9 /10 1 Votes
4.6/5 Barnes & Noble Language English ISBN 978-0-9892-3811-3 Subject Star Trek | 4.4/5 Goodreads Country United States Pages 580 Originally published 3 March 2013 Page count 580 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Marc Cushman books, Television books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
These Are The Voyages: TOS, Season One is a non-fiction reference book by Marc Cushman with Susan Osborn about the first season of Star Trek. The information revealed inside primarily comes from production documents that were donated by Gene Roddenberry and Robert H. Justman to the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Contents
Contents
Originally, These Are The Voyages was to be published as one book, but with over 2,000 pages of material, it was decided to break it into three books, one book for each season. The book documents hundreds of previously unpublished insights, including recollections from actors, directors, producers, and production crew. The book collects original staff memos (including memos dictated by Roddenberry while reading drafts to the series scripts), contracts, schedules, budgets, network correspondence, and the censor reports from NBC. Also included in this first book is the history of what was involved in getting the series accepted by NBC, the failed first pilot, and the ultimatums surrounding the second pilot. The entire trilogy also contains hundreds of rare, behind-the-scenes photos from the filming of the episodes; that are displayed in black and white format on the pages and were restored and contributed to the effort by Gerald Gurian, who served on the Jacobs Brown Press project team for the book series.
History
In 1982, Marc Cushman interviewed Gene Roddenberry for a TV special about Star Trek. Later in 1989, he pitched the story for the episode "Sarek", for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Roddenberry gave Cushman all the scripts from the original series and showed him the immense amount of documents he had saved. He invited Cushman to take his previous research for the TV special, expand on it by utilizing the UCLA Archives, and turn it into a book. Cushman was too busy with his own career as a screenwriter and director to begin work on the book until after Roddenberry had died, but during those years, he continued to collect interviews from the creative staff (Bob Justman, D.C. Fontana, John D.F. Black), members of the production crew, the cast, and guest players. In 2007, he began writing the book.
Reception
At the 40th Saturn Awards, Cushman received a Special Recognition Award for his work on the book series. Chris Gardner of Stuff.co.nz rated it 4/5 stars and called it "a compelling read for the Star Trek aficionado as well as anyone interested in television history." Wesley Britton of Blogcritics quoted Rod Roddenberry's statement that "these are the new essential Star Trek reference books."