Thursday, July 28, 2011

1978 Article: The Technology Of Trek

This time, I'm bringing you more material from Issue #3 of the awesome Science Fantasy Film Classics magazine, published July 1978. You can view the cover here, and earlier content I've posted from this issue here, as well as here. And there will be more to come in future posts, you can be sure. This time the article focuses on the wonderfully thought-out technology that set the show apart from all other TV sci-fi, and was years ahead of its time. It was the technological trappings that made the setting so believable. The article looks at the technology on the show and where things were at the time, and postulates which items could be created and how long in the future it might be. With the exception of the transporter, which was more of a time-and-budget-saving device than a real possibility, many of the ideas are much closer to reality now, and some have been realized. The furthest away from being possible any time soon is warp drive, being only a theory.
(Click on images to enlarge. An additional click once the window opens may be necessary to view at full size.)














Bonus: a full-page photo of Bill Shatner from one of the TV-movie magazine articles published in September of 1967, during the show's original run.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember this issue in 1978 and still have it. As a kid, I was impressined by the prop pictures on the first page --we fans usually had grainy stills from the paperbacks or lithographs. Also, the first page of the interview has the prediction that small personal communicators would use satellites to replace home phones. I think our mobile phones today have better apps than even Scotty could slap together.

Frederick said...

Yeah, and it's wild to find out that those props were fan-made, not originals! Incredible work.

Erica Leibner said...

Star Trek fans, set your phasers to stun! William Shatner’s new documentary, The Captains, lands in participating movie theatres across Canada on Thursday, October 13 at 7 p.m. (local time) for a one-night only presentation. This special event, presented by Cineplex Entertainment’s Front Row Centre Events and Ballinran Entertainment, is the final frontier to see this highly anticipated documentary in theatres.

The Captains is a feature length documentary that “boldly goes where no man has gone before,” giving viewers an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at one of the most durable and profitable franchises in entertainment history, and the men and women who made the Star Trek brand an international phenomenon since 1966. The Captains is written and directed by William Shatner.

*Tickets can be purchased at participating theatre box offices, through the Cineplex Mobile Apps and online at www.cineplex.com/events or our mobile site m.cineplex.com.

Unknown said...

Trek fans! Get a video preview of Trek The Musical by checking this Mr. Media video interview with the show's creators, Lauren Field and Gaetano Rodriguez, and meet the cast, in character: http://www.mrmedia.com/?p=3743