Star Trek as I never read it before!

"These Are the Voyages : TOS season one" written by Marc Cushman is an impressive 600-pages book  detailing the genesis and the first season of the Star Trek original series, which means there will be two other volumes, for seasons 2 and 3. Am I complaining? Not in the least!

Frankly, I thought I knew everything about Star Trek Classic, from the Making of to more recent reviewing books, from artbooks to actors, producers and writers biographies... I really thought I knew all. Apparently I was far from the truth.

This project dates back to 1982, Marc Cushman approached Gene Roddenberry about the writing of a book about Star Trek. Roddenberry asked the same question I had in mind thirty years later: "why still ANOTHER book?". Gene Roddenberry ended up giving Cushman access to all the Star Trek archives, memos exchanged, various script versions, shooting schedules... He also conducted many interviews and recouped his informations with the various reference books and magazines from the 60ies (the bibliography is indeed quite impressive). And finally he had access to the Nielsen ratings of this time period.

The result is a thrilling book, very well written, whose main merit is to make us feel like a part of the creative process behind each episode of the show, each one of these replaced in the context of its time. Every player has his professionnal background listed, from the director to the recurring extra, and the author even takes the time of establishing an overview of television during the 60ies.

Each version of the scenarios is analysed, from the outline to the finished screenplay, with a critical and thoughtful of the different elements that were lost among the many revisions. We can thus understand for the first time, very concretely, the real influence Gene Coon and Dorothy C. Fontana notably had over the evolution of Star Trek, which would have been quite different if Roddenberry had stayed the only master onboard.

Each shooting is detailed, and lists the various anecdotes and lateness that accompanied them, each step of the post-production stage is documented, music as well as special effects. The cost of each episode is given, as well as the total over the whole season versus the budget allowed. When the amounts are significant, they are translated in their 2013 counterpart.

But the most interesting part of the book is perhaps the definitve ending of an urban legend, the one which said that Star Trek had been a failure on his first run on NBC, and that the show only found its audience during reruns in syndication. This work demonstrates that Star Trek was hardly a pushover in the ratings, against shows that were in no danger of cancellation, like Bewitched!

So why did NBC decided to cancel the show? Future volumes will probably cover this, but with NBC executives not especially fans of science-fiction, there were also frictions between NBC and Roddenberry, who never hesitated to badmouth his bosses, and who inserted content considered way too "sexy" for the time period.

To be continued, this is a fascinating trip to the 60ies. The second volume should be released in early 2014!