Starlogging With David McDonnell: Lunch With The Perfect Mate

Lunch with the Perfect MateContrary to what some people might assume, there are many Star Trek people I’ve never encountered. Others I met only in passing—just long enough to thank them for being kind to Starlog and talking to my writers (be that Ian Spelling, Joe Nazzaro, Mark Phillips or Bill Florence). So, no name-dropping shaggy dog stories, no fables without morals about them. Lack of anecdotes!

Of course, Janssen’s best known for her three-movie run as Jean Grey, one of the X-Men (where she reunited with Next Gen beau Patrick Stewart). She cameos in the current X-film The Wolverine. Now, I began reading Marvel’s original X-Men comic (with issue #14) not long after Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created it. I’ve always liked the telekinetic Jean Grey (romantically torn in the comics between Cyclops and Angel initially; in the cinema between Cyclops and Wolverine). As Marvel Girl/Phoenix, she was an appealing mutant heroine, eventually transformed into the tragic, ultra-powerful Dark Phoenix, then killed off and resurrected several times, as comics characters often are. That poignant thread of doomed romance enhanced the Jean Grey legend.Janssen did two notable TV series (Nip/Tuck and the recent Hemlock Grove) and three other genre flicks (Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions, co-starring with Scott Bakula, Deep Rising, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) as well as the Taken movies. But pre-X-Men, her biggest break came in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye (Pierce Brosnan’s bow as Agent 007). Janssen played Xenia Onatopp, a lovely assassin with the usual name drenched in that special Bondage brand of sexual innuendo.

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David McDonnell, "the maitre’d of the science fiction universe," has dished up coverage of pop culture for more than three decades. Beginning his professional career in 1975 with the weekly "Media Report" news column in The Comic Buyers’ Guide, he joined Jim Steranko’s Mediascene Prevue in 1980. After 31 months as Starlog’s Managing Editor (beginning in October 1982), he became that pioneering SF magazine’s longtime Editor (1985-2009). He also served as Editor of its sister publications Comics Scene, Fangoria and Fantasy Worlds. At the same time, he edited numerous licensed movie one-shots (Star Trek and James Bond films, Aliens, Willow, etc.) and three ongoing official magazine series devoted to Trek TV sagas (TheNext Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager). He apparently still holds this galaxy’s record for editing more magazine pieces about Star Trek in total than any other individual, human or alien.

Copyright 2013 David McDonnell