My Star Trek Experience: The Reference Books of Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens (1994-1997, Pocket Books)

 Hey everyone, Happy Friday! How's everybody doing? I'm doing pretty well. So I'm here to talk Star Trek. However, rather than talking about one of the shows, movies, novels, or comics, I decided to talk about reference books. Specifically the reference books published by Pocket Books between 1994 and 1997 that were written by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who have also written numerous Star Trek novels, as well as episodes from the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise. I'll cover their novels in another post, I just wanted to focus on the reference books they wrote, because, I've read all four of them, and I own three of them. Let's get into it.

The first is The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which was published on December 9th, 1994. This book is probably the most indepth look at the making of DS9 until the 2019 documentary, What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine came out. It's definitely the most indepth look at the creation of the series, including original character breakdowns and how to write a script for the show. One of the things that I love about all of the Reeves-Stevenses reference books, that focus on the background of a particular series or concept (Phase II became Star Trek: The Motion Picture), is that they do their best to explain the financial workings of a series. Not just how the production crew works with their budget, but also why Paramount Pictures decides to make new Star Trek shows, or why and how they decide to end a particular Star Trek series. Which is something that fans today tend to forget about, despite the fact that money still plays an important part of the film and television industry, particularly with high budget franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars.

For example, in this book they explain why DS9 was greenlit. Paramount was already preparing to end TNG and transitioning that show's cast to the big screen, as TNG was reaching the point in the show's run, where despite the ratings being huge, and continuing to be stable, it was reaching its point of diminishing returns, where the ratings would begin to stagnate as the audience would stop growing, or start to drop altogether because the existing audience would stop watching it. Any popular TV show, be it broadcast (network and cable) or streaming, has this point of diminishing returns. Especially when a show that has massive storylines, with major character development, goes into a fourteenth or fifteenth season. They have a harder time attracting a new audience because there's too much to catch up on. Especially back in the 90's when DVD sets and streaming services didn't exist yet. You often had to wait until the show, if popular enough, aired in reruns, and even then you couldn't guarantee that the audience would be able to see every episode if they're coming in on a ninth or tenth season. In the case of TNG, which ended at seven seasons, and had all 178 episodes available on VHS, even hardcore Star Trek fans wouldn't be able to own all 178 VHS releases for TNG, because they wouldn't have the space for all those tapes. Add on the fact that the cast was becoming more expensive as their talents were becoming more and more in demand. So it makes sense that Paramount capped the 90's Star Trek shows at seven seasons each, even if they weren't transitioning to feature films, the way TNG, and TOS before it, did.

The Reeves-Stevenses get a bit more technical and indepth in their books, than I'm able to here, But that's the basic gist of it. TV shows become more and more expensive the longer they're on the air. Supernatural was a huge example of this, as it ran for fifteen seasons even though it was becoming more expensive for The CW to produce, given they were also producing five or six comic book based shows at the same time, and was a network that already didn't have a high viewership compared to FOX, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Oh and this book was published only a few weeks after Star Trek Generations came out in theatres. I got this book at a used book store a number of years ago.

Next up was The Art of Star Trek, which was published on November 28th, 1995. This book is a showcase of the concept art and matte paintings from the first four live action Star Trek TV shows, the first animated series (the only animated series at the time), the lost series (which I'll get into in a little bit), and the first seven movies. So there isn't as much text in the book as there are in their other reference books. I got this book as a birthday present in 1996. Not the paperback version though, the original coffee table sized hardcover. Which is a heavy book. Of course, aside from a small tear in the dust jacket that probably happened from the two moves I've gone through since I got this book, I've taken extremely good care of it over the last almost 28 years since I got it. I take it off the bottom shelf of the small shelving unit in my closet and look at the stuff in the book. 

 This next book is an interesting one because it's not about a show that aired or a movie that came out in theatres. Instead, it's about a TV show that almost happened between TOS ended in 1969 and Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out in 1979. Phase II as the show was called was supposed to kickstart a fourth TV network in 1977 because reruns of TOS had been so popular, but no other network, including NBC wanted to spend the money on a new series. And while Paramount had gone back and forth on making a new show or a Star Trek movie, the success of Star Wars in 1977 made them to scrap the TV show and new network idea, and turn the project into a feature length film. Obviously, there's more to it than that, but that's the basic history of this "lost series". I borrowed this book from the library back in late 2006 or early 2007, and I thought it was a fascinating read.

This last book was a look at the ten year history of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which includes the production of all seven seasons, Generations and First Contact, as the book was published while Insurrection was still in production. While the book doesn't give all of the details that documentaries like Chaos on the Bridge do, it's still an indepth look at the production of a TV show in the late '80s to mid '90s. I also got this book for my birthday, but in 1997.

Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens are amazing writers, and they're the first to really explain what TV production was like since the average viewer had no clue, since this was before DVDs became a thing. Well, this book, The Continuing Mission, came out just as DVDs were starting to become a thing, but you get the idea. The average viewer of a TV show didn't understand what went into making whatever show they were watching be it Star Trek, Friends, The X-Files, or Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

That's gonna be it for me for this week. I just wanted to do a post that really focused on a particular aspect of Star Trek. Particularly '90s Star Trek, as reference books like this don't really exist anymore. Especially because we have YouTube videos and DVD and Blu-ray bonus features that detail all of this behind the scenes stuff these books are about. Alright my friends, I'll be back next week for more blog posts. Until then have a great rest of your day and a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.