Did I Just Discover a Previously Unknown Star Trek TV Special?

One of my favorite hobbies (which I have previously discussed) is “digital archaeology.” I love finding, digitizing, archiving and sharing audio and video from the past that may not have mage the transition from analog to digital. I get great personal enjoyment from digging through old cassettes, video tapes, and even computer disks in hopes of finding something that got left behind, something that never made it to the internet and putting it there. To be fair, 95% of what I find already exists in some form. Most of the movies and television shows I find on old tapes have been released on physical media and/or are available to stream, and that stuff isn’t very exciting. The television commercials I find get uploaded to their own YouTube channel (VHS Dumpster Dive). All the home movies I find get archived; some get shared publicly while others may never leave my hard drive.

It’s actually pretty rare for me to find a VHS recording that hasn’t made its way to the internet in some form. It’s extremely rare to find something that nobody seems to remember.

Yesterday, I think I found one.

This tape opens with a station identifier from KAUT 43, a UHF channel operating out of Oklahoma City. An announcer introduces the program as “The Movie For a Sunday Evening,” described as “a series of features selected for family viewing.” This evening’s program? “A very unusual presentation of the first feature length production of Star Trek, The Menagerie. With special guest host, Leonard Nimoy.”

After the opening credits from the original Star Trek television show play, the camera moves to the Enterprise’s transporter room. Moments later, Leonard Nimoy appears in the transporter — not as Spock, but as himself.

Nimoy begins by asking viewers if they can believe it has been eleven years since he first stepped foot on the set of the Enterprise. He further clarifies the date: “it’s been 11 years, 30 days, 8 hours, and 15 minutes since the first Star Trek adventure was filmed.” Overlaid text confirms the date the program was originally created: January, 1975.

After introducing The Menagerie, Nimoy asks Mr. Scott to transport him to the bridge, and after some familiar sounds and special effects, he reappears there. In these shots, Nimoy is very clearly standing in front of a green screen with old Star Trek footage from the bridge rolling behind him. The transporter scene appears to have been shot the same way, but it’s not quite as noticeable as the bridge scenes.

Before the program begins, Nimoy explains that The Menagerie contains clips from The Cage, the unaired Star Trek pilot. After a bit more introduction, The Menagerie Part One begins. I am not a Star Trek expert and couldn’t tell you if there are any differences between this airing and the versions that exist today.

One of the most difficult parts in regards to all this digital archeology is dating recordings. Occasionally I’ll find a tape where the person who recorded the tape physically wrote the recording date on the label, but that’s pretty rare. Most of the time I have to search for clues within the recording itself to figure out when it was recorded. This is most easily done via car commercials that often mention the year, but there weren’t any of those on this tape. I found one commercial with a copyright date of 1982/1983 at the bottom, which feels right based on the other commercials. Later in the program a KAUT 43 advertisement for “Alien Attack” says it will air on “Sunday, February 13th.” In 1983, February 13 did indeed fall on a Sunday, so that year is confirmed. There are ads for upcoming programs on February 13th and 20th. If I were a betting man I’d guess this program aired on Sunday, February 6th, 1983.

Just look at this sweet van you could have purchased for only $299 a month!

After a series of commercials, the program resumes with The Menagerie, Part II. There are more commercials, and more Star Trek.

While there isn’t as much of the Nimoy footage as I would have hoped, he does return for a final appearance at the end of the program. After stating what an impact Star Trek had, he mentions that his journey began eleven years earlier… by putting on these ears.

After watching the program I searched for information online regard it and found nothing. I can’t find a single reference to this special. There’s no reference to it on Leonard Nimoy’s IMDB page. There’s literally nothing about this TV special online.

I then reached out to Earl Green from TheLogBook and The Retroist — two guys who have forgotten more about old stuff than I’ll ever know — and asked them about the program. Not only had they not heard of it either, but each of them reached out to their contacts, and none of them were familiar with it.

I stumped the panel!

I’m not sure what my next plan is. I cannot upload the video in its entirety to YouTube as the Star Trek content will get it removed almost immediately. I’m not sure if I can upload it to the Internet Archive, either. I could in theory clip out just the Leonard Nimoy segments and upload those to YouTube, but I hate presenting this in such an incomplete fashion. Today I’ll be clipping the commercials and uploading them to my VHS Dumpster Dive YouTube channel. If you have suggestions on where or how I should share this tape, let me know below in the comments. My intent is not to hoard this finding but rather to share it with the community at large; I just need to figure out the best way to do that.

Thanks again to Earl Green and The Retroist for their input and my friend Drew for the original tape! May they all live long and prosper.