Customer Reviews

The Star Trek Compendium: The complete reference book--including a show-by-show guide and over 125 rare and exciting photos! (Special 20th-anniversary edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is hands-down the best resource for reading about the original series' episodes.
The book is mainly an episode by episode guide.
Asherman gives thoughtful analyses of each episode. He is fair to the writers and series production crew. He resists slamming the widely discredited (as goofy) third season.
My only reservation that keeps me from giving the book five stars: I wish it were more intellectual. It is fitting to expect an intellectual assessment of the series as it was one of the most thought-provoking science fiction series after the 1960s Outer Limits. Certainly, this was a more thoughtful series, in comparison to the gadget-crazy subsequent television series incarnations of Star Trek.
Awkward points: the book was first written in the 1980s, prior to the release of the series on video tapes. Thus, it lacks references to the episodes' being on tape.
A fun companion to this book would be the special "Entertainment Weekly Special Star Trek Issue" (Fall, 1994) that is devoted to Star Trek. This edition gives tongue-in-cheek number ratings for the episodes.

I bought this book in 1991 because I had watched all 80 eps of Star Trek many times over and wanted more info on the series. It is part of our cultural mythos and references always come up about Star Trek that sometimes one likes to research.

When I moved to a smaller apartment I thinned my library and this was one of the books that I gave my sister, also a Trekker. Big mistake - I missed having it. Hence I hunted it down and got another copy for myself.

The Star Trek Compendium is an episode guide to Star Trek that is very well done. The episode lists and information appear to be quite accurate and informative, at least to my non-expert self. There is an introduction and some background to the Star Trek phenomenon as well. Anyone with interest should be happy with this.

The book begins with an interesting narration of the writer's introduction to the Star Trek universe, back in the 60's, and passes on to the complete sequence of events that preceeded Star Trek's premiere. The best part, however, is the episode guide, which, by providing accurate and objective summaries, without inserting personal opinions and irrelevancies. By far one of the best guides to the Star Trek universe!

This compendium was a valuable resource for me during my semester as Editor of my college newspaper. We used it extensively for trivia questions and to answer those pesky "In what episode" questions.

The 20th anniversary edition was a delight, I can only guess that the current edition is even better.

This book does exactly what it says.... There is great preliminary information and rare pictures of the beginnings of the series. Then, you get writer, director, principle characters, and descriptions of each episode. You also get information on syndication, conventions, the second series, and the first five movies.

Allan Asherman has a job well done in this work, and he was smart to fix all problems with the early printing as well as update the information.The style used gives the TV episode and movie information in a great way that was not done in the STAR TREK reference books that came before it.A good book to get your STAR TREK information from.

While this book contains thorough coverage of the Star Trek original series and the first three movies, that is as far as it goes. Therefore, if you are interested in the subsequent series or movies, this book will do you no good. The episodes of the original series are split up according to season and there is an extensive explanation of each episode. Additional bits of information regarding the writers of the episode, the genesis of the story and specific details about the production are also included.
If you are an original Trekkie, as I am, then this book will fascinate you. It is a combination of history and trivia about the original show; that quite frankly was a failure. Never able to achieve ratings worthy of keeping it alive, it was the origin of one of the greatest continuous stories ever told on television and on film.

This book covers all of the episodes of the Original Series and all of the movies up to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. A great reference book for even those who only just care for the Original Series but prefer the later serieses (like me!).