Star Trek Discussions: Star Trek (1966-1969, NBC and CTV)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday! Welcome to "Star Trek Discussions" where I will be talking about every Star Trek movie and TV show that came out between 1966 and 2005. With this blog focusing on nostalgia I figured that both "Star Trek Discussions" and "Star Wars Discussions" would only cover the franchises up to 2005 as that year would be see the end of a particular era for both franchises. So, for our first installment of "Star Trek Discussions" I'll be covering the original 1966 television series, Star Trek or Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as it's primarily known as today. Let's get into it.

Star Trek originally premiered on September 6th, 1966 on CTV, which is actually two days before the series premiered in the United States. I know, people tend to go with the American date as the show's official premiere, but nonetheless, it premiered in Canada first, for whatever reason. The series debuted with "The Man Trap" after going through two pilots, "The Cage", which was later edited into a two part episode in the first season called "The Menagerie", and then aired on it's own in 1988 during a writer's strike which delayed the premiere of season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which aired as the third episode of the series two weeks after the premiere.

The original pilot starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, but when the series officially premiered, Hunter had been replaced by William Shatner, a Canadian actor who played the captain, who is now known as Captain James T. Kirk. The series also starred Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, DeForest Kelley as Doctor McCoy, James Doohan as Scotty, George Takei as Sulu, Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura, Walter Koenig as Chekov, Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman Rand, and Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel. 

Despite Lucille Ball supporting the show, as her company, Desilu, was producing it, NBC very quickly canceled the show after its first season. They relented, but attempted to cancel it again after the second season. By this point Paramount Pictures had bought Desilu, and they had the show's production forced on them. Star Trek also had abysmal ratings. Many fans of the show blame it on NBC's decision to move the show to Friday nights at 10 o'clock, but the show's ratings weren't great to begin with in comparison to other shows that were on at the time, like The Monkees, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie.

Fandom wasn't anything like it is now. Unlike with Star Wars, which 20th Century Fox had marketed and promoted at Science Fiction conventions, Gene Roddenberry and Desilu didn't have that avenue available to them for Star Trek. Starlog Magazine didn't even exist yet. They had to rely on NBC's marketing department and word of mouth. Including word of mouth from Sci-Fi authors such as Isaac Asimov. And the show did have fans. In fact the hardcore fans like Bjo Trimble and her husband, John, were the ones that kept the series going even after NBC tried to cancel it twice before succeeding in 1969. The fans made fanzines, which were basically fan magazines because you didn't have magazines dedicated to a TV show in the '60s. They wrote stories and campaigned to keep the show on the air for as long as possible.

Television was also vastly different from what it is now. There were only three networks in the U.S. at the time, NBC, ABC, and CBS. Fox didn't exist yet. Cable channels like HBO, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, SYFY Channel, and Cartoon Network also didn't exist. Neither did first run syndication, or syndication at all. So you had to go through the networks to get your show on the air, and you were lucky if a network bought your concept letalone made it into a pilot. 

 

While merchandising wasn't a thing for TV shows in the '60s, it had been done for movies to a limited degree, as well as for characters such as Mickey Mouse, Zorro, Davy Crockett, Superman, and Batman. Star Trek got a comic book series published by Gold Key Comics, a publisher responsible for a lot of comics based on TV shows and movies. The comic wasn't very good. The people producing the comic had never seen the show and they didn't have very much to go on in terms of reference material. In fact in the first issue or two Uhura is a blond, white, woman rather than the delightful black woman that she is. They also took some liberties with the interior of the Enterprise and things like the transporter, shuttlecraft, and McCoy's medical instruments, turning them into generic versions that you might see in an old Sci-Fi serial from the '40s. 

A series of novelizations of the show were written by author, James Blish, and published by Bantam Books. These aren't the full length novelizations that we'd start to see with the movies in the '80s. Instead Blish would take five or six episodes and condense them into a single volume with a total of twelve volumes published across the span of the show's lifetime.

A series of original novels for Star Trek were published in the '70s, starting with Blish's novel, Spock Must Die! in 1970. I had a few of these novels when I was a teenager, but I ended up getting rid of them when I did my huge physical media purge in 2014-2015-2016 in preparation for the move, in favour of keeping the novels published by Pocket Books that I happened to enjoy more. 

Star Trek had toys as well, though they didn't start coming out until 1974, though AMT did have a line of buildable models of the Enterprise, the shuttlecraft Galileo, a Romulan Bird-of-Prey, the Bridge of the Enterprise, and a Klingon Battle Cruiser while the show was on the air. The toys were made by Mego and came in three categories: figures, playsets, and roleplay items. The figures included Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, a Klingon, Uhura, and other aliens from the show like the Gorn, a Talosian, a member of the Cheron race from the season 3 episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", a Romulan, an Andorian, and the Mugato from the season 2 episode, "A Private Little War".

 

Mego also produced several playsets to use the figures in. The first was the Bridge playset, which doesn't look anything like the Bridge on the show. The second was called Mission to Gamma VI, which is actually playset of Gamma Trianguli VI from the season 2 episode, "The Apple", complete with the Vaal computer system. The third was the Transporter, which I first saw in an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Mego also produced a couple of roleplaying items. They were the communicator and the tricorder. Again, this was in the '70s so the amount of toys produced for the show weren't as abundant as they would be in the '90s. Trust me, we'll get there later on in this series.

Star Trek would be released on VHS in the early to mid '80s, as well as again in the '90s. The show also had CED releases in the early '80s, as well as Laserdisc releases before Paramount began releasing the series on DVD in 1999. Again, we'll get there.

While I do feel that Star Trek is outdated and out of step with the rest of the franchise that spawned from its ashes following its cancellation in 1969, I really do enjoy the show. Spock has always been one of my favourite characters, as has Doctor McCoy. I like Kirk, but I actually like him better on Strange New Worlds. The Enterprise sets are so '60s, and yet Sickbay's medical monitors actually are the basis for today's modern monitors above each bed in the hospitals. And of course the communicators are the basis for our original flip open cell phones that we had in the late '90s and the 2000s. One of which I still have today. Plus, as I mentioned Star Trek spawned an entire franchise that has endured for nearly 60 years.

That's going to be it for me for this week. I'll be back next week with more blog posts. I'm not sure what my post on Wednesday is going to be yet but I have a few options. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My '90s and 2000s Experience: Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008, YTV and Nickelodeon)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be taking a quick look at the 2005 Nickelodeon animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender as I just finished watching the entire series from start to finish for the very first time. I'm placing it under the "My '90s and 2000s Experience" banner, because I did see one episode on YTV when I was visiting my grandparents at the cottage one summer sometime between 2005 and 2008. I can't tell you what episode it was, but it was probably a season 2 or a an early season 3 episode because I remember Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee being in it. Anyways, let's get into it.

Aside from that one episode that I caught on YTV sometime in the mid to late 2000s, I completely missed this show when it was originally airing. I was already 18 years old when Avatar started in 2005 and about a year and a half away from graduating from high school, so I wasn't watching what was current children's animated television shows at that time. I had already dropped off Pokemon and Digimon and I wasn't watching Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, The Batman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), even though I'd seen a good chunk of the first season of all of those shows except for JLU. Avatar began the same year as Power Rangers SPD, and I really wasn't sure about the new season of Power Rangers after how amazing I thought Power Rangers Dino Thunder was.

Fast forward to about seven or eight years ago and Brad lent me the complete series DVD set for Avatar. I didn't make it past the third episode. I felt the show was too juvenile and formulaic for my tastes, and at the time I just wasn't into that sort of thing. Especially because it was heavily inspired by Anime, and aside from the ones I grew up with and more recent ones like Haganai and One Punch Man, I'm not a big Anime fan and generally don't care for that style of storytelling.

So then, during the pandemic, but after lockdown was over, I asked Brad if I could borrow the show again, because I really wanted to watch the show from start to finish and see if I'd like it now that I'm almost a decade older than I was when I first tried to watch it from start to finish. Unfortunately, he'd lent it to someone already and hadn't gotten it back yet. That was fine. Brad finally lent it to me a few weeks ago, during our most recent hangout. I'd completely forgotten that I'd asked if I could borrow the DVD again, because other things like Disney+ shows, my VHS collection and my DVD collection has kept me occupied. Especially because I've watched movies for my guest appearances on The VHS Club Video Podcast, and the focus of my blog has been stuff I grew up with in the '90s and early 2000s, so I haven't thought about watching much from 2005 and onward, unless it's brand new like the most recent episode of the current Star Trek shows, Only Murders in the Building, Superman & Lois, and the Disney+ Star Wars shows, minus Andor and The Bad Batch. 

But, I finally watched it, and while it was good, and I obviously watched the entire show, I still have the same problems that I had with it when I tried to watch it in 2017 or 2018. It's too juvenile for an older audience, but too mature at some points for the audience the show was aimed at back in 2005. Which was 6-11 year olds. Which, oddly enough, if Avatar: The Last Airbender came out when I was between the ages of 6 and 11, or I had been between the ages of 6 and 11 when the show began airing in 2005, I probably would loved it because of the voice cast. I mean, you have Mae Whitman as Katara, Dante Basco as Zuko, Mako (replaced by Greg Baldwin) as Iroh, Mark Hamill as Firelord Ozai, Grey Griffin/Grey DeLisle as Azula, and tons of guest stars such as George Takei, Rene Auberjonois, and Clancy Brown.

Speaking of Clancy Brown, the character he voiced turned out to be a bad guy. I saw it coming because Clancy Brown voiced a lot of villain characters in the '90s and 2000s, from Haakon, the leader of the Vikings, in Gargoyles to Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited to Savage Opress in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So naturally, if Clancy Brown is voicing a character, there's a good chance the character's gonna turn out to be a villain.

Because of Nickelodeon's requirement of a maximum of 22 episodes, and minimum of 20 episodes, per season, there were a lot of episodes that felt like filler. Kinda like Pokemon, where Aang, Sokka, and Katara, and then with Toph joining them in season 2, make a ton of stops on their journey to wherever they're going in each season (the North Pole in season 1, the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se in season 2, and then back and forth between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation in season 3) where they end up helping people, or getting stuck in a mystical swamp, and then they might fight Zuko, Azula, or whoever the Fire Nation General of the week was. You know, the usual deterrents.

Season 1 was good. It was interesting, but I didn't like any of the characters. Sokka was a jerk, Aang was annoying (he's 12 years old afterall), and Katara was that 2000s kids TV show girl that was in every show, whether it was a show on Nickelodeon or a show on The WB/The CW or UPN. Don't get me wrong, Katara was my favourite of the three main protagonists, but it was really difficult and took most of the season for me to like her. My favourite character the whole season was Zuko's uncle, Iroh, because he was hilarious but also really wise, even if Zuko didn't listen to him as often as he probably should've. Appa and Momo were great too.

Season 2 was my favourite season of the entire show, and the only season that I genuinely enjoyed. It started out rough, but once Toph was introduced in season 2, episode 6, that's when things started to pick up for me. And by the end of the season I was genuinely excited to see what was going to happen next, even as Team Avatar escaped from Ba Sing Se in the season finale.

Season 3 was the worst season for me. I found it so boring and even the two two part episodes that we got that season had dissatisfying cliffhangers that left me wishing the show would just end. Even the four part finale felt overbloated and dull until Part 3 where Zuko and Katara fight Azula, Sokka, Suki, and Toph fight the Fire Nation Army, and Aang fights Firelord Ozai...sorry, I mean Phoenix King Ozai because of course Mark Hamill voices a villain with delusions of grandeur. Because he's never done that before (I'm being sarcastic). I did like that Aang chose not to kill Ozai at the end, because way too often action shows like Avatar end with the hero killing the villain.

I also really liked how slowly they made Zuko's redemption arc. I was thoroughly prepared to be unimpressed because I thought he was going to turn against the Fire Nation in the season 2 finale, but he didn't, and I REALLY liked that. I also like that he didn't just simply join Aang and his friends in season 3. He had to work hard to earn everyone's trust. Especially Katara's, because of how things went between them in the season 2 finale.

I also got really tired of Katara and Toph bickering with each other after the first couple of episodes where they were at odds with each other. I get that you have to create conflict between characters when you're telling a story, but that trope of women or girls, depending on what age group you're writing about, have to be at each other's throats all the time right? (again, I'm being sarcastic). 

Overall, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a really good show, it's just not for me. I couldn't connect with any of the characters, though Iroh was my favourite character in the entire show, and season 2 was the only season I loved. Like I said, season 1 was fine though it took a long time to actually get the story started, but I just didn't enjoy season 3 at all besides the series finale, and not just because I had finally finished the show. 

Alright my friends that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday to talk about Star Trek, also known as Star Trek: The Original Series for the first in my Star Trek Discussions series. Until then have a great rest of your night and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Wars Discussions: Star Wars (1977)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So, initially I was planning on doing three Star Wars blog posts this month, one on Shadows of the Empire, one on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and one on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith since it's that movie's 20th Anniversary in two weeks. However, I decided to begin my Star Wars Discussions and Star Trek Discussions series of posts that I started under "My Star Wars Experience" and "My Star Trek Experience". These will be more of a chronological look at each franchise. So, today I'm taking a look at the movie that started it all, Star Wars, now mainly known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Let's get into it.

Following the release of his first feature film, THX 1138 in 1971, director George Lucas began working on a science fiction fantasy film influenced by science fiction serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, and science fiction novel such as Dune, called The Star Wars. However, he wouldn't get a studio to back the movie until 1973 when his second feature film, American Graffiti was released and was successful.

Star Wars is one of those movies that could've bombed as easily as it succeeded. During production of the movie, everybody working on it, including George, thought would fail. Whenever I've seen interviews about the franchise, Steven Spielberg is interviewed since he's a close friend of George's, and he usually says that he always thought the movie was going to be successful. Of course, I kinda take things like that with a grain of salt because it's only one person saying it, and he had nothing to do with the production of the movie. 

The movie was released on May 25th, 1977, and ended up making a total of $220 million at the domestic box office, which is about $1.14 billion in 2024 money. With the earnings from the international box office, the movie made a total of $314.4 million against an $11 million budget, making it the highest grossing film in North America at the time, replacing Spielberg's 1975 film, Jaws.

At this point, fandom was not what it is today. Science fiction conventions were just becoming a thing, with San Diego Comic-Con having only started in 1970, there was no internet, and merchandising for films wasn't really a thing yet. the Star Trek TV series had a few toys by MEGO, as well as some novels and a comic book series, but movies were never marketed with much more than some movie posters and maybe a comic book tie-in or novelization. Star Wars had everything.

 The first piece of merchandise to come out was the novelization by Alan Dean Foster (though the book credits George Lucas as the author of the book), which was released on November 12th, 1976, about six months before the movie had even come out. This novelization included scenes that were in the movie's script and had been filmed, but the visual effects weren't working or post-production was tight, so they couldn't finish the scene. Two of those scenes, the Jabba the Hutt scene, and the scene where Luke speaks to Biggs at the Rebel base, were restored for the Special Edition re-release in 1997. Luke's scenes with Biggs and his other friends remained on the cutting room floor, but were included in a CD-ROM release in the '90s, as well as deleted scenes on the Blu-ray release of the first six movies in 2011. The novel also has a prologue that gives an early backstory for the fall of the Old Republic and the rise of the Empire. This prologue was the first time the Emperor is given the name Palpatine, as none of the movies in the original trilogy of films ever refer to him by that name, only referring to him as the Emperor.

George Lucas also made a deal with Marvel Comics to publish a six issue comic book adaptation of the movie in the vein of Marvel's other science fiction properties such as the Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, and Captain Marvel.

Starting with issue #7 Marvel began publishing original Star Wars adventures set after the events of the movie. Issue 8 introduced a character named Jaxxon, who was a green space rabbit, who resembles Bucky O'Hare, and whose personality is a cross between Bugs Bunny and Rocket Raccoon. For decades Jaxxon was used as an example of how ridiculous the early Star Wars Expanded Universe was. Now, he's started to gain some respectability among Star Wars fans, and has begun appearing in comics again lately.

The movie also had a junior novelization in 1995. This is the one I owned when I was a kid. It included two extra scenes that aren't in the movie or in the main novelization. The first is Darth Vader beginning to board Leia's ship, and the second is Leia preparing to give the Death Star plans to Artoo as the Imperials board the ship.

There was a storybook which told a truncated version of movie.

Kenner released a line of action figures in 1978. They were supposed to be released in 1977, but production couldn't keep up with the demand, so the release was pushed back to Christmas 1978, a full year and a half after the movie came out in theaters. This toyline included all of the major characters from the movie, as well as background characters like the aliens found in the Cantina scene.

To go with the action figures, Kenner released a series of playsets including the Mos Eisley Cantina and the Death Star.

They also released a line of vehicles, including Luke's Landspeeder, Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, the regular TIE Fighter, the X-Wing Starfighter (pictured above), and the Millennium Falcon. All of which gave kids hours and hours of play as they didn't have the movie to watch at home.

While the movie did have a presence at the video arcade in the early '80s, it wouldn't recieve a home video game console release until 1990, which was a side scroller released on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Nintendo would re-release the game on the Super Nintendo in 1991. I loved playing this game growing up. I've never played the original game, but I'm assuming it's similar in that you could play as either Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, or Chewbacca and go through various levels until you reach the Death Star battle, which you fly an X-Wing in a more three dimensional level, similar to the polygram design of the arcade cabinet.

With the movie being such a big success, George Lucas commissioned Alan Dean Foster to write a sequel novel to tie fans over until the actual movie sequel, then only known as Star Wars II. This novel was originally commissioned to act as a novel sequel that could be adapted into a low budget movie sequel, should Star Wars be only a moderate success, or as a novel sequel if the movie bombed and novels were the only way George could finish his story. This novel was Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and it didn't include Han Solo, in case it got adapted into a movie and George couldn't get Harrison Ford back for the movie.

Not every Star Wars thing was successful. George decided to allow others to make their own thing set in the Star Wars Universe, and we ended up with The Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. It's so bad that it only aired once on CBS and has never been officially released on home video, though bootlegs do exist and the animated segment is available to watch on Disney+. Despite how bad it was, and despite George disowning it, the TV special was responsible for introducing us to Boba Fett, a character who was appearing in the movie sequel, in the animated segment produced by Nelvana Entertainment, a Canadian animation studio that would be responsible for giving us two full fledged animated Star Wars shows in 1985. It also gave us a glimpse of Kashyyyk, the homeworld of the Wookiees.

Star Wars got a home video release in 1982. This was how a lot people saw the movie as the theatrical re-releases came infrequently and by the mid '90s when I first saw the movie, there hadn't been a theatrical re-release since the movie's 10th Anniversary in 1987. Of course Star Wars has had numerous home video releases since then and I'll be talking about some of those releases another time.

Star Wars has come a long way since those early days. It's one of my favourite movies of all time because of how fun and exciting it is as a standalone movie, even if you take away everything that came after it in the franchise. I'm also thrilled that I got to be there for its revival in the '90s. I'm glad that I get to talk about it here on the blog this way. 

And that my friends is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Wednesday for my post on Avatar: The Last Airbender, the original 2005 animated series, as I'm halfway through season 3. A friend of mine let me borrow the complete series DVD boxset, and I've been watching through that these last few weeks. So I decided I'd come on here and talk about it. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: Star Wars Insider Magazine (1994-2006)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today, in spirit of this Sunday being May the 4th, a.k.a. Star Wars Day, I've decided to do another blog post on Star Wars Insider magazine. Last time I talked about this magazine, I went over the general history of the magazine from its humble beginnings as The Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine in 1987 to it celebrating its 200th issue in 2021. I've also talked about my personal history with the magazine as well as the very issue that I ever got back in the spring of 1999. This time I'm going to be going over 12 issues of the magazine that came out between 1994 and 2006, which covered the announcement of the Shadows of the Empire Multimedia Project that Lucasfilm put out in 1996, the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition releases, the Prequel Trilogy, and The New Jedi Order book series. So let's get into it!

The first issue of the magazine as Star Wars Insider was published in the fall of 1994, around the time George Lucas began writing The Phantom Menace. While the prequels had been announced the year before, and the Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine had increasingly been adding more Star Wars content to the publication since that announcement, this was the first issue where Star Wars was the sole focus of the magazine. 

Back in 1994 we didn't have the internet the way we do now. There was no official Star Wars website, no Wookieepedia, only message boards. There was no Disney+ or DVDs, Blu-rays or 4Ks. Star Wars Celebration wouldn't even exist until May 1999. There also wasn't Andor, The Mandalorian, or Ahsoka. The only way you could watch the movies and the two animated shows that were out at the time, Droids and Ewoks, were on VHS or on TV. In the case of the two cartoons, they were reruns, and those only happened in certain areas. So you were lucky if you got to watch those cartoons in the early to mid '90s, like I was as those two cartoons were my introduction to the Star Wars Universe. So this magazine was the only way to get news about the franchise, be it the novels, comics, video games, the Special Editions or the prequels themselves at this time. Yes, other publications such as Starlog, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair covered news about the movies, but not to the degree that Star Wars Insider did.

The very next issue announced the Shadows of the Empire project that would have everything except a movie. I'll be talking about this insane project in the very near future, but this was a way for Lucasfilm to gauge fans reaction to a new Star Wars project before the Special Editions came out the following year and before Episode I would be released in 1999, though at this point the plan was to release the movie in 1998, followed by Episode II in 1999, and Episode III in 2000, as George was planning on writing all three movies at once, and then film each one back to back, similar to how Peter Jackson would produce the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in the early 2000s (I know, I need to talk about those at some point). As we all know, it didn't end up working that way with the prequels due to the sheer amount of work that needed to be done on The Phantom Menace, which resulted in the movie's release date being pushed back to 1999, Attack of the Clones being released in 2002, and Revenge of the Sith being released in 2005. This issue also introduced readers to Rick McCallum, the producer of the Special Editions and the Prequel Trilogy.

Issue 25 began a new column known as Prequel Update. This was a series of interviews the magazine conducted with Rick McCallum, updating fans on the state of each of the prequel movies which would run for ten years, from 1995 to 2005, and would end in issue 81, shortly before the release of Revenge of the Sith.

Issue 32 (not pictured) covered the 20th Anniversary of the franchise and issue 33 (pictured above) covered the premiere of Star Wars: The Special Edition in early 1997.

Issue 34 was the beginning of the magazine's full coverage of Episode I, which ran until issue 46, which I'll be talking about later on in this post. This issue announced the cast of the movie, including Jake Lloyd as the young Anakin Skywalker and Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala, though I don't think the character's name was announced until issue 43. Unlike today where, thanks to social media, you know just about everything about a movie, including all of the characters's names, before you ever see a trailer, back in 1997, the people who made movies and TV shows actually made the effort to keep some things secret from the audience, so that there'd be some surprises when you sat down in that dark theatre to see a movie for the first time, or when you sat down in your living room to watch the latest episode of your favourite TV show. Obviously there would still be leaks to the media, but studios and networks did their best to keep those to a minimum. And it was much easier, because, again, you didn't have production people posting pictures to their Instagram or Twitter/X feeds like you do today.

Issue 43 included full sized pictures of the main characters of Episode I, as well as their names and rolls in the movie. I don't know for sure, but I think this was the first time it was confirmed that Samuel L. Jackson was playing a Jedi Master in the movie. I think it had previously been announced that he was going to appear in the movie, but I think this was the first time his roll, and the name Mace Windu, was mentioned anywhere. Being that this was my first issue of the magazine, I don't know if he'd been mentioned in an earlier issue or not. The issue also announced that Del Rey was publishing a new series of Star Wars novels, beginning in the fall of 1999, with R.A. Salvatore having been hired to write the first book, which would be a hardcover, and Michael A. Stackpole writing a trilogy of novels (that ended up being reduced to a duology that would be published in paperback immediately after the first hardcover), and James Luceno, a newcomer to the world of Star Wars novel writing, writing two more of the paperbacks.

Issue 45 covered four things. The first was opening night of The Phantom Menace in various cities in the U.S., including George Lucas's hometown of Modesto, California. The second was the press screening of the movie in New York City, including bytes from the main cast. The third was a full chapter excerpt from the first book in the New Jedi Order book series, Vector Prime, which was still a few months away from coming out. This is the only time in my memory where Insider actually had an excerpt from an upcoming novel included in its pages. Maybe it happened in an issue that I missed, either before this one came out, or after, but it's the only time that I know of where this happened. The fourth and final thing this issue covered was the inaugural edition of the convention, Star Wars Celebration, which just wrapped up this year's edition in Japan almost two weekends ago. This event happened in Denver, Colorado in 1999, and it ended up happening the weekend after the shooting at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado. There was even a letter from a girl whose sister was a student at Columbine in the letters column, Rebel Rumblings in the back of the issue.

Issue 46 was the last issue of the magazine to have full coverage of The Phantom Menace, with interviews with Jake Lloyd, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Anthony Daniels. Sadly, I think this was the final time that Insider had an interview with Jake Lloyd. The magazine would return to the movie in later issues, being that The Phantom Menace would come out on VHS in 2000 and then on DVD in 2001, but this was the last issue to include indepth coverage. Also, by this point Vector Prime had come out, so they had an interview with R.A. Salvatore about the book in their book section called The Star Wars Bookshelf, which alternated with the comic book column, The Horse's Mouth (originally known as From the Horse's Mouth), for the first year or two of the book column's existence, before both columns would be included in every issue.

Issue 50 began covering Episode II in earnest with the announcement of Hayden Christensen being cast as Anakin Skywalker in Episode II, as well as in Episode III. There's also an interview with Hayden in the issue as well, the first of many for him. The issue came out in July, 2000, three months after The Phantom Menace had been released on VHS, but before it was announced that the movie would be released on DVD in 2001 about four or five years before it had been originally planned for all six Star Wars movies to be released on the format.

By issue 69, which covers the first season of Genndy Tartakovsky's traditionally animated Clone Wars micro-series, Attack of the Clones had been and gone in theatres, and the movie had come out on VHS and DVD simultaneously, it being the final Star Wars movie to be released on VHS, at least in North America, so the magazine began covering Episode III in earnest. However, unlike with Episode II, only three years earlier, there was no big casting reveal accompanied by an interview. Instead, it was announced in this issue that Peter Mayhew would be returning as Chewbacca for Episode III. Clone Wars was the first TV show for the franchise since Droids and Ewoks ended in 1986. It was also just a small taste of what was to come for the franchise in regards to television. 

Again, there were no streaming services back in 2003. In fact, Netflix was still a DVD rental service at the time. So the only way you could watch this show was if you had Cartoon Network, or Teletoon if you lived in Canada when this show aired. And even then, because they were short cartoons airing between episodes of whatever shows were on on Friday nights, I think a lot of people missed this show when it originally aired, and caught it once the show became available on DVD in 2003-2004. Also, at this time the only Star Wars shows and movies that were available on DVD at this time were The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. So, if you missed the show when it aired on Cartoon Network or Teletoon, that would be it.

Issue 81 was the final issue of the magazine to have the Prequel Update feature, after ten years and nearly 60 issues of updating the fans on the production of the Prequel Trilogy. Revenge of the Sith was wrapping up post-production at this point and it wasn't that long until the movie was going to be coming out in theatres. So while coverage of the movie would continue strong, including pieces on the movie's novel and comic book adaptations, this was the last chance that Rick McCallum would have to talk to Star Wars Insider before the movie came out.

Finally we come to issue 86, which covered Revenge of the Sith and how watching all six movies in episode order (I-VI) would change people's perspective of the Original Trilogy now that we had the full saga. It also began my second era of reading Star Wars Insider as after issue 49 in 2000, the magazine was hard to find at the bookstore I went to, the hobby store my dad still goes to wasn't carrying new issues of the magazine, I didn't have access to a comic book store in the early 2000s, and geek events like Ottawa Comiccon and the Geek Garage Sale were still about a decade away from becoming a thing here in Ottawa. So, besides issue 57, which came out in 2002, and issue 80, which came out in 2005, the magazine didn't start becoming available in my area regularly again until this issue came out in 2006. Occasionally, I would miss an issue, but for the most part I had every issue from 86 to 111, and then I had issue 113, and then every issue from 120 to about 197, as I was able to pick the magazine up at my local grocery store, which was great, as this was after Titan Magazines took over publication of the magazine in 2007, starting with issue 93.

And that my friends is it for my look at Star Wars Insider during the mid '90s to mid 2000s when the magazine covered the Special Editions and the Prequel Trilogy, as it was basically my era of the magazine and my favourite era of Star Wars as it was when I became a fan of the franchise. With May essentially being Star Wars month with May the 4th, Revenge of the 5th, and the 20th Anniversary of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, I have three more Star Wars related posts that I have planned for May. The first is a look at Shadows of the Empire, then I'll be taking a look at Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and then, finally, I'll be looking at Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. So, if you're a Star Wars fan, get ready to celebrate the franchise in all of its glory. Until then, have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: TV Show Premieres and Finales (Season and Series)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today is going to be another easy topic. Even though I'm not watching Andor season 2 (I haven't even seen season 1), the premiere of the season has got me thinking about what TV show premieres and finales, both season and series, were like in the '90s and early 2000s. I'm only going to be talking about premieres and finales in a broad sense, as well as the ones that really stood out to me for shows that I watched. And there aren't any images in this post so I can go off on tangents without worrying about placing a new image in. So let's get right into it.

The premieres and finales that I remember the most of from my childhood are all from Star Trek. In fact the first one I remember ever seeing was the season finale for the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Best of Both Worlds" from 1990. I was still pretty young at the time, only being 3 years old when it originally aired, so I more remember watching it, but don't remember the impact the episode had on not only Star Trek as a franchise, but on TV as a whole. Back in the early '90s, Primetime Television was episodic, with the occasional two parter thrown in for good measure, but serialized storytelling on TV was usually reserved for daytime soap operas like The Young and the Restless and The Days of Our Lives (both of which my mom watched when I was a kid). So for Star Trek to end a season with a cliffhanger was groundbreaking.

Of course, I remember seeing the rest of TNG's season premieres and finales after that, except for the season 7 premiere, "Descent, Part II". By the time it aired in 1993, we'd already moved to the log house, where we didn't have cable, so we didn't have access to CHRO or Citytv, which TNG aired on at the time. My grandparents taped a bunch of season 7 episodes for us, but I didn't see a lot of them because of how different the tone of season 7 was in comparison to previous seasons. Nana taped the series finale, "All Good Things..." for us and I definitely remember watching it.

I didn't see DS9 until I was a teenager in the early to mid 2000s, so I didn't see any of its season premieres and finales, except for the series premiere, "Emissary", until I was much older. Even then, I remember being blown away by episodes like "Way of the Warrior", a two hour episode that opened the fourth season, and aired in two parts in reruns, and "A Call to Arms", which was the season finale for season 5, simply because DS9 was more heavily serialized though it still very much had an episodic nature, which is something most network shows had all the way through the 2000s and the 2010s, even though there were overarching stories throughout a season, with some carrying over into the next season.

Voyager and Enterprise are probably the Star Trek shows I remember the most when it comes to their premieres and finales. Particularly Enterprise because by the time it began airing in 2001, I was a teenager and in high school. But like, I remember watching Voyager's season premieres and season finales from later seasons more. For example, my parents taped "Equinox, Part I", the season 5 finale for us to watch on the weekend after it aired as I didn't have a TV in my room yet, and being that I had to get up early for school on weekdays, I wasn't allowed to stay up late enough to watch Voyager very often being that it aired on Wednesday nights on Citytv with an encore airing on Sunday nights on Space Channel at that time. I do remember watching the season 6 finale, "Unimatrix Zero, Part I" the same way. I also remember watching the series finale, "Endgame", on the TV in my room in 2001, with the Enterprise series premiere, "Broken Bow", that same year. 

Enterprise was interesting because it was also on at the same time as Smallville, so I was watching both shows, and I remember being more enthralled by the season 1 finale of Smallville than I did by the season 1 finale of Enterprise, "Shockwave, Part I". I think it's because I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen to Lana Lang (played by Kristin Kreuk) as Clark had leapt into a tornado to rescue her at the end of the episode, while I knew that Archer and his crew would be exonerated by Starfleet and the Vulcan High Command and be allowed to continue their mission, since Enterprise had been renewed for a second season, and was a prequel to the rest of Star Trek at the time. And while Smallville had also been renewed for a second season and was also a prequel series, it was its own show with no connection to any particular Superman continuity, though retroactively it would be connected to the Arrowverse (2012-2024), so I didn't know what was going to happen except that, eventually, Clark Kent (Tom Welling) would become Superman.

Speaking of Smallville, I watched most of the first five seasons of the show when they originally aired. We didn't have The WB here in Canada, unless we had Satellite TV, so for me, the first four and a half seasons aired on Citytv, before it moved to YTV for the remaining five and a half seasons. Which is why I don't remember the season 5 finale (I have yet to watch the show in its entirety, despite the fact that I've had all ten seasons on DVD for the last six or seven years now). I do remember the season 4 finale though, because the night it was on, a friend of mine dropped by to hang out for a bit before she went on her date. So I actually missed five or ten minutes of the episode, since I wasn't taping it as I wasn't expecting my friend to drop by. 

I haven't talked about sitcoms so far in this blog post, because few sitcoms had season finales with cliffhanger endings. The only one that I can think of off the top of my head that I watched when I was a kid, was season 5 of Boy Meets World as that was the finale where Topanga proposes to Cory at graduation. Otherwise the other sitcom that I remember having cliffhanger season finales was Friends. Particularly the later seasons. I think Sabrina the Teenage Witch had them too in that show's later seasons, after it had moved to The WB from ABC in 2000, after the original run of TGIF had ended. It really wasn't until the mid to late 2000s with shows like How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory that I really saw sitcoms try things like that more, despite them still remaining mostly episodic. The other major sitcom that I watched in the 2000s that had some seasons end in cliffhangers was That '70s Show.

Of course I watched plenty of other shows in the 2000s that had cliffhanger season finale endings, even though the season premieres had different episode titles than the finales did, like The O.C., One Tree Hill, and Everwood. But, I've found that other than the network sitcoms I was watching in the 2010s, like The Big Bang Theory, not many shows have cliffhanger endings anymore. Particularly streaming shows, because not a lot of them stick around for more than a season anymore. Which is why the cliffhangers at the end of season 1 of That '90s Show (a streaming sitcom), every season of Only Murders in the Building, and season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds were so cool to me. They brought back that feeling of anticipation I always felt while watching season finales on TV in the '90s and 2000s. Of course, nowadays I have to wait 1 to 3 years before the next season of a show because of how streaming shows work, rather than the 2 to 3 months I waited for in the '90s and 2000s, but, what can I say, times certainly have changed.

Series finales were also more special back then, because, with the exception of certain shows like Firefly and Mutant X, series finales were planned. So for many shows they were special events. With the exception of Enterprise's series finale, "These Are the Voyages...", all of Star Trek's 1990s shows had two hour series finales. Some shows had two separate back to back episodes, whether the show was a one hour show or a 30 minute show. The Big Bang Theory is probably the most recent show that did this for its series finale back in 2019. My friend, Katie, came over and we watched it together. Unfortunately, she couldn't come over on the night the finale aired, but I recorded it on our PVR (DVR), and she came over on the Saturday night after it had aired, so we could watch it together.

TV in general felt special back then. Not to say it isn't special these days, it's just special in a different way. Streaming shows mostly feel more like a movie being released every season. And like I said, it takes anywhere between a year to three years for a new season of a show to come out, if a show gets a new season at all, as not many do. Even less these days than during the heyday of network television.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more blog posts. I had just been thinking about this topic for the past week because of Andor having its three episode season premiere last night for its second season. So until next time have a great evening and a great rest of your week and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Choosing Between DVD and VHS in the Early 2000s

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today I'm going to do something a little bit different. Rather than talk about a particular piece of entertainment that I grew up with, I'd like to talk about being able to go to the store and choosing between buying a movie on VHS or buying it on DVD in the early 2000s. Specifically I'll be talking about five of my favourite movies that came out on DVD between 1998 and 2002. So they aren't necessarily the most popular movies of whatever decade they were originally released theatrically in. This is also going to be from a Canadian perspective, though if you're in the U.S. you can apply it to your circumstances as well. Also, this is a completely fictional scenario, though the movies are ones I ended up having on physical media at some point in my life, either on VHS or DVD or both. So, let's get into it.

It's late January 2003, and you're a teenager in high school and you're hanging out with your friends at a strip mall that has a Walmart, a Futureshop and a Chapters, a movie theater (very likely Cineplex Odeon) and a restaurant or two such as Denny's and Montana's, with a McDonald's across the road, and maybe a Tim Hortons as well. You just saw The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at the movie theater and you decided to do some shopping before your parents are due to pick you up because you live in the middle of nowhere, are too young to drive yet, and there's no public transit service out in your area. Knowing the movie and music selections at Futureshop are better than at Walmart or Chapters, you go into Futureshop and while your friends go to the CD section to pick up the CDs they're looking for, you make a beeline to the movie section and start browsing, hoping to pick up some new movies with the money you got from relatives for your birthday and Christmas. Here are the movies you see.

 

The first movie you see on the shelf is Batman: The Movie. Both the VHS and the DVD from 2001. You never owned the official VHS release of the movie as it's a movie you saw on TV and have it taped off of PBS. And, even though you don't own it on VHS outside of that taped off TV version, you pick it up on DVD because you just got a DVD player (it's a DVD/VHS combo player) for Christmas and got Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Austin Powers in Goldmember, and Scooby-Doo on DVD to go with it.

Next, you see Batman Forever on DVD only. Since you already own it on VHS, you're not super disappointed that the VHS isn't there. You decide to pick it up on DVD since you already own Batman, Batman Returns, and Batman & Robin on DVD.

Then you see Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition on both VHS and DVD. Your sister got it on VHS for Christmas, so you pick up the DVD for your collection. It's a bit more expensive than the two Batman DVDs because it is a 2-disc release rather than the single disc releases that the other two are.

Then you see Spaceballs on both VHS and DVD and you pick it up on both since you don't already own it on VHS (You rented it over the summer of 2002). 

The last movie you see that you're interested in is Star Trek Generations on DVD. It's also the movie you were hoping to get on the format since it's your favourite Star Trek movie, contrary to popular consensus within the Star Trek fan community on the online message boards. They also had the director's cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture on DVD, but these five movies, including the VHS and DVD versions of Spaceballs take up your budget for this trip, so you join your friends as they make their way to the cash with the various CDs they planned to buy. You can't wait to get home so you can watch the movies you've just bought.

I chose to go this route with this blog post, because I remember what it was like to find Batman: The Movie and Spaceballs on DVD, as they're both movies I didn't own on VHS when I was a kid. I borrowed Spaceballs on VHS from a friend of the family's in 2000, and I had Batman: The Movie on VHS because my dad taped it off PBS for me in 1992 or 1993, sometime after I started watching some episodes of the 1966 TV show on YTV. In all honesty, I didn't see the VHS releases that coincided with the DVD release of either movie at Futureshop when I got the DVDs in 2004 or 2005, whenever I got the portable DVD player that was the first DVD player that I personally owned (my parents had a DVD player as early as 2002). And you also don't need to have been a teenager in 2003 to know what it was like to find these movies on DVD either. You could be any age as long as you were old enough to have seen the movies on VHS or on TV. Or any movie really. As long as it was coming out on DVD in 2003 or had come out on DVD between 1998 and 2002. Whether it was the latest movie like The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which had come out on VHS and DVD in August, 2002, or the first James Bond film, Dr. No, which had been out on VHS since 1982, and out on DVD since 1997, with the then most recent DVD release having come out in 2000

I also did it this way so you could imagine going to the store in 2003 and seeing these movies on the shelf on either VHS or DVD or both, whether you already had them or not. Also, it was only an eight year period, between 1997 and 2005 where you could get movies and TV shows on VHS and DVD simultaneously. Where you could choose to pick up a new movie on either VHS or DVD, or both if you had enough money for that.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I hope you all enjoyed this blog post. I might do something similar with going to the movie theater in the late '90s and early 2000s because it was a unique experience and very different from how going to movie theaters is in 2025. Not that I'd really know what it's like to go to the movies in 2025 since I haven't been to a movie theater since December 2019, but even in 2019, we were starting to get things like assigned seats, they'd removed the old box office booths from the entranceways of the theaters sometime in the early to mid 2000s, and they'd replaced the old theater seats with more comfortable chairs in the early to mid 2010s. So until then have a great rest of the evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

My 90s and 2000s Experience: Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga (1991, DC Comics)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I've got a comic book related post for you today. It's been a while and I picked a special one to talk about. So let's get into it.

Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga is one of the few collected editions that DC Comics published in the early '90s. It collects issues #9-16 of the original Star Trek comic book series that DC published from 1984 to 1988. It was also my first collected edition and my first trade paperback collected edition.

The book takes place between Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) and acts as a sequel/followup to the TOS season 2 episode, "Mirror, Mirror", about a decade before DS9 would do its first sequel to that episode, "Crossover" from late in its second season. So obviously, everything that happened in the TV show version of the Mirror Universe in DS9, hadn't happened yet, or didn't happen up to that point, as this version of Mirror Spock never challenged Mirror Kirk and took command of the Enterprise. 

The reason this book is so special to me, beyond the fact that, for decades, it was the only Star Trek comic collected edition I owned, is that I got it from a very special group of people. It was given to me as a gift by the cast and crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when I visited the set back in January, 1993. Along with several other comic books, including the comic book adaptation of the 1992 film, Cool World, which I reviewed on the Review Basement back in 2020. I still have this copy in my collection. I never got rid of it because it was given to me by the cast and crew of TNG and I really like the story.

Being that this is a collection of comics from the original 1984 Star Trek comic book series, the artwork isn't great. The characters are fine, but the interiors of the ships look more generic Sci-Fi ship interiors than starship interiors from the TOS movies. That would change with the 1989 series, which is mainly set between Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), but this was a problem that the original comics published by Gold Key in the '60s and '70s had as well. 

Because I still have my original copy that I got in 1993, I haven't been on the search for a copy to include in my collection. However, I have come across the original DC published edition it at comic book sales, geek sales, and conventions at least once. IDW also re-published it in 2022 as part of their Star Trek Classics series, and had previously re-published the entire story arc in Star Trek Archives: Best of Alternate Universes, which was volume 6 in the Archives series, in 2009. So it should be pretty easy for you to pick up if you're interested in checking out these classic Star Trek comics.

That's it for me for today my friends. I'll be back next time with another post. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to talk about next week. I'm also returning to the VHS Club Podcast next week to chat about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie with Katie. The podcast has been on hiatus for the last month, so it'll be awesome to not only have the show back, but to also be the first guest host for their return. I should have a blog post up before Thursday, April 10th though. That's my plan anyway. Until then have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you all later. Take care.