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The Fifty-Year Mission #2
The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years
This is the true story behind the making of a television legend. There have been many books written about Star Trek, but never with the unprecedented access, insight and candor of authors Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross. Having covered the franchise for over three decades, they’ve assembled the ultimate guide to a television classic. The Fifty-Year Volume Two is an incisive, no-holds-barred oral history telling the story of post-Original Series Star Trek, told exclusively by the people who were there, in their own words—sharing the inside scoop they’ve never told before—unveiling the oftentimes shocking true story of the history of Star Trek and chronicling the trials, tribulations—and tribbles—that have remained deeply buried secrets... until now. The Fifty-Year Volume Two includes the voices of hundreds television and film executives, programmers, writers, creators, and cast, who span from the beloved The Next Generation and subsequent films through its Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, as well J.J. Abrams’ reimagined film series.
861 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 30, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 163 reviews
October 19, 2016
For those unfamiliar with Star Trek, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the franchise and, as such, arrives with a ton of celebratory confetti - of which this "oral history" is a part. Altman and Gross are veteran journalists of the genre and, in an attempt to pay tribute to the trajectory of this sci-fi behemoth, have created what they believe to be the definitive backstage narrative of this long-running and immensely popular media sensation. Released in two parts, the first volume dealt with Old School Trek - the original 1960s television series and the eventual string of films featuring the legendary triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The second volume tracks creator Gene Roddenberry's vision through its subsequent iterations; the four sequel television series (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise), the films emerging therefrom, and the startling cinematic left-turns instituted by J.J. Abrams.
Having plowed through both books in relatively quick succession, and able now to speak to the work in its entirety, I feel obliged to issue the following warning:
This material is not fan-centric.
Not only do these books fail to provide fresh and exciting facts, stories or juicy asides that serious Trek fans will wish to hear, they actually contain an awful lot of information you'd prefer not to know. It's a bunch of tin gods grousing about one of the few things in life you unabashedly cherish, which does the fandom no favor at all. And since there's no true Spock in your immediate vicinity to press his Vulcan hand to your brow and sternly whisper "Forget..." it is my advice to consider this enterprise carefully.
My fascination resides where it did when reviewing the first installment - the collision course between vision and vanity, muse and muscle; the clash of Art and Ego and the entrenchments that ensue. On this front, The Fifty-Year Mission offers much to compel.
The bulk of the statements made in this second leg of the oral history were made by writers. And the bulk of those writers were male - there's pretty much no way around that. And the bulk of those male writers sailed through the gates of Paramount Studios on the wings of pure euphoria. It's Star Trek, after all. Even if you weren't a fanboy, you knew it was big. You knew it was important. You knew you were going to be creating scripts for sci-fi icons. This is a major myth in the modern-day pantheon. And you couldn't wait to get your hands on it. (Or your boots on the bridge, rubbing shoulders with Picard, testing your best pick-up schtick on the likes of, perhaps, Seven of Nine...) They all felt it. They were, to a man, every one of them, jazzed.
Only here's the rub: Every single one of these guys wanted to put his mark on the franchise. Wanted to twist it, tweak it, darken it, deepen it; they wanted to alter it just enough to make their presence known. An egotistical element engaged (as it often does in Hollywood) that eventually put these writers in direct opposition to the ethos of the show(s). Suddenly they were bucking up against what made Trek Trek - and, boy, were they not liking it.
See, the Star Trek mandate is pretty clear. The future is positive. Humanity has managed to overcome several of its restrictive beliefs and practices. We're less biased, less divisive, more intelligent, more rewarding, and we work really well as a team. We are, in fact, inspiring. None of which plays to the kind of interpersonal conflict and subtext-heavy atmosphere most of these writers were accustomed to tapping as their basic dramatic default setting. The vision is heavy on metaphor and remarkably light on irony - which is going to slide right out of the wheelhouse of anyone writing from this (our) day and age. So, understandably, they wound up struggling.
And I'm reading all these passages of complaint and disparagement; defending, justifying - making case after case after case for a darker and more dysfunctional universe, a darker and more dysfunctional future, as if this was what it meant to be fighting the good fight when, really, you know, if you want to write freakin' Battlestar Galactica well then you should go write freakin' Battlestar Galactica. (Which, by the way, one of them did.) And it occurs to me at, like, argument one hundred and thirty-seven, that what these guys are all trying to do is...wait for it...wait for it...they are, at the heart of their every effort, attempting to go where no man has gone before. At least, no man who's written for Star Trek.
And that is the mission. All fifty years of it.
Having plowed through both books in relatively quick succession, and able now to speak to the work in its entirety, I feel obliged to issue the following warning:
This material is not fan-centric.
Not only do these books fail to provide fresh and exciting facts, stories or juicy asides that serious Trek fans will wish to hear, they actually contain an awful lot of information you'd prefer not to know. It's a bunch of tin gods grousing about one of the few things in life you unabashedly cherish, which does the fandom no favor at all. And since there's no true Spock in your immediate vicinity to press his Vulcan hand to your brow and sternly whisper "Forget..." it is my advice to consider this enterprise carefully.
My fascination resides where it did when reviewing the first installment - the collision course between vision and vanity, muse and muscle; the clash of Art and Ego and the entrenchments that ensue. On this front, The Fifty-Year Mission offers much to compel.
The bulk of the statements made in this second leg of the oral history were made by writers. And the bulk of those writers were male - there's pretty much no way around that. And the bulk of those male writers sailed through the gates of Paramount Studios on the wings of pure euphoria. It's Star Trek, after all. Even if you weren't a fanboy, you knew it was big. You knew it was important. You knew you were going to be creating scripts for sci-fi icons. This is a major myth in the modern-day pantheon. And you couldn't wait to get your hands on it. (Or your boots on the bridge, rubbing shoulders with Picard, testing your best pick-up schtick on the likes of, perhaps, Seven of Nine...) They all felt it. They were, to a man, every one of them, jazzed.
Only here's the rub: Every single one of these guys wanted to put his mark on the franchise. Wanted to twist it, tweak it, darken it, deepen it; they wanted to alter it just enough to make their presence known. An egotistical element engaged (as it often does in Hollywood) that eventually put these writers in direct opposition to the ethos of the show(s). Suddenly they were bucking up against what made Trek Trek - and, boy, were they not liking it.
See, the Star Trek mandate is pretty clear. The future is positive. Humanity has managed to overcome several of its restrictive beliefs and practices. We're less biased, less divisive, more intelligent, more rewarding, and we work really well as a team. We are, in fact, inspiring. None of which plays to the kind of interpersonal conflict and subtext-heavy atmosphere most of these writers were accustomed to tapping as their basic dramatic default setting. The vision is heavy on metaphor and remarkably light on irony - which is going to slide right out of the wheelhouse of anyone writing from this (our) day and age. So, understandably, they wound up struggling.
And I'm reading all these passages of complaint and disparagement; defending, justifying - making case after case after case for a darker and more dysfunctional universe, a darker and more dysfunctional future, as if this was what it meant to be fighting the good fight when, really, you know, if you want to write freakin' Battlestar Galactica well then you should go write freakin' Battlestar Galactica. (Which, by the way, one of them did.) And it occurs to me at, like, argument one hundred and thirty-seven, that what these guys are all trying to do is...wait for it...wait for it...they are, at the heart of their every effort, attempting to go where no man has gone before. At least, no man who's written for Star Trek.
And that is the mission. All fifty years of it.
May 4, 2019
This is the second instalment of Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman's oral history of Star Trek. The first book mostly covers the ToS while this second instalment covers everything else. Star Trek:TNG both the TV show and the movies, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise (Yeah they actually cut the Star Trek from the title to make it seem cooler or something lol!), and the J.J.Abrams reboot movies.
The oral history idea is a pretty good one as the authors of this have gathered up a bunch of old and new interviews from a lot of the people involved in creating and working on the various Star Trek projects and organised them in a way that, mostly, seems to tell a chronological history of the series. It really did make for entertaining and engaging reading as we got the thoughts and musings from not just the various Star Trek actors but also a lot of writers, producers, and other various creative or executive level participants. It was good stuff.
This ran for 35 hours in audio and was engaging from start to finish. The only dull spell was right at the start where we got a list of the people involved and their accomplishments. Outside of that it was all good. I have to admit I really enjoyed hearing the Star Trek story from so many different people. It really does prove what a collaborative effort it was to create such a rich and sprawling world as Trek and also likely explains the often different takes we get in the various TV shows and movies as pretty much everyone involved seemed to have a different idea of what it really meant to make a Star Trek show!
My favourite bit was the tales of the main three 90s TV series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager as those are my Star Trek shows! The biggest surprise for me was learning that both the fans and the studio felt like DS9 was not capable of being the flagship Trek show. I loved it! The other thing I found fascinating was the Kate Mulgrew/Jeri Ryan dynamic. I hate no idea that the pair hated each other as it never came across on screen.
The only downside of reading this super enjoyable and engaging book was listening to some interviews from the guys behind the new Trek movies and the new CBS TV Star Trek series as they all hinted that those guys have a very different idea of what Star Trek should be than I do. Which is a pity!
Rating: 4.5 stars.
Audio Note: This was very well narrated by a whole bunch of narrators. I think that was a great idea as it gave a unique feel to all the various voices.
The oral history idea is a pretty good one as the authors of this have gathered up a bunch of old and new interviews from a lot of the people involved in creating and working on the various Star Trek projects and organised them in a way that, mostly, seems to tell a chronological history of the series. It really did make for entertaining and engaging reading as we got the thoughts and musings from not just the various Star Trek actors but also a lot of writers, producers, and other various creative or executive level participants. It was good stuff.
This ran for 35 hours in audio and was engaging from start to finish. The only dull spell was right at the start where we got a list of the people involved and their accomplishments. Outside of that it was all good. I have to admit I really enjoyed hearing the Star Trek story from so many different people. It really does prove what a collaborative effort it was to create such a rich and sprawling world as Trek and also likely explains the often different takes we get in the various TV shows and movies as pretty much everyone involved seemed to have a different idea of what it really meant to make a Star Trek show!
My favourite bit was the tales of the main three 90s TV series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager as those are my Star Trek shows! The biggest surprise for me was learning that both the fans and the studio felt like DS9 was not capable of being the flagship Trek show. I loved it! The other thing I found fascinating was the Kate Mulgrew/Jeri Ryan dynamic. I hate no idea that the pair hated each other as it never came across on screen.
The only downside of reading this super enjoyable and engaging book was listening to some interviews from the guys behind the new Trek movies and the new CBS TV Star Trek series as they all hinted that those guys have a very different idea of what Star Trek should be than I do. Which is a pity!
Rating: 4.5 stars.
Audio Note: This was very well narrated by a whole bunch of narrators. I think that was a great idea as it gave a unique feel to all the various voices.
March 29, 2018
A collection of interviews with producers, directors, writers, showrunners, cast and crew, and even a few fans of Star Trek. It covers the birthing pains of The Next Generation in 1986 through the JJ Abrams movies as of 2016. The interviews seem to have primarily been with Star Trek's producers and writers. Pro: plenty of insight into the kinds of though processes and considerations that went into creating seminal episodes, characters, or plot arcs. Con: a little too much insight. There's a lot of he said-he said (cuz there were like, three female writers interviewed) and snippy comments about script edits made 20+ years ago. Also, a huge number of the people with decision-making power on the show seem really sexist, which is disheartening but also kinda nice to know that I wasn't just imagining the sexist undercurrents and lazy treatment of female characters in the shows and movies.
Overall, as a Star Trek fan I found this pretty fascinating.
Overall, as a Star Trek fan I found this pretty fascinating.
September 6, 2018
This was a hefty brick of a book. It follows the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation through the 2016 release of Star Trek: Beyond, but because there was so much more Star Trek content created in the second twenty-five years of the franchise, this sucker clocks in at a whopping 843 pages. I read the first volume in a day and a half. This one took me six.
Of course, this was also partially because this book not only had more content, but the content it did have was so frickin' dramatic. So much behind the scenes drama, mostly involving disorganized and chaotic writers rooms. And so, so much of Rick Berman being a donkey's ass. Except that's an insult to donkeys and their asses. Donkeys are sweet, gentle, intelligent creatures. Rick Berman, who doesn't even really like Star Trek, is also kind of misogynistic pig. So that's fun! I mean, setting aside the sexual harassment of Terry Farrell and other women, all of his comments about women were consistently about if they were beautiful. He wouldn't shut up about the whole point of Seven of Nine was that she was a "Borg Babe," when everyone else, including Jeri Ryan, are trying to focus on her emotional arc to rejoin humanity, and how smart and capable and emotionally vulnerable she was. But no, she's a babe! And doncha know it's so hard to find pretty actresses who can act! Gross.
It's kind of funny how clear it becomes that having a competent creative vision in charge of the writers is so, so important to the health of a TV show. And so is not being hamstrung by limitations placed on the show from the outside. TNG became great when Roddenberry stepped back, and his weird lawyer stopped interfering and playing the writers against each other. DS9 was good from the start, but became great when Ira Stephen Behr took over and did what he thought was best for the show, including running a writer's room with a competent, creative, respectful environment. And poor Enterprise, which started with such premise, became samey and wasn't allowed to exceed network and Berman mandated limitations until it was clear it was on death's door, at which point everyone said fuck it, let them do what they want.
I also very much enjoyed everyone shitting on the Enterprise theme song. It is a very terrible song. I cringed and had to literally hide my face the first time I heard it. But I also have complicated feelings, because it did grow on me! It was terrible, and yet I came to like it because I liked the show and the characters. But when they tried to jazz it up in season three, it became an abomination. They made a terrible song even more terrible trying to boost ratings, which is stupid. Fix the actual problems not the surface ones, guys.
I do wish there was a little bit less of the writers room drama, and more behind the scenes production stories. What little we got was also steeped in drama, i.e. Terry Farrell leaving because she was sick of Rick Berman, her boss, sexually harassing her, and Kate Mulgrew causing extreme tension on the set of Voyager when Seven of Nine was brought in (which she notes that she now regrets). Actually, let's quote that whole thing:
So that was pretty bad. All the cast members talk about it the book, and Jeri Ryan's was the hardest to read from me, because at one point she talks about it being so bad (the tension) that she would feel nauseous before coming to work, and I've been in working situations like that before, and it is TERRIBLE. I would have been very upset if Mulgrew, whom I like very much, had not owned up to her shittiness. I hope she's made some sort of gesture to Jeri as an apology. Yeesh.
Overall, I liked this book, but it was just so long and full of drama. I wish it had been a little less drama filled, and had more stuff about production and reactions to the material. Fun set stories, stuff like that. My same complaints from the first volume still apply, in that I wish the interviews were contextualized. Very difficult to tell which ones were new material and which were archival sometimes, and that matters because thoughts long after the fact and thoughts in the middle of are very different.
One of the things I enjoyed most about this book was seeing the starts of so many TV careers originate from these writer's rooms, particularly Ronald D. Moore, who would go on to create the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and to do a lot of stuff with it that he wanted to do with Star Trek for years and years. These same editors have also compiled an oral history of BSG, and I've got it on order at the library. I love oral histories, even if I'm not a superfan of the material. I like Star Trek a lot, but BSG is my jam, so I'm very excited about it.
[3.5 stars, rounded up]
Of course, this was also partially because this book not only had more content, but the content it did have was so frickin' dramatic. So much behind the scenes drama, mostly involving disorganized and chaotic writers rooms. And so, so much of Rick Berman being a donkey's ass. Except that's an insult to donkeys and their asses. Donkeys are sweet, gentle, intelligent creatures. Rick Berman, who doesn't even really like Star Trek, is also kind of misogynistic pig. So that's fun! I mean, setting aside the sexual harassment of Terry Farrell and other women, all of his comments about women were consistently about if they were beautiful. He wouldn't shut up about the whole point of Seven of Nine was that she was a "Borg Babe," when everyone else, including Jeri Ryan, are trying to focus on her emotional arc to rejoin humanity, and how smart and capable and emotionally vulnerable she was. But no, she's a babe! And doncha know it's so hard to find pretty actresses who can act! Gross.
It's kind of funny how clear it becomes that having a competent creative vision in charge of the writers is so, so important to the health of a TV show. And so is not being hamstrung by limitations placed on the show from the outside. TNG became great when Roddenberry stepped back, and his weird lawyer stopped interfering and playing the writers against each other. DS9 was good from the start, but became great when Ira Stephen Behr took over and did what he thought was best for the show, including running a writer's room with a competent, creative, respectful environment. And poor Enterprise, which started with such premise, became samey and wasn't allowed to exceed network and Berman mandated limitations until it was clear it was on death's door, at which point everyone said fuck it, let them do what they want.
I also very much enjoyed everyone shitting on the Enterprise theme song. It is a very terrible song. I cringed and had to literally hide my face the first time I heard it. But I also have complicated feelings, because it did grow on me! It was terrible, and yet I came to like it because I liked the show and the characters. But when they tried to jazz it up in season three, it became an abomination. They made a terrible song even more terrible trying to boost ratings, which is stupid. Fix the actual problems not the surface ones, guys.
I do wish there was a little bit less of the writers room drama, and more behind the scenes production stories. What little we got was also steeped in drama, i.e. Terry Farrell leaving because she was sick of Rick Berman, her boss, sexually harassing her, and Kate Mulgrew causing extreme tension on the set of Voyager when Seven of Nine was brought in (which she notes that she now regrets). Actually, let's quote that whole thing:
"Let’s be very straight about something . . . This is on me, not Jeri. She came in and did what she was asked to do. No question about that, and she did it very well. It’s on me, because I’d hoped against hope that Janeway would be sufficient. That we didn’t have to bring a beautiful, sexy girl in. That somehow the power of my command, the vicissitudes of my talent would be sufficient unto the day, because this would really change television, right? That’s what dug me the hardest, that to pick up the numbers they did that . . . That was my interpretation of it. And that hurt me. I found it sort of insulting. And, of course, she embodied the part, this beautiful girl. But we certainly were utterly professional. I had been nothing short of completely professional, and she did her job. Very well! It was a very good idea that she was half Borg, but it’s on me. I’m sorry it has to be part of this legacy, and I probably should have comported myself better. I should have been more philosophical about it, but in the moment it was difficult.” [source]
So that was pretty bad. All the cast members talk about it the book, and Jeri Ryan's was the hardest to read from me, because at one point she talks about it being so bad (the tension) that she would feel nauseous before coming to work, and I've been in working situations like that before, and it is TERRIBLE. I would have been very upset if Mulgrew, whom I like very much, had not owned up to her shittiness. I hope she's made some sort of gesture to Jeri as an apology. Yeesh.
Overall, I liked this book, but it was just so long and full of drama. I wish it had been a little less drama filled, and had more stuff about production and reactions to the material. Fun set stories, stuff like that. My same complaints from the first volume still apply, in that I wish the interviews were contextualized. Very difficult to tell which ones were new material and which were archival sometimes, and that matters because thoughts long after the fact and thoughts in the middle of are very different.
One of the things I enjoyed most about this book was seeing the starts of so many TV careers originate from these writer's rooms, particularly Ronald D. Moore, who would go on to create the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and to do a lot of stuff with it that he wanted to do with Star Trek for years and years. These same editors have also compiled an oral history of BSG, and I've got it on order at the library. I love oral histories, even if I'm not a superfan of the material. I like Star Trek a lot, but BSG is my jam, so I'm very excited about it.
[3.5 stars, rounded up]
December 31, 2016
Somewhere, right in the middle of the Next Generation years, there was a point where Trek was firing on all cylinders. TNG and DS9 found their identities and were telling great stories, and Star Trek was a hot commodity.
Then it all goes horribly wrong, the franchise creaks to an arthritic halt, and Gross and Altman have the stories of the people who were there. Some of the interviews work hard to protect their legacy or their love of the franchise, but enough truth seeps out to appreciate the highs and lows of the productions.
If you're looking to explain the decline of the franchise, the buck stops with executive Rick Berman. His own words depict him as thoroughly sexist, a little bit racist, and short on imagination. Roddenberry's feet of clay are also on full display, though Roddenberry at least deserves credit for relaunching Star Trek and was no longer around for the worst of the rot. There are moments, especially during the Voyager and Enterprise chapters, where the fifty-year voyage turns into a bit of a horror show.
At the same time, there is a lot of joy in this book. Even the worst shows had some great moments, and a lot of the cast and crew loved the work they were doing even if they didn't love Star Trek. That comes through here. It's also hard to ignore how many of today's top writers and show-runners built their skills working on Star Trek. In the end, this is a book by fans and for fans, and hearing more of Trek's story just makes me love it a little bit more.
Then it all goes horribly wrong, the franchise creaks to an arthritic halt, and Gross and Altman have the stories of the people who were there. Some of the interviews work hard to protect their legacy or their love of the franchise, but enough truth seeps out to appreciate the highs and lows of the productions.
If you're looking to explain the decline of the franchise, the buck stops with executive Rick Berman. His own words depict him as thoroughly sexist, a little bit racist, and short on imagination. Roddenberry's feet of clay are also on full display, though Roddenberry at least deserves credit for relaunching Star Trek and was no longer around for the worst of the rot. There are moments, especially during the Voyager and Enterprise chapters, where the fifty-year voyage turns into a bit of a horror show.
At the same time, there is a lot of joy in this book. Even the worst shows had some great moments, and a lot of the cast and crew loved the work they were doing even if they didn't love Star Trek. That comes through here. It's also hard to ignore how many of today's top writers and show-runners built their skills working on Star Trek. In the end, this is a book by fans and for fans, and hearing more of Trek's story just makes me love it a little bit more.
March 25, 2017
I read as much of this book as I cared about (skipped Enterprise and most of Abrams). Its an amazing work in that the interviews they must have conducted were probably exhaustive. The major issue with the book is that it lacks charm. The book is unrelenting in its conflicts, and maybe even pettiness, and after a while its just too much. What the book lacks is charm, and I think why is that its woefully short on actors. For as talented bunch of writers Star Trek has had over the years, they do not come off as charming in this book, and I think some focus on the actors would have leavened the book a little. If there was a few quick charming cast stories interspersed in it would have helped greatly.
The book is very much a grueling behind the scenes of a Star Trek writers room; a how the sausages were made story. For seven seasons of Next Generation, seven seasons of Deep Space Nine and seven seasons of Voyager. Plus the Next Generation movies and Enterprise. It gets repetitive, mostly because its the same fights. "That's Not Star Trek!!" is about 75% of them.
Its a must read for any Trek fan with the warning that it will probably change your opinions (probably negatively) on many people.
I read this book over many weeks, I never noted what day I started it. I didn't read it in one day.
The book is very much a grueling behind the scenes of a Star Trek writers room; a how the sausages were made story. For seven seasons of Next Generation, seven seasons of Deep Space Nine and seven seasons of Voyager. Plus the Next Generation movies and Enterprise. It gets repetitive, mostly because its the same fights. "That's Not Star Trek!!" is about 75% of them.
Its a must read for any Trek fan with the warning that it will probably change your opinions (probably negatively) on many people.
I read this book over many weeks, I never noted what day I started it. I didn't read it in one day.
December 15, 2016
My original THE FIFTY-YEAR MISSION: THE NEXT 25 YEARS: FROM THE NEXT GENERATION TO J. J. ABRAMS: THE COMPLETE, UNCENSORED, AND UNAUTHORIZED ORAL HISTORY OF STAR TREK audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
Picking up directly after the close of the previous volume, The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years, The Next 25 Years has an awful lot of ground to cover over the course of its nearly 35 hour run-time. If the previous era of Star Trek was defined by The Original Series’s cancellation and subsequent resurrection as a film franchise a decade later, and one in which studio support was generally a cold shoulder, then the next era is best characterized as a resurgent franchise, one where the very same studio, under new leadership, recognized the cash cow of the Trek brand, that eventually grew so over-saturated the death-knells of Star Trek began ringing loudly again.
This 25 year period saw the development and success, both creatively and financially, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, its leap to the silver screen following a seven-year television run, and subsequent spin-off TV series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and the prequel series, Enterprise (later re-branded as Star Trek: Enterprise) set a century before The Original Series, and the rebooted film franchise helmed by J.J. Abrams.
Given the amount of material covered here, 34 and a half hours almost seems too short. The prior volume had plenty of room to breath during its exploration of The Original Series three-year run and six films, and authors Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross were able to spend a lot of time on the intricacies of story development, the actors and their relationships, and the history of the series and its formation. Having to cover what amounts to a total of 25 television seasons, plus seven films between the TNG and reboot franchises, the oral history delivered here feels truncated even with the longer running-time.
This, however, is not to say that The Next 25 Years lacks depth or breadth, as there is still plenty of interesting material to cover, all of it told from first-hand accounts from the actors, directors, and writers involved. And, best of all, the stories being told don’t hold back, as the speakers approach their recollections with much-appreciated frankness. The writer’s let you know when they failed, the actors speak out about the material they liked and didn’t like. None of the behind-the-scenes drama is hidden away, and nearly everyone involved is very open about the missteps taken at various points along the way, or how harshly some actors treated their cast-mates. Several Voyager cast members speak out about the catty jealously between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan, who joined the show’s fourth season as Paramount Studios demanded the show get sexed up a bit, as a ex-Borg crewmen seeking to rediscover her humanity while wearing a skin-tight silver suit that left little to the imagination. Others speak about the difficulties in bringing the prequel series to life and being hampered by studio executive demands, only to be cancelled just as the show seemed to be finding its legs, and delivering an alienating series finale that upset fans and cast and crew alike by focusing on TNG characters in the 24th Century, rather than the 22nd Century regulars.
The ratings drop Voyager suffered over the course of its run, the premature cancellation of Enterprise, and the box office failure of the final TNG movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, gave the ready appearance the Star Trek franchise was finally finished. Once again, though, it was resurrected due to fan support – this time from within Hollywood, as those writers and directors who grew up on Trek found themselves in positions to take the reins and give the franchise new life, beginning with the 2009 movie, Star Trek, featuring a young James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, both fresh to Starfleet.
Like the prior volume, The Next 25 Years is narrated by a full-cast. Unfortunately, none of them are the actors, writers, crew, and directors themselves. I will say, though, that one of the narrators does a stellar impression of Malcom McDowell when reading the actor’s lines during discussion of the TNG film debut, Star Trek: Generations. The production side of things leaves a little to be desired, though, as several of the narrators have trouble pronouncing the names of various characters. Deep Space Nine’s Gul Dukat and Voyager’s Chakotay proved to be particularly problematic for the readers, and these names get mauled in various ways nearly every time they come up. The audio, at least, is clear, although the reading of this oral history can be a bit dry at times.
Given the turbulence involved in keeping the starship Enterprise aloft, it’s seems somewhat surprising that the Star Trek franchise has survived fifty years. This is, if nothing else, a testament to the love and loyalty of those involved in the series production, as well as the support of the fans across generations. Whether or not it will survive another fifty years is questionable, but with the resurgent film series and the launch of a new streaming series, Star Trek: Discovery, on CBS All Access in spring/summer 2017, there is at least room for hope. And hope has been the central enduring characteristic of Star Trek itself for half a century.
Picking up directly after the close of the previous volume, The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years, The Next 25 Years has an awful lot of ground to cover over the course of its nearly 35 hour run-time. If the previous era of Star Trek was defined by The Original Series’s cancellation and subsequent resurrection as a film franchise a decade later, and one in which studio support was generally a cold shoulder, then the next era is best characterized as a resurgent franchise, one where the very same studio, under new leadership, recognized the cash cow of the Trek brand, that eventually grew so over-saturated the death-knells of Star Trek began ringing loudly again.
This 25 year period saw the development and success, both creatively and financially, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, its leap to the silver screen following a seven-year television run, and subsequent spin-off TV series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and the prequel series, Enterprise (later re-branded as Star Trek: Enterprise) set a century before The Original Series, and the rebooted film franchise helmed by J.J. Abrams.
Given the amount of material covered here, 34 and a half hours almost seems too short. The prior volume had plenty of room to breath during its exploration of The Original Series three-year run and six films, and authors Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross were able to spend a lot of time on the intricacies of story development, the actors and their relationships, and the history of the series and its formation. Having to cover what amounts to a total of 25 television seasons, plus seven films between the TNG and reboot franchises, the oral history delivered here feels truncated even with the longer running-time.
This, however, is not to say that The Next 25 Years lacks depth or breadth, as there is still plenty of interesting material to cover, all of it told from first-hand accounts from the actors, directors, and writers involved. And, best of all, the stories being told don’t hold back, as the speakers approach their recollections with much-appreciated frankness. The writer’s let you know when they failed, the actors speak out about the material they liked and didn’t like. None of the behind-the-scenes drama is hidden away, and nearly everyone involved is very open about the missteps taken at various points along the way, or how harshly some actors treated their cast-mates. Several Voyager cast members speak out about the catty jealously between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan, who joined the show’s fourth season as Paramount Studios demanded the show get sexed up a bit, as a ex-Borg crewmen seeking to rediscover her humanity while wearing a skin-tight silver suit that left little to the imagination. Others speak about the difficulties in bringing the prequel series to life and being hampered by studio executive demands, only to be cancelled just as the show seemed to be finding its legs, and delivering an alienating series finale that upset fans and cast and crew alike by focusing on TNG characters in the 24th Century, rather than the 22nd Century regulars.
The ratings drop Voyager suffered over the course of its run, the premature cancellation of Enterprise, and the box office failure of the final TNG movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, gave the ready appearance the Star Trek franchise was finally finished. Once again, though, it was resurrected due to fan support – this time from within Hollywood, as those writers and directors who grew up on Trek found themselves in positions to take the reins and give the franchise new life, beginning with the 2009 movie, Star Trek, featuring a young James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, both fresh to Starfleet.
Like the prior volume, The Next 25 Years is narrated by a full-cast. Unfortunately, none of them are the actors, writers, crew, and directors themselves. I will say, though, that one of the narrators does a stellar impression of Malcom McDowell when reading the actor’s lines during discussion of the TNG film debut, Star Trek: Generations. The production side of things leaves a little to be desired, though, as several of the narrators have trouble pronouncing the names of various characters. Deep Space Nine’s Gul Dukat and Voyager’s Chakotay proved to be particularly problematic for the readers, and these names get mauled in various ways nearly every time they come up. The audio, at least, is clear, although the reading of this oral history can be a bit dry at times.
Given the turbulence involved in keeping the starship Enterprise aloft, it’s seems somewhat surprising that the Star Trek franchise has survived fifty years. This is, if nothing else, a testament to the love and loyalty of those involved in the series production, as well as the support of the fans across generations. Whether or not it will survive another fifty years is questionable, but with the resurgent film series and the launch of a new streaming series, Star Trek: Discovery, on CBS All Access in spring/summer 2017, there is at least room for hope. And hope has been the central enduring characteristic of Star Trek itself for half a century.
June 6, 2017
I have lots of thoughts on this but i don't think I can be bothered to write them down
September 3, 2017
If you are interested in screen writing for television or if you think Enterprise was a great Star Trek series, you will love this book.
Otherwise, here was my main takeaway: Any good that ever came from Star Trek happened DESPITE everyone involved ("everyone" being studio, writers, and producers).
Depending on how dear to your heart Star Trek is, you may want to give this one a miss. First ask yourself if you really want to see 'how the sausage gets made'.
I will be doing my best to forget everything I learned from this, and replaced it with the delusion that the people behind my beloved Star Trek are a bunch of woke idealists and science-loving intersectional feminists!
Otherwise, here was my main takeaway: Any good that ever came from Star Trek happened DESPITE everyone involved ("everyone" being studio, writers, and producers).
Depending on how dear to your heart Star Trek is, you may want to give this one a miss. First ask yourself if you really want to see 'how the sausage gets made'.
I will be doing my best to forget everything I learned from this, and replaced it with the delusion that the people behind my beloved Star Trek are a bunch of woke idealists and science-loving intersectional feminists!
August 2, 2018
This book pretty much confirmed all of my suspicions about how badly the show runners, the studio, and the network suits managed Voyager and Enterprise. It told me a lot of things I wish I didn't know about the people behind the show, but there were other times where it made me love certain writers and actors more than before. I will probably never read it again from cover-to-cover, but I may pick it up from time to time and review certain parts to relive my favorite episodes from Next Generation and Deep Space Nine (still the best modern Trek, in my 'umble opinion).
April 23, 2019
"That God Damned, lying, hypocritical, deceiving, thieving, son of a bitch. That bullying bastard. Everything that I'd been pretending was not true for twenty years just welled to the top. I walked out of there and said that man can never again call me friend, he's a user. I went home and the first thing I did was pick up the phone, call Harlan Ellison and tell him he was right." -David Gerrold on Gene Roddenberry.
This is for the fans only. It's so long, covering the period from the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation all the way to Star Trek Beyond, so that by the time I reached thge chatpers covering Voyager, TNG felt like a whole book ago. I treated this almost like a podcast, something I listened to whle driving, and that worked for me, thinking of it as individual episodes in a show rather than a single exhausting narrative.
While Gene Roddenberry continues to come across as egotistical and jealous, his successor Rick Berman had his own issues. It seems like the nicest thing most people say about Berman is when he didn't stand in their way, even though he had the opportunity. The biggest issue seems to be he stands in the way of actual writers because of what he believed Roddenberry would have wanted... it wasn't even for his own beliefs, but a long dead, deeply flawed man. Berman also comes across as sexist, referring to women as "babes" on more than one occasion, claiming how hard it is to find a beautiful woman in Hollywood who can act. Like it can only be one or the other.
I enjoyed the section on Deep Space Nine, and it was interesting to learn the reason it's one of the best incarnations of Star Trek is because Berman and the studio saw it as the black sheep, so they just let Ira Steven Behr and his team of writers do their own thing.
Towards the end there is a lot of excuses about Berman and Brannan Braga not getting the chance to do what they wanted with Voyager and Enterprise, but I find that hard to believe. I think by that point they just didn't really care and were happy to just run the series into the ground.
Because of the length, I can only recommend this to Trekkies... I think it's a bit too overwhelming for the casual fan. There are times it's embarassing to be a Trekkie, but after listening to this book, and seeing how much hard work and effort went into this universe, I'm glad it's a fandom I belong to.
This is for the fans only. It's so long, covering the period from the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation all the way to Star Trek Beyond, so that by the time I reached thge chatpers covering Voyager, TNG felt like a whole book ago. I treated this almost like a podcast, something I listened to whle driving, and that worked for me, thinking of it as individual episodes in a show rather than a single exhausting narrative.
While Gene Roddenberry continues to come across as egotistical and jealous, his successor Rick Berman had his own issues. It seems like the nicest thing most people say about Berman is when he didn't stand in their way, even though he had the opportunity. The biggest issue seems to be he stands in the way of actual writers because of what he believed Roddenberry would have wanted... it wasn't even for his own beliefs, but a long dead, deeply flawed man. Berman also comes across as sexist, referring to women as "babes" on more than one occasion, claiming how hard it is to find a beautiful woman in Hollywood who can act. Like it can only be one or the other.
I enjoyed the section on Deep Space Nine, and it was interesting to learn the reason it's one of the best incarnations of Star Trek is because Berman and the studio saw it as the black sheep, so they just let Ira Steven Behr and his team of writers do their own thing.
Towards the end there is a lot of excuses about Berman and Brannan Braga not getting the chance to do what they wanted with Voyager and Enterprise, but I find that hard to believe. I think by that point they just didn't really care and were happy to just run the series into the ground.
Because of the length, I can only recommend this to Trekkies... I think it's a bit too overwhelming for the casual fan. There are times it's embarassing to be a Trekkie, but after listening to this book, and seeing how much hard work and effort went into this universe, I'm glad it's a fandom I belong to.
December 1, 2024
Makes me wonder how they ever managed to finish an episode of the many series or complete a movie. so much goes on behind the scenes.
As when I read book one of this series it took longer to read because I ended up rewatching tv show episodes and movies that were mentioned in the book. Learned interesting details and backstories about my favorite TV and movie franchise.
As when I read book one of this series it took longer to read because I ended up rewatching tv show episodes and movies that were mentioned in the book. Learned interesting details and backstories about my favorite TV and movie franchise.
December 21, 2016
The second half of The Fifty-Year Mission, which focuses on all the post-TOS iterations of Star Trek, isn't nearly as fun a read as the first half. Not because the shows weren't as good (DS9 rocks), but because instead of offering behind-the-scenes views from all levels of the shows' production, this volume focuses almost entirely on the drama and infighting that occurred among the writers. Especially in the Next Generation section, where there are almost no insights from actors, directors, designers, etc. - it's several hundred pages of Star Trek writers complaining about how badly Star Trek writers were treated, and it goes on and on and on like some kind of Moebius loop of sniping.
From what I gather: TNG had the most well-gelled cast, but the writers' room was a revolving door of hires and fires. DS9 held together the best from a scripting point of view because they were the middle child and no one at Paramount cared as much what they were doing. Voyager wasn't allowed to be as edgy as the premise called for, which we already knew, and wasn't allowed to serialize like DS9 got away with. It's funny how a show that was once as cutting-edge as Star Trek resisted serialization for as long as it did, but the execs were focused on the "syndication model" that saved TOS and let TNG work so well. Once they finally let Enterprise serialize, the show finally got good. Too bad it was too late to save the series.
From what I gather: TNG had the most well-gelled cast, but the writers' room was a revolving door of hires and fires. DS9 held together the best from a scripting point of view because they were the middle child and no one at Paramount cared as much what they were doing. Voyager wasn't allowed to be as edgy as the premise called for, which we already knew, and wasn't allowed to serialize like DS9 got away with. It's funny how a show that was once as cutting-edge as Star Trek resisted serialization for as long as it did, but the execs were focused on the "syndication model" that saved TOS and let TNG work so well. Once they finally let Enterprise serialize, the show finally got good. Too bad it was too late to save the series.
February 16, 2020
Finally finished this second volume of interviews weaving together a history of Star Trek. Enjoyed Volume I more. This one revealed a side of making episodic tv that I think I would have preferred remaining oblivious of. Like how little long-term planning the writers were doing on most post TNG shows. It was a little sad to hear what writers wanted to do with shows I liked but were not allowed to due to syndication needs. Maybe shows I liked would have turned into shows I would have loved.
December 21, 2016
Really enjoyed listening to this book. I learned a bunch of things about the making of Trek from TNG to the new films. This book is really worth listening to.
January 31, 2018
Turns out even the people who made VOYAGER dislike it.
August 23, 2017
El segundo tomo de The Fifty Year Mission son los 25 años posteriores a la serie original. Es decir, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, todas las películas de Next Generation y la trilogía del Kelvin Timeline.
Si bien la primera parte (los primeros 25 años) revela con exhaustivo detalle el carácter, la personalidad, los aciertos y fracasos de Gene Roddenberry, y quizá se detiene demasiado en ello (y esta crítica sólo es posible luego de leer el segundo tomo); es en los siguientes 25 años que podemos apreciar el legado del Great Bird of the Galaxy. Una vez que Star Trek deja el seno de Roddenberry, pasa a ser parte de la cultura popular en manos de sus hermeneutas, algunos celosos como Rick Berman, otros más ambiciosos y menos papistas como Ronald D. Moore. La gimnasia mental y creativa necesaria para darle la vuelta a los guiones sin perder la "esencia" de lo que es Star Trek, la lucha entre innovar y sostener un legado, la paranoia de los ratings, el debate entre complacer pasivamente o confiar con generosidad en el público, todo es parte de la supervivencia de esta saga.
Sin embargo, lo que más valoro de este segundo tomo es el haberme dado la oportunidad de reconsiderar muchas posturas fundamentalistas que a veces resultan inevitables en el fandom. Por mi lado, estas posturas tenían que ver con la labor de J.J. Abrams en el reboot de las películas y el universo de la serie original, y con la serie Enterprise, sobre todo, con el final de ésta. Al escuchar las razones que llevaron y motivaron a los escritores a hacer lo que hicieron, escucharlos desde mi lugar de fan apasionada, pero también desde mi profesión y formación académica, es decir, con la perspectiva de quien ama escribir y analizar guiones, tuve que reconocer que es posible y, más que nada, necesario, sostener una postura crítica abierta, que reconozca que la motivación de los guionistas y directores son tan importantes como mi crítica de consumidora. El fundamentalismo como fuente de identificación es pobre y además, nos empobrece y reduce el fandom a una caricatura. Este libro, además de ser un registro histórico de la más relevante saga televiva, cumple la invaluable misión de mostrarnos que solo a través del esfuerzo sostenido de los fans, los creadores, los historiadores, los actores, es decir, sin una comunidad de personas comprometidas con una misión, no es posible emprender una aventura, efectuar un cambio verdadero, dejar una huella. Nada de eso difiera de la visión inicial de Roddenberry. Live long and prosper.
Si bien la primera parte (los primeros 25 años) revela con exhaustivo detalle el carácter, la personalidad, los aciertos y fracasos de Gene Roddenberry, y quizá se detiene demasiado en ello (y esta crítica sólo es posible luego de leer el segundo tomo); es en los siguientes 25 años que podemos apreciar el legado del Great Bird of the Galaxy. Una vez que Star Trek deja el seno de Roddenberry, pasa a ser parte de la cultura popular en manos de sus hermeneutas, algunos celosos como Rick Berman, otros más ambiciosos y menos papistas como Ronald D. Moore. La gimnasia mental y creativa necesaria para darle la vuelta a los guiones sin perder la "esencia" de lo que es Star Trek, la lucha entre innovar y sostener un legado, la paranoia de los ratings, el debate entre complacer pasivamente o confiar con generosidad en el público, todo es parte de la supervivencia de esta saga.
Sin embargo, lo que más valoro de este segundo tomo es el haberme dado la oportunidad de reconsiderar muchas posturas fundamentalistas que a veces resultan inevitables en el fandom. Por mi lado, estas posturas tenían que ver con la labor de J.J. Abrams en el reboot de las películas y el universo de la serie original, y con la serie Enterprise, sobre todo, con el final de ésta. Al escuchar las razones que llevaron y motivaron a los escritores a hacer lo que hicieron, escucharlos desde mi lugar de fan apasionada, pero también desde mi profesión y formación académica, es decir, con la perspectiva de quien ama escribir y analizar guiones, tuve que reconocer que es posible y, más que nada, necesario, sostener una postura crítica abierta, que reconozca que la motivación de los guionistas y directores son tan importantes como mi crítica de consumidora. El fundamentalismo como fuente de identificación es pobre y además, nos empobrece y reduce el fandom a una caricatura. Este libro, además de ser un registro histórico de la más relevante saga televiva, cumple la invaluable misión de mostrarnos que solo a través del esfuerzo sostenido de los fans, los creadores, los historiadores, los actores, es decir, sin una comunidad de personas comprometidas con una misión, no es posible emprender una aventura, efectuar un cambio verdadero, dejar una huella. Nada de eso difiera de la visión inicial de Roddenberry. Live long and prosper.
August 15, 2022
I could have lived without the late chapter dedicated to various Trek references and homages in other shows and movies, which honestly seems to exist simply so they can dedicate multiple pages to Altman's own movie, Free Enterprise (don't get me wrong - I can see the logic behind discussing Trek's larger impact, but it seems odd and unnecessary to do so in this fashion when you're already not at all touching on so much other Trek stuff over the years, such as the tie-in novels, comic books, video games, the Vegas exhibit, etc.). And it's kind of a bummer that DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all put together are given about the same amount of pages as TNG - again, I understand that TNG is the most popular of the bunch, but it still feels a bit unfair. Also, the section on the Kelvin-verse films feels very half-hearted...you can sorta sense the authors don't care too much about these, as this section really feels just lazily cobbled together from promotional interviews about the films.
That all said, the majority of this is still a very entertaining, illuminating read. There are a lot of great behind-the-scenes tidbits, and honestly reading this made me much more forgiving of a lot of the problems and weaker elements of these later Trek series, as we get to hear a lot about how much the writers often tried to finally push the franchise in new, more interesting directions, but were usually hampered by the powers-that-be of the studio and producer Rick Berman. What I appreciate about oral histories about these is that it allows us to get a sense of these struggles without really trying to cast anyone as TOO MUCH of the "bad guy" - Berman is still given his say, too, and there's also some evidence that he thought he was doing right by the franchise in his own way. Though, make no mistake, he definitely comes across as a sexist asshole quite a bit here, often shooting himself in the foot with his own comments. I never hated the Berman/Braga era of Trek as much as many others (and I was happy to see that at least Braga seems MOSTLY like a decent enough dude here), but this book DOES help crystalize why that era was never quite as good as it COULD have been.
At the end of the day, the stories in this book are a great testament to just how complicated and complex it must be to try to steer a giant franchise like this, given all the elements like fan expectations, financial limitations, studio edicts, and the like. Even when its highlighting the franchise's misses, it still makes you appreciate just what they managed to pull off with the franchise during these 25 years, and makes you love the HITS even more.
That all said, the majority of this is still a very entertaining, illuminating read. There are a lot of great behind-the-scenes tidbits, and honestly reading this made me much more forgiving of a lot of the problems and weaker elements of these later Trek series, as we get to hear a lot about how much the writers often tried to finally push the franchise in new, more interesting directions, but were usually hampered by the powers-that-be of the studio and producer Rick Berman. What I appreciate about oral histories about these is that it allows us to get a sense of these struggles without really trying to cast anyone as TOO MUCH of the "bad guy" - Berman is still given his say, too, and there's also some evidence that he thought he was doing right by the franchise in his own way. Though, make no mistake, he definitely comes across as a sexist asshole quite a bit here, often shooting himself in the foot with his own comments. I never hated the Berman/Braga era of Trek as much as many others (and I was happy to see that at least Braga seems MOSTLY like a decent enough dude here), but this book DOES help crystalize why that era was never quite as good as it COULD have been.
At the end of the day, the stories in this book are a great testament to just how complicated and complex it must be to try to steer a giant franchise like this, given all the elements like fan expectations, financial limitations, studio edicts, and the like. Even when its highlighting the franchise's misses, it still makes you appreciate just what they managed to pull off with the franchise during these 25 years, and makes you love the HITS even more.
June 4, 2017
Oral histories can be a mixed bag, but Altman and Gross compile an excellent one here, focusing on the second half of the history of STAR TREK. The coverage here isn't quite 25 years -- in fact, it's a little more, because the editors made the decision to cover each TREK series as a whole from start to finish, instead of remaining in a strictly linear format which would have had comment on TNG overlapping DS9 overlapping the last couple TOS movies overlapping VOYAGER and so on.
STAR TREK's history is notably messy, with a lot of conflicts. Many of those are directly commented herein, from Gene Roddenberry's inability to get along with certain people to Rick Berman's similar difficulties. Some of the interviewees even sound bitter on occasion (Susak Sackett accuses the producers of moving forward with DS9 while Roddenberry's body was still warm), and it's interesting to learn of a number of behind-the-scenes conflicts that I never knew about (apparently there was quite a bit of friction between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan on the VOYAGER set, and apparently Paramount was very close to ordering the DS9 producers to get rid of Dr. Bashir, a character I always loved).
The book moves along quickly, even though it's quite long (there's a lot of material here, after all), and the editors only sporadically allow things to get into nitty-gritty discussions of specific episodes, usually the more beloved ones (THE INNER LIGHT, THE VISITOR). TREK fans who have long suspected that the creative team was petering out by the time they were nearing the end of VOYAGER and the beginning of ENTERPRISE will find a lot to back that view up. (Disclosure: I only skimmed the section of the book on ENTERPRISE, because I never watched a single episode of it.) For me, I was somewhat heartened to see a couple of quotes from JJ Abrams and his writers confirming my suspicion that as they rebooted the franchise they nevertheless failed to understand it at a fundamental level (insisting that Kirk and Spock were the focus of TOS).
I don't know how interesting any of this will be to anyone not a TREK fan, but along with its first volume it provides a very good summation of how a franchise that has endured for fifty years (and was even born before that) managed to endure at all.
STAR TREK's history is notably messy, with a lot of conflicts. Many of those are directly commented herein, from Gene Roddenberry's inability to get along with certain people to Rick Berman's similar difficulties. Some of the interviewees even sound bitter on occasion (Susak Sackett accuses the producers of moving forward with DS9 while Roddenberry's body was still warm), and it's interesting to learn of a number of behind-the-scenes conflicts that I never knew about (apparently there was quite a bit of friction between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan on the VOYAGER set, and apparently Paramount was very close to ordering the DS9 producers to get rid of Dr. Bashir, a character I always loved).
The book moves along quickly, even though it's quite long (there's a lot of material here, after all), and the editors only sporadically allow things to get into nitty-gritty discussions of specific episodes, usually the more beloved ones (THE INNER LIGHT, THE VISITOR). TREK fans who have long suspected that the creative team was petering out by the time they were nearing the end of VOYAGER and the beginning of ENTERPRISE will find a lot to back that view up. (Disclosure: I only skimmed the section of the book on ENTERPRISE, because I never watched a single episode of it.) For me, I was somewhat heartened to see a couple of quotes from JJ Abrams and his writers confirming my suspicion that as they rebooted the franchise they nevertheless failed to understand it at a fundamental level (insisting that Kirk and Spock were the focus of TOS).
I don't know how interesting any of this will be to anyone not a TREK fan, but along with its first volume it provides a very good summation of how a franchise that has endured for fifty years (and was even born before that) managed to endure at all.
October 20, 2021
Entertaining - of course it is, it's Star Trek, what do you expect? - but less substance than the first part had to offer IMO. Due to the amount of material covered here, there just wasn't room for quite as much of a deep dive into each series discussed as with TOS and the directly related animated series and movies which got a book all to themselves. TNG (+ movies) got the lion's share of the available space, with significantly fewer pages dedicated to DS9, Voyager and Enterprise - which didn't bother me all that much with the latter two series as I was never all that much into either (though I've seen both in their entirety), but was a shame in the case of DS9 which is and likely always will be my favourite part of the Star Trek franchise. (Uh-oh, I feel another re-watch coming on...) I was hoping for more there. Still a lot of interesting background bits and pieces, both on the various series and the J.J. Abrams movies.
May 27, 2018
The best part of this book for me was the Deep Space Nine stuff. It really made me want to rewatch that series. The Next Generation stuff was a bit of a dissapointment. The Voyager and Enterprise parts were fine. The Abrams part seemed to be mostly an attempt to justify the movie Into Darkness, with little success.
May 10, 2020
The TNG sections are interesting, as is the DS9 section, though it's mostly redundant if you've seen the What We Left Behind documentary. I did glean from it that Rick Berman is almost as racist as he is sexist, though. The Voyager section was most interesting to me, because I can see now how it was sexism that ruined the show more than anything else, and not just because it was sexism that put a talented actress in a confining catsuit.
June 20, 2024
As with the first book, I found this an enthralling read partially because, with time and distance, some interviewees ofter more candid views on the shows and movies than they might have when they were working on them. It's a warts and all approach which offers a fuller look at the history of the franchise than many books on the subject.
March 3, 2021
Much less of a draggy read than the first volume! Some truly bonkers quotes from Gene Roddenberry and info about set dynamics. I like Jonathan Frakes more now, and apparently Scott Bakula is a dream to work with. Still a lot of time spent rehashing stuff in the writer's room - I would have liked more perspectives outside of that in a 1000+ page book (I read the ebook). But definitely worthwhile for fans.
December 27, 2021
I thought this was great! A warts and all journey through a famous television sci fi series.
December 10, 2023
I read and reviewed the first volume of this oral history Star Trek saga in 2021, an easy five star treat. This second volume isn't quite as sublime but for Trek geeks is still very much worth reading. It covers Star Trek: The Next Generation, the ST:TNG movies, Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise, and the J.J. Abrams movies. Right, let's do this.
The Sad Eclipse of Gene Roddenberry
The truth about ST:TNG is that its first two seasons are mostly terrible; it became a great show in season 3 and remained so until it finished in season 7. The reason was Roddenberry, who legally speaking owned Star Trek and so had to be placated. One problem was that his classic liberalism of the 1960s had curdled. He was a guy who believed in his original idealism about equality and inclusiveness in the macro, big picture sense, but not so much up close. He was prone to bitter rants about women. When putting together the crew of the new Enterprise, he initially vetoed the idea of Lieutenant Worf, a Klingon serving in Star Fleet, feeling that Klingons were passe. Until...
The other issue was that Roddenberry wanted the new show to adhere more closely to his original vision that humans had solved all their problems and Earth was a utopia, and therefore the characters should not have any personal conflicts. Which... I mean, sounds lovely except you're making a television show, and you need drama, and drama requires conflict. Kind of Narrative 101, really. It was an insane dictate, yet Roddenberry was adamant. So the writing staff went thru this pointless dance where they'd have a good script, and Gene would neuter it, and then they'd have to slyly try to put the conflict back in, back and forth, until shooting deadlines loomed and they had to film what they had. The result was two seasons of mostly bland, sterile storytelling. I hate to say it, but what changed and allowed ST:TNG to reach its potential from the third season on, was that Roddenberry's health declined, and he simply couldn't be as involved on a day to day basis.
Make it So-So: the ST:TNG Movies
The six original cast movies are fun to discuss and argue about (my own views are in my review of the previous book), opinions vary, and the quality spiked or plummeted from film to film. The four Next Generation movies do not inspire much debate. In brief:
Star Trek: Generations - eh.
Star Trek: First Contact - great!
Star Trek: Insurrection - eh.
Star Trek: Nemesis - eh.
And that seems to be the consensus of nearly everyone. The first film attempted to combine the original cast (Shatner, Doohan, Koenig) with the new cast, and while one can understand the temptation, it was in the end a damp squib, with a rather empty, desultory death scene for James Tiberious Kirk. It does yield a great anecdote from Malcolm McDowell (who else you gonna call?), who killed the storied Captain.
A Darker Shade of Trek
Deep Space Nine is still my favorite iteration of Star Trek, and it had to really break from Roddenberry's ideals to become what it did. The storylines were darker, the interpersonal conflicts more intense, and the Federation or Star Fleet wasn't always in the right. It's doubtful the original creator would have sanctioned it. (Roddenberry died before it aired.)
An interesting example of the behind-the-scenes battles of making a television show is the look of Avery Brooks, who played Captain Sisko, the first Black actor to lead a Trek show. For three seasons they made him wear a conservative afro, and combined with the uniform he looked like a scout leader, or as Terry Farrell put it, "a Black Ken doll." In the fourth season they finally allowed him to have a shaved head and goatee as he does in real life, and the character almost immediately became more dynamic. Ira Behr also bent/ expanded what a Trek show could be by increasingly serializing it. This was always a battle for a TV show then, because executives feared casual audiences becoming lost, and so always preferred self-contained episodes. Behr kept pushing, it was a frustrating give-and-take, but in the end he mostly won out and the final two and a half seasons focused on the Dominion War. In subsequent years long story arcs became the norm for much of television, but in the '90s it was a rare thing. The book also gives you the story of why Terry Farrell left the show with her character Jadzia Dax being killed off at the end of the sixth season. It's not an edifying story. Rick Berman, who more or less became Roddenberry's successor as the guardian of Star Trek and was everyone's boss, was rather old school sexist and in the early years fixated that Farrell didn't have bigger breasts, to the point she had to have fittings to make it appear that she did. By the end of season six she asked to become a recurring character and maybe do 13 episodes rather than 22. Given she wasn't the star and was probably fifth on the call sheet, this surely could have been accommodated, but Berman said no, take it or leave it, so she left.
Lost in Space
Personally I never warmed that much to the next two shows, Voyager and Enterprise; the former ranged from average to pretty good, and the latter was just weak. Voyager was frustrating because I agreed that if anything it was past time a Trek show had a female Captain, but it always seemed to me that the creators felt "she's a woman...who's the Captain" was sufficient as far as character development. I just never felt they gave Janeway the dynamic persona that Kirk or Picard or Sisko had. And my other issue was I just disliked the premise--being thrown across the galaxy to the unknown Delta quadrant, where it will take 70 years to get back home. So in other words, the characters, from go, are somewhere they don't want to be. They did have the promising prospect of two enemy ships having to combine into one crew. Great, you can mine all kinds of drama from that! Except from basically episode 2, they all get along like the best of friends, so what's the point? But most basically, the writing just wasn't of the caliber of the previous shows. To be fair, I like Kate Mulgrew and she did what she could. But sometimes you come across a quote that gives you an idea of people's blind spots.
Gosh, if only a solution to the lack-of-female-writers would present itself!
But the Voyager section is one of the most engaging to read about, because this show had alot of behind-the-scenes drama. Robert Beltran, who played the first officer Chakotay, it turns out is a very opinionated guy, and holds nothing back. He apparently even mocked the writing when he was filming scenes. The defining clash, though, was adding the new character Seven of Nine at the end of the third season, a former Borg drone separated from the collective who joins the crew. So this was an undeniably dynamic character, played by a talented actress, Jeri Ryan, whom the writers naturally were enthused to write scripts for. Equally undeniable is that the character was also added to bring some T & A to the show, and was given a ridiculous skintight catsuit to wear that emphasized the actress' voluptuous body. I think most people's initial reaction to the costume was, are you kidding me?? Well, it worked, the ratings spiked, but perhaps unsurprisingly Kate Mulgrew was not a fan. She lobbied to have the character removed, which wasn't going to happen, and eventually turned her ire on the actress. By all accounts it made the set a tense, unhappy place.
To her credit, in this book and with the passage of time, Kate Mulgrew owns up to it.
She also has a nice anecdote about meeting Patrick Stewart and getting some Captain advice.
Lost in Apathy
As the authors themselves put it, Enterprise left dry dock on a four-year voyage timidly going where many had gone before... Pretty much. I watched it but have very few clear memories of individual episodes (other than one that featured a Gorn which was very cool). Tepid writing, a mostly unmemorable cast, it mostly wasn't bad, it was just sort of there. Plus they learned the wrong lesson from Voyager's Seven of Nine by featuring a Vulcan sexpot, only without the character being all that interesting. There is a great anecdote illustrating that fans are sometimes idiots.
For the record, Vulcans can lie, and there are many examples on the original show. One unbelievable indignity that befell Enterprise was that they essentially turned its final episode into an episode of ST:TNG. They have a wraparound framing device with Riker and Troi from TNG with Riker on the Holodeck witnessing crucial events from 90 years earlier involving Captain Archer's crew. It was honestly the most staggeringly tone deaf thing they could have done, and it pissed off fans, the actors, everyone. So ended Enterprise.
The section on the J.J. Abrams movies is the weakest in the book. I like those movies fine, all three are good, fun and entertaining, if not quite great. But it's the one section where all the quotes read like typical PR fluff from a press junket, you know, everyone was great to work with, the director's vision blah yadda blah. Rather dull. I will say that oddly, the Abrams movies most closely approximate the tone and the feel of the original show. Fans--and I should know--can get overly serious about their favorite shows, but the original Star Trek, in addition to taking science fiction seriously and having genuine ideals, was always fun, with no shortage of fistfights, monsters of the week, one night stands with alien babes, and had a great sense of humor. It pays to remember this.
Ultimately the first volume of these two doorstops is the better read, because you get the story of creating Star Trek from when it didn't yet exist except as a hazy concept in Gene Roddenberry's head, and that story is often exhilarating. But for fans these are both recommended.
The Sad Eclipse of Gene Roddenberry
The truth about ST:TNG is that its first two seasons are mostly terrible; it became a great show in season 3 and remained so until it finished in season 7. The reason was Roddenberry, who legally speaking owned Star Trek and so had to be placated. One problem was that his classic liberalism of the 1960s had curdled. He was a guy who believed in his original idealism about equality and inclusiveness in the macro, big picture sense, but not so much up close. He was prone to bitter rants about women. When putting together the crew of the new Enterprise, he initially vetoed the idea of Lieutenant Worf, a Klingon serving in Star Fleet, feeling that Klingons were passe. Until...
Gene vetoed it for four months until Dorothy (Fontana) said that we need someone to take command when the saucer separates, so let's have a woman commander, and Gene said, "No, let's have a Klingon." He'd rather have a Klingon than show a woman in a position of power.
-David Gerrold, writer, creative consultant
The other issue was that Roddenberry wanted the new show to adhere more closely to his original vision that humans had solved all their problems and Earth was a utopia, and therefore the characters should not have any personal conflicts. Which... I mean, sounds lovely except you're making a television show, and you need drama, and drama requires conflict. Kind of Narrative 101, really. It was an insane dictate, yet Roddenberry was adamant. So the writing staff went thru this pointless dance where they'd have a good script, and Gene would neuter it, and then they'd have to slyly try to put the conflict back in, back and forth, until shooting deadlines loomed and they had to film what they had. The result was two seasons of mostly bland, sterile storytelling. I hate to say it, but what changed and allowed ST:TNG to reach its potential from the third season on, was that Roddenberry's health declined, and he simply couldn't be as involved on a day to day basis.
Make it So-So: the ST:TNG Movies
The six original cast movies are fun to discuss and argue about (my own views are in my review of the previous book), opinions vary, and the quality spiked or plummeted from film to film. The four Next Generation movies do not inspire much debate. In brief:
Star Trek: Generations - eh.
Star Trek: First Contact - great!
Star Trek: Insurrection - eh.
Star Trek: Nemesis - eh.
And that seems to be the consensus of nearly everyone. The first film attempted to combine the original cast (Shatner, Doohan, Koenig) with the new cast, and while one can understand the temptation, it was in the end a damp squib, with a rather empty, desultory death scene for James Tiberious Kirk. It does yield a great anecdote from Malcolm McDowell (who else you gonna call?), who killed the storied Captain.
When we finished his death... we sat down and he got out a little tape recorder and he says, "Do you mind if I tape-record this?... I'm going to write a book about it."... I said, "It's fine, anything you want." "Ok, what's it like to have killed an American television icon?" I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding... "Well, Bill, I'll tell you what it's like: it's like half the world is going to totally and utterly hate me, and the other half is going to be so happy." He goes, "Oh yeah, who's going to be happy?" And I went, "The ones that have had it up to here with you, Bill, after thirty fucking years." True story.
-Malcolm McDowell
A Darker Shade of Trek
Deep Space Nine is still my favorite iteration of Star Trek, and it had to really break from Roddenberry's ideals to become what it did. The storylines were darker, the interpersonal conflicts more intense, and the Federation or Star Fleet wasn't always in the right. It's doubtful the original creator would have sanctioned it. (Roddenberry died before it aired.)
But I want to understand something: there's no wars, there's no money. Well, if you're going to say that stuff and there's no conflict, you better be able to back that up. I felt the show could never back it up. It was just these rules. They might as well have said the color orange has disappeared. In the twenty-fourth century there's no more orange. I don't know how, but it went with the money.
-Ira Steven Behr, executive producer/ showrunner
An interesting example of the behind-the-scenes battles of making a television show is the look of Avery Brooks, who played Captain Sisko, the first Black actor to lead a Trek show. For three seasons they made him wear a conservative afro, and combined with the uniform he looked like a scout leader, or as Terry Farrell put it, "a Black Ken doll." In the fourth season they finally allowed him to have a shaved head and goatee as he does in real life, and the character almost immediately became more dynamic. Ira Behr also bent/ expanded what a Trek show could be by increasingly serializing it. This was always a battle for a TV show then, because executives feared casual audiences becoming lost, and so always preferred self-contained episodes. Behr kept pushing, it was a frustrating give-and-take, but in the end he mostly won out and the final two and a half seasons focused on the Dominion War. In subsequent years long story arcs became the norm for much of television, but in the '90s it was a rare thing. The book also gives you the story of why Terry Farrell left the show with her character Jadzia Dax being killed off at the end of the sixth season. It's not an edifying story. Rick Berman, who more or less became Roddenberry's successor as the guardian of Star Trek and was everyone's boss, was rather old school sexist and in the early years fixated that Farrell didn't have bigger breasts, to the point she had to have fittings to make it appear that she did. By the end of season six she asked to become a recurring character and maybe do 13 episodes rather than 22. Given she wasn't the star and was probably fifth on the call sheet, this surely could have been accommodated, but Berman said no, take it or leave it, so she left.
Lost in Space
Personally I never warmed that much to the next two shows, Voyager and Enterprise; the former ranged from average to pretty good, and the latter was just weak. Voyager was frustrating because I agreed that if anything it was past time a Trek show had a female Captain, but it always seemed to me that the creators felt "she's a woman...who's the Captain" was sufficient as far as character development. I just never felt they gave Janeway the dynamic persona that Kirk or Picard or Sisko had. And my other issue was I just disliked the premise--being thrown across the galaxy to the unknown Delta quadrant, where it will take 70 years to get back home. So in other words, the characters, from go, are somewhere they don't want to be. They did have the promising prospect of two enemy ships having to combine into one crew. Great, you can mine all kinds of drama from that! Except from basically episode 2, they all get along like the best of friends, so what's the point? But most basically, the writing just wasn't of the caliber of the previous shows. To be fair, I like Kate Mulgrew and she did what she could. But sometimes you come across a quote that gives you an idea of people's blind spots.
For Kate's character, I knew we had to find a way of not writing her as a man, but writing her as a woman, which might have been a difficult thing to do because there are not that many female writers on Star Trek.
-Winrich Kolbe, director
Gosh, if only a solution to the lack-of-female-writers would present itself!
But the Voyager section is one of the most engaging to read about, because this show had alot of behind-the-scenes drama. Robert Beltran, who played the first officer Chakotay, it turns out is a very opinionated guy, and holds nothing back. He apparently even mocked the writing when he was filming scenes. The defining clash, though, was adding the new character Seven of Nine at the end of the third season, a former Borg drone separated from the collective who joins the crew. So this was an undeniably dynamic character, played by a talented actress, Jeri Ryan, whom the writers naturally were enthused to write scripts for. Equally undeniable is that the character was also added to bring some T & A to the show, and was given a ridiculous skintight catsuit to wear that emphasized the actress' voluptuous body. I think most people's initial reaction to the costume was, are you kidding me?? Well, it worked, the ratings spiked, but perhaps unsurprisingly Kate Mulgrew was not a fan. She lobbied to have the character removed, which wasn't going to happen, and eventually turned her ire on the actress. By all accounts it made the set a tense, unhappy place.
I used to watch Voyager every week and I'd say to Jeri, "Did you see the episode last night?" and she'd say, "Garrett, Kate has made me hate Star Trek. I hate coming to work every day."
-Garrett Wang (Harry Kim)
To her credit, in this book and with the passage of time, Kate Mulgrew owns up to it.
Let's be very straight about something: this is on me, not Jeri. She came in and did what she was asked to do. No question about that, and she did it very well. It's on me, because I'd hoped against hope that Janeway would be sufficient. That we didn't have to bring a beautiful, sexy girl in. That somehow the power of my command, the vicissitudes of my talent, would be sufficient unto the day, because this would really change television, right? That's what dug me the hardest, that to pick up the numbers they did that...
-Kate Mulgrew
She also has a nice anecdote about meeting Patrick Stewart and getting some Captain advice.
I said to him, "How am I going to survive this?" He said, "Take a watch. You see that bridge? Just own that bridge. Come for seven years. Do your work. Do it to the best of your ability. Make them follow you. Make them bloody proud."
Lost in Apathy
As the authors themselves put it, Enterprise left dry dock on a four-year voyage timidly going where many had gone before... Pretty much. I watched it but have very few clear memories of individual episodes (other than one that featured a Gorn which was very cool). Tepid writing, a mostly unmemorable cast, it mostly wasn't bad, it was just sort of there. Plus they learned the wrong lesson from Voyager's Seven of Nine by featuring a Vulcan sexpot, only without the character being all that interesting. There is a great anecdote illustrating that fans are sometimes idiots.
At 8 a.m. (assistant) Juan Hernandez answers the phone. The man, totally irate, said "You don't know what you just did. You just violated a basic rule. Vulcans don't lie! Vulcans don't lie! And Mr. Spock said that." ...And Juan took a beat and said, "When Mr. Spock said that, he was lying."
-Antoinette Stella, producer
For the record, Vulcans can lie, and there are many examples on the original show. One unbelievable indignity that befell Enterprise was that they essentially turned its final episode into an episode of ST:TNG. They have a wraparound framing device with Riker and Troi from TNG with Riker on the Holodeck witnessing crucial events from 90 years earlier involving Captain Archer's crew. It was honestly the most staggeringly tone deaf thing they could have done, and it pissed off fans, the actors, everyone. So ended Enterprise.
The section on the J.J. Abrams movies is the weakest in the book. I like those movies fine, all three are good, fun and entertaining, if not quite great. But it's the one section where all the quotes read like typical PR fluff from a press junket, you know, everyone was great to work with, the director's vision blah yadda blah. Rather dull. I will say that oddly, the Abrams movies most closely approximate the tone and the feel of the original show. Fans--and I should know--can get overly serious about their favorite shows, but the original Star Trek, in addition to taking science fiction seriously and having genuine ideals, was always fun, with no shortage of fistfights, monsters of the week, one night stands with alien babes, and had a great sense of humor. It pays to remember this.
Ultimately the first volume of these two doorstops is the better read, because you get the story of creating Star Trek from when it didn't yet exist except as a hazy concept in Gene Roddenberry's head, and that story is often exhilarating. But for fans these are both recommended.
March 16, 2018
This book was made for the ultra Star Trek fan who watched all the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager episodes. That was me. If you are interested in all the behind the scenes gossip about how the show was created, this book is for you. It should carry a warning that it will make you feel nostalgic and cause you to watch old episodes on whatever streaming platform you may have. They were great when well written and going through this book will remind you of the standout episodes.
August 20, 2017
For a book of its broad physical size, I found this history of the latter 25 years of Trek history to be really narrow.
It covers every series and movie in at least some detail (all the way down to the little-known 1999 movie "Free Enterprise," which the authors fail to disclose was co-written and co-produced by one of them, Altman). No surprise that the bulk of the book is given over to TNG and its movies, but there's a reasonable amount of DS9 and Voyager content. Enterprise and the reboot movie series get the least amount of space.
Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with the "oral history" format of the book. First, other than a note in the afterword that "most" of the quotes were obtained by the authors over years of interviews, there's no indication in the text when most of the quotes were obtained. That's a crucial omission--without knowing *when* the various statements were made, important context is missing. Did the individual feel that way in 1992, or do they feel that way now?
You could argue that including such footnotes would slow down the read, but the reader already has to pause to read and consider the name before each quote anyway. In some cases, it's clear where the quotes came from--material from the reboot series stars is all clearly press junket statements, for instance. But in many cases, it's not clear at all.
The key issue, however, is a problem with many oral histories: an excess of content from some perspectives, and a dearth of it from others. It's clear that the authors got extended interviews with a handful of central writers and producers, but much less with almost everyone else. We get ENDLESS variations on writer vs. producer conflicts, writer's room politics, and an intolerable amount of debate over "Gene's vision." But the fact is that quotes from Rick Berman, Ron Moore, Brannon Braga, Ira Behr, and the late Michael Piller comprise probably 65 percent of the book. Beyond that, there's a lot of reframing and restating of things that the three preceding quotes already made clear. The effect is to turn the 842 pages (!) into a real grind. Notably missing is the same level of detail from visual effects and production staff, and even series stars. It's pretty clear who talked to the authors (Frakes, Spiner, Siddig el Fadil, Kate Mulgrew) and who didn't (Avery Brooks, 1/2 the cast of TNG).
That's reflected within each chapter, as well--several key elements are hammered on for pages on end, while others go by the wayside. For example, a large chunk of the Voyager chapter is given over to the behind-the-scenes dislike between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan, but after the first two pages of it, nothing particularly new is added.
There are still some interesting nuggets buried in this book, and someone who aspires to write for television, especially genre television, might find some useful insights into how various writer's rooms work (or at least, how they worked 20 years ago). For anyone else except the most die-hard Trek fan, this is going to be a slog.
It covers every series and movie in at least some detail (all the way down to the little-known 1999 movie "Free Enterprise," which the authors fail to disclose was co-written and co-produced by one of them, Altman). No surprise that the bulk of the book is given over to TNG and its movies, but there's a reasonable amount of DS9 and Voyager content. Enterprise and the reboot movie series get the least amount of space.
Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with the "oral history" format of the book. First, other than a note in the afterword that "most" of the quotes were obtained by the authors over years of interviews, there's no indication in the text when most of the quotes were obtained. That's a crucial omission--without knowing *when* the various statements were made, important context is missing. Did the individual feel that way in 1992, or do they feel that way now?
You could argue that including such footnotes would slow down the read, but the reader already has to pause to read and consider the name before each quote anyway. In some cases, it's clear where the quotes came from--material from the reboot series stars is all clearly press junket statements, for instance. But in many cases, it's not clear at all.
The key issue, however, is a problem with many oral histories: an excess of content from some perspectives, and a dearth of it from others. It's clear that the authors got extended interviews with a handful of central writers and producers, but much less with almost everyone else. We get ENDLESS variations on writer vs. producer conflicts, writer's room politics, and an intolerable amount of debate over "Gene's vision." But the fact is that quotes from Rick Berman, Ron Moore, Brannon Braga, Ira Behr, and the late Michael Piller comprise probably 65 percent of the book. Beyond that, there's a lot of reframing and restating of things that the three preceding quotes already made clear. The effect is to turn the 842 pages (!) into a real grind. Notably missing is the same level of detail from visual effects and production staff, and even series stars. It's pretty clear who talked to the authors (Frakes, Spiner, Siddig el Fadil, Kate Mulgrew) and who didn't (Avery Brooks, 1/2 the cast of TNG).
That's reflected within each chapter, as well--several key elements are hammered on for pages on end, while others go by the wayside. For example, a large chunk of the Voyager chapter is given over to the behind-the-scenes dislike between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan, but after the first two pages of it, nothing particularly new is added.
There are still some interesting nuggets buried in this book, and someone who aspires to write for television, especially genre television, might find some useful insights into how various writer's rooms work (or at least, how they worked 20 years ago). For anyone else except the most die-hard Trek fan, this is going to be a slog.
August 2, 2019
Star Trek is important. Star Trek is important to me. I still remember when I first got into the series, quite literally sitting in a friend’s basement in the late 1980s and watching “Encounter at Farpoint.” I was hooked. Through dodgy transmission schedules, VHS releases, DVDs, and eventually streaming, these stories have formed the backbone of my love affair with pop culture over the last three decades.
Following on from the volume covering the first 25 years, this covers “my” era of Trek: the continuous run of shows that ran from the 1987 launch of Star Trek: The Next Generation, through DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise, which ended the TV run in 2005. It also covers all of the films in that period from the TNG cast, as well as the J.J. Abrams alternate timeline films and the fan culture beyond it.
Spending about a third of its time on the TNG era, from the highs of “Best of Both Worlds” to the lows of Nemesis, the personal stories of the cast, crew, and creators are all folded into this cleverly edited tome. I was fascinated to learn how many times Patrick Stewart almost left the series, the contingency plans for his departure, and some of the behind-the-scenes reveals I hadn’t heard anywhere else. DS9 gets the next biggest share of the book, and this is where things get really interesting. Having just seen the What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, these stories definitely paint a grimmer picture of the troubles the crew had getting their vision on screen.
The rest of the book takes a lighter touch to Voyager and Enterprise, and surprisingly the Abrams films where there was far more recent material to draw from, but taken together with the previous volume, this is most complete picture of a series you’re ever likely to get without having been there for all of it. Some of it is repetitive - if we hear it once, we hear “utopia is the antithesis of drama” a thousand times - but it definitely reveals that some of our favourite episodes took some serious fighting to get to our homes.
My favourite bits remain the detailed explorations of the things that didn’t make it to the screen, whether it is the series that failed to get greenlit, episodes that were kiboshed by the top brass, or the film scripts that didn’t make it beyond the concept stage. Picture this: Christopher Walken in a subterranean cavern with ancient rotting Nazi UFOs.
It will be great to eventually hear the same treatment being given to Discovery, the upcoming Picard series and beyond, although we may have to wait another 25 years to hear all those stories. What we can probably be assured of is that there will still be a Star Trek to talk about, ensuring generations of basement dwelling pre-teens may begin their lifelong obsessions long into the future.
Following on from the volume covering the first 25 years, this covers “my” era of Trek: the continuous run of shows that ran from the 1987 launch of Star Trek: The Next Generation, through DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise, which ended the TV run in 2005. It also covers all of the films in that period from the TNG cast, as well as the J.J. Abrams alternate timeline films and the fan culture beyond it.
Spending about a third of its time on the TNG era, from the highs of “Best of Both Worlds” to the lows of Nemesis, the personal stories of the cast, crew, and creators are all folded into this cleverly edited tome. I was fascinated to learn how many times Patrick Stewart almost left the series, the contingency plans for his departure, and some of the behind-the-scenes reveals I hadn’t heard anywhere else. DS9 gets the next biggest share of the book, and this is where things get really interesting. Having just seen the What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, these stories definitely paint a grimmer picture of the troubles the crew had getting their vision on screen.
The rest of the book takes a lighter touch to Voyager and Enterprise, and surprisingly the Abrams films where there was far more recent material to draw from, but taken together with the previous volume, this is most complete picture of a series you’re ever likely to get without having been there for all of it. Some of it is repetitive - if we hear it once, we hear “utopia is the antithesis of drama” a thousand times - but it definitely reveals that some of our favourite episodes took some serious fighting to get to our homes.
My favourite bits remain the detailed explorations of the things that didn’t make it to the screen, whether it is the series that failed to get greenlit, episodes that were kiboshed by the top brass, or the film scripts that didn’t make it beyond the concept stage. Picture this: Christopher Walken in a subterranean cavern with ancient rotting Nazi UFOs.
It will be great to eventually hear the same treatment being given to Discovery, the upcoming Picard series and beyond, although we may have to wait another 25 years to hear all those stories. What we can probably be assured of is that there will still be a Star Trek to talk about, ensuring generations of basement dwelling pre-teens may begin their lifelong obsessions long into the future.
January 31, 2026
I have to start by saying that I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I grew up on the original movies and TNG, and while DS9, Voyager and Enterprise had their problems I enjoyed those as well. I think that's why I have a few problems with this book. The first being that the sound bites primarily come from the writers with the producers a close second. There was one quick bit from a set designer, but nobody else. What about all of the set designers, the art department, the wardrobe people? All of these people made huge contributions to the series, wouldn't you like to know what was behind those recliners in the first season of TNG, or their pajamas? But the editors feel like we don't need anything from anyone who isn't a writer, and no offense to the writers but hearing them complain and complain and complain got a bit old after the first 5 or 6 hours of that. The other complaint that I have is that the editors very obviously didn't like any of the shows after TNG and so they only included sound bites that were complaints about the later shows or talking about how it could have been better. I am a Star Trek fan. I like all Star Trek. Again not that they didn't have their problems, but they were not all bad, and seriously the complaining got old. How it didn't get old to the people putting the book together I don't know. So while I thought this book was interesting it could have been so much better.
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