Good movies and television continue to fascinate, and I’ve done a number of projects inspired by them, or created items that fall into the category of licensed items.
Starfleet Navigator Class Starship
Coming out of my work on the revised Star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual, it got me thinking about something a little sleeker that your average starship. It would be Starfleet's answer to the Romulan Bird of Prey.
Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country Cover by Jerome K Moore
It was the last time the original Star Trek crew would be together and they sent the original cast off with a great story helmed by writer/director Nicholas Meyer – the man who'd been behind a lot of great movies: Invasion of the Bee Girls, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Time After Time, The Day After, and two previous Trek films, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Star Trek DC v1 No. 1 Cover by George Pérez
In the US, Star Trek comics began with Gold Key and they spanned 1967–79 with tales based on the original series. With the release of Star Trek – The Motion Picture in '79, Marvel picked up the licence and published from 1980–82.
The Last Action Hero No. 1 Cover by Jerome K Moore
1993 brought the Arnold Schwarzenegger action-comedy The Last Action Hero to the summer viewing season. Plans were made to have the movie adapted into comic book form at Topps, and Jerome K Moore was attached as the artist.
Star Trek DC v2 No. 16 Cover by Jerome K Moore
Star Trek has supported a number of comic book series, almost from the beginning of the original series. Gold Key, then Marvel had the licence, but it wasn't until it landed at DC Comics that the property found its footing and enjoyed longer runs. A return to Marvel in the 90s was short lived, and IDW has been steadily producing quality series for a number of years now.
Disney’s Atlantis The Lost Empire
The Press Kit and More
I've always enjoyed Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. With a great voice cast including Michael J Fox, Cree Summer, James Garner, Claudia Christian, John Mahoney, Jim Varney and others, it's an engaging adventure story which was meant to draw in teens, a slightly older demographic than Disney's traditional core animation audience.
Amerika: 1987 TV Mini Series
Amerika arrived in February 1987, a seven-part ABC TV mini series focused on the former USA 10 years after the USSR successfully invaded and defeated the Americans. Starring Robert Urich, Kris Kristofferson, Sam Neill, Christine Lahti, Wendy Hughes and Armin Mueller-Stahl, the story explores the troubled world of Americans in defeat and a nervous Soviet leadership afraid of an uprising.
The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual 2.0
In 1975, Franz Joseph’s Technical Manual was the perfect companion to his Enterprise blueprints. While there are more accurate sources now, these were two of the best items to have during the time after The Original Series went off the air and before the movies began.
Doctor Strange (1978) DVD Cover
You have to feel for the folks over at Shout Factory. They got the rights to re-release the 1978 Doctor Strange TV movie to tie in with the release of the new feature film starring Benedict Cumberbatch. And they went to the effort to remaster it from the original film elements. That's dedication, and one of the reasons genre film and TV lovers love Shout like cinephiles love Criterion and Kino Lorber. They do things right.
eBook: Gene Roddenberry’s Spectre by Robert Weverka
Post-Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry made a series of pilots in the 1970s: Genesis II (1973), Planet Earth (1974), The Questor Tapes (1974) and Spectre (1977).
Fantastic Voyage Posters and Wallpapers
Fantastic Voyage was released in 1966. Well-written, imaginative and with a good cast, it was one of the better science fiction films of the 60s.
Filmation Tarzan Lord of the Jungle Season 1 DVD Cover
In 1976, Filmation had the license to produce Tarzan cartoons for Saturday mornings. Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle debuted with 16 episodes that first season, and it was different than many previous portrayals of Edgar Rice Burroughs' signature character. Tarzan was shown as an intelligent and civilised character who had fantastic adventures with his animal friends in lost cities and strange civilisations, just as he was in the original novels. A lot of kids like me loved it.
Dr. Syn alias the Scarecrow Novel Cover
In 1975, Disney decided to re-release Dr. Syn as a 75-minute feature film, and to tie into that, they commissioned Victoria Crume (aka Vic Crume) to write a novelisation of the film for young readers, something she had done before for other Disney properties and would do again.
AssignmentEarth.ca Relaunched
The web's most complete site on this back-door pilot from Star Trek gets its seventh major update, with new design and content.
Outland : The Press Kit
Outland was released in 1981, very much a product of the popularity science-fiction films were enjoying during the time period. While the film was expected to do well, it was a modest success at best, making back little more than its budget on initial release. Since then, it has remained in print in the home video market. The DVD and Blu-ray releases are very good – if a little light on special features – with the Blu-ray being exceptionally clear and vibrant.
Finding Forrester : The Press Kit
I had never seen a press kit for a feature film before and I came across this one for Finding Forrester, one of Sean Connery's best of his later period. Produced in 2000, it was a few years before these things went digital. It included a package of stories about the film, black & white 8x10 photos and colour slides.
The Blade Runner Spinner by Syd Mead
Syd Mead, futurist designer, has few peers in the fields of industrial design and commercial illustration. And he accomplished all that before he worked on Blade Runner.
Mezco Mars Attacks Action Figure
Mezco Toys has released an action figure based on the Martian soldier from the Topps trading card series (which inspired the Tim Burton film).
John Carter of Mars 2: The Gods of Mars Poster
A set of teaser posters for John Carter of Mars II: The Gods of Mars. With Disney having let their option lapse after acquiring the Star Wars franchise, perhaps Warner Bros. will explore the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
John Carter of Mars: Disney’s Mars and Beyond
Long before Andrew Stanton got the green light to make John Carter (of Mars) for Disney, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars was included in Mars and Beyond, aired as a Tomorrow Land episode of Disneyland on December 4, 1957.
The Thunder Child Banner
Here's a quick project for The Thunder Child blog, done in trade for some SF memorabilia.
The Starlost Compendium
The Starlost was a television series that aired primarily on NBC in the U.S. and CTV in Canada during 1973. Created by Harlan Ellison – with technical details on the ship by Ben Bova – it was an early foray into Canadian-American co-production and syndication release.
Assignment: Earth eBook
"Assignment: Earth" aired in the spring of 1968 as the last episode of the second season of the original Star Trek. It began, however, as a completely separate pilot script by Gene Roddenberry almost two years earlier.
Perfection Ain’t Perfect (or The Scourge of Hyphens)
I was in the Sony Store in the mall, looking for replacement rubber tips for my in-ear headphones. While the guy went in the back to retrieve this low-demand, low-cost-but-easy-to-steal item, I watched a bit of Iron Man in high-def Blu-ray on a big Bravia.
The Perils of Choice
The grade nine science trip to Calgary was pretty cool. Four-and-a-half hours by school bus (without seatbelts, woohoo) from Cranbrook to Calgary at some god awful early hour. A visit to the planetarium, another to the zoo, and a stop at a shopping centre (I think it was Chinook, but I can't really recall), and then four-and-a-half hours in the school bus back across the mountains. It was a very, very long day.
eBook: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
My favourite novel was written by Philip K. Dick and first published in 1962. The Man in the High Castle won the 1962 Hugo award, the Oscars of science fiction, for best novel of the year.
A long time ago, in a lake far, far away…
So, that summer I was 10 and I found the watch in Peckham's Lake outside Cranbrook, BC. Dad said Timex might be interested in hearing about it, so I wrote them a letter and they got back to me.
Batman : The Brave & The Bold
If you want to have a whole lot of fun packed into 30 minutes or less, watch an episode of the new Batman: The Brave & the Bold TV series on Cartoon Network in the US and on Teletoon in Canada. You also might find it – ahem – on the web while we await a DVD package.
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