Anyone receive "These Are The Voyages..." Season 2 yet?

[Harvey]

The images issue has largely gone by the wayside for me. I think the greater majority of these images have already been seen widely over the years and even those few rare ones I don't recall ever seeing are rather small and printed in commonplace black-and-white. They don't impress as anything special. It might have been different if they had been reprinted in large size and in colour on nice glossy paper, but that isn't the case.

The low quality of the images is probably a mix of two factors. One, the book was self-published, not the work of a professional outfit. Just compare the quality of the images in TATV to those in the Solow/Justman book (which is, for the most part, also black and white). It's like night and day. Two, since the author never contacted the fans who originally restored many of the images for permission, he also never got the chance to include higher resolution versions of the images.

It seems likely to me that the images weren't a part of the research process, and were only added to break up the text after the fact. Don't believe me? Take a look at the excerpt about "Who Mourns for Adonais?" which has been posted online.

The text says, "The entire [first] day was spent on the Stage 9 bridge set. Jerry Finnerman was out sick this first day and replaced by Arch Dalzell." The images tell a different story, which lead me to echo Indysolo's comment -- if Cushman can't get the stuff right that we can easily verify, why are we assuming that he got the stuff right that we can't?

(Can't claim credit for this observation -- it came from a blog reader).

In terms of typos and grammatical errors sadly it's not only this not being the first time I've seen such things it also seems to be becoming more common. I see such mistakes in newspapers, magazines, professionally published works and it's all over the internet in supposedly professionally presented writings.

Mistakes happen, but the typos in the first edition of volume one were truly embarrassing, and hardly the work of a professional. I hear volume two has been much improved in this regard.

 

[Warped9]

^^ Yes, Volume Two is much better in that regard.

And, yes, it does come across as a self-published work. It's a shame he couldn't avail himself of someone who could have helped him even if he wasn't going to be dealing with an established publisher.

I find it hard to accept that someone like Pocket Books wouldn't be interested in such a work, but then maybe they just didn't care for the three volume format. And, yeah, putting all three volumes in one book would have been ridiculously massive and pricey. But if they could have been persuaded to go for it at least the overall presentation would have been better. And certainly the images issue wouldn't have been there.

I also don't care for how many of the images are placed within the text. Sometimes I've actually been confused for a second about how to follow the text. It would have been much better if he'd had a standardized way of, say, always placing the images on one side or on the outside of a page and then having the text wrap around it. That's easy enough to do with something like Office or any number of word programs.

 

[Botany Bay]

It's hard to see the economics of a project like this working for a publisher like Pocket, which is a shame. A high quality, 1,000 plus page analysis of TOS would be of limited mainstream interest, even though I'd sure be happy

I think the best solution is just to publish a book containing all the memos and let the reader decide for themselves. It would save space, and eliminate the subjectivity issues. The Roddenberry and Justman memos (in particular) are the highlight of the first Cushman book. Thank god both men archived all this stuff for us.

As for the intermixing of facts with theories, there was a series of huge books written about the classic Dr. Who show where the author writes about the making of each episode factually, but then intersperses the episode summaries with multi-page essays about his theories as to why certain things that season were done etc. These essays are in grey text boxes, and so his opinions are clearly distinguished from the facts. Wish I could remember the name of the series.

But, his debatable theories aside, the thing that most annoyed me about Cushman Vol 1 was the fact I was reading the supposedly revised edition, but it was still really poorly presented. Yeah I know I am only one of the .00001% of readers who check the references at the back, but so many of the in-text references he made did not exist in the reference list, or were mis-numbered. It was like someone gave up on checking the referencing half way through and decided "ah well, nobody will notice". Very sloppy.

As many others have mentioned, there are also plenty of factual errors. Add this to the poor/nonexistent referencing, and it is hard to accept any new assertions he makes as facts. I'm sorry, I've done too much time at universities to be able to believe an assertion without supporting evidence to back it up.

Pleasing to see 'Gerald Gurian' gives the second volume another five star review on Amazon. If Gerald says it's a winner, then that's good enough for me

Seriously though, I want to reward this guy's efforts (and you can't deny he has done a lot of work), but I am still a bit torn whether to buy or not. I'll keep reading the reviews for now. It's encouraging to hear the presentation may be a bit better on this volume.

 

[stcanada29]

On Amazon, 55 of 58 customers who reviewed the Season One revised edition gave it a score of 4 stars or higher (and 49 of those ratings were 5 stars) while Botany Bay gave it a score of 1 star after specifically stating "I take my hat off to the author for the years of research that must have went into this book". This makes one wonder how Botany Bay would have rated the book had he not taken his hat off to the author? And apparently only 6 of 18 people found Botany Bay's comments useful. IMO, he should pay attention to Mr. Gurian's assessment of Season Two - since (for the first book at least), Mr. Gurian's review was proved far more accurate and reflective of the popular opinion of these books than Botany Bay's own unbiased opinion.

 

[Maurice]

Just because reader reviews are mostly positive does not change the fact that Mr. Cushman's books demonstrably contain numerous factual errors and questionable scholarship, now does it?

Nnnnnnnnope.

 

[bbailey861]

I think the best solution is just to publish a book containing all the memos and let the reader decide for themselves. It would save space, and eliminate the subjectivity issues. The Roddenberry and Justman memos (in particular) are the highlight of the first Cushman book. Thank god both men archived all this stuff for us.

That`s a great idea. I`d buy that.

 

[Warped9]

I have to say one thing that pops up that I find amazing are the references to multiple page memos and letters they send to each other. This is in such contrast to today where few people sem to have the patience or attention span to read more than a few lines. And this was all on typewriters.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Was Star Trek unique in its level of communication via memo? In the book, at least one writer carped about getting endless memos when he preferred someone actually pick up the damned phone and call him.

 

[JoeD80]

Not really any different than the endless and lengthy e-mails we write at my work today.

 

[BillJ]

I have to say one thing that pops up that I find amazing are the references to multiple page memos and letters they send to each other. This is in such contrast to today where few people sem to have the patience or attention span to read more than a few lines. And this was all on typewriters.

I don't think it has anything to do with patience. It has more to do with the fact that each point can be answered almost instantaneously via e-mail. An ongoing dialogue is much easier to have.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I'm not sure how much better quality the book would be with a major publisher. It would get better distribution, sure, but the author is still responsible for the text and original research. A major publisher may have been a little more careful when it came to making sure proper credit was given for images and proofreaders may have spot the obvious typos, but it's unlikely anyone would catch the factual errors. Whether self-published or distributed by a major publisher, the quality of a book comes down to the author. Being self-published is no excuse for shoddy work. (Not that I think anyone here suggested such.)

 

[Indysolo]

IMO, he should pay attention to Mr. Gurian's assessment of Season Two - since (for the first book at least), Mr. Gurian's review was proved far more accurate and reflective of the popular opinion of these books than Botany Bay's own unbiased opinion.

[sarcasm] And there's no conflict of interest with Gurian reviewing the book![/sarcasm]

 

[stcanada29]

I was just attempting to point out that while Mr. Gurian and others on the project team of course have biased opinions favoring the work (and this is to be expected); it appears to me that others take every opportunity to point out every tiny type-o that the mainstream reader would consider of negligible significance and easily forgive the author/proofreaders for. Yet some relish in portraying these things as critical flaws in the books, and this is very much in contrast to the general public opinion. So I suspect it's possible for those unassociated with the project team to have negative agendas just as well as the Jacobs Brown people have positive ones.

If there is an improper musical reference given on page X, that is unfortunate, but wouldn't one have to think that such a mistake is rare compared to all the correct references given .. which I suspect must surely greatly exceed that unintended error? And would the author have included his supposedly incorrect assertion in the work without any supporting evidence/documentaton for it?

Also, I for one find Marc Cushman's added opinions and insights genuinely entertaining and informative at times and not at all inappropriate.

 

[Maurice]

Typos speak to sloppy production and not enough proofreaders, even of the casual stripe. The larger problem is that Cushman doesn't distinguish between opinions and insights as fact. He appears to state as fact that which is mere speculation.

I'm going to raise one other problem here, which anyone who's dealt with oral histories will understand: the unreliability of interviews made years after the fact. People's memories are notoriously faulty, and the farther away from the event you get the less reliable they are. As such, in a work which cites and quotes contemporary primary sources and then later interviews and reminisces, it's important to draw a distinction and NOT treat them as factually equal. I had lovely email exchanges with several Star Trek staffers, and both got some of their facts twisted around, which they graciously admitted when I sent them memos and interviews contemporary to the series production. This is not to diminish their worth to such research, but it ably demonstrates why one cannot treat such accounts as automatically factual.

 

[stcanada29]

Yes, that is an excellent point, very well stated Maurice. I agree, and I think many readers do understand this. Also, I believe I recall at least once or twice coming across a similar statement by Cushman in the Season One book how Justman's or some other staffers verbal recollection was contradictory to a memo, etc.

I also wonder what the real error rate is for these books, given that perhaps tens of thousands of individual facts are presented in their pages? The first two volumes are almost 1400 pages in length together, and sometimes a single page might hold a couple dozen unique details (ex. dates and authors for a series of first and final drafts on a script). So if we point out, say 100 factual errors in this thread, doesn't that mean that there are also 14000 correct facts made within the pages.

 

[davejames]

Only up to Friday's Child, but so far I'm really enjoying the book.

Reading about the problems they continued to have with the effects houses, it's becoming more and more clear that the issue with those lay much more with the vendors' competency than with the budget or technology that was available at the time. And that Justman and Roddenberry were fully aware that the effects weren't up to par, and that a lot of the inconsistency we see today is only due to the fact the editors had no choice but to piece together the few decent shots they had available to them.

My favorite part of the book though continues to be hearing from some of the guest stars all these years later, like the actress playing the Commissioner in Metamorphosis (whose sitcom-style acting Shatner was apparently not very impressed with).

Completely disagree with the author's opinion that Catspaw is an entertaining and worthwhile episode though. I just... do not see it. Lol

 

[trevanian]

Typos speak to sloppy production and not enough proofreaders, even of the casual stripe. The larger problem is that Cushman doesn't distinguish between opinions and insights as fact. He appears to state as fact that which is mere speculation.

I'm going to raise one other problem here, which anyone who's dealt with oral histories will understand: the unreliability of interviews made years after the fact. People's memories are notoriously faulty, and the farther away from the event you get the less reliable they are. As such, in a work which cites and quotes contemporary primary sources and then later interviews and reminisces, it's important to draw a distinction and NOT treat them as factually equal. I had lovely email exchanges with several Star Trek staffers, and both got some of their facts twisted around, which they graciously admitted when I sent them memos and interviews contemporary to the series production. This is not to diminish their worth to such research, but it ably demonstrates why one cannot treat such accounts as automatically factual.

There were typos and screwups on picture captions in the Pocket Books making of stuff, so having a big publisher behind it is no guarantee.

The opinion as fact thing sound a lot more troubling. I've had occasion to talk with folks decades after the fact (mostly about TMP) and I usually try to have earlier resources on-hand, so I can correct/reprompt when someone seems to be going way-off from history. Sometimes they are doing this because they feel it is now okay to talk about something that was more iffy before (that has been the case with a couple of people who worked for Abel on the TMP VFX), other times, as you say, they just ain't remembering it right.

But to just print the most recent interview as fact without trying to reconcile it with previous 'fact' ... well, that doesn't sound like scholarship at work, or good journalism.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I also wonder what the real error rate is for these books, given that perhaps tens of thousands of individual facts are presented in their pages? The first two volumes are almost 1400 pages in length together, and sometimes a single page might hold a couple dozen unique details (ex. dates and authors for a series of first and final drafts on a script). So if we point out, say 100 factual errors in this thread, doesn't that mean that there are also 14000 correct facts made within the pages.

What's keeping me from buying these books even more than reports of factual errors (which happen) are reports that the author seems to have decided on a narrative and is selectively using facts which support the narrative while seemingly ignoring facts which dispute it.

 

[pfontaine2]

Hi Trevanian,
Are you planning on doing anything with your TMP interviews? I would love to see a definitive book about the years from Phase II through TMP with as many behind the scenes photos and interviews as possible!

 

[T'Bonz]

I used to do fact checking for articles in an educational history magazine. Yikes....now that was work. And sometimes, there was no "right answer," one had to make a choice.

Fact checking Cushman's book would have been a pain in the ass.