While I’ve been going through old graphics and documents to find items to post on my website, I’ve re-discovered a few things that I thought were kewl enough to share. I decided to post one of them now.
Back in February 2013, just before Star Trek: Into Darkness was released in theaters, we were contacted by Star Magazine asking if someone from Starfleet Command’s Seventh Fleet would be interested in participating in an interview for an up-coming special issue dedicated to the movie. They had sent invitations out to different fans and organizations and they would be selecting the best responses for publication.
Now I’ve been interviewed by local radio and television stations regarding my Star Trek fandom (some of the photos are in my Kewl Stuff online gallery). Podcasts have invited me to join an episode and talk about geeky things. I’ve also been interviewed by local newspapers (I’ll have to find and scan those articles as well). However I had never had a chance to be interviewed by a national publication until this invitation. After some encouragement from my friends, Dennis Hollinger and Richard Henline, I agreed to participate.
The interviewer sent me a series of questions, which I answered as honestly as I could. I sent back my response thinking, it will be kewl if this happens, but I’m not expecting to be published. To my surprise, I was informed in mid-March that my interview had been one of three selected for publication. A high quality photo of me was requested and Star Magazine wanted my address to send me several free issues.
The publisher sent me an image of the cover first, which is the first time I heard that this would be the “Battle of the Star Trek Superfans.” Uh… what? A few days later the issues arrived in the mail. Here is a scan of the covers and the interview.
As you can see from the interviews, I was “battling” the author of the Star Trek: The Visual Dictionary, Raul Ruditis and Anthony Pascale, the editor of the Star Trek news site TrekMovie.com (a site I visit quite regularly for reputable Star Trek information). Not bad company. I would love to be a published author of a Star Trek resource book (I have some ideas in mind) or on a site like TrekMovie. What was interesting is that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know about the “battle”. At least one of the above gentlemen contacted me by twitter stating “I surrender to you in the battle”. This made me upset because I was going to concede to him. We didn’t want to battle, we just wanted to talk Trek.
I don’t know who else was contacted for possible inclusion in the interview. But I do know that Starfleet Command’s Seventh Fleet beat out one of the larger international fan clubs for publication. I thought that was a nice feather in our cap.
Some of the other questions that were asked, but not published were as follows.
What would you name the next Star Trek film? Star Trek: Infinite Combinations
Do you have a favorite piece of Star Trek memorabilia? I love collecting the Star Trek technical manuals. I have all of the official books and a large variety of fan created items. The amount of creativity into “explaining” how this make-believe tech works is inspiring. A favorite short story I read is where a post-apocalyptic society finds a collection of Star Trek tech manuals. They end up using the books as inspiration to rebuilding their civilization. (This story is “Half the Battle” by Harry Turtledove which was originally published in Stardate Magazine)
If you could give J.J. Abrams some direction about the next movie, what would it be? Less lensflare. If there is not going to be a continuation after the third contractual movie, then the final scenes should be showing the universe reverting back to the prime-universe established in the television series. (At the time, a third movie had been highly speculated, but it didn’t seem like there would be any more Kelvin timeline movies after that one, hopefully we will get one more)
After the issue was released, my mother went out and purchased a copy for her scrapbook. A lot of friends also went out and purchased copies (some even asked me to sign them). Every once in a while, this issue pops up again in the wild. When I see it, I have a sense of pride that this was my first national interview. Thank you to Star Magazine for the opportunity.