Women At Warp Book Club discussion

Hello! I am brand new to the group, and am so happy to be here! I am going back to school this fall (non-traditional student!) to get my master's in Popular Culture. I plan to write my thesis about the women of Star Trek. The Women of Warp podcast was a miraculous find for me last week, and I am enjoying binging all the episodes. I would like to get this group's suggestions for good research books about the making of Star Trek (all series/movies/etc.) and the women of Star Trek. There are so many books out there, and it's hard to know which ones are really the best. Do any of you have advice for me? Thanks so much! I can't tell you how excited I am to find a group of "my people!" :)

I know what you mean about finding star trek people! I joined The Trek BBS. The folks there are very helpful and might have suggestions (www.trekbbs.com) Good Luck! Live Long & Proser :-)

None of the research books I can recommend are particularly focused on women's contributions, but neither do they omit them (in my recollection and as far as I can tell, at least).

For TOS, the best I've read to date are the These are the Voyages series by Marc Cushman: These Are The Voyages: TOS Season One, These Are The Voyages: TOS Season Two, and These Are the Voyages - TOS: Season Three. Each is the size (and weight) of a college textbook, and there's a lot of detail in them, all sourced from period documents (including production memos) and interviews both from the period and later by the author and others.

Similar in amount of detail and presentation style is Preston Neal Jones's Return to Tomorrow, which is solely focused on The Motion Picture. This one's more of an "oral history", but also draws on a lot of both period and after-the-fact documentation and interviews.

I found all of these fascinating to read through, but they (obviously) only cover TOS and the first film.

I liked The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek-The First 25 Years and 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 they would probably be great to have on hand for writing your thesis since they are oral histories so they are entirely made up of quotes from people involved in the production.

I am coming to this so, so late, and I apologize.

If you're looking for some fandom books, you might want to check out Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth, Star Trek Lives !, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Boldly Writing... And there are several others, many written in the 70s and 80s.

As for real "making of" stories, try The World Of Star Trek and On the Good Ship Enterprise: My 15 Years with Star Trek.