Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special is a bizarre time capsule of Star Trek history as well as North American pop culture in general. I watched it for the first time last night and it was fun to go back to what Star Trek was back in 1991 and 1992 (the VHS tape came out in 1992 though the special aired in 1991). I remember what Star Trek was like back then. TOS was on in reruns, as well as on VHS, there were only five movies out and they'd just been re-released on VHS in a special 25th Anniversary box set, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was about to be released, TNG was in it's fifth season and the first season was just starting to come out on VHS, and of course there were comics, novels and reference books coming out every month. However, there was no DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, TNG movies, Kelvin timeline, StarTrek.com, Discovery, Picard, or Lower Decks, no season or complete series box sets on DVD or Blu-ray, and very few Star Trek video games as well. Oh and the only ways that Star Trek fans could meet and interact with each other were through the Official Star Trek Fan Club, the letters' columns of the Star Trek comics from DC Comics, or at Star Trek Conventions.
So to revisit that period in Star Trek history through this documentary was a real treat. It was hosted by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and included interviews and shoutouts from both casts of the franchise at the time, as well as some TNG guest stars and former cast members Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) and Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher). Not to mention members of the Scientific community and NASA were interviewed as well. Though the most fascinating part was when they included some footage of LeVar Burton at NASA's Space Camp taken from an episode of Reading Rainbow, which he was the host of at the time in addition to playing Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But that just goes to show how more open Paramount was to that sort of thing, especially since LeVar did an entire episode of Reading Rainbow dedicated to TNG back in 1988, between the first and second seasons of TNG. You could tell that episode was filmed just after season 1 had wrapped production though since they filmed part of it on the Bridge, because they hadn't made the modifications to the set yet that were shown in season 2 so it was still the season 1 Bridge with the brown side access panels, the brown flip open panels on the captain's chair and the slanted back chairs and the swivel consoles for the CONN and OPS panels.
Anyway, the documentary touches on all aspects of Star Trek from the conventions and fans, to some behind the scenes production on TNG, to Roddenberry himself. Tellingly though what's not in the documentary is anything about Star Trek: The Animated Series which famously Gene Roddenberry didn't like and removed it from canon in 1988 and then Paramount actually made it policy until the series was released on DVD in 2006. Because of this policy most Star Trek reference books on the history of the franchise excised TAS from that history. The exception being The Art of Star Trek by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, which came out in 1995, after Voyager started airing, but before Star Trek: First Contact came out. Despite TAS being removed from canon and Star Trek's production history, the series was released on VHS in 1989 and then re-released in 1995.
Because it was in production at the time this documentary was filmed, there's a lot of coverage of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, including cast interviews. But what's cool about this is that Michael Dorn actually talks about playing Colonel Worf, Kirk and McCoy's defense attorney in the Klingon judicial system and the fact that he's Worf's grandfather. It's actually not something that Dorn really mentions in interviews nowadays as he, and the interviewers, tends to focus more on him playing Worf on TNG, DS9, and the TNG movies. So I thought that was pretty neat.
The VHS release is pretty cool. Particularly the opening, which is something I'm very familiar with. Because it's a 1992 Star Trek VHS release, it seems to have the same opening that the late first season TNG VHS releases had. With the commercials for the Star Trek Home Video Library, which included the first five Star Trek movies, the first season of TNG, all 79 episodes of TOS, and the Director's Series release of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and then for Star Trek: The Astral Symphony, which was a special CD and audio cassette release of music from all five movies up to that point, and it was released for the franchise's 25th Anniversary, which also mentions the VHS re-release of all five movies. Then the standard "Feature Presentation" logo, and then the particular Paramount warning title card, then the Paramount Pictures logo before going into the documentary itself. Like I said, the mid to late season 1 VHS releases from "11001001" to "Skin of Evil" have this opening on them and I saw it all the time whenever I watched one of those episodes, as I had the majority of the first season on VHS when I was a kid. So when I watched the opening before the documentary started, it transported me back to the days of watching the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation on VHS. What's interesting is that the collection of covers it shows are the original 1985 to 1990 Transporter covers rather than the 1992 blue re-release covers
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I would highly recommend you watch Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special if you've never seen it before, whether you're an old Star Trek fan like me, who remembers watching the series in 1991, or you're a younger fan who grew up on Enterprise, the Kelvin timeline films or the current slew of shows, Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks. It's an interesting time capsule for the history of Star Trek and where the franchise was back then compared to where it is now. I'm going to give Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special 10/10 stars for the special and 10/10 stars for the VHS release giving me those nostalgia feels for early '90s Star Trek VHS releases.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274889/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_4
Memory Alpha (Star Trek Wiki): https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_25th_Anniversary_Special_(VHS)
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