From 1989: The British edition of STARLOG's done-in-one STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER OFFICIAL MAGAZINE.
The release of Shatner's movie coincided with MARVEL UK's ill-fated (and hard to explain) decision to plunge back into the Media Magazine market only four years after they'd flogged-off STARBURST to Visual Imagination at a knockdown price.
Core to the cunning plan was the new monthly magazine FANTASY ZONE (see here for more on its brief run). The new launch also spawned a couple of branded spin-offs: this one and GHOSTBUSTERS II.
The contents are the same as the American edition, with the exception of tweaks to the cover and substituting US ads for British replacements.
This was the first Marvel UK TREK special since the 1982 Winter Special (see here). The Annex of Ideas launched a Next Gen tie-in the following year but badly misjudged the audience... and paid the price.
London Editions, having renewed its licensing arrangement with DC Comics after the best part of a decade, also published a British edition of the one-shot comics adaptation of the film. This was the first time one of the movie adaptations had been widely available in Great Britain (the regular monthly was part of the bundle of DC titles sold in newsagents) since the British Bullpen had published the MOTION PICTURE adaptation in annual form and serialized in the pages of FUTURE TENSE.
The film itself is always dismissed as one of (of not THE) worst of the franchise. I've never understood that. I had a chance, coutesy of CIC Video and the IDIC Fan Club, to see it on the big screen at London's Empire Leicester Square (which, I believe, was operated by UiP which also owned CIC Video) in 1989 or 1990 (just before the VHS release) and, although the shortcomings (notably in the clearly cash-strapped visuals) were obvious... I also thought it was a good character piece... at least for the three principals.
Having seen it a few times since over the years, most recently as part of the BR set, my opinion hasn't really changed. I like the cast more than any of their successors and I think this stands above most of the TNG era movies.
Incidentally, I must be the only person anywhere to think that NEMESIS was a reasonable attempt to reboot the stale franchise by upping the action quota... although I could have done without seeing Riker in the buff.
I agree that TREK V and NEMESIS are both underrated. Apart from both having a score by the great Jerry Goldsmith, they also have many other fine qualities. TREK V still gets a bad rap to this day even recently from the official site as seen here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.startrek.com/article/26-years-later-star-trek-v-beams-into-theaters
still a lot of good stuff and some great laugh out loud moments...none of the subsequent crews could ever hold a candle to shatner and co and that includes the cast of the recent movie reboot , standing on the shoulders of giants.
NEMESIS maybe wasnt quite the send off the next gen cast deserved but by god , Tom Hardy showed his mettle as an actor even then.