Cinefantastique

Cinefantastique was a magazine devoted to television and movie productions in the horror, fantasy and science fiction genres, including Star Trek. It started out as a fanzine in, under the stewardship of Frederic S. Clarke. Under his auspices, it soon developed into a high-quality critical review magazine, relaunched and with a re-started numbering from onward, with in-depth articles about the genre. The high quality was reflected in the way the magazine was published, being printed on high gloss paper and featuring full color interior work, with advertising kept to a minimum and those limited to related products. Over time, a more journalistic approach was introduced as a new element in the formula. Reporters were sent out to get firsthand information of the people involved in the genre productions. Another element was introduced in, with the publication of the first double issue covering Star Wars, heralding the advent of theme numbers where editors were able to go in-depth into specific productions in the genre. Double issues became regular occurrences of Cinefantastique. Up until then the formula was comparable to the contemporary Starlog magazine. The magazine had a sister publication, Femme Fatales, which featured interviews with Nana Visitor, Terry Farrell, Chase Masterson, Jeri Ryan, Roxann Dawson, Jennifer Lien and female Star Trek guest stars.

Summary
In, Star Trek: The Next Generation became the first television show to be covered in an episode guide issue. The set-up differed in that the guide was beefed out with behind-the-scenes articles. The formula was very well received by readers and was later expanded to double issue theme numbers and applied to other popular genre television series of the time, like The X-Files and Babylon 5. Mark A. Altman, Dale Kutzera and Anna Kaplan became the premier reporters on Star Trek. While not as specialized as its contemporaries, American Cinematographer and Cinefex, Cinefantastique covered a wider range of behind-the-scenes aspects of productions, which, however, gave a more complete picture of the production of the Star Trek spin-off television series than the contemporary "official" Starlog Press television series magazines. At the time of publication, particularly during the years 1990-2000, Cinefantastique became therefore the premier source of contemporary background information on the production of the television series, its two contemporaries concentrating on the movie features, and has arguably remained so to this date, especially where Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager are concerned. Unlike other, later publications, including reference books or commentaries on home media releases, Cinefantastique's strength lay in the fact that production staffers of the television series proffered insights about their contributions, while their memories were still fresh, having been interviewed hot on the heels after, or even during, their involvement in a particular season. Cinefantastique's articles were accompanied by behind-the-scenes photographs, taken on personal title, and provided by production staffers themselves (therefore not part of CBS's licensing department), virtually unseen seen afterwards.

Anna Kaplan cited her interviews about the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode as an example of the magazine's strength, commenting, "Only in CFQ could I have written complete coverage of "Trials and Tribble-ations" Deep Space Nine's homage to classic Trek on it’s 30th anniversary. I talked to all the writer-producers and many of the people behind and in front of the camera who contributed to that remarkable episode. David Hines also interviewed David Gerrold, who wrote the original series episode . The November 1997 CFQ issue devoted 18 pages to that one episode. None of the other genre publications, not even official Star Trek magazines, provided that kind of coverage". 

Coverage of the movie features through  has not been as exhaustive as the television series, due to the fact that these articles, essentially teasers, were published prior to the movie releases, meaning that what information could be divulged was restricted out of necessity. The heavy Star Trek coverage during the late 1980s and 1990s did alienate some of the long time readership as well as some of the writing staff, though staff writer Dan Scapperotti has mused years later, "I was never terribly interested in STAR TREK, but those issues paid the bills. Every year you had to come out with [at least] one, because they were really hot issues. Looking back twenty years later, that’s interesting stuff."

In, founder and chief editor Clarke committed suicide. After his death, perceived quality of the magazine in both content and product (including those with Star Trek contents, as the last few issues covering the subject had not the depth, the previous outings had) started to wane noticeably, and readership began to decline rapidly, before the magazine ceased publication in 2002.

Mark A. Altman, who had previously left the magazine, acquired publishing rights with Mark Gottwald and relaunched it under the new title CFQ in. Returning the publication to its original formula of being a critical review magazine, they were unable to regain the popularity it originally had in its heydays and publication ceased in after 25 issues.

Cinefantastique relaunched in as a webzine called Cinefantastique Online.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Noteworthy is that – unlike the other Star Trek productions, up to – coverage of  and  was either very limited (in the first case) or altogether non-existent (in the latter case). Especially the first case was remarkable since The Motion Picture received extensive coverage, at the time, in contemporary magazines like Starlog, American Cinematographer, and Cinefex. Cinefantastique had planned a theme double-issue for the occasion, and articles were written for the issue. However, editorial problems, probably due to scheduling problems with the likewise conceived The Black Hole double-issue, caused that issue never to be published. The completed cover art by Roger Stine for that issue was later acquired by Daren Dochterman, having bought it as  in Profiles in History's Hollywood Auction 24 of 31 March, 2006.

Years later, in regard to the Motion Picture, the main free-lance writer for the would-be special, Preston Neal Jones, shed more light on the issue of its non-publication, as he searched for a publisher to have his work, done for the special, yet published as a book (after a previously failed December 1991 release attempt by Image Publishing), entitled "Return to Tomorrow": "This work began in the summer of 1979 as a commission from Frederick S. Clarke, the editor of Cinefantastique magazine, to create a double-issue honoring the imminent Star Trek movie, similar to previous special issues covering Star Wars and Close Encounters. Given to understand by my Trek fan friends that they would wish to read as detailed an account as possible, I interviewed sixty participants in the creation of this film, from Roddenberry and his original cast to director Robert Wise, science advisor Isaac Asimov, composer Jerry Goldsmith, screenwriters, set designers, special effects technicians and on and on, up to and including the young Executive in Charge of Production, one Jeffrey Katzenberg. I edited this material like a montage of memories, as if all sixty people were holding a round-robin seminar about the making of the movie. Wherever possible, I let them tell the story in their own words. (...)

"Even given that it was impossible to complete this magnum opus in time for the film's opening in December of 1979 – as I'm sure your readers are well aware, the special effects teams were working on ST-TMP until literally a few days before its premiere – my editor still had cause to regret the great amount of time I took on this assignment. By the time I was finished, the picture was long gone from theaters, and the completed manuscript totaled some 1,800 pages – more than enough for three books, let alone one.

"Cinefantastique kept promising its readers [note: among others in Vol. 10, issue 1, in a in a full page ad, featuring in black and white, the unused cover art, mentioned above] that it would print Return to Tomorrow, but this never happened, for reasons known only to Fred, now sadly gone from the planet.

"My book was never designed to be a muck-raker, but it was an honest, straightforward account of the amazing series of crises and difficulties encountered by this particular big-studio production. One reason why I believe the book should finally be published is that it examines a major motion picture in more detail than any previous book of its kind. Now that a few relatively honest books on the Trek universe have been published in recent years, with no resulting collapse of Gulf and Western or its assets, my hope is that Return to Tomorrow can finally take its place among them." 

Notable issues
Of particular relevance to Star Trek are the following issues (most of them with recognizable cover art by David Voight, annotated if otherwise):