Growing up in the seventies, I fell in love with Star Trek watching the reruns on TV. Even after the success of Star Wars, I was always a Star Trek guy. Now that it is Star Trek’s 50th anniversary year, the show is getting a lot of attention. Among that attention are two books that claim to be “the complete, uncensored, unauthorized oral history of Star Trek”. This is the first of them.
Though this book claims to focus on “the first 25 years”, it cheats a bit. It would more accurately claim to be the book that covers the series of the original cast. Thus, it covers the original series and the movies through Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country but it ignores Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I assume is covered in the second book even though it began broadcast in 1987. It’s a sensible division to make.
Assuming that the person reading this is interested in Star Trek to begin with, there are two things that will likely determine whether or not this book is enjoyable. First, do you like reading lengthy interview excerpts from various people? Second, how much do you worship Gene Roddenberry?
Essentially, this book is a giant collection of interview excerpts of people both major and minor in the history of the series. This has become a popular approach to the history of pop culture products, having previously been done for SNL and MTV, for example. It has its pleasures, giving a multitude of voice to people who were there and involved, sometimes bringing to the fore people wrongly forgotten and sometimes doing the same for people better left forgotten. It’s surprising how little there is from the cast, however. But it does feel like a series look behind the scenes.
Also, Gene Roddenberry comes across very poorly in this book. He has his fans, obviously, but many of the voices here drive home how difficult he was to work with and how close he often came to destroying Star Trek. Though the idea for the series was definitely Roddenberry’s, there is a lot of commentary on how many of the best development was done by Gene L. Coon and others. Many people point out that, despite a long career, Star Trek was Roddenberry’s only real success and he used it as a cash cow for most of his life. It is a blow to people who think of Roddenberry as a giant.
Still, if you keep in mind that this is a book of mostly opinion and little fact, it is illuminating on how Star Trek came to the screen and kept coming back over and over despite being on the verge of disappearing forever many times. It is definitely worth a read.
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