The Hardy Boys 2x01 "A Disappearance" (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So normally I'd have a comic book review out for you today, but I had a dental appointment today and it got moved up to this morning from this afternoon, so I haven't had time to do a comic book review. However, the first four episodes of the second season of The Hardy Boys dropped on Disney+ up here in Canada (it being on Hulu in the U.S.) and I just finished watching the season premiere. Which means I'm here to talk about the season premiere. So let's get into it!

The weirdest thing about this episode is that both Joe and Biff are older than they were in season 1, because season 1 was filmed near the beginning of 2020, almost a year before the season dropped on Hulu in late 2020, and in alot of these cases, two years can make a difference. There's also a different actor playing Fenton Hardy, and a different actress is playing Jesse Hooper, Biff's mom, and I guess the chief of police in Bridgeport now that Chief Collig is gone, but I'll get more into that later.

The episode opens six months after the events of the first season and Joe is a bit upset that he and Frank didn't get the recognition for stopping The Circle, led by their grandmother, Gloria Estabrook, and is looking for a new case so that they can be recognized finally. Frank on the other hand, just wants to live a normal life, and go to work and school, and hang out with his friends, including his girlfriend, Callie Shaw. But, when a classmate of Joe, Biff, and Phil goes missing, the Hardy Boys work together to find him.

Honestly, I really enjoyed that Joe is looking for a new mystery because in the original books, both boys were always willing to dive into a new case no matter what it was. Now, on the show, I don't think the boys will be travelling around the world like they did in the original books, so all of the cases they get, in however many seasons this show ends up having, will come to them in Bridgeport and will take them around Bridgeport rather than around the world. Joe was one of my biggest problems with the first season since they made him, and Biff, the unlikable younger kid characters rather than teenagers like Frank and his friends. So hopefully this season brings both of them out of that mode because they were both annoying in season 1.

I also respect Frank for wanting a normal life after the insanity of his mother's murder, and the revelations about his grandmother's involvement with The Circle. TV Frank doesn't have that same thirst for adventure that Book Frank does. So naturally he isn't going to immediately jump into another mystery. As he said to Joe in this episode, solving their mom's murder was something they had to do for themselves, for Fenton, and for Aunt Trudy, putting The Circle out of commission was just a bonus. 

We don't get very much with any of the other characters in this episode. Aside from Fenton, but even he didn't do a whole lot in the episode. I still love the returning characters from last season though. Though Phil is a little more annoying this season, given that he was actually in most of this episode. I didn't mind him in small doses last season, but having him in most of the first episode, and probably most of the season as a whole, might become a problem.

I find it interesting that the events of this episode is tied to the season 1 finale and the shadowy organization running the cleanup from everything that happened at the end of season 1 with The Circle and The Eye. I don't know where any of that is gonna go, but I'm intrigued to find out as the season goes on. Especially with how it relates to the Hardys and their friends. 

I don't really have much else to say about this episode. I enjoyed it, but being a serialized story, like season 1 was, this episode only represents a piece of the whole story, so I don't really even know what exactly is going on with this season as a whole yet. Especially because Disney+ didn't drop the entire season all at once, just the first four episodes of a ten episode season. So we'll see what happens, but I'm excited for it.

Alrighty that is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday with my review of this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and I think I might post something on the magazines of Star Trek tomorrow. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you later. Take care. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x01 "Strange New Worlds" (2022) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone! I am back once again with another TV show review. This time I'm going to be talking about the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which also happens to be called "Strange New Worlds". Again, there will be some spoilers for this episode, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read this review until you do. Now, without further ado, let's get into it.

I've had mixed feelings about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ever since it was announced because on the one hand, I wanted to see Anson Mount and Ethan Peck get their own Star Trek series. On the other hand though, the people involved in this show are also some of the ones that botched the first seasons of Discovery and Picard, so I was dreading what they'd do if they had an entire show to focus on Pike, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise. Thankfully this episode eased those fears.

One of the things that I love about this show so far is that it's truly episodic, the way TNG, early DS9, and Voyager were. This episode felt like a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an end and now the crew can go on to more adventures in the coming episodes. 

I also love how the show hit the ground running and did a Prime Directive story right out the gate. Not just a Prime Directive story, but a good Prime Directive story. One that takes what's going on in the world today and using a new civilization as allegory for that stuff, rather than shoving it in our face like season 2 of Star Trek: Picard did. Which works so much better honestly. 

The new cast is incredible. And I love that everyone who was introduced in this episode got a moment to shine, and we got a few details about each of them. With Discovery we didn't even learn the majority of the Bridge crew's names until the second season, and even then most of them have been shafted for other characters. I honestly don't have a favourite or a standout in this episode because they were all so good, but I do really like Jess Bush as Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as La'an Noonien-Singh, and Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura. We didn't get a whole lot with Dr. M'Benga or Lieutenant Ortegas, but both were pretty solid as well. I especially liked it when M'Benga announced what he and Chapel called a "Delta Scorpi VII", which is a reference to a similar incident where a being from another planet woke up in the Enterprise's Sickbay and ran away, Ortegas replied, "Always when I'm in the captain's chair". Which makes me wonder if that's a sly reference to the TNG movies where something happens to the Enterprise-D and the Enterprise-E every time Riker is in command (i.e. the ship getting destroyed, assimilated, or damaged), or if it's a sign of things to come when Ortegas is in command of the ship.

The one thing that I was a little unsure of was having that scene with Spock and T'Pring that was shown in the trailer, simply because I couldn't remember whether or not it was mentioned in "Amok Time" how long it had been since Spock had seen T'Pring last. So I rewatched that episode again just to be sure, and it wasn't mentioned at all. Which means that scene doesn't clash with what Spock said (or didn't say) in that episode, which takes place after this one. I didn't have much of a problem with it anyway, because I always felt that Vulcans clung to the ancient ways a little too much, and so I felt that if Spock hadn't seen T'Pring since they were children, it was weird to have them get married. Which is why I don't understand arranged marriages and betrothals in some cultures that populate the real world. But, I liked T'Pring in this episode alot better than I liked her original version in "Amok Time", so it didn't come off as weird in this episode the way I was afraid it would. 

I'll be honest, I really liked the connections that the characters we already met on Discovery had with the new characters being introduced in this episode. Like, Pike was friends with M'Benga because they were posted in each other's hometown, and served together in both places, and that Una (Number One) had rescued La'an from the Gorn when Una was an ensign and La'an was a child (or a teenager). I think Ortegas was part of Pike's crew prior to this episode because she was already familiar with Pike and Spock. Uhura just fit in really nicely. I'm interested to see how Chief Engineer Hemmer and Lieutenant Sam Kirk, who is Jim Kirk's brother, gel with everyone in the next episode, since they didn't show up until the end of this episode.

Overall this was a wonderful, strong, start to Strange New Worlds. I really hope things keep going the way they did in this episode, because it was fun to watch. It was optimistic, full of heart and the characters were fantastic. It wasn't trying to be Star Trek, it IS Star Trek and I am very excited to see what next week's episode brings because I read the synopsis and it sounds awesome. I definitely recommend watching it week to week. Because of the episodic nature of this show, I'm going to try and review the show each week because it'll be a complete story each week so I won't be spending ten weeks saying, "I guess we'll see how it works at the end of the season" because that could get tedious. Especially with shows like Picard, where basically not a whole lot happened in each episode.

Alright folks, that's going to be it for me for this week. I will be back next week though for more reviews and posts. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How're you all doing today? I'm doing pretty well actually. So I'm going to have two reviews out for you today. The first is this one, where I'm going to be reviewing the second season of Star Trek: Picard now that the season finale has aired/dropped. The second is going to be my review of the pilot episode of the new series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. There will be spoilers for both of these reviews so if you're not caught up on season 2 of Picard or haven't watched the first episode of Strange New Worlds, then don't read these reviews until you do. With that out of the way let's get right into it with season 2 of Star Trek: Picard.

My history with this show has been mixed. Season 1 was good in execution and in premise, I just didn't care for how dark and violent it was. Season 2 was interesting in concept, but failed miserably in execution. Oh don't get me wrong, there are some things that I enjoyed about this season, but as a whole it was bad. Okay, bad might be the wrong word. This season was boring and pointless. Again, there were alot of good ideas in this season, it's just the way it was done with the time travel being the entire season, and how it tried to tie in to an event in Picard's childhood just didn't work.

Time travel has always been an element of Science Fiction that I've disliked. Mainly because it's not consistent from one series to the next. Even Star Trek's various incarnations doesn't have set rules for how the characters travel back through time or how their presence in the past will affect their own present. But, because up until this season, time travel has always been a one to two episode affair in every other Star Trek series and movie ever produced. And honestly, I had hoped that that would be the case this time. It wasn't. The entire season was set either in an alternate timeline, or in the past. And that's not Star Trek.

I don't mean that in the way that the idiots online have been wailing about since Star Trek: Enterprise debuted in 2001. I mean that because of the setting being the year 2024, only two years in the future from now, it feels more like a season of DC's Legends of Tomorrow or the series, Timeless or any other generic Sci-Fi show. And because the season is set in what is basically present day, the mental health stuff they were trying to do with Picard and his childhood trauma of seeing his mother hang herself because she was mentally ill, felt too realistic and not Star Trekkie enough. And I don't mean that to be insensitive. It's just other Star Trek shows, especially the last couple of seasons of Discovery, have handled the topic of mental illness alot better than this show did.

As those of you who have followed my blog for a very long time know, one of my friends committed suicide back in 2007. For those of you who are new to the blog, her name was Sarah and she suffered from severe mental health issues for years. We had been close during my final two years of high school, even after she'd been forced to transfer schools because she was getting bullied so bad and our principal was an idiot who only cared about his own image and success, and didn't care about us at all. And I can say that because I graduated 16 years ago and he's not my principal anymore. 

My point in telling that story is that season 2 of Picard handled that poorly. Star Trek has done stories about suicide in the past, most notably the fourth season TNG episode, "Half a Life" where David Ogden Stiers played Timicin, a scientist who was required to undergo ritual suicide at the age of 60 according to the laws of his homeworld, Kaelon II. TNG also tackled suicide in the fifth season episode, "Ethics" where Worf is paralyzed and considers suicide as Klingons believe that disabled warriors are a disgrace to their families as they were not given the honor of dying. In that episode, Worf asked Riker to assist him, but Riker refused, as did Worf's son, Alexander. But here, it felt pointless and felt like Picard's guilt over his mother's death, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it, could've been resolved in an episode or two at most. Not something to be dealt with over the course of the entire ten episode season. In fact the only episode where that plotline had any impact at all was the episode where Picard was in a coma following Dr. Adam Soong, played brilliantly by Brent Spiner, hit him with his car. And even then it was mostly included to make Picard, and the viewers realize that Maurice Picard, Jean-Luc's father, wasn't an abusive character. Except the way he handled his wife's illness was to lock her in a room by herself, was very much an abusive thing to do to someone with a mental illness. So yeah, that storyline was handled poorly because it's obvious that the writers have no clue about how to deal with mental illness and just forced it in, probably because Discovery did such a good job with that topic in it's third and fourth seasons.

I also didn't really care about Rios's storyline this season all that much. Cristobal Rios was one of the best part of Picard's first season and I got excited when it turned out he was going to get a new storyline this season. Except it turned out to be the stereotypical love story that you'd find on a show that airs on The CW and wasn't all that interesting if I'm being honest.

I realize I've been picking apart everything in this season so far. Because it's crap. But there are things that I really liked this season. Like Seven of Nine and her storyline. While I find it confusing why Starfleet refused to let Seven join on the basis that she's Borg when they let Icheb in, I do appreciate that we finally got the reason why Seven didn't join Starfleet when Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant in the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager, "Endgame". The immediate aftermath of Voyager's return home is such an untapped sector of Star Trek lore since the TV show never dealt with it aside from Janeway getting promoted to admiral, and Chakotay becoming the captain of the U.S.S. Prodigy, as we've seen so far in season 1 of Star Trek: Prodigy. And none of the novels that dealt with it are canon.

I also loved seeing John de Lancie back as Q and Whoopi Goldberg back as Guinan. We haven't seen Q since his appearance in the seventh season Voyager episode, "Q2", which aired a little over 21 years ago, and we haven't seen Guinan since Star Trek Nemesis came out in 2002. So I was glad to see both of them back in those iconic roles because they were both awesome parts of TNG.

I don't have anything to say about Agnes Jurati and the Borg Queen, because that storyline was also boring and pointless. Annie Wersching and Alison Pill did a wonderful job as both of those characters, but they had nothing to do but cause trouble for absolutely no reason at all. Same with Adam Soong, who, as antagonists go, kinda sucks. Even his descendent, Arik Soong from season four of Enterprise was a better antagonist than Adam was.

The big surprise this season happened in last night's finale episode. Wil Wheaton showed up as Wesley Crusher for a scene that didn't last for more than two minutes, and he didn't have any interaction with Picard, but having Wesley back after all these years felt good to me. Especially since next season we're getting Riker, Troi, Beverly Crusher, Worf, and La Forge back, and makes me hope that Wesley will be back again too. 

Overall this was not a good season of television for me. Which is really disappointing because I had such high hopes for Star Trek: Picard when it was originally announced by Sir Patrick Stewart himself back in 2018. But for whatever reason neither of the first two seasons have worked for me, with season 2 just being really bad. I am going to watch the third/final season though because the rest of the characters I grew up with are coming back and I'm hoping that it'll be a fun ride instead of a third existential crisis for Admiral Picard. Because that's what this show has been, and it's sucked.

Alrighty that's it for me for now but I'll be back shortly with my review of episode 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Later.

The Comic Book Longbox: Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #1 (2022)

 Hey everyone! I am back once again with this week's comic book review. Today I'm going to take a look at a comic that I just got on Sunday, when Brad dropped by, Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #1. So let's get right into it.

I have an interesting history with Batman Beyond. When the series aired from 1999 until 2001 it was on YTV here in Canada. However, my siblings and I didn't watch it for whatever reason. We were still watching YTV as Animorphs, Radio Active, Digimon, Pokemon, and reruns of Sailor Moon, but I don't remember any commercials for it during any of those shows. However, we did have access to The WB and it's kids block, The Kids WB, when we were up at the cottage with our grandparents so I remember watching Batman Beyond from time to time up at the cottage but that's it and I've never watched the series from start to finish, though that is on my to do list since I have the complete series DVD set.

The comics on the other hand are a completely different story. The first comics came out from 1999 until 2001 and were directly based on the TV show, similar to the The Batman Adventures, Batman & Robin Adventures, and Superman Adventures that were tie-ins to Batman: The Animated Series, The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and Superman: The Animated Series. Following the end of this run in 2001, Terry McGinnis began making appearances in the main DC Universe, most notably in Batman #700 (2010), before a third series debuted in 2010, prior to the 2011 change over to the New 52. A fourth run ended after eight issues in 2011. There were also a few other series that got published from 2012 until 2020 during the New 52 and DC Rebirth, leading up to this issue.

So when this issue starts Terry is still Batman, but Bruce is dead, and someone named Donovan Lumos has taken control of Wayne-Powers Industries (Derek Powers had taken over Wayne Industries in the original continuity of the TV show). Terry is on the run as the Batcave, Wayne Manor, the Batmobile, and everything else is gone. The only thing Terry has is the Batsuit.

I actually enjoyed this issue. Even though I haven't seen every episode of the TV series, I do like the idea of a futuristic teenage Batman. And while Terry isn't a teenager anymore in this book, it's still a spin-off of that basic concept, which is cool. Terry doesn't have any of his supporting cast, aside from Commissioner Barbara Gordon, another carry over from the TV show. Not sure where Max or Dana are in at this point in the Batman Beyond comic book continuity. But that's okay because I'm glad the issue focused on Terry given that I haven't read any of the Batman Beyond comics before now. 

The art in this book is done by Max Dunbar, whose work I'm not familiar with, though according to the DC Wiki, he's worked on the most recent Damian Wayne Robin series, as well as Batman: Urban Legends. So he's a more recent DC artist. Also, he's Canadian, from Victoria, British Columbia, according to the DC Wiki, so that's pretty cool.

Like I said, I enjoyed this issue. Unlike alot of comics these days, this one doesn't require you to have too much knowledge of what had happened in previous Batman Beyond comics as it does a really good job of catching you up on what's relevant to this issue's story, which is a problem that I had with I Am Batman #1, which I've reviewed on my old blog, The Review Basement, but I'll review it on here at some point. If you can get your hands on it this is a great issue to pick up. I have the variant cover rather than the original one, which is fine because I actually like the variant cover, which you can see at the beginning of the review. It's the second image that I have in this post. 

And that my friends is going to be it for me for today. I will be back on Friday though for my reviews of Star Trek: Picard season 2, and the pilot episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Some Pre-Series Thoughts on Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

 Hey everyone! Happy Star Wars Day, I hope all of you Star Wars fans are celebrating with a favourite movie, TV show, video game, comic or novel (or all five options). Right now I just want to give some pre-series thoughts on the upcoming Disney+ series, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi. So let's get right into it.

Unlike with every other Star Wars series that's been made for Disney+ over the last two and a bit years, I'm the most excited about Obi-Wan Kenobi because I went through middle school and high school watching Ewan McGregor play Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Prequel Trilogy and he was the best part of those movies. I also enjoyed Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in those movies too. But I also don't have any particular expectations for this limited series, because I pretty much already know what it's going to be with very few surprises.

Because we're revisiting the character ten years after the end of the Prequel Trilogy (nine years before the original movie), there are certain things that will be done. Like, Obi-Wan isn't going to be leaving Tatooine since he's supposed to be presumed to be dead by most of the Empire, though I'm pretty sure that Vader knows that Obi-Wan is still alive, since Kenobi did have the high ground at the end of their Lightsaber duel in Revenge of the Sith. 

However I do hope that we see why he chose to tell Luke in A New Hope that Darth Vader killed his father instead of that his father became Darth Vader. Because while the novelization of Return of the Jedi tried to justify Obi-Wan and Yoda's decision to do so, that novelization was written in 1982 and published in 1983, before there were prequels or even spin-off TV movies and animated series. And the movies themselves never explained his reasons for doing so. Though based on the trailer that dropped this morning I suspect that Uncle Owen had something to do with it. Especially because in A New Hope Luke believed that Anakin was the navigator on a spice freighter.

The part that concerns me the most about this show, is the Inquisitors. This show takes place only four years before the start of Star Wars Rebels and alot of the stuff with the Inquisitors and the Empire in general  on this series will most likely overlap with what we got on that show. Particularly in the first season. I understand why the Inquisitors are on this show, given the time period it's set in, but personally, I don't care for them that much. Then again, I didn't really care for what we got of them in the Legends continuity either. So maybe it's just a me thing.

My other concern about this show is the same thing that happened with season 2 of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. This show has one less episode than The Book of Boba Fett and two less episodes than season 2 of The Mandalorian (and season 1 but I'm focusing on season 2 only), and a problem that these shows seem to have is that the people writing it and producing it want to go big with it and end up introducing too many elements. As a result, they end up leaving alot of loose threads because they only have six to eight episodes to tell the story that they want to tell. So I'm hoping that these people don't go too big because an Obi-Wan Kenobi series set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope should be a smaller, more intimate, series than something like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett ended up being. But I have this feeling that, just like with the other two shows that I mentioned, as none of the animated shows seem to have this problem, Obi-Wan Kenobi is going to go too big and the audience is going to be left frustrated like we were with The Book of Boba Fett earlier this year. But I have my fingers crossed that that won't be the case and that we'll get a fun, frustration free Star Wars live action Star Wars series.

Despite my concerns with this show, I am really excited about it. I mean, this is an element of the Star Wars Universe that has barely been touched upon before, aside from a couple of Legends novels in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The one question I have about this show is how much, if any, of Obi-Wan's storyline will be taken from John Jackson Miller's 2013 Legends novel, Kenobi? I mean there was also the couple of issues of Jason Aaron's run on the main comic book title, Star Wars, from 2015 that dealt with Obi-Wan's adventures on Tatooine during this time period as well. So definitely lots of inspiration for the writers to pull from. Though I do wish we will have a few surprises along the way.

Alrighty that's going to be it for me for now. I'll be back later with a comic book review where I'll be reviewing a recent addition to my comic book longbox. So stay tuned.

How I Met Your Father Season 1 (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today is May the 4th, a.k.a. Star Wars Day, so I'm going to have a Star Wars related post out later today. Right now though I have some thoughts on the first season of How I Met Your Father now that it's complete on Disney+. This is not going to be a long post though because I don't have a whole lot to say about it. So let's get into it.

How I Met Your Father season 1 is really weird because it's trying to be it's own thing while still being pretty attached to it's parent series, How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014). And by pretty attached I mean that Jesse and Sid's apartment is Ted, Lily, and Marshall's apartment from the original series, Kyle MacLachlan appears in the final two episodes of the season as The Captain, Ted's nemesis from the first series, and Cobie Smulders shows up as Robin when Sophie runs into her at McLaren's, where Carl is still working, even after all this time. We don't actually spend that much time in Jesse and Sid's apartment because most of it is either with Sophie at the various places that she goes to, at her and Valentina's apartment, at Charlie and Ellen's apartment, or at Sid's bar which is more like Central Perk from Friends (1994-2004). 

Aside from the narration aspect, both How I Met Your Mother and How I Met Your Father are sort of the spiritual successors of Friends. The original show started the year after Friends ended and it's sequel/spin-off/reimagining started eight years after the original ended. And the concepts for each show are basically the same, with How I Met Your Father being closer in concept to How I Met Your Mother.

Apart from Sophie, who is this show's Ted, there isn't really any comparison to any of the characters from How I Met Your Mother on this show. As I said in my review of the series premiere both Charlie and Valentina easily could've become this show's versions of Barney Stinson, had this show been made in 2012 instead of 2022. But because it was made when it was made, we were spared that situation. I don't have a whole lot more to say about the characters that I didn't already say in my review of the premiere because none of them really grew as characters. Which, in a way it was the same with Ted, Robin, Lily, Marshall, and Barney after only ten episodes. And I think that's kind of my biggest problem with this first season. There aren't enough episodes to really be able to develop any of the characters. But that's okay because the show is getting a second season and it's going to have twenty episodes instead of ten.

Overall though this was a fun series to watch. As I do with any Disney+ show that I watch, I watched How I Met Your Father right after breakfast on Wednesday morning every week and it was a nice way to ease into the day. I laughed when I thought something was funny and shook my head at the not so funny jokes. This show isn't groundbreaking, nor is it really trying to say anything that a TV show or movie hasn't said before, it's just a fun show and I'm glad it's getting a second season. 

That's going to be it for me for right now, but I will be back with some thoughts on where I think the Obi-Wan Kenobi series might be going based on the trailers we've gotten so far for my Star Wars Day post, and then I'll be posting a comic book review later today as well, so three posts for you all to read. Talk to you later. 

The VHS Corner: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 1 & 2: Encounter at Farpoint (1991, Paramount Home Video)

 Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was pretty great! I got to hang out with my sister and her partner on Saturday night, eating pizza and playing the Nintendo 64, and then Brad dropped off some comic books for me on Sunday morning. Today I'm back for The VHS Corner where I'll be taking a look at the first release for the regular retail VHS releases for Star Trek: The Next Generation. There was a Collector's Edition release as well, but I'll be talking about that another time. Right now, let's talk about the regular VHS release for the pilot episode of TNG, "Encounter at Farpoint". 

Seeing this cover brings back so many memories. Unlike alot of VHS tapes that I had when I was a kid, I didn't have this tape at home. It was kept, along with three other volumes, at my grandparents's place. At least until I was in high school when I got that TV/VCR combo set from my uncle for my 16th birthday. It was added to my personal collection sometime after that. But I remember staying at my grandparents's place for a few hours while my parents ran errands or went out for date night or whatever the case may have been, and asking Nana to put the tape on for me as soon as I got there. I'm a Trekkie afterall, and apart from the Collector's Edition VHS release that I had at home at the time, this was the only way to watch "Encounter at Farpoint" in it's full form since it got split up into it's two episode form for it's repeat TV airings, which had already begun by the time I began having memories of watching TNG on TV.

I love the cover art for this tape. It's design would be retained for the rest of the season 1 releases, which came out from 1991-1993 before being changed for season 2 in 1993 and then again for each subsequent season release through season 7 from late 1998 until mid 1999. Because, yes folks, it took eight years for all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation to be released on VHS. What's interesting is that the season 1 VHS releases had the same cover art as the Collector's Edition releases, except that the spot where the screenshot from the episode in question is just an image of a planet on the cover of the Collector's Edition releases.

Season 1 had a variety of openings before the start of the episode. Because it came out in late 1991, Encounter at Farpoint, along with it's succeeding episodes, The Naked Now and Code of Honor, opens with the teaser for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which was scheduled to be released to theatres on December 6th, 1991. These three releases were the only ones to come out in 1991, so the rest of the season 1 tapes don't have the Star Trek VI teaser before the episode. I'll talk more about that when I get around to discussing the later releases that I had when I was a kid.

That's actually all I have to say about this VHS tape. Mostly because I will be doing a full review of "Encounter at Farpoint" when I get around to doing my TNG rewatch somewhere down the line. It's a pretty great tape though. Unfortunately, I don't own it anymore, but I'm hoping to get my hands on another copy at some point in the future. I've been keeping an eye out for one anytime I'm out with Brad, so my fingers are crossed. 

That my friends is going to be it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow for this week's edition of The Comic Book Longbox though. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.