Wednesday, 8 September 2021

Star Trek's 25th Anniversary...30 Years Later

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing quite well. Please excuse my absence from The Review Basement this last week, I've been busy establishing the new movie review blog, Josh's Movie Review Corner. To all of you Trekkies reading this, Happy Star Trek Day! Today I'm going to take you back to 1991, when Star Trek was celebrating it's 25th Anniversary. I'll be talking about where I was in 1991 and where Star Trek was as a franchise. So let's go back in time and talk about Star Trek's 25th Anniversary, 30 years ago.


This logo was on everything in 1991. Posters, books, comics, videocassette boxes, toys, and video game boxes all had this logo on them throughout the entire year. I actually had several items with this logo on them. Including a set of trading cards from Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I actually still have those cards in a binder down here in the basement. I might do a separate post on them at another time, but right now, I had them and that's all I'll say about them. I was in and out of the hospital at this point in my life. With more and more time being spent in the hospital again than out of it. Which meant I was spending alot of time watching TV and movies. However, during the summer of 1991 I had a very special visitor at the hospital. Nichelle Nichols was in Ottawa for a Star Trek convention, celebrating the 25th Anniversary as well as the release of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Anyway, I wasn't able to go so they brought the convention to me instead. I got my Nintendo Game Boys, the Star Trek 25th Anniversary game for said Game Boy (more on that and Star Trek VI in a bit), and some TNG figures from Galoob that came out in 1988 from Nichelle, and she showed me the final trailer for Star Trek VI as well as a reel from TNG's first four seasons that was shown to promote the fifth season, which was just about to start. Now, let's talk about what came out for Star Trek at the time to commemorate the event.


Star Trek: The Next Generation was going strong on TV at the time of Star Trek's 25th Anniversary. Not only did it air it's 100th episode at the beginning of 1991, but went into it's fifth season in September, 1991. In my opinion the fifth season is the show's strongest season and the one I remember seeing the most episodes of as they aired in 1991 and 1992. Commercials for the show were everywhere, people had posters all over the place, there were stickers, trading cards, books, and comics available for the series as well. TNG was everywhere.


As mentioned earlier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was released in 1991 as a farewell to the cast of the original Star Trek as the vast majority of them would be retiring from those roles though Leonard Nimoy would return as Spock in the two part TNG episode "Unification", which actually aired before Star Trek VI came out, and again in 2009 in Star Trek and 2013 in Star Trek Into Darkness, James Doohan would return as Scotty in the TNG season 6 episode "Relics" and in the 1994 feature film, Star Trek Generations, William Shatner and Walter Koenig would return as Kirk and Chekov respectively in Generations, and George Takei would return as Hikaru Sulu in the 30th anniversary tribute episode, "Flashback" during the third season of Star Trek: Voyager.


1991 was also the year that Paramount requested that Rick Berman and Michael Piller put together a TNG spin-off series to begin airing in January, 1993. That series would become Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and would go on to do things that very few, if any, TV shows did at the time. Particularly if they were airing in first run syndication as both TNG was doing and DS9 would do. I don't think DS9 was announced to the public until 1992, or very late 1991 at the earliest. I'm pretty sure that that's when it was.







In celebration of the 25th Anniversary the first five Star Trek feature films were re-released on home video with new packaging. They were sold individually as well as in the Star Trek: The Movies - 25th Anniversary Collector's Set box set that I talked about in a previous post. Of course this is how I saw these movies for the first time. They re-used the packaging for the 1993 box set that included the home video release of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which is the set my dad would eventually get.



Star Trek: The Next Generation would also start coming out on home video in 1991. The first releases were the initial Columbia House Video Library releases that contained two to three episodes per tape. After that Paramount Home Video began releasing the series on home video with one episode per tape, starting with "Encounter at Farpoint" on September 5th 1991. Of course I had the first two volumes of the Columbia House releases as well as most of the first season of TNG in the Paramount Home Video releases when I was a kid. TOS had previously been released on home video, but this was the first time that TNG was being released.


Star Trek - The Astral Symphony was an audio collection of select tracks from the soundtracks of the first five Star Trek movies that was released on CD and audiotape in 1991. The cover art was designed to match the box art for the Star Trek movie VHS releases. I never had this collection. I knew about it because of a preview for it on some of the latter season 1 TNG VHS tapes before the episodes. 


The aforementioned Game Boy game was released too. There were versions for the Nintendo Entertainment System as well as versions for the computer. I have the Game Boy game still, but I remember playing one of the computer versions. I think it was the DOS version that I played at the hospital. I don't remember for sure though. 


Finally, on the week of September 28th 1991, Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special hosted by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy aired on TV. It would get a VHS release in 1992, but this was a TV special that celebrated Star Trek's 25th Anniversary and went behind the scenes on Star Trek VI. I have the special on VHS and it's a pretty fun watch. I did a review of it either late last year or early this year on this blog, so go check it out if you haven't done so already.

It's amazing to see how Star Trek was 30 years ago. Back then there were five movies, with a sixth one on the way, two live action TV shows, with a third one on the way, and a barely acknowledged animated series. There was no internet, no streaming services, and no DVD or Blu-ray box sets. The only way you could watch Star Trek is either on TV or if you were lucky and were able to get either the Collector's Edition or Paramount Home Video VHS releases of each series. Or if you were REALLY lucky you were able to tape each episode of TNG as it aired. Nowadays you have every series on DVD, you have all but two of them on Blu-ray, you have all the movies on Blu-ray, all of the shows and movies on streaming services and the classic shows from the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and 2000s are still being shown on TV. Plus there's the internet. Not to mention you have 13 movies (with a 14th and possibly a 15th on the way), you have a total of nine Star Trek shows to watch, with two more on the way, and over 800 episodes to watch. I don't think I can name another franchise that has that much to watch.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow over on Josh's Movie Review Corner with a review of Cruella. So head on over there tomorrow for that. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

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