Blasto from el pasto: Cinefantastique ST:TNG Specials
Tonight’s uncovered treasure: binders full of Cinefantastique Magazine’s annual Star Trek double issues. CFQ, as it was abbreviated, was a nifty magazine whose editors seemed to espouse an ethos of “we like this stuff, and we say so, but when we see a great big overbaked turkey, we’ll call a spade a spade”. Rob Heyman and I used to eat these issues up, especially when Mark A. Altman took over stewardship after the late 1989 issue. I’m not sure it can be overstated how influential these CFQ issues were on theLogBook.com’s own editorial “outlook.” Back around 1994-95, when theLogBook went through its brief incarnation as a print ‘zine, I’m unafraid to admit that we borrowed CFQ’s 4-star episode rating system and more than a little of Altman’s writing style. (At least for a while – I’m also unafraid to say that this was a “phase” for both of us.) It was the gospel according to Altman, and It Was Good.
Why bother with these when I was waxing rhapsodic just yesterday about Starlog’s official TNG magazines? Altman had a very fair but firm critical approach, and his behind-the-scenes pieces were wonderful warts-and-all profiles. Despite the descriptions of conflicts of personalities, egos, creative agendas and styles, they made both of us want to write for television all the more. Unlike the Starlog magazines, which were vetted by Paramount, CFQ would seek the opinions of pissed-off former TNG writers like Tracy Torme and Herb Wright, who often had perfectly legit axes to grind. Neither of us really exactly wound up going in that direction, but we have both served our time in the trenches of journalism – so Altman may have wound up being more of an influence on our lives than Michael Piller or Ronald D. Moore, though we didn’t realize it at the time.
As wasn’t uncommon for that point in my life (early 90s), I carefully removed the staples from each issue, gently separated the pages, and put each Trek-related page in a page protector in the binders. So these aren’t exactly “intact.” But if anyone’s interested in taking the binders off my hands, give me a shout. The 1989 issue has already been claimed by a friend of mine, but the rest of them (1990-94/95) are up for grabs.… Read more
