He starts in 1960 with "Wagon Train to the Stars" and works his way through "Capt. Kirk, Space Queen" ("Turnabout Intruder"). I don't remember if he touched on the Animated Series.

He does give a Technobabble(tm) explanation for stardates.

ScottN: Do you have a revised edition of this book? My copy ends after the second season, with the news that Star Trek had been renewed for 16 episodes and moved to Fridays.

I last read it about 15 years ago, so I may have been incorrect with the bit about CK:SQ...

I don't think a revised edition was ever published.

There was never a revised version written, but many, many reprints, which saw the original white cover replaced by a silver one. It only made it as far as the end of the second season, because that's when Whitfield wrote it in '68. It's an excellent reference, with much behind the scenes details, including memos between Roddenberry, Matt Jeffries, Leonard Nimoy, and others, and plenty of entertaining stories and practical jokes played on the set. Considering the nastiness of some of the cast's autobiographies, you'd hardly believe it was the same series, as the impression I got from reading this numerous times was that the cast and crew liked and respected each other, and little of Shatner's alleged camera-hogging is alluded to. It includes the original Trek pilot, with a somewhat different 'The Cage' storyline, mainly as it stars Captain Robert April, and not Christopher Pike, and has the ship referred to as the USS Yorktown, and not the Enterprise, as well as diagrams of the ship in its various incarnations, before the final design was approved by Gene. I would HIGHLY recommend this book for anyone that likes the Original Series and wants to learn more about it, when it was being written while the series was in production, by those involved, and not an author who never set foot on the soundstages.

I have a silver cover copy, and it is a great book. Frankly, I'm not certain how you would nitpick it, since it has so many behind the scenes stories, how could we prove he told something wrong?
My one complaint is that the book lacks an index, so that trying to quickly look something up becomes impossible.

On pg. 198, Roddenberry is talking about the rationale behind stardates and how they came to be used on the series: "We would use a star date such as 2317 one week, and then a week later when we made the next episode we would move the star date up to 2942, and so on. Unfortunately, however, the episodes are not aired in the same order in which we film them. So we began to get complaints from the viewers asking, "How come one week the star date is 2891, the next week it's 2337, and then the week after it's 3414?"

Actually none of the aforementioned star dates were used in the series (picky, picky . . .)

It is a shame that it did not include the third season. This was the first behind the scenes book ever published, so in that respect it was a watershed book. I had one in 1970 with the original cover of a picture of the Enterprise on the top, and Kirk and Spock on the bottom (not a first printing, though.) I gave it away to a friend, and since then have had about four or five subsequent copies. A fabulous book, a must for any Trek fan. I don't know if it is still in print; I haven't seen it in a bookstore in ages.

Shatner's alleged camera hogging and line counting was not alluded to, not in this book, Joan Winston's essay on the filming of "Turnabout Intruder," or David Gerrold's book on the making of "Trouble With Tribbles."
Check out the last scene of "Spock's Brain," with Kirk using the remote control to quiet a motormouth Spock. All look like their having a grand time.Was this a blooper that TPTB left in?

Page 24. From the Original Series Outline.
"Range - 18 years at light-year velocity
Nature and duration of mission:
Galaxy exploration and investigation;
5 years"
How much galaxy exploration can you do in a distance of 18 light-years?

Page 47. From the Pilot Show Outline.
The Enterprise picks up an "astro-wave signal", later referred to as just radio, from a ship that crashed on Sirius IV 14 years earlier.
Given that Sirius is only 9 light years from Earth you’d think someone would have picked up the signal earlier, either a ship, or even someone on Earth itself.

Re:last comment
The could be several reasons why Earth could not recieve/detect a signal from Sirius, such as the Star's own radio output could be masking the signal, the survivours could be using a obsolete form of radio transmission, that no reciever on Earth at the time could detect (Try recieving a AM signal on a XM satellite radio),or any or all of the above
The most probable reason is that the "juryrigged" transmitter's output is so low, that only a nearby reciever could detect it....

Obsolete form of radio? The ship crashed 14 years earlier. How obsolete could it be?

Rereading my nit I realized I wrote it from the POV that the messages have been sent for 14 years, but that seems unlikely given that all but one member of the crew died in the crash & the signal was just a lure to bring a mate for her. Still it should have been something that Captain April & the crew had considered.

Page 74. The chapter begins with a long quote from Gene Coon, several items of which I probably could have nitted, but I decided to focus on the last line. "Nobody can tell us that it's scientifically impossible or that it won't work."

Don't tell nitpickers what to do, buddy!

While not necessarily impossible, several things certainly fall into the improbable category. Lawrence Krauss's The Physics Of Star Trek deals with things like the amount of energy needed to dematerialize a human being (more than a thousand 1-megaton hydrogen bombs), or the fact that it takes more energy to create anti-matter than you would get from an anti-matter/matter explosion.

Page 129. The author mentions that in the second pilot Spock was second-in-command.
Actually Mitchell was second-in-command, Spock was third.

Photo section between pages 160 & 161 (unnumbered but 23rd page). The caption says it's an opticals shot of a man getting hit by a phaser, but it's actually a guy getting zapped by lightning from The Apple.

Not nits, but I felt like commenting on some predictions here.

Page 214. Gene Roddenberry said, "One day Leonard (like Shatner) will almost certainly become a top film director or producer."
I believe Leonard Nimoy did direct, at least, 3 films, two of which were blockbusters (somekinda sci-fi things, I believe. ). However it's been a few years since I think he's directed anything so I'm not sure if he can be called a top director.

Shatner, on the other hand, directed one film that I know of & it's generally considered to be a disappointment.

Page 215. About De Forest Kelley, Roddenberry said, "his career can only zoom upward. He will win an Oscar some day".
Sadly this did not turn out to be true. Even more sad, Kelley wasn't even listed among the tribute to film people who died in the previous year at the Oscars after his death.

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Actual nit

Page 215. A description of a starship captain includes this sentence. "He also functions as an Earth ambassador both to known alien societies in his sector of the galaxy."
Either the word "both" should have been deleted or it should have included something like, 'both to known and unknown alien societies.'

According to IMDB, Nimoy has 12 directing credits, including 8 films.

Among them, are STIII and STIV, Three Men and a Baby, and The Good Mother.

The last was critically acclaimed, though a box office flop.

Thanks. Forgot about Three Men (then again it is somewhat fluffy, so...).

Page 244. About Scotty's ancestors it says "a Scott was on the first large expedition to the Moon."
I suppose the key anti-nit is the word large.

Page 245. It says Scotty "has no brothers or sisters".
Guess they changed their minds about this by the time of The Motion Picture, since he did have a sister then.

Page 252. It says Uhura, "is a highly able starship officer".
Highly able? Never heard that term before. It does go on to mention that she's capable & reliable, so maybe it is an uncommon term?

Page 254. "Like many women aboard, Christine is desperately in love with Mr. Spock.
Whoa, whoa whoa! Many women aboard the ship are desperately in love with Spock??? I thought Nurse Chapel was the only one. I wonder if the ship had a Spock Lovers Anonymous group?

KAM, re "able". That's what it means. Haven't you ever heard the term "Able Seaman"? Same sort of thing.

I have heard the term able seaman, although not for a long time.

I did not remember ever hearing the phrase "highly able" before, highly capable, & highly reliable, yes, but highly able was a new one to me.

Pages 274 & 275. Bob Justman’s memo suggesting that all Vulcan names be 5 letters long, begin with SP & end with K.
On the one hand it seems to be a simple & convenient way to differentiate an alien culture. On the other hand it ignores the chaotic mess that you get with a planet like Earth and all the different ways we name people. For something like this to be accepted you would pretty much have to have a planetwide referendum in which all Vulcans decided that this is the way it's going to be.
It would also produce a very limited number of names. No wonder TPTB later dropped the 'second letter must be a P' idea & decided that Female Vulcan names would start with T'P.

The last name on his list is Spxyx.
Last time I checked X was not a K.

Some of the names are just downright silly. Such as Spook, Spunk, Spank, Spark & Spork.
Although I'm not sure when the Spork was invented, or the name was commonly known, so Bob may not have thought that last one would be a problem.

Page 277. While admittedly John D. F. Black's memo was one of the humorous responses to some duplicated names on Bobby Justman's original memo, his claim that Spork was really pronounced Sphork instead of Spohrk makes me wonder how he thought that should be pronounced, Sfork or Sp'hork?

And Bob Justman replied to Herb Solow about some of those, that there was a technical term for those errors (such as Spxyx). According to Justman, it's called a "Mistake".

the writer also wondered how they can ever get their work done with memos like that!

It was Herb Solow to Justman about the technical term & while Herb pointed out the duplicated names, I don't recall him pointing out Spxyx as a mistake.

I try to avoid listing mistakes already listed in the book, but I'll double-check to see if I missed it.

You may be right, it's been a while. I think I noticed the 'x' instead of 'k' back in 1970-something. I think that you're right and Solow only pointed out the dupes, leading to the "mistake" memo.

Yep, Solow only mentioned the dupes.

Page 333. "The landscape, the houses, virtually any object the viewer sees on the planet surface - everything must be entirely different from any other planet they have ever visited before."
You mean like trapezoidal doors, Eminarian & Klingon weapons, the Delta Vega station matte shot, Vasquez Rocks & any number of other things nitpickers have noticed being reused?
And then there are all those duplicate Earths.

Page 338. "we assume there are various transporter rooms throughout the vessel"
Which explains why some scripts refer to THE transporter room. Oh, wait a minute...

Still Page 338. "can transport up to six people at a time"
Except when it transports more.

"The landscape, the houses, virtually any object the viewer sees on the planet surface - everything must be entirely different from any other planet they have ever visited before."

Well that's how it was supposed to be. Often the realities of money and time cause the production staff to have to compromise.

Page 371. "Working form Matt Jefferies's renderings".
From not form.

Page 373. The paragraph is discussing post-production work & one sentence begins, "If when finished".
Given the context I should think 'When finished' would have been better.

Pages 404 to 414. This section lists the 55 shows of the first 2 seasons & the guest cast.

These aren't so much nits of the information, but some inconsistent formatting choices.

Three of the shows have the guest cast centered rather than in two side by side columns.
Now it's understandable that they do this with the show that has one guest, but shows with two or three guests were presented in both formats.

Of the 23 shows using the two-column format with an odd number of guest cast members, seven have the extra person tabbed far to the right rather than lined up with the rest of that column.

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quote:

Page 245. It says Scotty "has no brothers or sisters".
Guess they changed their minds about this by the time of "The Motion Picture", since he did have a sister then.

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