Star Trek: Memories [VHS]

Star Trek: Memories [VHS]
by Michael Mahler

Star Trek: Memories [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: DeForest Kelley, George Takei, James Doohan, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner
Director: Michael Mahler
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 46 minutes
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Paramount
Studio: Paramount

VHS Movie Reviews of Star Trek: Memories [VHS]

Movie Review: The Welcome Reprint of Shatner's ST Experiences...
Summary: 5 Stars

With the amazing longevity of William Shatner as a media celebrity, and the release of the reimagined "Star Trek" in theaters and on DVD, it's a pleasure to see Shatner's own insights of his best-known television series back in print. "Star Trek Memories" may be the chattiest, most entertaining of all the "Trek" books, with Shatner's wit, understanding, and, occasionally, his ego, wonderfully unrestrained!

To the movers who made "Trek" happen, he is remarkably fair and supportive, particularly to those who have passed away. While Gene Roddenberry is de-mythicized (his errors and often bizarre quirkiness are not glossed over), the vision and legendary audacity that created a unique series is not shortchanged, either...and the vital importance of Gene L. Coon, Robert H. Justman and Matt Jeffries in making a nearly impossible concept 'work' on a weekly basis is gratefully given the attention it deserves.

Shatner is magnanimous in sharing the performance credit with his castmates (particularly Leonard Nimoy and Dee Kelley), but admits it could be a battle getting screen time and scripts that played to the actors' individual strengths. He acknowledges that he could 'walk over' others in this, but I suspect it was more of an issue than he presents it, on the basis of the ill will James Doohan, George Takei, and others, had, and in some cases, still have towards him (and in his revelation of Nichelle Nichols' affair with Roddenberry before her own book was released, he effectively broadsided the actress, which reveals a lot about his being occasionally self-serving). Still, you end up feeling that Shatner, by and large, is a pretty terrific, likable person, and deserves the credit he's received for the show's extraordinary longevity. He never 'signed on' expecting the series to become the touchstone of his 50-year career as an actor, but has come to accept it with humor and grace.

This is certainly a 'must have' book for "Trek" fans!

Movie Review: Fascinating (Pun Intended)
Summary: 5 Stars

I began reading "Star Trek Memories" after recently bearing witness to J.J. Abrams truly awful reboot of the "Star Trek" franchise. Eager to resurrect the memories of the "Star Trek" of my childhood, I ploughed into William Shatner and Chris Kreski's memoir of the creation, production and eventual cancellation of the series with gusto, and, in so doing, discovered a story that is worthy of a HBO miniseries all of its own. Seriously, the shenanigans that occurred in the course of attempting to get the "Enterprise" off of the ground would give anything that you've seen on Mad Men - Season One a run for it's money.

From traffic-cop-and-wannabe-screen-writer Gene Roddenberry's subtle menacing of legendary Hollywood producer Irving "Swifty" Lazar in order to break into the TV writing industry, through to the notoriously troubled production of the third season of the show, it is a story which is never less than fascinating, and one which takes in nervous breakdowns, network plagiarism, egomania, bicycle theft, alcoholism, racism, some truly chilling allegations of rape, and a grinding Sisyphian production schedule which would have tested the diplomacy of Kofi Annan and the patience of Job.

Roddenberry, who had passed on by the time the book was written, is an intriguing figure who appears to have been equal parts visionary, workhorse, genius, egomaniac, huckster, philanderer, shill and skinflint; a man who aspired to produce a television show which celebrated the loftiest ideals of human ambition whilst indulging in, shall we say, the slightly more baser elements of human nature himself. Suffice it to say, prior to reading this book I had always considered Leonard Nimoy to be somewhat curmudgeonly in his attitude towards "Star Trek", but after learning what he went through during and after the production of the series and subsequent films (which are chronicled in the follow-up to this book, " Star Trek " Movie Memories, which I'm currently reading), one wonders how he didn't take to going to the set with a gun. Similarly, debts of honour are also repaid to the likes of Gene L. Coon, Robert H. Justman and Matt Jeffries (unsung heroes of "Trek" who were apparently as intrinsic to the series as Roddenberry himself) and amends are made to Fred Freiberger - the man who was wrongly vilified and maligned for the death of the series.

As a narrator, Shatner is conversational and avuncular and clearly attempts to play the diplomat. That said, he is completely open about his fraught relations with the rest of the cast, and the fact that James Doohan refused to be interviewed for the book, in its closing chapters.

If you haven't read it and are intrigued by the history of this classic series, I doubt you'll find a better account. Similarly, if you're only looking for a lightly humourous and scandalous insight into the world of television in the sixties, I suspect you'll thoroughly enjoy it.

Movie Review: STM
Summary: 3 Stars

Good background stories for the fan of STTOS but for the novice this would be mostly boring stuff about the production teams and the writers. Bill Shatner has a good sense of humor and keeps the listener engaged with some highlights.

Movie Review: Old and interesting
Summary: 4 Stars

Shatner wrote this memoir about the beginnings and the first season. It has a fair amount of humor and a great many inserted pieces by many of the production staff: Jeffries, Fontana, Justman and many others. Written in 1992 it's been remaindered for many years and the one I got is an untouched first edition. Even devoted Trekkers will find things they didn't know.

Movie Review: A Book any "Original Series" Fan Should Own
Summary: 5 Stars

Star Trek "The Original Series" originally aired in the late 1960s but really picked up its base of fans in syndication.

This book is the recount of star William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk) of how the series came to be, the struggles, the relationships, the victories, and ultimately the cancellation of the series.

Some myths are confirmed while others are completely busted. The jokes on the set were beyond belief, yet the first TV interracial kiss was a fake. Did you know that the men of "The Menagerie" were all women? The book is full of set drawings by Matt Jeffries and first-person interjections by Magel Roddenberry, Nichelle Nicholes, Leonard Nimoy, and many others. William Shatner is helped by Chris Kreski in telling the tales of the series that broke into frontiers where none had gone before.

The retelling is warm and welcoming, heart-felt and sometimes regretful, and in all respects easy to read and embrace. It's the first book I've read from cover to cover in over a year and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

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Summary of Star Trek: Memories [VHS]

Released in 1996, this straight-to-video effort focuses almost entirely on the classic Star Trek series, as told by the principal actors of Star Trek: Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. Shatner, of course, gets center stage, telling anecdotes about the way each of the roles was cast and why each actor was uniquely suited for his or her role. A great deal is also made (and rightly so) about what a breakthrough the show represented in its multicultural casting. Shatner, who also serves as host, repeats many of the same stories he used in his book, Star Trek Memories, as do his old cast mates. Indeed, this is one of several Star Trek retrospective tapes in which Nichols or someone else tells the story about her encounter with Martin Luther King Jr., at a point when she was considering quitting the show because her part seemed so inconsequential. --Marshall Fine

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