Review - The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

Short review: A collection of eighty-five works of nonfiction covering a range of topics from book stores, to the comics industry, from boons to video games to movies, and from authors to refugees.

Haiku
Pull up a chair and
Listen to Gaiman expound
On almost all things

Full review: The View from the Cheap Seats is an eclectic mix of selected nonfiction drawn from a wide swathe of Neil Gaiman's career. The works include the transcripts of speeches, introductions to books, memorials to departed writers, liner notes from albums, interviews, and pretty much every other form of writing that one can think of. The topics covered range from libraries to bookstores, from authors to books to music, and from comic books to refugee camps. While this volume is not a complete collection of Gaiman's nonfiction (assembling which would likely be a nigh impossible task), it does contain a broad spectrum of his work, both in terms of style and substance.

Normally, I would describe a volume like this as a collection of essays, but in the case of The View from the Cheap Seats, that would be a misnomer, as these are, for the most part, not essays, but other pieces of writing. The various pieces in this volume are grouped into ten broad categories, each with a relatively loose theme. Because these pieces appeared in a variety of outlets often separated from one another in both time and venue, many of them return to the same themes (and in some cases, the same anecdotes) so reading them one after another can be a little repetitive at times, as Gaiman returns to the same rhetorical well in one article after another. This is somewhat exacerbated by the groupings, as, for example, Gaiman's thoughts on what he believes generally have similar tempos and hit the same notes over an over again, which means that putting them all together in the same section has the effect of highlighting their similarities.

That said, this is Neil Gaiman's work, and as a result, it is almost all top notch, even when he does repeat himself a bit. The sections are: "Things I Believe", which are mostly speeches and articles in which Gaiman expounds upon some element of art, myth, or writing. "Some People I Have Known", which are either introductions to books or memorials to authors who have passed on. "Introductions And Musings: Science Fiction", which are introductions to books and one Nebula Awards speech. "Films and Movies and Me" which is basically Gaiman expounding upon film, mostly filmed work he has been involved in. "On Comics and Some of the People Who Make Them", which consists of articles about various comic book properties and creators as well as some insightful speeches about the genre. "Introductions and Contradictions" which is a grab-bag of introductions Gaiman wrote for books that don't really fit in any of the other categories. "Music and the People Who Make It" consisting of album liner notes, a couple of stories about Amanda Palmer, and his interview with Lou Reed. "On Stardust and Fairy Tales" a section that, given the title, has far less about Gaiman's Stardust than one would think, but a lot of commentary about fairy tale stories. "Make Good Art", which is the only section that is comprised of a single essay, whose title is the same as the section. "The View from the Cheap Seats: Real Things" the last and probably most personal section has essays that are clearly important to Gaiman but cannot really be categorized with the rest of the material in the book, and includes both his harrowing article about visiting a Syrian refugee camp and his intensely personal essay about the loss of his friend and collaborator Terry Pratchett. Every section contains brutal, brilliant, and insightful pieces in which Gaiman explores such a wide variety of topics that one has to wonder how he keeps up with all of them.

The most notable thing about The View from the Cheap Seats is that, with two notable (and entirely understandable) exceptions, Gaiman is relentlessly positive. I suppose it is kind of sad that a collection of writing that is almost entirely about how much the writer loves the things he is writing about is unusual in that regard, but it does make reading this book an enjoyable experience. It doesn't matter what Gaiman is writing about, he seems to always try to find what he loves in the subject. If he is writing about libraries and bookstores, he writes about the things that he loves about libraries and bookstores - even when writing about the creepy adult book store that somewhat inexplicably had a stack of old science fiction paperbacks on a back shelf. When he writes about books, he focuses on the part of the book that he found transcendent and sublime. When he writes about authors, he writes about the things they created that moved him.

Gaiman even generally keeps the tone positive when writing memorial pieces about authors, which he seems to often be having to do. It is probably a function of Gaiman coming to prominence at a relatively young age, but he seems to now be in the position of being the one who is called upon, by virtue of his relationship with the deceased, to write a tribute to an author or artist who has passed away. He is, to a certain extent, now in the role of being the man who remembers the great authors, artists, and singers of the past for those of us who were not fortunate enough to know them. For the most part, these memorials are sad and wistful, but focus primarily on what great art the departed made while they were alive, and how they touched the lives of others in beneficial ways. The one time Gaiman lets his anger at the loss of someone shine through is late in the volume, in A Slip of the Keyboard: Terry Pratchett, his essay about the passing of his friend and collaborator, but in the end he turns to focusing on the good things about Terry and leaves behind the fury at having him taken away too early.

The one essay which sees Gaiman angry is his piece about Syrian refugee camps titled So Many Ways to Die in Syria Now: May 2014. This is markedly different from the other works in the book, because its subject matter is the human tragedy playing out in dusty UN refugee camps in the Jordanian desert rather than books, music, authors, or artists. Without denigrating the rest of the work in this volume, this essay is definitely the most powerful and moving in the book, in large part due to the seriousness of the subject matter, but also because the plight of the Syrian refugees seems to bring out the very best in Gaiman as he works very hard to make sure their voices come through in his writing. Gaiman has done some news articles in the past, although most of his work seems to have been fluffy celebrity pieces - he did, after all, get his start writing a book about Duran Duran, but this article shows that if he hadn't moved into comics and fiction writing, he'd have been an excellent news correspondent.

In the end, The View from the Cheap Seats is five hundred pages of Gaiman writing about the world around him, and mostly writing about the things he loves. To a certain extent this book can be seen as Gaiman's attempt to pass on the things he loves to the reader, hoping that by extolling their virtues, his enthusiasm will rub off on his audience. By and large, at least for me, this worked, and I came away from the book with a list of new writers to read, music to seek out and listen to, and movies to watch. This is an excellent survey of Gaiman's work, that is likely to appeal both to those who have never read any of his nonfiction work and those who are hardcore fans of his, and is definitely worth reading.

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Review - These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season Three by Marc Cushman and Susan Osborn

Short review: NBC moves Star Trek to a terrible time slot, cuts its budget, and makes ridiculous demands. Roddenberry quits in a rage. Freiberger takes over, and many terrible episodes and a series cancellation ensue.

Haiku
The Way to Eden
plus And the Children Shall Lead,
Wow, these are awful

Full review: There is almost no doubt in the mind of any fan of the series that the third season of Star Trek was its weakest. Any list of the worst episodes of the series is certain to be dominated by ones from this season. Any list of the best episodes of the series is highly unlikely to have any drawn from the third season's offerings. When one evaluates the series as a whole, even the best episodes of this season are mediocre, making "pretty good for a third season episode" a statement that damns with faint praise. This does not mean, however, that volume three of These Are the Voyages is a bad book. In fact, it is the best of the series, as it shows in almost excruciating detail the collection of decisions that led to the show's demise. Contained within this book is a detailed look at the awful nature of television production, revealing a sight that is both sobering and fascinating.

This third and final volume of Cushman's series about the original Star Trek follows what by now is a familiar pattern to readers. Most of the book's pages are taken up with chapters about the individual episodes of the season, with a couple chapters at the beginning of the book detailing what happened after the letter writing campaign described at the end of volume two but before production began, and a couple of chapters discussing the events that took place after the set was wrapped on the final episode Turnabout Intruder, and an interstitial chapter concerning the mid-season break. Each of the episode-oriented chapters opens with a summary, then moves to now-familiar sections titled "Quotes", "Assessment", "The Story Behind the Story", "Pre-Production", "Production", "Post-Production", 'Release/Reception", and sometimes "From the Mailbag", and 'Memories". One change, reflecting the poor quality of many of the shows produced this season is the section concerning script development, titled 'The Story Behind the Story" in previous volumes, is frequently subtitled "What Were They Thinking" or "What Went Wrong" in this one.

For many of the episodes of this season, 'What Went Wrong" or "What Were They Thinking" is the appropriate question. Titles such as And the Children Shall Lead, Spock's Brain, The Way to Eden, and Let that Be Your Last Battlefield often elicit groans of disgust from fans of the show. Offerings such as Day of the Dove, The Savage Curtain, and Plato's Stepchildren aren't much better, and the "better" installments of the season such as The Enterprise Incident and Elaan of Troyius are too few and far between to provide much comfort. For a show that gave viewers such top notch material as The City on the Edge of Forever, The Menagerie, Trouble with Tribbles, and Mirror, Mirror, the plunge in quality was dramatic . . . and perplexing. In the first two seasons of the show there were a few missteps, but one could generally count on several good episodes for every clunker. When the third season rolled around, the bad shows dominated, and the good shows weren't actually so much "good" as they were "not quite as terrible as the terrible ones". What had happened to cause the show to drive off a metaphorical cliff like this?

The easy answer, and the one most fans seem to have gravitated to, is to blame the season's producer Fred Freiberger and be done with the question. To a certain extent, this answer is correct. As revealed in this volume, Freiberger was simply the wrong man for the job. He wasn't knowledgeable about the show he took over, and more critically, he didn't take the time to inform himself about it, watching only a handful of the shows produced in the first two seasons and, as D.C. Fontana notes in one chapter, he had apparently never even read the series bible. His instincts for scripts seem to have been weak as well as once the script assignments handed out by Roddenberry prior to the start of season three had run out, the ones commissioned by Freiberger generally ranged from uninspired to awful, and the handful that might have been interesting had any verisimilitude or excitement leached out of them by just enough rewrites to make the network happy and bring the show in under budget. In many cases he managed to offend and drive away talented writers like David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana. While working with new story consultant Arthur Singer (who once walked onto the transporter set and asked what it was supposed to do), Freiberger managed to get so far behind that some scripts had their final pages delivered after filming had been completed. When reading through the production diaries for the third season episodes is that what Freiberger never seems to have understood is that what made Star Trek work was creating a living and breathing world, not just filling air time. Freiberger seems to have been competent enough to helm a standard television show, but under his watch Star Trek became a pale and colorless shadow of its former self.

Blaming Freiberger for the misfire of the third season, while justified in many ways, places too much blame on him, and there is plenty of blame to go around. While Freiberger was a poor fit for the job and the decisions he made damaged the season tremendously, one must also look to the man who put him in the position to do so: Gene Roddenberry. In an effort to secure a better time slot for the show than the 8:30 to 9:30 Friday night position that it held during the second season, Roddenberry promised that he would be more active as producer and would write several of the episodes himself while giving the remaining script assignments to Gene Coon and D.C. Fontana. Given the fact that the executives at NBC really didn't like Roddenberry, this seems like something that would not be a particularly enticing offer, and instead of the 7:30 to 8:30 Monday night slot that Rodenberry expected, the network moved Star Trek to air from 10:00 to 11:00 on Fridays, what was normally regarded as a "death slot". In a fit of pique, Roddenberry essentially walked away from the show, remaining executive producer but abandoning the program in all but name. It was at this point that he passed over Robert Justman, who had been assistant producer since the show's inception, to bring in Freiberger to take over as producer. Through neglect, Roddenberry allowed Freiberger to exasperate D.C. Fontana and drive her away from the show. Roddenberry even managed to alienate John and Bjo Trimble by firing them from the mail order business he had started on the side so that Majel Barrett could take over, after which they abandoned any efforts at a new letter writing campaign to save the show. And so on. By acting as an absentee landlord, Roddenberry allowed the show he created to fall into disrepair and decay in the hands of people who simply didn't care about it as much as he and his team had in previous years.

The lion's share of the blame, however, falls on NBC and Paramount. Moving Star Trek to the "death slot" late on Friday night was their opening gambit in the long, slow execution of the series. But even in this time slot, it was not necessary for the show to drop in quality so precipitously. Unfortunately, NBC and Paramount saw to that by first cutting the per episode budget yet again (following a previous cut in prior seasons), and mandating an almost inflexible six-day no-overtime filming schedule that was almost impossible to meet. Directors who couldn't meet this schedule weren't invited back to direct additional episodes. Ralph Senensky was even fired halfway through the filming of The Tholian Web when he fell behind the production schedule by a half day. Because of the primacy placed upon keeping to the schedule, experienced directors familiar with the show were not rehired, and directors with reputations for working fast were brought in. Unfortunately, most of these new hires were unfamiliar with Star Trek and proved little better at keeping on schedule while turning out programs full of flat and uninteresting direction. These mandates were aimed at saving pennies, but resulted in episodes that were for the most part mediocre to miserable, and drove away viewers. The studio, while penny-wise, was pound-foolish.

Smaller budgets meant that there usually wasn't money to film on location or to build sets, resulting in many shows that were confined to the decks of the Enterprise. NBC clamored for more "planet" shows, but without the resources needed to make them, the production company was forced to ignore those requests. Budgetary concerns even changed the nature of scenes on the ship itself: Without money to hire background extras, many of the episodes for this season feature eerily empty corridors and painfully small landing parties. The network's efforts at killing the show didn't stop with reduced budgets and tight production schedules. The notes handed back from NBC's executives were all but guaranteed to result in a weaker and blander show. The network wanted action, but not only did the reduced budget mean that fewer set changes and fight sequences could be done, the executives continually sent back notes insisting that proposed battles be sanitized to an almost cartoonish level - in one case demanding that the results of a fight to the death be shown with dirty faces, but no blood. NBC wanted expensive episodes, but wasn't willing to pay for them. NBC wanted exciting episodes, but wasn't willing to allow exciting things to be put on screen. In the face of these contradictory demands and restrictions, it is no wonder that the show withered.

Oddly, even though NBC got what it ostensibly wanted - a Star Trek without the headaches caused by having to deal with Roddenberry that was produced on time and within budget - the network decided to cancel the show. What makes this decision somewhat perplexing is the fact that even with the slew of terrible episodes that are scattered through this season, the show had retained fairly good ratings, coming in second most weeks, and even taking the top slot away from CBS's Friday Night Movie a couple of times. At this juncture, the urgency of Cushman's continued campaign concerning the reality of Star Trek's ratings becomes clear. For three books Cushman has included every episode's Neilsen ratings, ostensibly showing time and again that the program was performing much better than fan lore would lead one to believe. But the real goal of this exercise only comes clear in the final chapters of this volume, as Cushman sets about documenting NBC's calculating dishonesty when interacting with fans disappointed by the show's cancellation. For years Herb Solow insisted that Star Trek only drew five million viewers per episode, asserting that shows that perform at that level simply don't get renewed. Cushman shows that Star Trek routinely drew at least twice that many viewers, and that Solow knew that, but lied anyway. Cushman presents the text of a deceptive letter NBC sent to fans who inquired about the show, misleading them into thinking that the show had been renewed when it had not. And Cushman presents details like a letter from NBC executive Stan Robertson to a fan in which Robertson flatly lies about how well the show had done in the ratings. As inexplicable as it seems, NBC cancelled a show that was performing better than anyone could have possibly expected despite its "death slot", and leaps and bounds better than they were willing to tell anyone. Fan lore concerning Star Trek's poor performance in the ratings is rooted in a deliberate lie told by NBC. The story of the cancellation of Star Trek isn't one of neglect and poor decisions. It is a story of a deliberate murder accompanied by a cynical cover-up.

These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season Three is a brilliant conclusion to an excellent series. Loaded with the same level of detail as the previous two volumes in the series, this contains the melancholy tale of the slow and deliberate death of something that started with such promise. By laying out the material in a methodical and comprehensive manner, Cushman tells a story that makes clear who the villains of the piece truly were, and the identities of the few heroes who kept things from falling apart entirely. For anyone who wondered how in the world The Paradise Syndrome or Turnabout Intruder ever got approved for production, this book is a gold mine of information. For anyone who has ever wondered what the process of killing off a show looks like, this book is a guided tour. And for anyone who loves Star Trek, this book, like the previous two volumes in the series, is a must read, although in this case, it is a must read that will probably anger the reader as much as it delights them.

Previous book in the series: These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season Two

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Review - These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season One by Marc Cushman and Susan Osborn

Short review: A comprehensive series biography of the first season of the original Star Trek, complete with biographies of the people involves, and accounts of the making of every episode.

Haiku
Fifty years ago
A new show was created
And changed television

Full review: The opening volume in a three book series, These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season One is a must read for committed Star Trek fans. Actually, this book is probably a must read even for slightly less dedicated fans of Star Trek, or even for those who are merely interested in the history of televised science fiction (or, more broadly, the history of television). This installment of These Are the Voyages contains a detailed history of the people behind the series, the development and sale of the series, and finally, the production of both pilot episodes and the twenty-eight remaining episodes of season one. While at least some of the information contained in this book has been published before, there has never been a comprehensive resource that compiles all of it into one place as this volume does.

These Are the Voyages is an incredibly detailed work, starting with a fairly extensive biography of Star Trek's creator and executive producer Gene Roddenberry. Cushman's treatment is methodical, working through the chronology of Roddenberry's life one step at a time, following him from combat airman on World War II, to Pan Am pilot to Los Angeles police officer, to television writer, to television producer. The book provides a similar biographical background for virtually every person who worked on Star Trek in any substantial capacity, although most are not nearly as extensive as that supplied for Roddenberry. As a general rule of thumb, the more important the person was to the show, the more extensive their background sketch is. In short, if you ever wanted to know a fair bit about the personal and professional history of, for example, the actress who played Yeoman Barrows in Shore Leave, then this is the book for you.

The book devotes a fair number of pages to Roddenberry's efforts to get a television series on the air, including background on his failed proposals, as well as material concerning his short-lived series The Lieutenant. The book then moves on to Roddenberry's pitch for Star Trek and his attempts to convince first Desilu executives and then network executives to put his brain-child on the air, both of whom were fairly skeptical. The book details the work that went into creating the first pilot The Cage, and then when that was rejected and the studio approved the unprecedented step of filming a second pilot, the book explains the process that led the show from how it looked in The Cage to how it looked in Where No Man Has Gone Before. The most important evolution that is covered in this section regards the changes to the crew and how they came about, as Leonard Nimoy playing Spock was the only cast member carried forward from The Cage to Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Though the sections detailing the production of the two pilot episodes, Cushman sets up the format that will be carried through the rest of the book. Each chapter covers one episode and starts with a brief synopsis of the episode, and frequently, a quote from TV Guide about it. Then there is a section titled "Sound Bites" consisting of a selection of quotes from the episode, followed by a brief "Assessment", giving Cushman's own evaluation of the episode as a whole. Each chapter then proceeds to the details of the development and production of each episode starting with "The Story Behind the Story", which identifies the scriptwriter for each script and the process that took their script from idea to being approved for production, then moving to "Pre-Production, which outlines the selection of the director for each episode, the casting decisions related to it, as well as set design, and then "Production", describing the day-by-day work on the episode. Finally, the chapter details "Post-Production", including the editing and scoring, but also (and in many cases, critically), the special effects work done for the series. After covering the production aspects of the featured episode, each chapter then goes on to "Release/Reaction", discussing the Nielsen ratings for each show, as well as the comments given by reviewers of the day, then to "From the Mailbag" which presents a few letters written to the series or one of the featured actors, and then sometimes a section titled "Memories" in which those associated with the production reminisce about making it.

Once this pattern is established, the book develops an easy rhythm as Cushman works his way through the two pilots and twenty-eight other episodes of the first season of the series. There is a break in this format to discuss the mid-season hiatus, and then a chapter at the end capping off the book, but otherwise, most of the book is presented in a fairly predictable manner. Rather than making this book dull, as one might expect, this regularity highlights the unique features about each episode. By comparing an episode with its peers, it becomes apparent where in the script development process The Alternative Factor went off the rails, or why The Corbomite Maneuver suffered the post-production delays that caused it to be repeatedly pushed back in the broadcast schedule. The descriptions provided are incredibly detailed, and include excerpts from internal production memos as various involved parties debate the cost and practicality of various script elements, and argue over whether an episode has enough action or not (with "action" mostly seeming to mean "some member of the crew gets into a fist fight") or whether an episode was too cerebral (with "cerebral" ending up meaning "an episode people who love Star Trek will love). These memo excerpts are supported by quotes from various individuals, either from interviews done for this book, or from other sources such as magazine and newspaper interviews.

Putting all of this material together makes some things quite clear about the series, or at least, the first season of the series. One important note is that there seems to have been very little connection between the cost of an episode and its quality. Some fairly poorly regarded episodes, such as The Galileo Seven were incredibly expensive, while others, like Tomorrow Is Yesterday, that are fondly remembered were brought in for a much more modest budget. One other thing that becomes readily apparent is that Star Trek's biggest proponent, Gene Roddenberry, was also one of its greatest weaknesses: His rather abrasive personality resulted in the show burning through large numbers of writers, directors, and staff members. While some friction with the network was almost inevitable with a show as experimental and expensive as Star Trek was, Roddenberry seems to have made things worse by at times intentionally thumbing his nose at the executives. On the other hand, there is no doubt but that some of the hurt feelings and bruised egos were the result of Roddenberry taking steps that improved the final product, in other cases he seems to have gotten involved just to have a hand in, and his involvement actually was detrimental and annoyed those he was working with for no good reason.

These details also show why the series developed as it did. They show how D.C. Fontana went from being a secretary to being a script writer to the show's story editor all in less than a single season. They show why John D.F. Black (who wrote the introduction to this volume) quit his staff position in disgust after Roddenberry rewrote several prominent writers, as well as one of Black's scripts, making them worse in Black's estimation. They show the importance of Shatner to the show, and how his abilities provided much of the drama infused into the show. They show how important the addition of Gene Coons was to the show, and how many of the elements that we now associate with Star Trek - the Federation, the Prime Directive, the humorous banter between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy - simply would not have been introduced to the show without his influence. They show just how petty and trivial many of the network concerns were - focusing on whether one could use a hypodermic needle to inject someone or not, or criticizing how brutal a fight was while clamoring for "action" at the same time. And they show just how expansive the vision some of the writers for the show had, and exactly how much had to be excised from their scripts to come close to fitting into the budget allocated for each episode. One thing the details also show is just how pervasive Westerns were in television programming of the mid-1960s. Virtually every actor with any experience who took a job on Star Trek had appeared in numerous televised Westerns, which probably accounts for the constant urging from then network to ramp up the fisticuffs.

The details also highlight just how shameful the network's treatment of Grace Lee Whitney, who appeared on several early episodes of the series as Yeoman Rand, truly was. By the middle of the first season, the network insisted that she be dropped from the show as a cost-cutting measure, insisting that her role could be filled by one-shot deals with individual actresses, possibly including Grace among their number from time to time, albeit at a reduced salary. Grace, however, told a much darker story, alleging that a network executive sexually assaulted her after a holiday party, and to cover it up, had her fired from the show. Buttressing the notion that someone associated with the production of the show had an ax to grind with the actress, her role in The Conscience of the King, her final contractually required episode, was reduced to little more than a walk-on. At several points after her contract ended, it was suggested that she be brought back for a particular episode, but each time this idea was quickly shot down. Adding insult to injury, immediately firing her for "cost-cutting" reasons, the network approved several scripts that turned out to be among the most expensive to produce in the season. In short, the material provided in the book shows just how shamefully Whitney was treated by the production, and just how little Roddenberry, famous for butting heads with the network, did to prevent it.

Another thing that is readily apparent from the material is just how prevalent Westerns were on television in the mid-1960s. Virtually every actor cast on Star Trek who had any amount of experience had appeared in numerous Westerns over the course of their career. DeForest Kelly, for example, had carved out something of a niche as a "heavy", with a career playing villainous characters in multiple Westerns. The dominance of the straightforward action adventure Western genre explains why there was so much pressure placed upon Star Trek's producers to add action to the show, and is also the probable explanation why virtually everyone was blind-sided by the popularity of Nimoy as Spock. Reading through the book it is obvious that no one expected Spock to be a popular character - network executives feared that his "Satanic" appearance would play badly in Southern markets, and even Nimoy was hesitant to take the part as he thought it would be cartoonish. But, like the show, this "cerebral" character proved to be wildly popular proving that a steady diet of fast paced adventure had been ignoring a possibly more intellectually inclined segment of the television viewing audience.

These Are the Voyages is not entirely without flaws. Cushman is almost obsessed with demonstrating that Star Trek did well in the ratings in its first season. He spends a fair amount of time first complaining about, and then attacking the myth that the show did poorly when it came to Nielsen ratings, and he backs up his argument with convincing evidence. The problem is that he belabors this point, returning to it time and again, even well after any reasonable person would have been convinced. Eventually, the constant harping on the fact that Star Trek had a strong viewership despite the belief that it did not becomes a little tiresome. Cushman is also quite clearly a fan of the series, which seems natural, as almost no one would write a book of this sort if they were not. Unfortunately, this means that his assessments of the various episodes, and his evaluations of the events surrounding the development and production of the show, are sometimes less than objective. It is clear that he tries to be as even-handed as possible, but even still there are times when he cannot prevent his inner fan from poking through, at which point the book veers from a biography of the show to a hagiography.

But these are minor quibbles. Taken as a whole, These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season One is a brilliant work of historical scholarship. Although much of this information has previously been available in some form or another, it has never been compiled together and organized into a cohesive whole as has been done here. Some of the information, such as the Nielsen data for the series, has never been made public before. Gluing all of these bits of historical trivia together is Cushman's text, weaving together what could have been a collection of dry details into a fast-flowing and engaging narrative. Anyone who is a Star Trek fan, or just a science fiction fan, should have this book on their shelf.

Subsequent book in the series: These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season Two

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