Star Trek behind the scenes books

[Trekfan12]

When I watched TOS I wasn't thinking about what it was like behind the scenes. There really wasn't a lot of information coming out back then. The only thing I had heard was that there was some friction on the set between Nimoy and Shatner.

I've since read several behind the scene books. "Inside Star Trek: the Real Story." by Solow and Justman
"Star Trek TV memories" by Shatner
"The Star Trek book" by Paul Ruditis
And one I just finished "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years (The Fifty-Year Mission #1) by Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman
It wasn't my fave. the "Inside ST the Real Story was the one I liked the best.

I have a question, does reading these books and looking behind the curtain, so to speak, does it make watching Star Trek a different experience for you? TOS is my fave of all the ST incarnations. I was thinking of all the hurdles that everyone involved with making the show had to go through. I thought it was so sad that it was such an uphill battle at times.

 

[BillJ]

I have a question, does reading these books and looking behind the curtain, so to speak, does it make watching Star Trek a different experience for you? TOS is my fave of all the ST incarnations. I was thinking of all the hurdles that everyone involved with making the show had to go through. I thought it was so sad that it was such an uphill battle at times.

I've lost a lot of respect for Roddenberry over the years, reading about his various transgressions.

 

[Tracy Trek]

I think they are interesting. Because I'm one of those people who like to watch the bonus material on a DVD to find out about the making of films themselves.

Does anyone recall reading in Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories that there was a fire on the set during the filming of one of them? And I think he mentioned it was around the same time he was hosting Rescue 911.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I think that nonfiction books tend to be covered in Trek Literature, so moving there....

 

[Leto_II]

Does anyone recall reading in Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories that there was a fire on the set during the filming of one of them? And I think he mentioned it was around the same time he was hosting Rescue 911.

The fire occurred during the shooting of Star Trek III, which overlapped with Shatner's starring role on T.J. Hooker at the time; Shatner actually personally helped the fire department battle the soundstage-blaze.

 

[ElizSalem]

When I watched TOS I wasn't thinking about what it was like behind the scenes. There really wasn't a lot of information coming out back then. The only thing I had heard was that there was some friction on the set between Nimoy and Shatner.

I've since read several behind the scene books. "Inside Star Trek: the Real Story." by Solow and Justman
"Star Trek TV memories" by Shatner
"The Star Trek book" by Paul Ruditis
And one I just finished "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years (The Fifty-Year Mission #1) by Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman
It wasn't my fave. the "Inside ST the Real Story was the one I liked the best.

I have a question, does reading these books and looking behind the curtain, so to speak, does it make watching Star Trek a different experience for you? TOS is my fave of all the ST incarnations. I was thinking of all the hurdles that everyone involved with making the show had to go through. I thought it was so sad that it was such an uphill battle at times.

I've lost a lot of respect for Roddenberry over the years, reading about his various transgressions.

(I'm new here, so am hoping I got this multi-quote function thing right...)

I had a similar experience to BillJ. I've binge-read my way through most of the behind the scenes books (even the Cushman and Osborn These Are the Voyages) over the last year or so, and have to say that The Fifty-Year Mission books were especially revealing for me. While they definitely won't end my love of Trek, they did cause me to lose respect for some of those who made it.

 

[Reanok]

I have several behind the scenes books for Tos and Tng Ds9 and the Tos movies and TNG movies.They have some really interesting things in the books. I really like the book Star Trek Action that was written when Ds9 and Voyager were still on tv.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Don't forget, there is also an eBook exclusive: "The Magic of Tribbles: The Making of the Star Trek: DS9 Episode, "Trials and Tribble-ations".

 

[Steve Gennarelli]

I also love reading the behind the scenes books.

Gene Roddenberry was a very complex and unique individual and a polarizing character at that.

I find the original "Star Trek" to be such a brilliant production, I do not think less of any of them after reading these types of books.

He really wanted to make a "Trek" movie that would be larger than life and it would of course, have to be about 1 of two issues 1) the Enterprise meets God or a God like Creature or
2) Kirk or Spock or the Enterprise plays a role in stopping the JFK assassination. He seemed obsessed about those 2 types of stories and I don't think he would have liked to have seen anything but those types of stories.

But I think Gene was able to re-prove his genius to any of the doubters out there. His instincts for picking the TNG cast and setting their story in motion proved he could make lightning strike twice.

 

[Christopher]

But I think Gene was able to re-prove his genius to any of the doubters out there. His instincts for picking the TNG cast and setting their story in motion proved he could make lightning strike twice.

Except that Roddenberry vehemently resisted casting Patrick Stewart, since he wanted a younger lead with hair, and Bob Justman had to talk him into it. Roddenberry also resisted the other producers' wish to add a Klingon regular, since he didn't want to reuse any TOS aliens. Oh, and D.C. Fontana had to talk him out of giving Troi four breasts.

The sad fact is, whatever genius Roddenberry had had was lost by the late '80s due to his deteriorating neurological health and his drug and alcohol problems. His reputation depended on the people around him who were carrying him... and either letting him take the credit for their work or having it taken from them. D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, and Justman were really TNG's co-creators -- and under industry rules, Fontana and Gerrold should have been given onscreen creator credits thanks to their work on the series bible and Fontana's co-writing of the pilot script.

 

[Garth Rockett]

The sad fact is, whatever genius Roddenberry had had was lost by the late '80s due to his deteriorating neurological health and his drug and alcohol problems.

In some ways, I feel like TNG succeeded in spite of Roddenberry. Certainly, the worst episodes of the entire run are largely concentrated in the first season, and especially the first half of that season - the time when Roddenberry had the most direct hand and was rewriting scripts regularly. I was generally aware of the problems that was causing, but recently reading The Fifty Year Mission: The Next 25 Years was fascinating, to hear of Roddenberry's issues at the time directly from others who were present.

While I love learning about the behind the scenes information, and it has sometimes negatively impacted my view of some of the participants (Roddenberry, for example), it's also increased my admiration for others (Coon, for example). And in any case, it's never impacted my enjoyment of the end product itself.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I've lost a lot of respect for Roddenberry over the years, reading about his various transgressions.

Yes. My opinion of GR is now extremely low. The credit-swiping, the lying to people's faces, the constant cheating on his wives, the way he let himself be built up as some great guru by the fanbase... I now think of him as a pretty scummy human being who just happened to create my favorite TV show.

The sad fact is, whatever genius Roddenberry had had was lost by the late '80s due to his deteriorating neurological health and his drug and alcohol problems. His reputation depended on the people around him who were carrying him... and either letting him take the credit for their work or having it taken from them.

Yep.

In some ways, I feel like TNG succeeded in spite of Roddenberry. Certainly, the worst episodes of the entire run are largely concentrated in the first season, and especially the first half of that season - the time when Roddenberry had the most direct hand and was rewriting scripts regularly.

And don't forget that he was also having his lawyer Leonard Maizlish, rewrite scripts, in complete violation of Writer's Guild rules.

If you read the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, they describe how a lot of the episodes started out before they were rewritten by Roddenberry & company. Pretty much every story they describe sounds more interesting than what ended up airing (the one that particularly sticks out in my mind is Picard lying to Moriarty at the end of "Elementary, My Dear Data" to get him to release the Enterprise... A much better ending than the anti-climax we got.).

 

[Steve Gennarelli]

Not unlike what he did with the original series, his great skills were putting the right team in place to make the show effective. As Harve Bennett and others have mentioned, his ability as a self promoter to get the word on "Star Trek" out to hundred's of thousands if not millions of fans, that was totally Gene Roddenberry at his best.

 

[Christopher]

Not unlike what he did with the original series, his great skills were putting the right team in place to make the show effective.

On TOS, yes. On TNG, the lousy way that Roddenberry and his clique treated the original creative team drove them all away within the first year. Something like 30 staff writers and producers quit or got fired in the first season alone.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

As Harve Bennett and others have mentioned, his ability as a self promoter to get the word on "Star Trek" out to hundred's of thousands if not millions of fans, that was totally Gene Roddenberry at his best.

I doubt Bennett felt that way when Roddenberry leaked word of Spock dying to the fanbase.

 

[JD]

The more I've learned about Roddenberry, the less I've liked him.
He set a good foundation, but it was the way others built off of that foundation that really made Trek great.
Looking through his credits, I see that the only episode other than The Cage/The Menagerie, that he wrote himself (or at least is the only credited writer on) was The Omega Glory and the less said about that one the better.

 

[Christopher]

The more I've learned about Roddenberry, the less I've liked him.

He had admirable qualities, but he also had a lot of demons. He had a vision of humanity that was worth striving for, even if he often fell short of it. Maybe it was his own imperfections that drove him to wish for a more perfected humanity.

 

[Steve Gennarelli]

I doubt Bennett felt that way when Roddenberry leaked word of Spock dying to the fanbase.

Harve was more generous with his praise in the mid 2000's as Gene had passed on a dozen years before and Harve was happily retired...he was only looking at the positive side of things.

 

[Defcon]

He had admirable qualities, but he also had a lot of demons. He had a vision of humanity that was worth striving for, even if he often fell short of it. Maybe it was his own imperfections that drove him to wish for a more perfected humanity.

Sorry, I think you are too generous here. It's kind of convenient that Roddenberry expressed most of his "vision" only after others had put him on a pedestal and he noticed that it would benefit his true vision (making money) to play along. If we are all honest Roddenberry was a one-hit-wonder writer/producer who lucked out and squeezed every dime possible out of his disciples. It's kind of telling that the best Trek was when he hadn't had any influence anymore.

 

[Christopher]

Sorry, I think you are too generous here. It's kind of convenient that Roddenberry expressed most of his "vision" only after others had put him on a pedestal and he noticed that it would benefit his true vision (making money) to play along. If we are all honest Roddenberry was a one-hit-wonder writer/producer who lucked out and squeezed every dime possible out of his disciples. It's kind of telling that the best Trek was when he hadn't had any influence anymore.

Don't mistake the later stuff when he fell too much in love with his image as a prophet with the core TOS ideas that were quite progressive for their time: Racial equality, gender equality (relatively, sort of, with qualifications), peace between the nations of Earth, a human presence in space driven by exploration and contact rather than war and conquest. Not to mention portraying a future without smoking in a time when cigarette manufacturers were among the biggest advertisers on TV -- that's an undeniable case of putting principle over profit. Even before Star Trek, he was pushing for social justice in his writing, such as in the episode of his first series The Lieutenant that was prevented from airing by the network because it dealt with racial prejudice.

And he did have unusual vision in one sense. He recognized that science fiction deserved to be treated seriously, that it was a mistake to ghettoize it as something frivolous or only for children, like most TV producers did at the time. He was the first producer to make an adult-oriented non-anthology science fiction series, and he always stressed character naturalism and plausibility, although he wasn't always as successful at the latter as he tried to be. He was also pioneering in his insistence on consulting with scientists and engineers to build a plausible future. The Enterprise was pretty much the first screen spaceship in American sci-fi that was more than just a flying saucer or a rocket. The Trek productions he worked on personally always had better science than the Trek productions he didn't work on. Of course, that's damning with faint praise, because most SFTV producers don't bother with even the slightest trace of credibility.

As for him being a "one-hit wonder," I think that's more due to the fact that he was difficult to work with than due to a lack of talent. His pilots had a lot of promise to them, but it was often his own stubbornness that kept them from going forward. In one case, that was probably a good thing. The Questor Tapes was a very good pilot movie, and it actually did get a series order; but the network insisted on eliminating its most important elements -- Questor's mission to protect humanity from itself and his friendship with Jerry Robinson -- and turn the show into one more Fugitive clone. Roddenberry actually abandoned the show altogether rather than compromise its concept so severely. That's another case where he passed up profit for the sake of standing by his principles, though surely some of it was ego.

I'm not saying he was a saint, or that he was anywhere near as talented or visionary as the legend. But there had to be something there at the core in order for Star Trek to have such a deep meaning to so many. Yes, a lot of it was due to his collaborators, but he provided the seed.