Patrick Stewart on Stage: The Starlog Project, Starlog #186, January 1993

Many years ago, actually probably not too far off from when this January 1993 issue of Starlog appeared, I lived briefly in Indianapolis. One fine day, a friend and I went to see Patrick Stewart on stage. He was touring with a one-man show in which he offered vignettes of various famous men from the history of the arts.

Naturally, he had bits of Shakespeare and other expected sources. But the best bit was what he didn’t do; he didn’t pander to all of us in the audience who expected some extended Captain Jean-Luc Picard scenes. Instead, about midway through his program, he mentioned the Picard character, walked over to the chair in the center of the stage, tugged on his tunic and sat down. All very Picardesque. The audience roared. Then he went on to other, non-Trek characters.

The show was great, and it probably introduced a lot of Star Trek fans to characters they’d never heard of or at least have never seen performed before. I hardly need to mention that Stewart is a great actor, and he made every minute of the show quite worth the price of the ticket.

But this was actually his less-known stage performance of the early 1990s. This issue of Starlog features an interview with the actor that focuses on his one-man Broadway stage performance of A Christmas Carol. I never had the opportunity to see this show, and I apparently missed something big. Stewart reportedly played to sold-out houses and rave reviews, just what any actor hopes to get. As he tells Starlog: “I had often imagined – all actors have, particularly, of course, British actors – what it would be like to be in a very successful show on Broadway. I had never projected myself into a successful solo show, a one-man show, so that made the whole experience that much more intense and exciting.”

Starlog #186
84 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

There are some personnel changes this issue. Editor David McDonnell says good-bye to longtime contributor Lia Pelosi, who is moving on; and Maureen McTigue is joining the staff as associate editor. Pelosi has used her post-Starlog life well, working as an editor at Marvel Comics and a string of major book publishers, including John Wiley & Sons and Random House. (No, I don’t know that off the top of my head. Google was invented for moments like this.)

The rundown: Patrick Stewart is in full Christmas Carol mode on the cover; meanwhile, Mel Gibson is in Forever Young mode on the contents page. David McDonnell’s Medialog column informs us that Mel Gibson has another project in process: a film revival of the old TV series Maverick. Michael McAvennie’s Gamelog column reviews Universal Soldier, More Cosmic Encounter, Star Wars: The Role-Playing Game, and others. And Communications letters dissect the late Beauty & the Beast, Gene Roddenberry worshippers and detractors, and the alleged paucity of new ship models on Star Trek: The Next Generation, while Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile features flying saucer aliens.

A bunch of classic adventures, such as Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, Jason and the Argonauts, and others, are released on video, as David Hutchison notes in his Videolog column. The Booklog section reviews Legends Reborn, The Magic of Christmas, Alien Earth, Speaking in Tongues, Blood Trillium, The Collected Stores of Robert Silverberg, Volume One: The Secret Sharers, The Eye of the Hunter, Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream, Nightside the Long Sun, and Mutant Legacy. Maureen McTigue takes up where Lia Pelosi left off and assembles the directory of fan clubs and publications in Fan Network, which also features the usual convention listings. And Kerry O’Quinn gets a tour of the Skywalker Ranch by his buddy Howard Roffman, a Lucas executive, and tells us, “Insiders say that [Lucas] has developed another Star Wars trilogy and hopes to begin working with writers and directors so that the premiere of the first film (the actual beginning of the entire saga) can be May 1997 – the 20th anniversary of Luke Skywalker’s materialization.”

The always-great Tom Weaver interviews Anne Francis, who discusses her work in the classic Forbidden Planet, including her impressions of fellow Forbidden star Leslie Nielsen, whom she says she “was madly in love with! Les was a very gentle, kind, terrific guy, just as he is today. He had a great sense of humor; today it has become more extreme than it was when I worked with him in those days.” David Hutchison talks to producer Brian Henson about the new film, The Muppet Christmas Carol. And Lynne Stephens talks about another Christmas Carol with stage and screen performer Patrick Stewart.

Marc Shaprio previews Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and gets all the awkward introductions of new characters and actors out of the way. Kim Howard Johnson interviews director Steve Miner about his new film Forever Young, which stars Mel Gibson, Jamie Lee Curtis, George Wendt, and Elijah Wood, all of whom Miner praises like there’s no tomorrow. Peter Bloch-Hansen profiles actor Adrian Paul, who talks about TV’s War of the Worlds (apparently it was a show with serious script difficulties) and his current gig as star of Highlander. And Ian Spelling chats with composer Alan Menken about the music for Disney’s Aladdin.

Coralee Grebe makes her first appearance in Starlog’s pages with “Heir to the Wars,” an interview with Star Wars novelist Timothy Zahn. Alain Bourassa and Mark Phillips continue their in-depth look at The Immortal. Joe Nazzaro investigates the cult British science-fiction comedy Red Dwarf, including a sidebar on the failed American version of the show. And David McDonnell wraps it all up with a grab bag of news, including an aside that Fangoria Films has released three films; those three films (for which my home state of Wisconsin played at least a partial role as a film set) were not exactly blockbusters, and I later heard the publisher say that the company didn’t make any money out of the deal, so an aside like this is probably all they deserve.

“More than anyone else, my father was responsible in those early days for eliminating the puppet proscenium that was commonly used. It was the usual practice to see puppet characters confined to a small stage with the human performers standing alongside. Jim broke that proscenium and used the TV screen itself as a picture frame. He experimented with lenses, preferring a wide-angle lens, so that his creations could work sometimes only mere inches in front of the camera. This technique created an extraordinary sense of immediacy and led to refinements in detailing and very precise lip-sync techniques. Also, a puppet usually had a single costume that never changes and which helped to define the character. Jim was always changing his characters’ wardrobe. Jim created beings. Kermit wasn’t a frog when he was created, Kermit was … an organic creature. He became a frog later on.”
–Brian Henson, president and CEO of Jim Henson Productions, interviewed by David Hutchison: “The Muppet Christmas Carol”

For more, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.

The Starlog Project: Starlog #166, May 1991: Robin Hoods – Princes of Thieves

True, Robin Hood is in no way science fiction. Bows, arrows, hand-to-hand combat. It’s really just glorified road brigandage. Yet, SF fans tend to love it, probably for the action and the high principles involved of helping the poor (though by stealing from the rich; I suspect this makes the Tea Party people have nightmares).

This issue, the latest Robin Hood, as played by Kevin Costner, takes center stage, though the magazine also highlights other Hoods from legend, screen, text, and television. The historical article, by William Wilson Goodson Jr., does a good job at showing how Robin Hood evolved over hundreds of years, from a rebellious freeborn man (neither peasant nor nobility) to eventual noble defending the king.

Starlog #166
80 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.50

At last, our long national nightmare is over. Starlog finally boosts its page count for the first time in five years. Since 1985, its regular-issue page count (thus not including 100-page special issues) has been 76 pages, including covers. This issue, the publisher adds another four pages to its basic package, and Starlog also rearranges the placement of its color and B&W+1 (black-and-white plus one color) pages. Again except for special issues, the magazine has for 15 years alternated four B&W pages with four color pages, with roughly half of the pages color. With issue #166, the B&W+1 pages are all ganged together (as pages 5-24, and 57-76).

This might be too much arcana to most of you, but it’s worth noting because it also changes the way the magazine is designed. When you only had four pages of color in a row, that meant the designers would sometimes do interesting (or not interesting enough) things to start a feature article on a color page opposite a black-and-white page. (This has occasionally limited which page spreads I’ve scanned for display with these article writeups.) Now, increasingly, the feature articles all begin on two-page color spreads, which livens up the design options available to the art staff. The departments (Videolog, Tribute, From the Bridge, etc.) migrate to the B&W+1 pages, which also give the magazine a more traditional division between departments and the feature well.

Okay, all of that is probably far more interesting and significant to a magazine editor like me than it is to you.

Perhaps of more general interest is that in this issue, Starlog runs its first ad for the official Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special, a 100-page, all-color magazine celebrating the silver jubilee of the science-fiction series that inspired Starlog 15 years earlier. It’s a very nice publication, and it also must have brought in a good amount of money to the company; the 25th-anniversary special magazine would reportedly become a huge best-seller. Priced originally at $6.95, it can sell for multiples of that amount on eBay in 2010, though I see one seller who’s priced it at $1.40. The fool!

The rundown: Kevin Costner grabs the prime cover spot, dressed as Robin Hood, who’s a prince of thieves, as you probably know; and if that’s not enough for you, he’s also featured on the contents page. The Communications pages are filled with readers commenting on past coverage of Robin of Sherwood, Edward Scissorhands, Beauty & the Beast, and more, plus Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile features the Morlocks; David McDonnell’s Medialog reports on yet another Robin Hood project, this time for TV; and the Fan Network pages include Lia Pelosi’s directory of fan clubs and the convention calendar.

Drew Bittner previews Car Warriors, a new four-issue limited series Epic (Marvel) comic book; Kerry O’Quinn’s From the Bridge discusses a man whose passion and profession is designing the spaceships of today – airplanes; Bill Warren previews the science-fiction comedy Mom & Dad Save the World; in “Saracen Sentiments,” Jean Airey talks with actor Mark Ryan about his role as Nasir in Robin of Sherwood; William Wilson Goodson Jr. explains the origins and development of the Robin Hood lore; and Adam Pirani previews Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Marc Shapiro visits the set of The Rocketeer (in my opinion, one of the unappreciated gems of 1990s filmmaking); Daniel Dickholtz interviews Paige Turco, human star of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze; interplanetary correspondent Michael Wolf (with illustrations by George Kochell) looks at mutants in genre history; David Hutchison’s Videolog column announces Ghost and other genre releases; Peter Bloch-Hansen and Elyse Dickenson provide a complete episode guide to TV’s War of the Worlds; I swear to God there’s a classified ad that reads: “GIANT AMEBA! Grows hand-size, bigger. Unearthly, ‘desktop Blob.’ $5.00 guaranteed alive! ...”; and in his Liner Notes column, editor David McDonnell talks SF conventions and also says good-bye to long-time Starlog editorial staffer Eddie Berganza. Berganza would go on to an even longer career as a comics creator at DC.

“Over all, Robin Hood is established as Robin of the Village of Locksley. A yeoman, a freeborn man – neither noble nor peasant – he’s outlawed for poaching deer and killing a royal forester (in self-defense). And that’s where the adventures begin. Robin’s popularity comes from his humiliation of such figurees as the Sheriff and the Abbot, who were hated as tax collectors and enforcers of petty laws. While not a noble himself (in most legends), Robin Hood represents chivalry’s ideals, demonstrating personal honor, generosity, courage and loyalty to the Crown. To England’s commoners, an outlaw’s life, free of backbreaking farm labor and the daily duties to the lord of one’s manor, must have seemed like paradise.”

–William Wilson Goodson Jr., writer, “The Many Adventures of Robin Hood”

To see more issues, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit The Starlog Project’s permanent home.

The Starlog Project: Starlog #148, November 1989: Exit Interviews

Starlog’s kind of becoming the place you go to do your exit interview when your character is killed off in a science-fiction TV series. Denise Crosby had her pre-, post- and follow-up exit interviews with Starlog when her Tasha Yar character was murdered in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and she even got a cover story out of one of those interviews.

This month, it’s Richard Chaves’ time to pick up his final paycheck and his accumulated vacation balance, chat with the HR lady, and then carry his box of belongings out to the car. Chaves’ character, Lt. Colonel Ironhorse, was killed off for the second season of TV’s syndicated War of the Worlds program. He checks in this month – with a cover story – to talk about his character, the show, and his career. The magazine also interviews the program's producers, who explain why the changes were made.

Starlog #148
76 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $3.95

The letters to the editor this issue almost go meta on the whole Star Trek matter. Does Starlog cover too much Star Trek? Not enough? Readers battle back and forth, with this one having the final word: “OK, now that you have done it – a whole issue without any major Star Trek articles, bring Star Trek back to every issue. I’m sure [the reader who complained in a previous issue about too much Trek] will bronze this issue (#142), but, for me, it goes into the circular file.”

The rundown: War of the Worlds’ departing actor Richard Chaves is on the cover, along with the line, “Why they’re killing me!” Meanwhile, Tron’s David Warner is featured on the contents page. Communications letters tackle Trek, the state of non-Trek TV (apparently there is some), identify with Wil Wheaton, and more; and David McDonnell’s Medialog reports the latest genre news headlines, including John Haymes Newton’s replacement as the star of Superboy by Gerard Christopher.

Terminator and The Abyss star Michael Biehn is interviewed by Dan Yakir and Ian Spelling, and he tells them about whether or not James Camerons sees him as an alter ego; in the Fan Network pages, Robert Greenberger answers reader queries (such as, “Where could I get a new style captain’s uniform?”), and Steve Jacobs (who I believe is one of the magazine’s typesetters – and heir to the fortune?) reports on Universal Studios’ Earthquake ride; Bill Warren talks with actor David Warner about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, performing Shakespeare with Patrick Stewart, Time After Time, Time Bandits, and more; Edward Gross profiles actor Tony “Paracelsus” Jay from Beauty & the Beast; Kyle Counts interviews former Catwoman Julie Newmar, who discussses her long career; and Jami Bernard checks in with a very pre-Ally McBeal Peter MacNicol about his roles in Ghostbusters and Dragonslayer.

Dan Yakir interviews Robert Davi, James Bond baddie; David Hutchison’s Videolog notes the latest genre releases, including a number of classics; Peter Bloch-Hansen reports on the changes in the second season of War of the Worlds; Christopher Golden interviews writer Craig Shaw Gardner (A Difficulty with Dwarves, An Excess of Enchantents, etc.); in “Casualty of War,” Peter Bloch-Hansen talks with Richard Chaves about his honorable discharge from War of the Worlds; Jean Airey and Laurie Haldeman complete their episode guide to Blake’s 7 (the guide ends the same way the series ended: “A stunned Avon kills Blake, a real Federation officer is revealed, troops charge in, shots ring out and, of the Scorpio crew, only Avon is left standing. Encircled by black uniformed guards, Avon raises his gun, smiles eerily, and ...”); in the fifth installment of his Who Framed Roger Rabbit special effects report, David Hutchison reveals some of the scenes that did not make it into the final film; Kerry O’Quinn’s Bridge column recounts his visit to the Toronto Ad Astra 9 convention, where he was hearing very bad things about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; Kim Howard Johnson talks to Terry Jones about The Saga of Erik the Viking; speaking of Python, David McDonnell’s Liner Notes column chats with Kim Howard Johnson about his new book, The First 200 Years of Monty Python. Read it for the George Harrison note.

“An actor prays for a kind of diplomatic immunity from outside prosecution: a director saying, ‘I want it to be this way. I don’t want you doing that.’ I want benign neglect. Ivan Reitman is a secure enough man that he let me do just about everything I wanted to, with one exception. I wanted to have a kind of an old Beatles wig and jeg-black hair, as if to say the ’60s had just now reached Carpathia, that it had taken a while, it had gone from village to village, and it was just now coming into fashion in this remote mountain area. They receive their culture like messages in a bottle. It looked like the wig was a go, and then, I’lll never know if it was a fellow cast member or what, it was cut. It was the lamest of reasons, which is why I suspect it was for another reason. Someone said, ‘Oh, everyone in this picture already has dark hair.”

–Peter MacNicol, actor, interviewed by Jami Bernard: “Who? Me a Villain?”

To see more issues, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the permanent home of The Starlog Project.

The Starlog Project: Starlog #137, December 1988: War of the Worlds

With War of the Worlds being syndicated each week across the nation, 1988 was a year of highlights for that venerable H.G. Wells classic. Though I'm sure Wells would be pleased to see War on the cover of Starlog #137 (if they could stuff a copy of the magazine into his coffin, that is), the most famous War production was and remains the 1938 radio production by wunderkind Orson Welles, which reportedly panicked listeners, some of them (let's be frank: probably not the intellectual cream of the crop among them) believing the radio program was announcing a real invasion.

Starlog #137 has both productions: The TV series as well as writer a report on the controversial 1938 radio play. That mix of the brand new and the classic was always one of the things Starlog did best.

Starlog #137
76 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $3.50

Classified ad of the month: "FREE A new mailing list is being formed for distribution to hundreds of companies that give away free items in the mail: Free samples/Promotional items/Sci-Fi/Horror/Fantasy/Subscriptions! Anything & Everything Free. If you would like to be on this list, send $2 processing fee to ..." It's sort of the genius ad of the year: Have someone pay to be placed on a mailing list.

The rundown: In his From the Bridge column, publisher Kerry O'Quinn begins a multi-part editorial about how to find out what really interests you in life; Communications letters include a number of letters on the situation of BBC's Doctor Who program, which at this time was undergoing a rather tumultuous period in its long life, plus readers chime in with thoughts about Beauty and the Beast, the magazine's recent articles on the bodies and voices behind Star Wars' Darth Vader, the TV airing of David Lynch's Dune, and more; in the Medialog section, there's Kim Howard Johnson on a rather bizarre rumor that John Cleese is in the running to play Doctor Who (Cleese muses, "People reading newspapers often think there's no smoke without fire – my experience is that in many cases, there is"), Ian Spelling on a young Kiefer Sutherland (at this time, he was known mainly for Stand By Me and The Lost Boys), and David McDonnell's roundup of genre headlines (such as the news that the next James Cameron film is going to be called The Abyss – not that you asked, but in my opinion, it's the best Cameron film).

Adam Pirani previews director Neil Jordan's film High Spirits (starring a much-younger Liam Neeson, along with Steve Guttenberg, Daryl Hannah, and Peter O'Toole); Diana Whitaker Jackson interviews writer Jean Lorrah, author of The Vulcan Academy Murders, Empress Unborn, and more; Edward Gross profiles director Richard Colla about his tours of duty on Battlestar Galactica, The Questar Tapes, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and other shows; Theorist-in-Chief Michael J. Wolff turns his pen (keyboard?) to tackling the meanings of The Blob (the first time I wrote that sentence, I misspelled it as "The Blog," which would be about a different beast that takes over the world); because Cocoon was a success, 20th Century Fox decided the world needed a follow up, and Ian Spelling was dispatched to report on Cocoon: The Return.

Glen E. Swanson explains the making and the resulting controversy of Orson Welles' 1938 radio version of War of the Worlds, with a sidebar by Daniel Dickholtz on a new production of the story for National Public Radio; meanwhile, Peter Bloch-Hansen gets the behind-the-scenes story on the making of the syndicated TV series; in the Fan Network pages, there are answers to reader queries (such as, "Having seen The Boy Who Could Fly on cable, I have fallen for Lucy Deakins. Is she sticking with acting or has she gone on to be a marine biologist as she stated in the interview in Starlog #111?") and some short news bits on a Twin Cities Doctor Who convention and a James Bond art competition; producer Frank Marshall is interviewed by Edward Gross and David McDonnell, who get him to discuss Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the new Indy Jones film (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), and more; Michael Mallory interviews stuntman Tom Steele; Desire Gonzales profiles the actor who played the Next Generation's Traveler character, Eric Menyuk; Peter Bloch-Hansen talks with screenwriters Brent Maddock and Steve Wilson about their creation, Short Circuit and its sequel, and they tell him "We've discovered that writers are basically powerless" in Hollywood; in an extra-lengthy Videolog column, David Hutchison gives background on Disney's The Three Caballeros and Cinderella; Carr D'Angelo interviews AlienNation director Graham Baker; and editor David McDonnell wraps it all up in his Liner Notes by listing all kinds of magazines not published by his company to which you should consider subscribing. I'm sure his bosses loved that column.

"Graham Baker is unique in Hollywood: He is the first director of a science-fiction film who is actually a visitor from space. (He's lying. While Baker is the director of AlienNation, a tale of extraterrestrial immigrants in Los Angeles, he is originally from England.) On his home planet, Baker was a prominent rocket scientist whose visionary ideas about space travel inspired a generation. (Actually, Baker spent 15 years in advertising as an award-winning commercials director before helming his first feature.) Prior to AlienNation, Baker had taken an extended vacation on Mars where he is an honorary colonial governor. (Not true. Before filming began, Baker kept busy directing the infamous Joe Isuzu ads that immediately became a pop culture staple – but you may have figured that out already.)

–Carr D'Angelo, writer, "Pride & Prejudice"

To read previous Starlog issue descriptions, click on "Starlog Internet Archive Project" in the keywords below or visit the StarlogProject's permanent home.