TREKCORE > SPECIALS > Trek Artifacts : Official Fan Club Magazine

Author: Greg Jones
Date: January 15, 2007 (expanded January 21, 2007)

Star Trek: The Official Fan Club Magazine (OFCM) began as a newsletter-style fanzine distributed only to members of The Official Star Trek Fan Club sometime in the 1970's or early 1980's (any of you have a specific date on this?). Due to demand, the newsletter became a glossy 10-20 page magazine with issue #58 and shortly thereafter was distributed publicly to newsstands and other magazine outlets in the late 1980's.

Modest by today’s standards, the thin, bi-monthly magazine provided a regular dose of all things Trek in an era when saturation media coverage of the franchise had yet to begin. In fact, aside from Starlog, there wasn’t a lot out there regarding Trek and the OFCM was the best place for news and updates regarding the movies and the new show, Star Trek: The Next Generation. No doubt the arrival of TNG was a factor in making the OFCM a nationally distributed magazine, as another way to promote the show, since it’s newsstand debut coincides with the series’ premiere. Although the amount of “news and updates” on Trek were often thin, the magazine featured great full-color photographs and covers as well as a black & white 4-page insert catalog for Trek merchandise.

Gradually the OFCM grew in popularity and thus also grew in size; in the 1990's the page count increased as did the number of articles, and the size of the merchandise catalog insert. As Trek’s popularity exploded in the early-mid 1990's so did the media attention afforded it and, in order to keep up with the changing times, the OFCM changed it’s name to Star Trek: Communicator with issue #100. Published by Decipher, the Communicator was a more well-rounded magazine with a greater variety and scope of articles (although these changes were already apparent in the last issues of the OFCM) featuring longer interviews with cast members, more coverage of the then-burgeoning Star Trek universe, and–of course–a larger merchandise catalog later dubbed “Quarks’ Bazaar”. The magazine changed formats again in the early 21st century, going with a smaller “square-bound” style and featuring fold-out posters. As Trek’s popularity and proliferation waned, the magazine was ultimately canceled in 2005 after issue #155, although it has now been “replaced” with the new Star Trek: The Official Magazine released in late 2006.

The scans included here are a sampling of both magazine series (and all the issues I have anyway).  More scans will be coming in future Artifacts articles.
 

Issue 58 March/April 1988	Issue 64 April/May 1989	Issue 71 Dec 1989 / Jan 1990
Issue 72 Feb/March 1990	Issue 73 April/May 1990	Issue 74 June/July 1990
Issue 75 Aug/Sept 1990	Issue 76 Oct/Nov 1990	Issue 77 Dec/Jan 1990/1991
Issue 79 April/May 1991	Issue 80 June/July 1991	Issue 81 Aug/Sept 1991
Issue 82 Oct/Nov 1991	Issue 85 May/June 1992	Issue 86 July/Aug 1992
Issue 87 Sept/Oct 1992	Issue 88 Nov/Dec 1992	Issue 91 May/June 1993
Issue 98 Aug/Sept 1994	Magazine's Order Form

*The website www.memory-alpha.org was used as a source of information for this article.*