Fact checking These Are The Voyages....

My friend Scott Mantz will be interviewing Cushman at this event in Burbank, but at this point I'm not interested in what the author has to say.

Neil

 

I have a lot of fond memories of a couple of small Portland, Oregon area conventions that Mantz hosted over a decade ago. His Access Hollywood interview with Cushman was pretty soft-ball, though. Would he be willing to ask the author some harder questions?

 

It is interesting JBPress advertises the books of others. They do not say they are JB books, though one might assume so, since it is a publisher's site. When you buy one throught Amazon thumbnails on JB, they get a small cut as an Amazon Associate.

Why do they feature Chicago on their banner? I only see SD or LA mentioned. Are they based in Chi and I missed it?

I think the cat who does PR/events is the only one pulling her weight (all seven meowvelous pounds) aside from Cushman. It is interesting their motto is "Reading is believing" given the number of factual errors people have noted. And given the author thought a spoof cover was an unpublished book.

 

I have been reading this book and had reached the end of the chapter on "Arena," saw the fan art cover and was like, "Waaaaaait a sec." Damn, there's a lot out there that's incorrect.

I guess you don't take this one as gospel, huh?

 

There's a lot that's suspect here. I'd trust the memos, but you always have to apply healthy skepticism of oral histories (interviews, many decades after the events recounted) and an author who displays a propensity for editorializing and interpreting.

The proper way to do something like this is recount what you've learned and point out the contradictions. Make the reader aware that, in some ways, history is a big game of "telephone".

 

Not sure if you are aware, but aside from the Jacobs Brown Press site, there is a separate website dedicated just to the TATV book series - that it appears Marc Cushman and Gerald Gurian and the entire project team have contributed to ...
http://www.thesearethevoyagesbooks.com/

 

Interesting that while the first volume says only TOS on the cover the next two volumes have Star Trek on their covers. Unless those aren't finalized covers.

 

Now there's a good way to get some unwanted attention from the publishing rights holders.

 

LOL!
Actually, I'm not 100% certain that those cover designs are finalized. But the Lincoln film clips for both of those Enterprise shots are actually shown in that article on Gerald Gurian's website. In the pages of starship filming model shots near the beginning of the article.

Both of those shots are actually rare NBC bumpers produced to advertise the series. And the words STAR TREK are part of the Lincoln film clip image. I'm not certain how copyrights would apply to them - they technically might not be considered part of the broadcast episode / storyline.

 

Make sure this doesn't show up in the season 2 book. I'm telling you now, it's not real and this is no hoax!


-artwork courtesy of "The Lensman"

 

LOL. But not including it would eliminate a potential new topic of discussion in this thread. :-) I don't think it will be in Book 2, probably in Book 3 by mistake.

 

I was wondering about TOS in the title of book 1 myself. My understanding is that one may use titles (e.g. "Star Trek") in a nonfiction work about a series or movie. Even small bits of dialog, both under fair use guidelines. Writing a for-profit fiction book and using Star Trek in the title, uh, no. But there are plenty of "unauthorized bios" of series that include the title, so readers know what it's about. Anyone more knowledgeable than me care to weigh in?

This board needs its own legal console.

 

My wife's employer mistakenly canceled our health insurance. We're agitated, so we could use a little consolation.

 

I wouldn't want to claim to be more knowledgeable than you on the full scope of copyright law - but I think you are correct in that the fair use guidelines do grant some leeway for including clearly copyright material inside for-profit works. Even on the back cover of "These Are The Voyages - TOS: Season One", the words STAR TREK appear two or three times, I think, but they are always immediately followed by the registered trademark symbol of a circled capital letter "R".

It is interesting, I think, that another unauthorized work on TOS was released about the same time as TATV (a couple of months earlier) called "Star Trek: Exploring the Original Series" by E.J. Wilson. It can be found on Amazon.com and is shown as being published by: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. So I believe that we can correctly assume it is unauthorized by CBS. It's front cover is dominated by the two huge words "STAR TREK", one under the other, they take up 90% of the front cover space, and the individual letters are filled with a mosaic of color images from TOS featuring the entire face or partial faces of most of the regular series cast (as well as some aliens like the salt creature, Balok, etc.) It seems to me that both the clear use of the title Star Trek and all the actors photos might be questionable/require permission - but the book continues to be sold. So CBS might just be overlooking this behavior at present.

And for non-profit endeavors, they've always been gracious, I think, in allowing fan sites and fan movie enterprises to use the various Star Trek logos and designs. According to Gerald Gurian, when the folks at startrek.com listed his website startrekpropauthority.com on their own "Fan Sites" page, they requested that the following disclaimer appear at the very bottom of his web page "This website is not endorsed, sponsored or affiliated with CBS Studios Inc. or the "Star Trek" franchise. The STAR TREK trademarks and logos are owned by CBS Studios Inc." They said they required all fan sites listed on startrek.com to display the same disclaimer, and he was pleased to comply.

Specifically regarding the name "TOS", I don't think that was ever registered at all in the same way as "STAR TREK" was. But it's obviously become greatly associated with the show.

 

Yes, CeateSpace is the self-publishing, print-on-demand arm of Amazon. Oddly, I do not believe another user - if using the mark legally, say in a bok about the product - must put the "r"; but the company who owns the trademark rights had to. That is the owner alerting the word tha the mark is registered.

If I wrote a book about oreos, or a cookbook, I believe I would not have to write r or tm every time I wrote "Oreos."

Moreover, iirc, that requirement on trademark holders was eased or eliminated recently. I believe I learned that on the very fine sports uniform blog, UniWatch. Again, smarter-than-I people, disabuse me of my errors if they be.

 

Source

 

The book cover, like much of the editorializing and television history stuff, is something that would've been much better left out rather than chancing being so wrong. It has questionable value in the first place.

 

Just found that memo today. Will go over it further when I get to it (I've accumulated quite a back-log of things I need to look at from UCLA), but the salient budget details are the following (report dated 8/28/67):

Mannix: $213,378
Mannix: $224,602
Mission: Impossible: $218,004
Star Trek: $189,696
Star Trek: $195,674
Voyage: $166,485
Man From U.N.C.L.E.: $150,158
Wild, Wild West: $181,108
Bonanza: $167,870
Gunsmoke: $192, 326
Batman: $184,232

These must be the budgets of select episode rather than season averages (explaining why there are two numbers for Trek and Mannix). Note: I've excluded some shows on the document, since they weren't as well-known.

There's a corresponding memo from Justman (which you must have read, at least in part, in one of the biographies, probably Alexander's) which explains some of the "creative accounting" which he suspects Voyage was doing to keep their budget low. But, that will take time to type up. For now, this will do.

 

^^^That figure for Batman must represent 2 half hour episodes (as per the first 2 seasons), since it was filmed essentially as an hour episode and split to air in over 2 nights.

 

The document didn't indicate one way or another, but I suspect you're right, both for the reason you list as well as the fact that it would be an insane figure for 25 minutes of television.