DarenDoc’s Slightly Nifty Musings Inc.

Thank goodness for the internet!  Thanks to a helpful reader, I’ve been given the solution to the question I posed at the beginning of the month… What book did this illustration that I have come from??

From the 1976 UK printing of Star Trek: The New Voyages - Corgi Books

The answer is:   STAR TREK : THE NEW VOYAGES by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath… this version was published in paperback in the UK by Corgi Books in 1976.   Here is the cover:

The UK Paperback Cover... at last.

Many thanks to blog reader Glenn Harrison in the UK for this trip into his memory… thanks to him I was able to pinpoint the edition on Amazon.uk and a decent copy is on its way now… it will get an honored place next to the original art…  awesomeness!

Back when Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, there was intended to be a special double issue of the great “Cinefantastique” magazine highlighting this release, devoting stories to the development of Phase II, the cancelling of the Paramount TV network, the other two aborted Movie Projects, and finally, the development of Trek TMP…  including script, visual effects, actors… the whole she-bang.

Well… for some reason, and I never have been able to determine exactly why…  That issue never surfaced… and all the material was sent to the four winds… usually to wind up with their creators.  Much like V’Ger.

The intended cover was designed to be a dramatic pose of the new starship Enterprise blasting out of the convines of a standard TV set, to boldly go beyond…  

The artist had the original painting for years… and a couple of years ago, he put it up for sale.

And that’s where I came in.

Seeing that I already had a small collection of original Star Trek artwork… in prints and paintings (you already know of one of them)… I decided that this painting should come and live with me.

So I got it.

And here it is:

The Cinefantastique Cover that never was...

Enjoy.

My living room has a battle going on in it…

Our Lord Vader

Dr. Jones

Battle of Titans

This living room isn’t big enough for the both of us…

The National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. features a well loved visitor moored in the basement gift shop.  It’s a little over 11 feet long, and the only remaining paint that is original is on the top of the saucer section…   If you have a chance, go visit her.

[View with PicLens]

This was never in the show...

When I was about 6 years old in Suburban New Jersey, we had a “five and ten” store on the bustling Elmora Ave. in Elizabeth.  I would get to go there sometimes with my mom or dad, and it was the place where my fandom and collecting bug was caught.  It was in this store that I first saw this toy… the “Star Trek Tracer Gun”…  The toy was neat… (and a little bit dangerous)… and it had a picture of the REAL Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock on it…  which was a bit of an oddity to me, since I was used to seeing them animated on Saturday Morning TV.  The picture of Spock disturbed me… he was strange looking, and his pointed ears fascinated me… there were almost too many details to take in.  I must have gotten one of my parents to get this for me… and one afternoon I found myself doing target practice with it into a box at one end of my room…  but the package was what I got the most fun out of.  I had a big pad of tracing paper, and I put the cardboard package under a sheet, and began tracing out the pictures on the box… especially the logo.  I must have traced that Star Trek logo a dozen times before I got it right.  (Long time readers will remember an early picture of the Enterprise I drew when I was 7 which included the Trek logo… for the longest time, I thought the proper way to draw it was with the red lines in the middle, as it shows on this box).

The five and ten store was ALSO when I first got a glimpse of the AMT Enterprise model… but that’s another story.