AG Monday!
There be whales here.
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock answered some questions about the fate of the Enterprise crew, and left others very unresolved. Where would they go next? Why, on a trek to find humpback whales, of course! Star Trek IV: The Journey Home was a very light-hearted adventure to the 20th century to save the future of Earth, and became one of the most beloved Star Trek productions ever! Come with us back to the 80s, an era of colorful metaphors and peak Trek.
A mysterious alien probe! San Francisco! A stolen Klingon ship! Way too much rain! Humor! Hot takes! Its all here.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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Where are the nuclear wessels?
Didn’t expect the ST4 podcast to follow right on the heels of ST3 podcast! Better listen quick so I can comment in a timely fashion (for a change… I end up waiting so long that the article drops way off the page).
Obligatory joke. From Futurama’s ep. Where No Fan Has Gone Before:
Leonard Nimoy: Melllvar, you have to respect your actors. When I directed “Star Trek IV”, I got a magnificent performance out of Bill because I respected him so much.
William Shatner: And when I directed “Star Trek V”, I got a magnificent performance out of me because I respected me so much.
I can’t recall whether I saw Trek IV in a theater or a video rental… I’ve seen it again a number of time since.
The reason I classify it as comedy is, mostly, that the crew of the Bounty shows total disregard for the timeline while time traveling*. Scotty casually showing the 80s primitives how to make transparent aluminum**, McCoy treating a patient without even examining her, Spock walking around in Vulcan robes, Kirk letting the whale scientist in on the joke, etc.
For a serious movie, they’d have been more constrained and couldn’t have had such fun an outing.
*BTW, while they tended to travel back in time to the era the show or movie were shot in, in The City on the Edge of Forever they travelled to the 1930s. TNG’s crew went to the XIX century (albeit to San Francisco).
**And expertly using a 1980s computer after showing he had no clue how they work.
I’ve no idea how it took me this long to remember this, given there have been a number of Trek themed installments of Ancient Geeks already.
Anyway, in 1983 Leonard Nimoy hosted a TV special called Star Trek Memories. I found it on Youtube
@Kathy:..Star Trek Memories…
Thanks for the video.
It is interesting to learn that Nimoy borrowed the “Live Long and Prosper” hand gesture from a Hebrew blessing.
When I moved to San Francisco with friends in the spring of 1974 we didn’t have much money. One of the first things we bought was a used black and white TV that we sat on the kitchen table. Since it didn’t interfere with our budget for beer and weed somehow we scraped together enough money to sign up for the local San Francisco basic cable TV service. To our delight we were able to tune in to several different bay area TV stations that broadcast reruns of Star Trek at different times for a total of three hours every weekday. I saw some of the episodes on it’s original run however since I was working most weeknights during prime time in those years the
San Francisco reruns allowed me to catch up with all the episodes.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
You’re welcome.
I saw it when it first aired, and recalled almost all of it. I think they edited it smaller, or got some kind of abbreviated version. I’ll look for other uploads online.