When We Talked to Marc

With all our technical obstacles overcome we can finally post our interview with author, Marc Cushman.

For those of you in the know, it's also a pretty time to post this as July 13th marks 45 years since Star Trek was originally broadcast in the UK. For me in particular this is massively significant since without my Dad ever watching those airings I would never have caught the bug in the mid-80's and watched the BBC2 repeats then.

Shortly before the release of These are the Voyages season two we were granted a hour to chat to the man behind the three-volume series - but it went over by some time.

Which is why we've edited the interview into "bitesize" segments running from the introduction right through to our little test for Marc - but we'd recommend you listen in order.

So without anymore waffle, drop in and join us as we talk to Marc about all things Star Trek and importantly, the arrival of the second book in the series....and there are a few gems of info dotted here and there too....

Introduction

Back to the 80's

So how did Marc get into all this and where did it stem from?

Getting into the Voyages

It took a few years to get started but now it's in full flow...

Compiling the Volumes

Marc talks about his expectations for the series.

Printing Up

Working with the publishers, producing the covers and the differences in the stills used and others out there.

Talking Research

Getting those key interviews and sources before it's too late; and what was going on with Spock's Brain???

Six from SKoST

And just to test Marc's substantial knowledge of The Original Series...

Wrapping Up

Thanks to Marc and signing off...

These are the Voyages is available right now from Jacobs Brown priced $29.95. You can purchase your copy by dropping over to the site HERE.

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Marc's Second Term - These are the Voyages Season Two

We loved the first season and they just keep getting better.

But before we dive into the review just a quick note - we have an audio interview still to publish - this will be coming shortly now we have resolved some technical issues. We had hoped to release both together but this has not been possible although we tried...hence the delayed review of Season Two.

Photo by Albert L Ortega

The main concern for those looking to make a purchase here is that there won't be an expanded second edition as there was with Season One. Surely this alone will make a lot of fans breathe a great sigh of relief knowing that their hard earned cash isn't going to get split across two books when one, complete edition will more than suffice. Marc Cushman told me himself there won't be and I, for one, believe him (minor note that no doubt in about ten years a whole chunk of stuff will appear and...yep...we know where that's going...!)

But let's just hold for second because there's some great news for the author as Marc Cushman will be receiving a Special Achievement honor at the 40th Annual 2014 Saturn Awards for this comprehensive series. Robert Holguin, president of the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror Films who are hosting the awards, said that Marc's books constitutes "one of the greatest achievements in the world of literature [in] the past year. The level of research in writing these books are of the highest order."

So here we are, at book two with it now being recognised at the highest level and it's been a long wait for the sequel. My first season copy has been getting very lonely, more so since the release date of it's followup was delayed from the end of 2013 until the start of 2014 and with good reason. Admittedly dropping this review now has been a lucky hit because only this week we've seen the arrival of Star Trek Continues latest offering Fairest of Them All which acts as a sequel to the classic second season episode Mirror, Mirror. Secretly all this coincidence was planned. Promise...(!) Honest.

Compiled in their original production order, this is the essential companion to the most reverred season of The Original Series. While the first year packs in heavyweight episodes such as The City on the Edge of Forever, Arena, Space Seed and Errand of Mercy, the 1967-68 shows were a step up even though all was not well behind the scenes and don't we get to know about it here.

This could easily slip into a big nostalgia-fest and laud glory on all but Marc has never intended this to be just a simple reference guide to the episodes, their stories and a smattering of pre-production footnotes. This is every breath, heartbeat and drop of sweat that went into the production of everything between Catspaw and Assignment Earth. Each page is a slice of Star Trek history with much of it never printed or glimpsed before. Here we get to find out why Gene Coon left, how John Meredith Lucas came on board, how high emotions really were running when it was announced that the show was being cancelled, then reprieved short-term and finally just what it meant for fans, the cast, crew and the network mail-room when Star Trek was renewed for the swansong third year.

Allan Asherman and Stephen Whitfield's work which have been on my shelves for a fair few years are, among others, referenced throughout but Cushman doesn't just regurgitate their valuable literary editions but builds on it. He's carefully sourced information compiled from Roddenberry's own extensive archives, talking to cast and crew who have never (repeat, never) been interviewed about their part in the show and attempts to fill in the blanks that so many publications have left open.

It's clear from this that I'm a total fan of Marc's series, the first volume of which has come in for some factual criticism. All I can say here is that devoting a good six years of your life to something is never going to be an easy and relaxing task. Sure there might be a few typos and errors but on the whole this is a work that will stand the test of time and prove to be one of the three most valuable resources on The Original Series. The other two will be the volumes that sit on either side of the number "two".

All well and good, but what else is here? What am I getting for my cash and why would I want season two? 

Easy answer; because this reveals the dirt under the nails in our favourite stories (although I have to wait another season for The Tholian Web). I could find something new on every single page as you read through the story of each episode from inception through development, filming, post-production, viewing figures and even letters received by the studio once the shows had aired. It feels that there is no frame of film left untouched by this book - every (major) decision seems to be noted or discussed from model shots to cast entrances, story lines through to wardrobe decisions. With each episode there is always something different or a point that is being grumbled over for a quick resolution.

Take a couple of fan favourites  - The Trouble with Tribbles for instance; originally not a comedy nor Tribbles but the pages here chart an extraordinary evolution, the changes, the reasons why and how they came about. Sometimes it was more from a fluke thought than a huge idea-bashing session or a spark came from the mind of a more experienced story editor such as Gene Coon (Gerrold did a big edit that ensured he kept the main credit for the episode). How about the fact The Doomsday Machine - one of the ultimate classics of the show - came in under budget and in a record number of days for the second season? What about the hotch-potch stories that got stitched and moulded together into Patterns of Force that you might not have known about? Maybe you're just interested in finding out about the torrid events and dealings that went into the making of the aborted series pilot that was Assignment: Earth? It's all in here and there's so much more to discover as you go. Get reading. That's an order.

Every episode will at some point have you uttering the word, "Really?!" or the phrase; "I did not know that." In fact your opinions on a few episodes might just change when you read what took to get them to the screen. While you might not like what ended up on TV, the journey there was more fraught than you might care to imagine; The Omega Glory can take a bow for that. I loved the narrative that accompanies this episode - one of the three original ideas for the second pilot.

Here Marc's own voice is quite strong in support showing that there is definitely a degree of passion and support to ensure we appreciate every frame of the series and what went on. With The Omega Glory though it's slated by those who worked on it but by the end of that section you genuinely feel that it's one of Star Trek's all-time misunderstood episodes. It's a mark of the depth to which Cushman has researched that there is such a level of evidence in each chapter that you are called upon to examine every aspect of the show from the ground up not only in each chapter but after each watching of the series and then, most likely again when you head back to cross-reference in These are the Voyages.

The additional sections within the book are essential to getting your feet under the Star Trek table and knowing what influenced the show's background evolution - whether it be ever-increasing levels of infighting, the Hollywood press rumour mill or true stories of how-it-happened-on-that-day, it's all here and explains why the legendary show turned left instead of right or hired one person rather than another. Rarely do I leaf through an appendix but here the story assignment list is a must see. While we get to know how and when a story was planned and assigned, there are a number which fall by the wayside for a variety of reasons. These are covered in their own chapter but here the true extent of how many were unused, unworthy or too expensive can be easily visualised. I suspect that if we clustered all the unmade episodes from '66 to '69 there would be enough for one more (over-budget) season without another idea being submitted.

Even more inviting are the viewing figures which are more than pleasing but were no help to Gene Roddenberry as his relationship with the network went from bad to worse to downright catastrophic over the course of the year. To tell you the truth I came out of reading this book with a mixed view on the show's creator as well as a totally different perspective on Gene Coon - neither of which I expected when I started the season. Marc's style makes this ever more accessible and easy to understand. 

This isn't a book to sit down and read from cover to cover either. I found it much more beneficial to dip in and out of the chapters, reading each episode as a section rather than overloading the old grey matter with line after line after line of new and surprising information. We covered some of these points in our audio interview recently but there are loads more to discover. In fact let me expand on that.

Each evening I chose at random an episode or a section to read and this in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the overall product. In some way the weaker or less well known episodes provide more layers to the overall picture and the epilogue as is provides a key link to the third year. I had expected the letter-writing campaign and subsequent resurrection of Star Trek to be featured as the opening to the final These are the Voyages but there's something that feels so right about using that event; that pivotal fan-led mission, as the final chapter here.  Actually the work Cushman does here does indeed open up the true story - the volume of letters, what actually happened, how narked the network were that they got a vast amount of "Thank You" letters once the show was picked up for the '68-'69 season.

Marc's six year research project is now two-thirds complete and, even with the criticisms that were levelled against book one this is an absolute essential for your Star Trek library. The other books which exist will always have their place - they are part of the history of the show and reflect the views of the last fifty years through the eyes of fans and those involved. Marc Cushman may well be the last person to document the stories of those who were there at the time; those people who were in front and behind the camera for those defining years in TV history and it would have been criminal if their stories had never been properly documented. Many of them have never been interviewed before in regards to their involvement with Star Trek but their observations and recollections are now secure for generations of fans now and in the future; new and existing.

Go out, get a copy and barricade yourself into a room with a DVD player, TV and this book. You won't regret a second because afterwards you'll know all that there is to know about the second season. Just make sure you resurface to purchase the third volume.

These are the Voyages is available right now from Jacobs Brown priced $29.95. You can purchase your copy by dropping over to the site HERE.

Did you know you can now join up with us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter or even +1 us on Google+? If you didn't why not drop over there now!

More News to Continue the Voyages...

We thought that These are the Voyages couldn't get any better. It was already (and we self refer here) probably the best Star Trek reference book ever written - but then Leonard Nimoy read it.

We knew that he had contacted author Marc Cushman over the content of the first season companion and recently we were even told from our Super Secret contact at Jacobs Media Press that there was something special coming because we weren't going to get a hardback copy of the first edition (Bah! we thought) but then this news broke and made our day. 

Jacobs Media Press released a new edition of These are the Voyages; The Original Series, Season One. The new edition has 80 additional pages based on an exclusive interview with Leonard Nimoy and material/photos from personal archives of contributors who contacted Marc after the first edition was released. 

Awesome! However not all was well in Trek fandom.

Now there's been a lot of discussion about this improved edition after fans bought the first which wasn't exactly the least expensive book produced only to find that a second was in the works/on shelves. The Facebook page for the book certainly gives the hint at some thoughts - Is it worth it? Why the hell wasn't the first book up to this standard? ...and the like (I've paraphrased there to give an indication so it's not precisely word for word but you get the gist).

It's a shame, if we're honest, that the first edition didn't work out the bugs, errors and teething troubles that have been highlighted and while the second edition does deal with a lot of the problems, we can see both sides here. It was never the author's intention to cause issues or anger from fans but only to produce an ultimate guide to the much-loved show. On the side of the reader we totally understand that forking out for the same book with corrections and updates isn't financially viable or desirable. 

Still, it is a good book and there's no denying it whether you have the first or second editions. We can only hope that the second and third season volumes don't go through the same process and are as perfect guides as possible on first run.

startrek.com

So what's the best way to find out about what's going on under the cover so to speak? Ask the author. Go to the source. Marc has been really communicative about the additions - the new Nimoy interview for instance now sits within the section dealing with the filming of The Cage and includes the origins of those distinctive ears within its pages. Not only does that add to the wealth of information but there are several other notable quotes and information including some more documents and memos from Robert Justman (right). The tragedy is that this information appears to have only been available after the original publication and therefore omission was unavoidable because Marc didn't know it was there in the first place.

Of those 80 extra pages a lot is taken with a ton of new, previously unavailable photos and Marc even pointed us to Balance of Terror and Arena as just two episodes which have benefited from the additional work. In the former the pre-production section is much expanded with the creative process as well as two or three new pictures including a personal favourite of the Commander Hansen on Outpost 4 -  not something I've seen before or how about preparing to film the cube ship in The Corbomite Maneuver? Take your pick as there are a lot more. 

I know this is going to be another mammoth reading project for me but I have some holiday time coming up and this will be top of the list. To fully detail all the changes would take a long time but I can see they have only been meant to enhance the experience not detract and I understand from Marc that it was not meant to be a bigger volume, just more thorough!

Has it been a success though is a big question. Well, how about the fact it's now available on Kindle in the United States, the UK, Australia and Canada. Top that off with the news that this book has also been translated into several different languages and will be available within days in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, and Brazil. There's surely no wonder Spock himself chose to be interviewed for such a work?!

In the near future we'll have some more news on this fantastic literary series and maybe even a word or two from the man himself, Marc Cushman.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL

We can now reveal that Season 2 will be available for pre-order through www.thesearethevoyagesbooks.com) on Monday, March 3. The target publication date is March 25 and the book orders will be filled soon after that date.

Here's a sneak peak of the blurb currently available just to tempt you AND a first look at the new cover!

"For Gene Roddenberry and his talented staff and crew, launching Star Trek was a near impossible task. Keeping it on the air was even harder. Leonard Nimoy almost didn't make it back to the Enterprise for the start of Season Two. Lucille Ball gambled big in putting Desilu behind the chancy sci-fi venture, and would become the next to fall, losing her studio. Discover the real reason Gene Coon suddenly quit as series producer at the mid point of Season Two. Learn which stories by renowned science fiction masters never made it to the screen and why, and which episodes almost didn't make it in front of the camera. Read the memos from Roddenberry and his staff, and NBC, concerning all 26 Season Two episodes, and witness the continuing deception by the network over the TV ratings, and how the fans took on a corporate giant to save their favorite series."

These are the Voyages Season One is available now from Amazon priced £18.23 ISBN 978-0989238120

To see our full review click right HERE

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All images courtesy of Jacobs Media Publishing

These Are the Voyages...To the UK!

Here at Some Kind of Star Trek you know we love a good reference book and in particular that one from Marc Cushman that was released a few months ago...what was it called again...?

Our friends over at Jacobs Brown Press have told us that the superlative These are the Voyages, The Original Series, Season One, by Marc Cushman, is now available in the UK and other parts of Europe via Amazon. Fans of Star Trek: The Original Series in the UK can purchase the book at www.amazon.co.uk; in France at www.amazon.fr; and in Germany at www.amazon.de.

The extra bonus is that this edition not only sports a rather nice new cover (left) but also has some updated material thanks to, among others, some guy called Leonard Nimoy. Yep; straight up.

Add to that (it gets better!) the great news that These are the Voyages, The Original Series, Season Two, documenting the production of Star Trek’s second season, is scheduled for an early 2014 release and this can only be a good day all round. Seriously, we can't wait to get our hands on the second book after the phenomenal read that was Book One. Truly one of the best reference books if not the only reference book you will ever need for The Original Series.

If you have any sense and any cash I would recommend hitting the UK link on the Amazon tab here and getting that book on order now. Need some further reasons? Here's an entire article full of them so there's absolutely no excuse...and did we mention this review is quoted on the book's website? Not that we're name dropping or anything (but they are also really nice people to deal with).

As an extra little treat and incentive to buy the book, we've dropped in one or two images here just to tempt you....

These Are The Voyages: The Original Series Season One

I've read a lot of Star Trek not only since I started SKoST but for quite some years and I've never encountered a book that comes close to this.

NB: Article updated 23/6/14

Within the archives I have well thumbed copies of The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Whitfield, the Star Trek Compendium and the encyclopedia but a recent publication has eclipsed everything before it; These are the Voyages.

Charting the evolution of The Original Series from the spark in Gene Roddenberry's mind to the two pilots and then through to Operation: Annihilate! your first thought will probably be "Oh no not again..." but I can assure you that this will be one of those books that in years to come is reverred as one of the ultimate reference guides to Star Trek.

But why can I make such a grandiose claim so early into a review? Why would I want to stick my neck out at this point? Because it's true. I actually have to confess that due to other commitments I was unable to read this when it arrived in the post and have only recently been able to sit and digest its considerable content. My, was I silly for letting it sit around for so long unread.

Now going back to the early 1980's, These Are the Voyages was originally intended as a TV special which was cut in favour of Leonard Nimoy's Star Trek Memories following the release of that "minor" movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (you might have heard of it....). I'm frankly glad that it didn't and 31 years later we get to see this publication out for sale.

This is the ultimate story of The Original Series and I would dare anything to try and come close. It's not just a simple episode guide for the first batch of classic episodes; it's the heart and soul of the show, the producers, the stars and Gene Roddenberry laid out for all to experience. It's almost the day to day evolution of every Star Trek episode from concept through to aired version.

So what's the content? What makes this different to Whitfield's work or the Compendium? Why should you buy it? Simply, it's the Absolute Final Word on The Original Series. Not sure? Well, read on.

In the Beginning...

The opening sections detailing Gene Roddenberry's life story and the initial origins of the show have been walked many times before in historical and legendary context but there are still one or two titbits of information hidden that will add themselves to your knowledge of the series. It's exceptionally well written and you can feel the slog that it took to bring Star Trek  to the TV - twice. 

That's only a small part of the story here though. Each episode following The Cage is split into sections detailing different aspects of the stories. The refresh of the plot is minimal - for once - and for the uninitiated this is great. Even better is that these synopses are from TV Guide in the 1960's from the original listings or NBC press releases. Good move. These inturn are fleshed out by the author but I'm not sure this was an absolute necessity. Anyway...

I suspect that 95% of readers however will be life-long or hardcore fans with an interest in the show's background and it's multiple shades. Author Marc Cushman has painstakingly delved into all the episodes of season one examining everything from the date of the first draft submission right through to the final wrap on stage, post-production and even into ratings figures.

It really is the ultimate guide and I can't wait until the undoubted season two and three volumes. I must make a small admission too at this point; I was reading another Star Trek novel at the time which will remain nameless and I just fancied reading a couple of pages of These Are the Voyages as an alternate for an hour however that hour turned into two...then three...and a week later I was still hammering through the pages - it really is that good. Period. It is now excessively thumbed and has pride of place amongst The Library.

All Aspects

Nothing is left undisturbed; each episode receives a series of soundbites and an author's assessment of the show before getting into the mechanics of the show and examining the anatomy of each TV hour. The Story Behind the Story examines the path to the screen; the wranglings and constraints faced by Roddenberry and the producers especially after their budget blowing first pilot that ran away with the cheque book. 

Cushman takes memos and quotes from key personnel such as Bob Justman, Gene Coon and a plethora of others to explain how each show came about. For example, in Miri, Roddenberry asks for the children to have their own language developed after the script is initially turned in as well as adding more to the character of Spock who was becoming something of an audience draw. If you want to know the battles that took place to get elements taken out or added in then this is a great section for you. There's even notes which show the network's concerns on how alien attacks and other violent elements should be displayed to the audience. Some of these might seem tame now, but in 1966 what should and shouldn't be televised was very different; such as the animalistic nature of the evil Kirk in The Enemy Within in relation to the almost-rape scene that takes place.

This in turn gives way to Pre-Production, Production Diary and Post-Production and then to information about the release of the episode accompanied by never-before-seen ratings as well as some great quirky asides in From the Mailbag as well as details on the fallout from episodes and their legacy in years to come. The immediate one for that last point comes from George Lucas remembering Clint Howard as Commander Balok in The Corbomite Maneuver!

What these sections give us is the "How". Before this production the majority of information focused on diagrams of sets and what we actually saw on the screen. Here Cushman gives REAL insight into the order in which episodes were shot, the difficulties faced day to day and how the show genuinely evolved. Indeed, The Galileo Seven obviously covers the whole matter of AMT's involvement in the creation of the recently restored shuttlecraft but what I didn;t know is how the crew of that ill-fated mission was formed and altered as well as how the incidents on the ship were used to keep the pace of the show going. Commissioner Ferris for instance wasn't part of it to begin with and Kirk was on the Galileo! Due to those 1960's budgets and effects, this book also manages to point out where things didn't go so well or look as good as they could and The Galileo Seven is a fine example to cite again - polystyrene rocks and bouncy spears anyone? Nobody's perfect and it's good to see that they were aware, even then, of a level of quality that should (if not always) be achieved.

That whole story of the story piece is my favourite aspect of each episode, uncovering what made it tick, why it ended up in the format it did - and that Gene Coon's Arena script was perhaps a little on the verge of plagiarism to begin with. Not that I would take away from the other areas. The story behind The City on the Edge of Forever is the largest here, giving a lengthy but still incredibly interesting layout of all the difficulties and tribulations that faced Roddenberry particularly around writer Harlan Ellison as well as the torturous rewrites it required to become the landmark episode that was made.

Pre-production mainly focuses on who was being cast in the guest roles each week and what they had previously been seen in. While not massively exciting it's not something that gets a lot of space elsewhere and it's interesting in a few cases how actors from this show criss-crossed paths in other guises over the years - and other Gene Roddenberry scripts.

In Sequence

The diary of production sets the filming into a certain period, relating events of the day (such as Walt Disney dying on the same day that filming began for Space Seed as well as detailing how long filming took for each scene, what days the bridge scenes were shot and in some respects where the budget was slapped. The Cage is a wealth of information on just how passionate Roddenberry was about his show; it went massively over budget and over on shooting schedule because of what was required, the limited set of stages to film and a variety of other issues including pigeons believe it or not.

Post-production creates an interesting tale too and is one aspect best viewed across the whole season. There are a lot of pieces here about the building of sets, models and the work that went into adding the "magic" if you will to the physical action that had been filmed on stage - but here we also learn how that season budget was being spent and frittered or soothingly massaged to ensure that there wasn't a Grand Canyon sized hole in the Desilu funds by the end of the first year. You can see how scripts were chopped to save funds and face by the time it came to Operation: Annihilate! or that bottle shows were always welcomed to save as many dollars as possible.

The Mailbox element is something I've not seen before in print, relating some of the fan mail that the studio received during transmission of the show. There's a lot of positive feedback that you would expect from studio executives and the public who were warming to the show as the included and surprisingly buoyant ratings show.

Oh - and I seem to have forgotten to mention the abundance of awesome photos that adorn more pages than not. A lot of them (and I mean A LOT) have rarely or never been seen before and just trawling through them is an activity in itself - publicity shots, candid snaps taken off camera, photos culled from off-cuts that never made it onto the screen - all can be found within these pages and just add another layer to the conclusion that in the future this will be the one series of books that will act as the last line of reference for The Original Series bar none. Sorry to all before but this just has everything covered from the first page right to the last. 

You're Still Reading..?

I cannot enthuse enough about this book as it's something that just keeps on giving. One reading might be cover to cover to assimilate as much as possible however in the future it's the ultimate reference point for "Wasn't that in...?" or "I'm sure that wasn't in the first draft...". I think I'll certainly see a few episodes in a slightly different light having ploughed through this in a lot less time than I imagined. I could cite examples continuously but the best advice I can give is to order a copy, find a quiet room (or buy some earplugs) and just read it.

Maybe even read an episode and then watch it - it doesn't matter apart from getting onto a site or visiting a shop that sells it...NOW. For once, this is a book where I'm not even attempting some form of balanced review. It's all good. Yes, it is a mighty 580 pages but it's 580 pages of 110% pure Star Trek gold that would be, well, illogical to miss. To date this is my absolutely number one favourite book on The Original Series. Cushman's (pictured below) style is very easy to understand and follow. It's not rocket science, it's not overly technical when it comes to filming or model work and that makes it accessible to all levels of fans whether they just want to understand more about what made the show tick.  What is apparent is that this guy loves the material and has amassed an incredible amount of research to make These Are the Voyages. 

From my perspective as a writer it's how that idea grew that intrigues me and I can be sure that for some filmmakers the order of shooting will be a highlight. It successfully caters for all in just about every way possible. It's the new reference bible for the series and this is only the first part of the trilogy. I can't wait for the next two to be published to complete my collection and further my knowledge of the show.

There will always be bits that we know but here there's something new, different and unseen on each and every page you turn. It's a Star Trek book you'll return to again and again and I certainly will be myself. I now feel like I know the true story; the real story; the FULL story perhaps, behind the creation of TV's greatest franchise. My one regret or niggle?  I just wish I'd read it earlier because it's probably the best Star Trek book ever written.

These are the Voyages Season One is available right now from Jacobs Brown Press by clicking HERE

Did you know you can now join up with us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter or even +1 us on Google+? If you didn't why not drop over there now!