because I obviously missed recognizing my 500th post), here's... a rerun. The very first post I wrote for this blog, which I guess you can look at as a reaffirmation/re-statement of my intentions with this site.. Here's to the next 600!

The Good Stuff.

If I had been born five or ten years earlier, I most certainly would have been a "Monster Kid," haunting the local newstand for the latest issue of Famous Monsters Of Filmland, scouring the TV Guide listings for Creature Features or Shock Theater showings, and clumsily building Aurora model kits of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and Quasimodo.

As it turned out, I didn't become a "Monster Kid" until I was nearly 30.

I was born in 1965. By the time I was five or six years old, the monster fad of the 60s had mostly faded away. The Groovie Goolies were still rockin' on Saturday morning, but I was more interested in the Star Trek cartoon (from the same studio), and, when I could find them, reruns of the live-action Trek.

By the time I was ten, I had already collected numerous Star Trek books - James Blish and Alan Dean Foster's short story adaptations, The Making of, The Concordance, The New Voyages, The Technical Manual. Then, one of our local stations starting airing Space: 1999. I loved it, and poured over the television listings for more sci-fi. The Planet of the Apes movies, TV series and cartoons, Logan's Run. Then, a year or so later -- Star Wars.

Christmas '78 I received three record albums - my first ever - the Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Battlestar Galactica soundtrack LPs. I started spending my allowance on Starlog and Fantastic Films magazines. I had model kits of all the Star Wars, Galactica and Buck Rogers space ships. I bought the movie novelizations and would use my old cassette recorder to make audio recordings of my favorite sci-fi TV shows.

From the newspaper, I clipped out movie advertisements for Message From Space, The Black Hole and Alien -- and pasted them in a photo album along with TV Guide ads for Galactica (painted by Frank Frazetta!), Quark, and Buck Rogers... and telefilms like The Martian Chronicles and Brave New World.

I was a nut for anything sci-fi, and back then, it wasn't cool. I took massive amounts of abuse from my peers. If I was caught with a Star Trek paperback in school by a my classmates, it was all but guaranteed that it would be shredded by lunch. I was called all sorts of things -- most of them pretty awful.

But I had my magazines and audio cassettes and paperback novelizations and my model kits and comic books... and somehow I survived.

This blog is devoted to those science fiction films and shows that were such a large part of my childhood. I loved those programs, and still do today. In fact, I enjoy them as much now as I ever did, and prefer them over most modern genre product. (Guess which Battlestar I think is the better one?) I still admire the handcrafted model spaceships and stop-motion animated monsters (you won't ever find the word "cheesy"used to describe those effects here!), the gallant space heroes and sizzling space babes, the comic relief robots (Twiki! Peepo!) and the sense of wonder those shows stirred in me.

I don't expect that I'll be posting to this blog often. In fact, many of the initial posts will probably be revised versions of pieces that I've written before that appeared elsewhere. But when I do feel like writing about one of those childhood favorite space operas, I'll be doing it here instead of at one of my other sites.

Journey with me back to when the future was...fun!

Fourth Coolest Toy Ever: Mego STAR TREK Communicators

When I was in fifth or sixth grade (circa 1975-76), my pal Mark Usher and I formed a short-lived Star Trek "club." There were four of us in all, as I remember, and once a week, we'd all go over to Mark's house after school and basically play Star Trek all afternoon. He lived on an old farm, and his parents cleaned out an old outbuilding for us to use as a clubhouse - or, in our case, "starship." His father even made a sign that said "U.S.S. Enterprise" and placed it over the door. (I vaguely recall that he misspelled it somehow, but I could be misremembering.)

His mother was an artsy-craftsy sort, and she wanted to make sure that we weren't getting into trouble, so she actually created Trek-themed projects for us to do. We made plywood "control panels" for our "ship" - including a "transporter console" with sliding levers (wide beads on strings) - which Mark's father mounted on the walls of the shack. We made uniforms out of appropriately colored tee-shirts, which his mother helped us draw insignias on with fabric paints, and we made papier-mâché planets, which we suspended from the ceiling of our clubhouse/starship with fishing line.

But mostly, we role-played being crew members of the Enterprise, and explored the alien cornfields and woods on the Usher property. We kept in touch with the Mego Star Trek Communicators, which were - as the advertising proudly exclaimed, "real, working walkie-talkies!" But unlike the other walkie-talkies we had as kids, these had flip-up lids, just like the ones on TV. Of course, they were considerably larger than their television counterparts, colored blue, and had telescoping antennae - but they worked.

If you didn't wander too far apart, anyway.

Mark also had the "Command Communications Console," which was a nicely Trek-styled base set tuned to the same CB frequency, and the only actually working piece of equipment in our ramshackle starship. It didn't get used much, as I recall, because no one wanted to be the Communications Officer and stay behind "on the ship" while the rest went exploring.

For those keeping score, the coolest 70s toy ever was the Mattel Space: 1999 Eagle Transporter. The second-coolest toy of the Space: 1970 era was Kenner's 18" Alien. And the third was Kenner's Bionic Bigfoot from The Six Million Dollar Man.

In the Beginning: The Enterprise

It is the end of an era, as NASA's final space shuttle mission has been completed. To commemorate, let's look back at the very first shuttle in the program - the Enterprise - and it's official unveiling on September 17th, 1976. Originally intended to be christened the Constitution, a write-in campaign to President Gerald Ford by Star Trek fans requested that the new orbiter be named after the television starship. Although Ford did not acknowledge the fan campaign officially, the president - who, during World War II, had served on the naval aircraft carrier USS Monterey, sister ship to the Navy's USS Enterprise - overrode NASA officials. Most of Star Trek's main cast, and creator Gene Roddenberry (pictured above), attended the public debut of the vessel.

Although the shuttle Enterprise was not actually equipped for spaceflight (a fact which rather irked Roddenberry, as he had hoped that the Enterprise name would be tagged to America's first genuine spaceship), having no engines nor heat shield, and was built solely as an atmospheric test vehicle, the craft was an important step forward in space exploration during a decade when that still seemed important to our future. I remember clearly the event above and took great pride at the time in being a Star Trek fan. It's a shame that as a country, we've seemed to lost our passion for exploring the final frontier....

FAMOUS MONSTERS #170

As I've said many times, I was a Starlog kid. Until my late teens, I had little-to-no interest in horror movies (although I love them now), so Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine wasn't even on my radar. However, this issue - #170, cover-dated January 1981, so I probably picked it up in November or December of 1980 - did catch my eye. This was the first Famous Monsters I ever bought, and pretty much the only one I ever bought off the newsstand, although I've purchased various other issues from back-issue bins over the last couple of decades.

It's not difficult to see what caught my attention, with Battle Beyond The Stars and Flash Gordon taking up three-quarters of the cover real estate. (You know, I've still never seen The Awakening.) I can even remember where I bought it - at the LaVerdiere's drugstore at the JFK Plaza in Waterville, Maine. That store (along with the rest of the chain) is long gone now, but I still have this magazine.

Anyway - on a tangentially related note - one more week until Battle Beyond The Stars gets its HD release from Shout! Factory. I can't wait....

My Enterprise Incident

Back in 1976 or so, when I was 11 years-old, my family took a vacation trip to Washington D.C. with a side trip to the Amish country of Pennsylvania. I was particularly excited to visit the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum because I knew that the original U.S.S. Enterprise model, used in the filming of Star Trek, was on display there. Everything else about that trip was pretty much of secondary importance to me. What really mattered was getting to see that fabulous starship with my own eyes.

Upon our arrival at the Air & Space Museum, I dragged my family right past the Spirit of St. Louis and the Wright Bros. plane - though I did stop briefly to examine the Apollo capsule they had on display - and headed for the "Life In The Universe?" exhibit, where, suspended from the ceiling, was the Enterprise in all her glory. With my little Kodak camera, I took almost a dozen photos of the starship, from just as many different angles, and marveled at being in the ship's presence. Eventually, my parents dragged me away, and I enjoyed the rest of my visit to the museum.

Unfortunately, when I had my film developed after our trip, I discovered that the camera had jammed, leaving me with a single print - of a dozen superimposed images of the Enterprise from a dozen angles. Oddly, the camera worked fine before and after I tried to shoot the model. Hmmm....

Anyway, that's why this post is illustrated with pix I found online.

 The Enterprise is still on display at the Air & Space Museum, although it's been repainted a few times and moved to the Gift Shop. One of these days, I hope to get back there and visit the great lady again....

Who Goes There?

Photos From the Vault

Space: 1970 now has over 250 followers here on Blogger and more than twice that number over on its Facebook page, and I've been wondering lately about you guys. Who are you? How old are you? How in hell did you find this blog?

In fact, I'd be most appreciative if you'd take a moment, post a comment, and tell me those things. I don't need to know your real name (unless you wish to give it), but I would be interested to find out a bit about those of you who stop by here regularly to read my ramblings. What's your favorite Space: 1970-era TV show? Movie? What's your best 70s sci-fi memory? Were you the only Star Kid in your town, or did you have friends to share your interests?

...and do any girls read Space: 1970?