Anyway, I've read through the third volume and, not being as critical toward the other volumes, I was looking forward to reading about what is the least covered season of the original series. For awhile now, Cushman has said that this would be even more pages than the other volumes, even without the full time detailed documentation from Roddenberry and Justman or anything really from Coon or Fontana (not to mention that Freiberger and Singer weren't big on memos). And yup, that's true. At 736 pages, it's the largest of the volumes. But still, I felt a little let down. Without the constant memos, there are lots of quotes from a writer who was working on an abandoned biography with Fred Freiberger. Also, many, many pages are taken up by other people giving their thoughts on the episodes. People like Vic Mignona, Marc Altman, film critic Scott Mantz and so on. Also, some of his "assessments" go on for a very long time. Honestly, there's a lot of filler in here.
Some things started to dive me a little nuts. Now, I get that people may not choose to read it from cover to cover, instead starting at whatever chapter or episodes interest them the most. However, that biographer is constantly introduced as "the writer who worked with Freiberger on his abandoned biography." And there there's the maddening, easily checked music errors. Such as "Plato's Stepchildren" have a partial score, when it was, in fact, a full score.
However, I still found it fascinating to read the evolution of each episode, and gained a real appreciation for what Freiberger and Arthur Singer had to work with. It was really a two man operation, especially after Justman left. They were the only two people doing polishes after the drafts were handed in. Also apparently, Freiberger was tasked with making each episode "good enough." Just get them done in 6 days and under budget. While he seemed to want to do stories with value, his "vision" was miles away from Roddenberry's.
Sadly, since most of the information presented is either second hand or conducted through interviews done well after the fact, there isn't much of a consensus between the wounded writers like DC Fontana and Freiberger's version of events. Even if one could trust Cushman implicitly, the memories and lingering bitterness would color an already faulty memory. The lack of voluminous memos really hurts this book.
Still, the Freiberger biographer's contributions were interesting to read since I was always interested in the producer's point of view.
I don't know, I guess if you didn't want to read the others for the various reasons, this volume won't do a damned thing other than confirm those reasons. If, however, you enjoyed the previous two volumes, you'll still find value in this. Just don't take it as gospel and enjoy the evolution of each episode and what the players have to say about it all.
I'll just file these with the other faulty but interesting books on the series.
