Star Trek - The Original Series: A Celebration

WAGON TRAIN TO THE STARS

STAR TREK BEGINS

The essence of STAR TREK stayed the same, but Gene Roddenberry s first ideas provide a fascinating glimpse of a different show.

STAR TREK was always meant to be something new, but at the same time, Gene Roddenberry was very clear it wouldn t be so new that it would be impractical.

In the early 1960s, there was plenty of adult science fiction on air. The Twilight Zone, which ran from 1959 to 1964, was a big hit and it had been joined by The Outer Limits, which ran for two seasons between 1963 and 1965. But both those series had a problem: they were anthology shows. Every episode was different, without a regular cast, so every story stood or fell on its own merits. When Roddenberry started thinking about STAR TREK in 1963, he wanted to develop a format that combined this kind of storytelling with the kind of regular cast that viewers were familiar with on shows such as Bonanza, where the audience invested in the adventures of the Cartwright family.

In the pitch Roddenberry put together, he emphasized that there were bound to be millions of inhabited planets in the universe. He threw in the concept that there were parallel Earths, meaning that they would have evolved with human beings who had built societies that looked remarkably like the back lots available at Hollywood s studios. These planets could be placed at any point in human evolution, so they could be the setting for stories about cultures like Ancient Egypt or the Westerns that dominated 1960s television. His idea was that a spaceship, originally led by Captain Robert April and his female first officer, Number One, would visit a different world, with its unique culture, every week. This way we d have familiar characters to anchor the same kind of

Ben Robinson has been involved with Star Trek for 20 years. Ben was the launch editor of the huge Star Trek Fact Files, and went on to edit the US Star Trek: The Magazine. He has co-written two Haynes Manuals. Ben created the Starfleet shipyards line of books and co-authored Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration.
 
Ian Spelling is an entertainment journalist whose Trek association dates back to the mid-1980 s, when he interviewed Gene Roddenberry for his college newspaper. Ian went on to write for Starlog, Star Trek Monthly/Star Trek Magazine, the official TNG, DS9 and Voyager magazines, Inside Trek/Strange Worlds, and was editor of StarTrek.com. Additionally, Ian beamed onto Trek twice as an extra, playing a Bajoran and a Drayan soldier, and he often moderates panel at Trek conventions.

Writing a book about Star Trek: The Original Series presents a challenge: How do you tell the story of a revered, classic show that can serve both die-hard fans who ve heard the same stories told over and over for years along with the newcomers who came into Star Trek from either the Berman-era shows or the Kurtzman ones? Authors Ben Robinson and Ian Spelling have found a way, combining familiar stories with new interviews and rarely heard details without ever condescending to either group, in a beautiful new coffee table book called Star Trek: A Celebration.
- Laurie Ulster, TrekMovie.com

What a great book. I love the layout - for me it was like looking through a family album and visiting old friends. It really gives you a sense of what it was like to work on Star Trek.
- Joe D Agosta, Casting director of STAR TREK: The Original Series

STAR TREK is a phenomenon. It took two pilots to launch it as a series. It took most of its first season to shape up as television s most unique and original program. It was almost cancelled at the end of that first season. The series was cancelled at the end of the second season, only to be put back on the schedule because of its fans. Its cancellation at the end of its third season proved to be final. STAR TREK was dead. But was it? Within the year, STAR TREK, despite lacking a backlog of the usual required five years of episodes, entered the syndication market. And the rest is history. Ian Spelling and Ben Robinson, in their stunning new book on STAR TREK, have assembled the people who worked behind and in front of the camera through those difficult, tumultuous years.
- Ralph Senensky, director of STAR TREK: The Original Series

The TOS Celebration is a stunning immersive look at one of the most groundbreaking TV series in history. From a design standpoint, TOS may never be equaled. It encapsulates an era of optimism and the futurist movement. We take for granted so many things, from