Star Trek: The Original Series — A Celebration, by Ben Robinson and Ian Spelling, is everything you’d want out of a Star Trek convention focused on the original Star Trek TV series, served up to you in your home and in the form of a book.
There are interviews with the actors, discussions about what happened behind the scenes, big picture asides that place everything in its proper context, and you end the experience feeling satisfied — but also like you might have wanted to go just a little bit deeper in places.
After 55 years since series’ premiere, you may be asking what could this book possibly bring to an already-stuffed of classic Trek books? What more could there possibly be to say about one of the most famous shows in television history, as it sets it races ahead towards its sixth decade since release?
Where previous books might have gone deep in specific areas of the show or production, there actually isn’t anything out there published about Star Trek that looks at the show holistically. Some books focus on the writing, some books focus on the production, and cast memoirs focus on their experiences, but Celebration is really the first book that has tried to bring everything together into one volume.
(If you missed it, be sure to check out my interview with Celebration author Ian Spelling, where we discuss how this book came together!)
That’s a lofty job; there’s a lot to say about Star Trek. But Robinson and Spelling do succeed in weaving together a story that covers as much of the show’s history and oeuvre as 256 pages will allow for. It’s not going to give you all the depth you want if you have specific interests, but if you are approaching the book as a way of learning more about the series as a whole, you’ll leave satisfied and with a clearer sense of the areas you might want to explore further or go deeper on.
Along the way, the book also explores some interesting angles that don’t feel particularly well developed in the existing literature. Each of the speaking-part Enterprise characters from the first two pilots, “The Cage,” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” get short profiles that discusses why that character may or may not have proceeded to the series.
In addition, the book gives space to going deeper into the non-special effects post-production on Star Trek. Many examinations of the show focus on its groundbreaking visual effects and the way in which the production successfully told stories of such magnitude on a 1960s television budget. But every aspect of the Star Trek production is remarkable, and Celebration goes a bit deeper into that.
The book is also gorgeous, filled with art from the show and a number of rarely seen images from production that the authors worked with Star Trek: Tour owner and operator James Cawley to identify. The clean, white layout of the Celebration books, which started with the Voyager book last year and extends to the original Star Trek book this year, was a smart choice by Hero Collector.
The generous white space allows the colors in the photography and the art work to pop off the page, and makes the book a very easy read.
Perhaps the best way to think about Celebration is as a very good introductory text to Star Trek — it does not go as deep as some of the other works about the series that already exist, but it is more comprehensive than they are, serving as a ‘start here’ text that should whet any fan’s appetite to understand where they want to go deeper and learn more. On the very last page, a “Further Reading” section provides your jumping off point to the rest of the Star Trek library.
For me, who has read some but not every book on Star Trek, I found a lot about Star Trek: The Original Series — A Celebration that I did not already know. True die-hard Star Trek fans who’ve read every word published in print about the famous show since its release might find they learn less, but like any great Star Trek convention, sometimes it’s less about what you learned that was new and more about hearing a good story told in a different and entertaining way.
After all, if we can watch the episodes a hundred times and still find value in them, can’t we do the same with what we learn about the show’s production history?
‘Star Trek: The Original Series — A Celebration’ is in stores now.