1982 / Ebook / 64 pages / USA/UK
*British 'Trek Annuals reprinting shitty Gold Key comics were a staple of speccy seventies Christmas stockings, culminating in a more timely reprint of Marvel's adaptation of the first film at the end of the decade. I don't know whether the publisher knew there wasn't going to be a similar adaptation this time around when they reserved the slot, but it's unlikely they cared about the Genesis-style wave of disappointment rippling across the British Isles on Christmas Day when Wrath of Khan content proved to be no more than a couple of publicity shots in favour of more shitty Gold Key comics and worse home-grown puzzle pages. Those speech marks were telling in hindsight.
Various, Star Trek: The Next Generation Annual 1992
1989-90 (collected 1991) / Ebook / 64 pages / USA
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1989-90 (collected 1991) / Ebook / 64 pages / USA***
Thunderbirds was my scene at the time this scrapbook of American things was compiled for nerdy British kids (though I was mysteriously gifted a 1701-D bubble bath at some point; my destiny was predictable). The comic feature is a random but decent pick from the DC run, the rest being in-universe and behind-the-scenes features mercifully provided by Starlog's TNG magazine rather than letting home-grown writers pad it out with the usual generic puzzles and an unappealing board game in seeming contempt for their audience.
Nicky Hooks and Sharon Burnett, Red Dwarf Quiz Book
1994 / Ebook / 216 pages / UK
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1994 / Ebook / 216 pages / UK
***When these fans got the green light to write the official quiz book for their favourite programme, they didn't half arse it. There are far too many sections of far too many inane questions for anyone to really bother getting through, but the crosswords, word searches and other puzzles would pass the time on a commute. It fortuitously catches the franchise immediately before its decline, so you don't have to slog through the post-Grant years to brush up on your Kochanski laundry trivia. The only really interesting part was brief questionnaires filled in by the cast and creators that give some insights into their personalities circa 1994.
2010 / Ebook / 132 pages / UK
***
A bit of an odd choice to package the de facto Official Series Five Companion as a 'family' annual, but if it wasn't for those disposable stories and fluff features between the episode guides, interviews and behind-the-scenes insights, they'd struggle to pass this off as more than a souvenir magazine.
2011 / Ebook / 164 pages / UK
***
Cutting down on the stories to make it a more respectable counterpart to the child-oriented Annual, but keeping the other superfluous padding between the episode write-ups, now with more of an educational angle about real and pretend history. I don't know whether they continued making series companions in some other unsatisfying hybrid form, it took me long enough to work out what these were.
