Cushman "These Are The Voyages" Season 3 - Who is "M.D.R."?

"The person who owns this site does not have enough money to really sue us."

"Ok, good. If it comes down to it, we'll just issue an apology. Better to ask forgiveness, right?"

*actual hypothetical discussion between legal counsel and ad executive.

 

Greetings, I'm brand new to this site. I found it, oddly enough, because I'm currently reading Volume 3 of "These Are The Voyages" and was curious to find out who M.D.R. is/was. I didn't find out, but instead what I found was just as interesting. The backlash of these books took me a bit by surprise. Not that I dispute the reasons for all the disdain of the author, it just never occurred to me that he did such a slipshot job in writing these books.
I consider myself a true 54 year old Trekker, I own every episode (some twice in DVD and Blu-Ray formats) and have over a dozen "behind the scenes" Star Trek books, probably almost every one that was ever published.
Starting from "The Making of Star Trek" all the way to the latest Cushman series. I might not be able to beat a lot of you in a game of Star Trek trivia, but I know more than the average fan. And yet, I never picked up on any of the inaccuracies that you all have been talking about in this forum. Maybe I was dazzled with all the brand new behind-the-scenes material, never published before: The Nielson ratings, the production diaries, the new interviews, and all those pages and pages of internal memos. I never stopped to consider that the editorial portions of the book might be incorrect, just because it seems Cushman had so much research and material at his disposal.

So now, I'm going to be seeing and reading these books from a totally different perspective. I'll be on the lookout for possible inaccuracies. I still love the books, just from the raw data they provide. My only two personal complaints is that for the first volume (purchased on Amazon), the book's description included color pictures that were supposedly included in the book. The book DID contain those pictures shown in color on Amazon, except they were all in B&W. I thought that was a misrepresentation of the product. And I wrote a review saying so. My second gripe about the books is that I received the first edition of the first book. And now that I have all three volumes, proudly displayed on my bookcase along with all my other Star Trek books, there is something very odd when you put these three books together. At the top of the outer spine of each book, each one is supposed to spell out "T.O.S.". But my volume one first edition had a different cover, and there is no "T". So on my bookshelf, these books display "--OS"! A small thing perhaps, but I think the author should offer to trade me for an updated edition so my book spines will properly spell out TOS on the bookshelf.

Anyway, thanks for the information, and thanks for letting me rant and offer my opinions. Even though I still haven't found out who M.D.R. is. I'd also like to know the "Studio Executive" that sexually assaulted Grace Lee Whitney and how much, if any, that had to do with her being fired from the show.

 

Welcome to the board! For more reading about the Cushman books, may I suggest you check out Star Trek Fact Check, written "Harvey" who posts on this board (and in this thread). Posts specifically about the books are:

Review: These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One"
A Few Thoughts on These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One (Revised and Expanded Edition)"
The Truth About Star Trek and the Ratings"
On Pickups and Lifts in 'The Man Trap'"
And On The Seventh Day: Conflicting Production Accounts of Star Trek's Second Season"
Credit Where Credit is Due: Producing Star Trek's Second Season"

Neil

 

Grace Lee never identified "The Executive" (calling him a "studio executive" is one of Cushman's many sloppy mistakes). In an interview with StarTrek.com, she implied he was a producer. Based on several bits of information in her memoir about "The Executive," it's not hard to determine his identity.

Based on several memos about the cost of regulars during season one, it appears that Whitney's release from the show had already been decided when she was assaulted. This only makes the actions of her assailant that much more despicable, in my view.

 

Thanks Indysolo, I'll check out those links.

Harvey: Yeah I guess that's the part that threw me, (I thought I read "studio executive" from another source besides Cushman, but I really don't remember). But that's why I ruled out GR, because he didn't work for the studio. But when "producer" is used then yeah, it's not hard to figure out.
That's sad. A "casting couch" is one level of wrongness, but that kind of drunken assault, there's just no excuse.
I'm a member of this classic rock music group on Facebook, and the subject of sexual abuse comes up often, and when you find out one of your heroes did those despicable things, it kind of makes it hard to see them as heroes anymore. Thanks for the info!

 

Cushman really said that?
There's so much wrong with his statement that I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

Kor

 

Yep!



Neil

 

Please keep in mind that unless he actually includes a photo of the document he's discussing it is decidedly NOT raw data.

 

I just read the opening excerpts from Whitney's book, and yeah, her story about "The Executive" seems to point to one very obvious suspect. Now, that's not 100% certainly, of course, but that account is pretty damning.

I wouldn't have thought it possible for my opinion of that person to get much lower than it already was.

I was wrong.

 

I guess "raw data" was a poor choice of words. Probably new (to me) information about TOS. Even if much of Cushman's editorial comments are innacurate, there are still interviews, quotes, and (supposedly) other factual information that I've never read before. And like I said in my first comment, that's pretty exciting for me because I have read almost every major Star Trek behind-the-scenes books ever to be published. And I'm endlessly fascinated by TV production in general.

But it is frustrating after now learning how much information is inaccurate in Cushman's books. It's a major disappointment. I initially thought finally, the real story told by an impartial person, who has done extensive and "exclusive" research....every book written by all the various actors, producers, executives, etc. each have their own slant to particular events and people. Even "The Making of Star Trek" by Whitfield was heavily influenced by GR, but when it came out, it was the first of it's kind and (at the time) it was worth it's price just for the behind-the-scenes pictures alone. The picture of the technicians working on the bridge with the overhead studio lights is burned into my brain. It was the first picture I ever saw showing the bridge as a TV set.

Probably the most impartial books that come close to giving an equal amount of behind-the-scenes information is the Captain's Logs series by Gross and Altman.

Anyway, as you can tell, I tend to ramble on in my posts. I just started reading the 3rd volume of TATV, and even though I'll be reading it with a totally different mind-set now (and with a grain of salt), much of it's still new territory after the "Captain's Logs" and Justman's and Solow's "Inside Trek", which after reading, I didn't think there was much more to squeeze out from documentation and the memories of the cast and crew.

 

On the OP, after scouting around, I'll throw out the name of Mack Reynolds as a possibility. He wrote the first original Trek novel, Mission to Horatius, that Roddenberry found fault with even after editorial changes. His general works often dealt with the development of utopian societies. Perhaps he felt that he had an advantage in approaching the series because of the strength of how he followed that theme, and the practical implications that showed up in some of his books that mirrored what was seen in Trek, despite the contretemps over Horatius, which was aimed at a juvenile audience. The middle initial D that was referenced, might be accounted for by the fact that Dallas was his actual given name, though he wrote under a number of pseudonyms, a few that used it as well but as a first name, but perhaps it may have been used as the former by some who knew him.

The fact that our resident authors haven't volunteered this author as a guess might indicate there is a glaring and well known fact that precludes its even being in the ballgame, but the connections that are present seem to me to give it a shot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Reynolds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_to_Horatius

 

Well, according to the wiki, Mack Reynold's given initials were D.M.R., for "Dallas McCord Reynolds." If D.M.R. had been intended, then interchanging two letters and writing M.D.R. would hardly be the worst error in the books, not by a long shot. Good theory.

 

Hi Leee79! Welcome to the forum. I'm a relative noob myself, and your post could easily have been written by me, almost word-for-word. We're almost exactly the same age, and, like you, I had read and enjoyed the first two These Are the Voyages volumes (I have the Kindle version of S3, but haven't gotten around to reading it), only to find that everybody here hates them with a passion! Not that I necessarily disagree with any of the points being made, but even though I feel like I know a lot about Trek, I'm obviously not enough of a "Trek-spert" to have caught the errors/assumptions/conjecture for what they were. Honestly, the parts of TAtV I enjoyed the most are the sections about the development of the scripts, and the various drafts they went through. I don't know exactly how off-base they are, but I found those quite interesting.

 

Hey JE,
Yeah, I liked reading about the story/script developments too. It's fascinating to learn the evolution of a story, and read what the original writer had in mind, and how much it needed to be changed because of budgets, network censors, and other factors.
The book still offers a lot of information that has never been published before. And not just the material used from the archives, but new interviews with cast and crew members too.
But I DO think the author misrepresented himself and is not a straight-forward kind of guy. The first clue was when Amazon showed color pictures (supposedly from the book), only to find out all the photos in the book are in black and white.
And then, as pointed out already, his claim to have "exclusive" access to the archives, when in fact anyone can get access to them (with an appointment). And he generally just did a very sloppy job with the basic editing and fact checking overall.

I can take a little editorializing. Every behind-the-scenes book on Star Trek have authors that offer their own opinions on the episodes, actors, and production staff. So that part is kind of a given. If he wants to call one episode "the worst" over another, that's just the author's opinion. It was stated as fact.

But all in all, even though my view of the books and the author are forever tainted after reading the posts in this forum (and other Internet sites), I still think the books make a nice addition to my library of Star Trek books....mistakes and all.

 

*That should say "It was NOT stated as fact." in the 2nd to last paragraph.
(can you edit these posts? I don't see an edit button)

 

Enjoying Trek and getting history correct are two different things.

Neil

 

I get that not everyone cares how accurate or inaccurate the books are. But I have a lot of problems with someone who claims he's writing some kind of definitive history and trumpets his sources and then basically makes up stuff or draws conclusions the data doesn't support.

Oh yeah, and who says things as fact-free as this:

​

YMMV.