As reported in the first part of this articleStar Trek celebrated its silver birthday on September 8, 1991, but even after that a lot happened until the end of the year – and then there was the unresolved cliffhanger about Interplay's big Star Trek game for the PC.
The fifth season of Next Generation started on US television on September 23rd. In keeping with the anniversary, the title lettering in the opening credits was given a pretty blue contrail.
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After a twenty-day delay, a special celebrating the anniversary was shown on US television on September 28th, which also made it to Germany several years later. The 90-minute show, hosted by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, was self-congratulatory and somewhat superficial.
The interviews shown covered the spectrum from Gene Roddenberry, to the various actresses and actors, celebrities such as TV presenter John Tesh to fan club president Dan Madsen, but mostly consisted of unctuously congratulatory empty words that contained little insight and rather that cementing the legacy.
Because Star Trek has always inspired real space travel since the series began, Geordi actor LeVar Burton insisted on giving a short tour of NASA's Space Camp. The highlight of the special at the time were certainly exclusive clips from the sixth film, over two months before its premiere – cold coffee during the first broadcast on SAT.1.
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Source: Pocket Books
The Rift, a 25th anniversary novel that connects generations
But the German private broadcaster continued to pull its punches; The first broadcast of the cinema films continued on October 13th with Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock (Star Trek: In Search of Mr. Spock). Sebastian in luck!
Great sadness on October 24th when Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry died suddenly and somehow not surprisingly at the age of 70, just a month and a half after the silver anniversary of his series. M More on this in my recently published big special about Roddenberry.
November 1st saw the release of Peter David's Star Trek novel The Rift, one of numerous novels Pocket Books published in 1991.
But this one was special because to celebrate the year, David told a story about a portal that only opened every few decades on an alien planet, the era of The Cage, the first unaired pilot (in which Captain Pike, who has recently come to fame in Strange New Worlds, acted alongside Spock), linked it to the twilight years of Kirk and Spock after the fifth film and thus made a huge impact at the time. In a way, a meeting of generations, only without the 24th century, three years before the movie of the same name.
From November 4th, the Next Generation Spock two-parter was broadcast on US television. And: Who still remembers the MTV cinema magazine The Big Picture?
This was also shown in November in a special edition entitled The Star Trek Logs. It turns out that Counselor Deanna Troi from the Enterprise-D was inspired by the adventure with Spock to sit on the spaceship bridge and watch clips from old episodes of the original series and films, as if they were historical documents the archive.
The special was staged by Next Generation director Robert Legato – and because Marina Sirtis actually played her role as Troi as if it were all taking place “in universe”, it was one of the few pieces of Star Trek that was never subsequently released received an official publication.
The year 1991 ended splendidly. On December 2nd, CIC-Video added the animated series from the 70s, Volume 1 of which came out that day, on top of the newly completed original series on VHS.
A day later, half of Hollywood gathered in tails and frocks for the celebratory premiere of the sixth film – unfortunately the first such event without Gene Roddenberry, who is still sorely missed to this day. The regular premiere in US cinemas took place three days later on St. Nicholas Day.
On December 20th, the Next Generation crew took a Christmas break from filming; In the episode Ethics (The Operation) not only a barrel falls on Worf, but also the last blow of the year.
On Christmas Eve 1991, my parents gave me Ralph Sanders, hot off the presses, The Star Trek Universe, which was then and for many years the German-language reference work par excellence on all things Star Trek.
Source: Paramount
Spock and Picard also celebrate together.
For several days I curled up on the sofa and read the almost 600-page non-fiction book from cover to cover. On Boxing Day, however, I took a break because SAT.1 ended the cinema-TV premiere year with the first broadcast of the wonderfully comedic Christmas Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home (Star Trek 4: Back to the Present). A few days to New Year's Eve, Happy New Year 1992!
But what happened to the PC game Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary from Interplay? It didn't live up to its name because it didn't even appear in the anniversary year; It wasn't until March 1992 that fans were able to enjoy the graphic adventure. So let's close the bracket on “25 Years of Star Trek” with this added tidbit and its epigones.
The genre of point & click adventures, made big by the companies Sierra or Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts), was extremely popular in the late 80s and early 90s and so Interplay now released its first entry in this game category with Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary, after they had previously only taken over US distribution for two graphic adventures from the French developer Delphine Software.
But a second genre, which was very successful at the time, was grafted onto the puzzle game, because Wing Commander had been making a splash since 1990, and with it the 3D space action battle from the cockpit perspective.
But despite these two perhaps not particularly well-matched game components, Brian Fargo's main goal was to bring the feeling of the Star Trek series itself to the computer screen. That's why Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary presented itself more or less like a quarter series series with seven self-contained episodes, each of which stood on its own without being connected by a metanarrative.
The intro, which showed the classic opening credits, as well as the display of episode titles, only reinforced the impression that you were watching TV instead of playing on the computer. If you had enough self-discipline to only play through one game each night, that episodic feeling was even reinforced.
The written word and the production also fit Star Trek perfectly, because just like in the series, it was often about first contact with an alien species. In almost every one of the six episodes the aim was to beam down as a team of four:
the triumvirate consisting of Kirk, Spock and McCoy – not accompanied by any of the other better-known supporting characters, but by a “red shirt of the week”, one of the Enterprise's always short-lived security guards, who even traditionally died.
Just like in the most beautiful moments of the series, the passionate McCoy and the stoic logician Spock didn't miss the opportunity to indulge in wordy arguments or even let out small taunts. The authors had captured the voices of both of them excellently and unmistakably.