Fans of Captain Pike’s “old is new again” Enterprise from the second season of Star Trek: Discovery got their wish Thursday as Anson Mount’s captain, new Number One actor Rebecca Romijn and new Science Officer Spock actor Ethan Peck stepped into roles long familiar to the Star Trek fan base. The title is apt: Strange New Worlds, taking a line from William Shatner’s original introductory dialogue for Captain James T. Kirk from the very beginning of Gene Roddenberry’s vision, is handed off once again, in a series opener drawn from the pilot for the first episode of Star Trek filmed way back in 1964, and that darned old Prime Directive.
Which pair of characters exemplifies the best friendship in all of the Star Trek franchise? Who do you think made the best BFFs? How about Geordi and Data? Or better yet, who represents friendship–its ups and downs–the best? Like Tuvok and Neelix? Kirk and Bones? Or frenemies Bones and Spock? Maybe for you its Worf and Riker, or Kes and the EMH. Or Naomi Wildman and Seven of Nine, or Quark and Odo. Of course there’s no right answer, but writers Robb Pearlmann and Jordan Hoffman explore the subject in a very fanboy conversation in the new gift book The Star Trek Book of Friendship. The best part? It’s filled with new artwork by the best Star Trek artist in the franchise’s 55 years, celebrated poster and comic book painter J.K. Woodward. It’s available for pre-order now here at Amazon.
The most infamous, notorious, and maybe most beloved of toymakers, Marty Abrams returned to the toy biz in 2018 (after a stint in prison for fraud and the bankruptcy of his famous toy company–get the whole story on Netflix’sThe Toys That Made Us). The company he made famous–MEGO–gave kids a memorable 1970s line of licensed 8-inch (1:9 scale) action figures, and it has been adding more figures–often in limited supplies–the past few years. Abrams has pulled in a diverse cross-section of licensed properties to get his foot back in the door with kids and collectors. Look around at Wal-Mart and Target and you’ll find an eclectic mix of pop culture nostalgia, some figures resembling sculpts and costumes from the original MEGO figures, others representing characters that may leave you scratching your head, wondering who has been eagerly waiting to see this show in an action figure line. Finally it seems MEGO may be giving its licensors the look they deserve design-wise, as you’ll find with the Young Frankenstein and Universal Monsters line. Check out some of the new and recent figures available below.
Our borgBest of 2021 list continues today with the Best Books of 2021. If you missed them, check out our reviews of the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2021here, the Best Movies of 2021 here, and the Best in TV 2021here. And we wrap-up the year with our additions to the borg Hall of Fame tomorrow. We reviewed more than 100 books that we recommended to our readers this year, and some even made it onto our favorites shelf. We don’t publish reviews of books that we read and don’t recommend, so this shortlist reflects only this year’s cream of the crop. So let’s get going!
Best Sci-Fi, Best Tie-In Novel – Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward (Gallery Books). An engaging read and fun-filled start to a new trilogy, full of great throwbacks to all the Star Trek series, with several surprise characters and incorporated events, and a great update to Wesley Crusher. Runner-up: Star Trek: Picard–Rogue Elements(Gallery Books), by John Jackson Miller, provided a great story for a newer character, pulling into the mix the future of some familiar characters including the classic villain Kivas Fajo.
The thing about being a kid in the 1970s and 1980s was that your view of television history is skewed by the advent of reruns. Ron Howard and Clint Howard are much older than me, and yet because of reruns of The Andy Griffith Show and Gentle Ben, and the original Star Trek, I feel like I grew up along with, or maybe only a little bit behind the characters these actors played at a young age. So for anyone who grew up with the Howards on television or those that only think they did by way of reruns, you’re in for a fun insight into the life of these brothers behind the scenes in their new bookThe Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family, available now here at Amazon. Long before Ron would direct Solo: A Star Wars Story and Apollo 13 and Clint would populate all of Ron’s movies and act in most of the Star Trek series as characters from Balok to Muk, a young couple in New York tried to make it in the movie biz.
For nearly 55 years sci-fi fans have been watching and re-watching Star Trek’s original series and rebuilding futuristic components from the show in their own homes. In the 1960s it was easier, as many of the components that defined the early look of Star Trek were simply “found objects”–items existing in the real world that could be repurposed to create a vision of the future. Midcentury Modernism was the artistic movement that coincided with the inception of the worldbuilding for Star Trek, and fans Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire chronicled some of the Star Trek creators’ use of those designs in their new coffee table book,Star Trek: Designing the Future–How Midcentury Modernism Shaped Our View of the Future. Take a look at a preview of this introduction to the artistic movement and the early Star Trek design aesthetic below, courtesy of publisher Insight Editions.
Sometimes you wish you could go back in time, to decades past where life was simpler and you could grab a magazine at the local bookstore or grocery store rack to get a fix from your favorite movies or TV series. Back in the 1970s and 1980s sometimes that meant Starlog, Starburst, or Space Wars, Fantastic Films Magazine, or even mags aimed at the younger set, like Dynamite. Then publishers targeted fandoms with The Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine for Star Wars, and Star Trek Communicator all sprouting out of fanzines. Titan Magazines has been publishing both Star Wars Insider and Star Trek Magazine–soon to become Star Trek Explorer–for decades, and it’s the articles from the Star Trek mags that fans can “read again for the first time” as Titan launches its best magazine-sourced overview yet from the big franchises, Star Trek Villains, now available for pre-order here. What is your favorite Star Trek villain? Check out a preview below courtesy of Titan.
One of the greatest–and most widely popular–chapters of the 55 years of Star Trek is coming back to the theaters this summer. The 35th anniversary of the film that expanded Star Trek beyond sci-fi fandom, 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home hits theaters again across the country in a limited release as Paramount Pictures partners with Fathom Events. It was all about having fun while fighting for Earth’s very survival with the beloved crew of the starship Enterprise, the film that wrapped up a trilogy of sorts after the death and rebirth of Spock. It’s one of the best-received time travel movies of all time, and it sparked a generation of environmentalists who would actually take heed of the film’s cautionary story to go on to save endangered whales in real life.
It really has all the mirrors, at least as far as Star Trek: The Next Generation is concerned–the TV series that never got around to an official Mirror Universe episode–although a few episodes came close. For fans of Jean-Luc Picard, Data, Worf, Riker, Troi, Crusher, and LaForge, few efforts have come as close to original episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation since the series finale aired 27 years ago as IDW Publishing’s continuing adventures of the crew in the pages of the comic books. J.K. Woodward painted a brilliant new story of the Star Trek: The Next Generation era with writers David Tipton and Scott Tipton in IDW Publishing’s nostalgic Mirror Broken series, and Woodward’s work is among the best of the past decade. Known already for his beautiful illustrations in the Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover miniseries Assimilation², the IDW adaptation of Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever, also with the Tipton brothers, and the covers of the Star Trek/Green Lantern crossover miniseries, Woodward brought his jaw-dropping photo-real paintings to Mirror Broken–providing poster-worthy interior artwork for every page of the series. Woodward not only gave fans their first look at the ships and places in the Mirror universe of the TNG years, he created the never-before-seen look of each character for the franchise.
J.K. Woodward homage to the NextGen crew, Mirror style, based on the 10th anniversary Continuing Mission photo.
The latest of the in-universe Star Trek biography books takes fans of the franchise back to Star Trek Voyager in The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway. The captain made famous by Kate Mulgrew takes readers through key life events that led to her role as one of Starfleet’s greatest leaders, and she provides her recollections on seven years in the Delta Quadrant. For fans looking for a trip through memory lane and the key encounters of the crew on Star Trek Voyager, all in that calming and authoritative voice, they will find it here.
