by Tim Eldred

From 1995 through 97, I had the pleasure of working with Voyager Entertainment Inc. (the US office based in New Jersey) to help create the Star Blazers comic book series under the Argo Press imprint. Eventually, comic book publishing became too turbulent to continue, but you can see the entire 12-issue run here.

We went our separate ways for a while, and when my phone rang in the summer of 2000 I was delighted to hear my friends from Voyager on the other end. They were engaged in a new project, the conversion of Star Blazers from VHS to DVD, and needed someone to manage it for them. I had my answer ready before they even finished the question.

I was given a free hand and complete trust to develop all the extra content for the DVDs, from the navigation menus to the writing and assembly of special features that would support the episodes. Series 1, The Quest for Iscandar, rolled out from January to November 2001 and established a fruitful working relationship that took us through the rest of the saga, produced a documentary, and founded starblazers.com, which grew into the website you’re reading today.

Those DVDs, along with the US office of Voyager, are now long in the past, but their content lives on in my personal archives. Presented here are the extra features I created for the six volumes of Series 1. Since this was a Star Blazers project, they all pertain to the American version of Space Battleship Yamato, but give a nod to the original where appropriate. The value of expanded story material is entirely in the eye of the reader.

Click on the links below to view the galleries in full. Extra features from the other series and movies will be presented in future updates.