If you combine the authorized PHASE 2 book from Pocket with the unauthorized TREK THE LOST YEARS book, then filter both with a discerning eye, you can get a pretty good picture of things. The art in the pocket p2 book is sometimes miscaptioned, though.
Mike Minor's version of vger is something that turns up in the background of a lot of pics, but I remember seeing it online in larger form someplace (maybe ottens lost trek or forgotten trek page?) ... I haven't ever seen anything showing photos of the corridors, but I'm guessing they are standard Holiday Inn, w/o the angled frames.
My guess is that if Minor, Lee Cole and/or Joe Jennings are interviewed that you'll get a decent hunk on p2 in there. Oh, and Jon Povill would certainly be a good person to have interviewed who had history on all trek attempts in the 70s, back when his memory was still fresh.
It'd be awesome if Robert Collins was interviewed as well, but I'm guessing he was long gone by the time Jones got this assignment (he was supposed to direct INTHYIMAGE and was technically still the director when it became TMP, but that was mainly just keeping a placard in place till Wise accepted the job -- they both had the same agent, so Collins knew he was history long before it became official.)
I helped a good writer named Ross Plesset prep a couple articles that ran in FILMFAX around ten years back (it has an EMPIRE STRIKES BACK cover if that helps) which deal with Joe Jennigs' career and paths not taken while phase 3 morphed into TMP ... he got comments from Povill, Collins and I think Bob Goodwin too ... he also got a picture of the building that was going to be used as Starfleet in IN THY IMAGE, an angular place called the Fluor Building.
Unfortunately, the MOST interesting thing Ross got, a memo from Jon Povill to Paramount higher-ups, was left out of the magazine. Povill wanted the memo printed in its entirety (understandable), and it went into convincing Paramount that its ... well, let's say Judeo-Christian bent ... was not a direction that was credible to have vger pursue.
Here's hoping Ross finds someplace that will reproduce that memo sometime ... it's amazingly polite given how what inspired it would probably have had Harlan Ellison throwing Magicam constructs at anybody wearing a business suit.
The stuff that is going to be of most interest to me is how they handle the whole Robert Abel situation. I've talked to a LOT of folks who worked at Abel's, some who went on to Trumbull and Dykstra, and there's a lot that was going on there that was positive, and some really bad stuff too. If Jones didn't get access to vfx till after main unit wrapped, he may not have had access to Abel folk at all, except maybe Bob Swarthe.
Just as an exercise, to give you an idea of what expectations we had at the time of release, you might want to hunt up the NEW WEST article from 79 about the Abel VFX debacle (only presents one side), the Playboy TMP article focusing on Trumbull's team (I think it has a Farah cover, but don't hold me to that) and STARLOG 27's MAGICAM article, along with STARLOG and FF pieces of 1979. I've never read it, but the MEDIASCENE PREVUE piece on TMP (might be 78, not 79) is also supposed to be of interest (cover is a recolored pr shot of the principals, but with great red coloring on the uniforms.)
