So what do we do with The Making of Star Trek, Stephen Whitfield's 1968 documentary on the creation of The Original Series (TOS) of Star Trek? I've probably read this book five or six times since I acquired my first copy of it in the late 1970s but I was interested to read it again now, since I have recently taken the plunge into the ongoing controversies over what actually happened during that tumultuous time: the battle between Gene Roddenberry and sci-fi great Harlan Ellison over the classic episode "City on the Edge of Forever"; the arguments over the original fan revolt against the cancellation of the show after its second season; the issues between William Shatner and his fellow cast members; and the seemingly universal grab for glory from everyone involved.

As part of that research, I've picked up videos and DVDs of any number of the retrospectives on the series (including the 25th and 30th anniversary specials) as well as Ellison's release of his original script for "City" (and the diatribe that accompanies it), the memoirs of the various actors involved in the show, Inside Star Trek, by Herb Solow and Robert Justman, as well as a series of 1970s era books that sought to document the series even before the first motion picture came out in 1979:

The World of Star Trek, by David Gerrold (1973);
Star Trek Lives, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston (1975);
Letters to Star Trek, edited by Susan Sackett (1977);
Shatner: Where No Man, by William Shatner, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath (1979).

I've even gone to Youtube to watch whatever was on offer there, including a 1976 hour-long interview with Ellison, De Forest Kelley, James Doohan, and Walter Koenig on the on-going popularity of the show. If you haven't seen that one, you really should take a look. It's fantastic.

What makes Whitfield's book stand out from all of these, however, is that it was written in 1968, just after the end of the second season of TOS and before all of the controversies could start to take root, before time and strong emotion could start to affect memory. Despite its flaws, The Making of Star Trek (TMST) stands as the closest thing we have to an eyewitness account of what actually happened.

That's not to say it's a perfect or objective account. It's clear that Whitfield was a huge fan of Roddenberry and of the show itself. The book is remarkable for how it portrays every single person involved with the creation of TOS as a wonderful person and a creative genius, Roddenberry especially. So we should not be looking to this book for any intelligent critical analysis of the show or its creators but at least it provides us with a view from closer up, even if it is through rose-coloured glasses.

To give you one example of how Whitfield white-washes over the negatives, in his brief biographical note on George Takei, Whitfield describes how Takei was born and raised in LA and stayed there until the beginning of WWII, "when his family moved to Arkansas" (at 247). Sounds nice, doesn't it? What Whitfield omits is the fact that Takei and his family were stripped of their belongings and forcibly moved to a prison camp in Arkansas as hostile aliens, despite the fact that they were as American as their California neighbours.

So we shouldn't consider Whitfield to be a critical observer.

That being said, I found it interesting to read the at-the-time accounts of certain issues that have since become controversial:

1. On the issue of the network's original problems with Spock's satanic experience, Whitfield tells the story of the air-brushed promotional brochure just as Roddenberry repeated it for years thereafter;

2. On the issue of the number of letters NBC received from fans in support of renewing the series, a number that Roddenberry and others would later claim rose to a million or more, Whitfield reproduces the entire text of an NBC press release dated March 4, 1968, which announces that the network had received 114,667 pieces of mail in support of the show (at 395), hardly the million or so the creators would later claim;

3. On the Ellison issue, Roddenberry is quoted as recognising even in 1968 that he had alienated some of his friends who were exceptional science fiction writers and I can't help but believe that he is referring to Ellison when he is states, at 303, "That was one of the most difficult experiences I have ever had. Working with a writer who was your peer, or often your superior in sci-fi experience, and having to insist he throw out his own good ideas and use your concepts instead. But once we had a couple of episodes on film, finished and en route to the network, we couldn't suddenly change things already established";

4. With regard to Shatner and his ego, Whitfield's book suggests that Shatner himself knew he was pushing the envelope, even though he argues that he is "very careful that [he doesn't] alienate the other people" (at 222);

5. As for the grab for glory, even Whitfied's polishing can't stop Roddenberry's ego from showing through. While he often gives credit to others in this book, it comes across loud and clear that both Roddenberry and Whitfield feel the Great Bird of the Galaxy is the genius behind all things Trek. It is Roddenberry's dedication, his attention to detail, his conviction that things must be realistic, his remarkable skills as a writer and re-writer that made Star Trek the success it was, according to this book. It's a good thing Whitfield wrote it prior to the third season of TOS when, as is generally acknowledged, Roddenberry took two steps back from the ailing series and left it to die, with poor scripts and shrinking resources — perhaps some of the bloom would have come off the Roddenberry rose for Mr. Whitfield if he had stuck around for that last deathly year.

All of that being said, I do enjoy reading this book and I wonder how much it, along with James Blish's adaptations of the original scripts into short stories, can be credited with the development of the fan base that exploded in the mid-to-late seventies. For the period between the cancellation of the series in 1969 and the creation of the animated series in 1973 (?), the only things fledgling Star Trek fans had to turn to were the episodes in syndication, the Blish books and this book by Whitfield. Quite helpfully, the latter contains a brief concordance of the episodes from the first two seasons as well as summary descriptions of the characters, the ship and the Star Trek universe, giving fans the grounding they needed to build the fandom in the 1970s prior to the release of books like the Star Trek Concordance, the Star Fleet Technical Manual and other reference works that provided access to the world of Star Trek.

Without Blish and Whitfield, would Star Trek have survived the fallow years in the early 1970s?

Tags: Star Trek, Stephen Whitfield, Roddenberry

Dennis Lehane is my hero. Not only does he write fantastic mysteries — he's now managed to bring Star Trek into the mix. I just started Sacred, his third book, and what do I find on pages three and four of the paperback version? The following dialogue, with the exposition taken out:

"He could be an alien," Angie said. ...

"An alien," I said. "From where exactly? France?" ...

"No, stupid. From the future. Didn't you ever see that old Star Trek where Kirk and Spock ended up on earth in the thirties and were hopelessly out of step?"

"I hate Star Trek." ...

"How can you hate Star Trek?"

Not only does Lehane mention Star Trek, his characters talk about an actual episode of the original series and get it close to right! Amazing.

So Lehane is officially my new hero. Of course, what Kenzie's problem is, I don't know. How can anyone hate Star Trek?

More on Stephen Whitfield's 1968 documentary book, The Making Of Star Trek, soon.

Tags: Lehane, Star Trek