The Making of Star Trek (1968) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back for another book review. Though this time it's going to be more of an overview similar to the review I did on the book I reviewed about The Big Bang Theory. Today I'm taking a look at the 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Poe, under the pseudonym, Stephen E. Whitfield. So let's get into it.

While books like this are fairly common for Star Trek now, The Making of Star Trek was the first of its kind. When the book was published, Star Trek's publishing program had just started the year before with the James Blish novelizations, his original tie-in novel, Spock Must Die!, and the comics being published by Gold Key Comics. And, of course, other TV shows didn't have books like this at the time. Neither did movies coming out at the time. Nerd culture was very different in the '60s. In a way it almost didn't exist. At least not the way it does now. And movie studios and TV networks certainly didn't cater to the nerds the way they do now.

Reading this book is also an interesting experience in terms of Star Trek. Back then, there was no franchise yet. It was a TV show called Star Trek that had some tie-in novels and a comic book series and that was it. There was no animated shows, no movies, no video games, no conventions, no home video releases, no sequel/spin-off TV shows, and no prequels. It was just the one show called Star Trek. Not even Star Trek: The Original Series, just Star Trek. Which is interesting to think about. There was a time where the franchise was a single TV show called Star Trek.

The book doesn't go into the merger between Desilu Studios and Paramount Pictures during the show's second season, it doesn't mention Lucille Ball's big influence in getting Star Trek made in general, nor does it deal with anything going on in the outside world. I know the book was written and published in the '60s, while the show was still on the air, but I feel like the book does a big disservice to Star Trek by ignoring these things because all of it influenced the series. Especially the stuff going on in the world outside of the Star Trek sets. Because it was the stuff going on outside that Gene Roddenberry felt the most strongly about.

Whitfield unfortunately paints a very happy, joyful, picture of the Star Trek production. We know now that wasn't always the case. Not only was it extremely stressful, but Shatner's ego was big enough that he clashed with cast and crew at times, Grace Lee Whitney left the show part way through the first season and wouldn't return until Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the late '70s. So there's alot this book doesn't go into that is instrumental in the history of the franchise. Including the more problematic stuff that was, unfortunately, part of it.

One thing I thought the book did extremely well is they devote an entire seven chapters to life in space in the time of Star Trek (they wouldn't decide on it being the 23rd Century until Star Trek II), the mission of the Enterprise, how many ships are in the Starship class (again, the Enterprise wouldn't be considered to be a Constitution class starship until the third episode of TNG in 1987 when Picard mentions it on screen), and more background information on the main cast of the show than was ever mentioned in any episode of the series. Including Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, and Nurse Chapel. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty each have a chapter devoted to them, and their actors, and then Uhura, Chapel, Sulu, and Chekov get a section of the seventh chapter of that section of the book. But considering we had to wait over fifty years to get any information about Uhura and Chapel in episodes of the show, thanks to SNW, this book is a treasure trove of information regarding the command crew of the Enterprise.

Overall, this is a decent book for its time. Not only does it talk about what Star Trek was like at the time, but it goes in depth in how a TV show was produced in the '60s. Whitfield describes every job from the executive producer to the cameraman and casting personnel. You have to remember that back then, not only was television seen as more lowly than movies, but general audiences didn't have books written about making TV shows (until this one), or DVD/Blu-ray/4K bonus features going behind the scenes, or YouTube videos detailing every movie in a filmmaker's filmography. Cinefantastique, a magazine focusing on horror, fantasy and Sci-Fi filmmaking, had just started publication the year before this book came out, though Starlog was still eight years away from beginning its publication, and Entertainment Weekly wouldn't become a thing for another 22 years. So the average person, unless they got to visit a movie or TV set, had no idea what went into making movies and TV shows. There just wasn't any interest in it the way there would be with the rise of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola and their films, Star Wars, Jaws, and The Godfather in the '70s. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.