TV & Film – 280 pages – my copy (paperback) picked up from the Works in St Austell during May 2012 for £2.99
#49 of 2011-12 / #170 of All Time
- 2 nods out of 5 -
Trekkie or Trekker: what is the difference? For the “serious” fan of Star Trek – of which are in good company (see below) - the business of buying DVDs and fanzines is not one to be taken lightly. Trekkie is the mocking term; but Trekker is one in which the fan has the sleeves rolled up and is ready to leave the real world and enter the dimension to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Sci-fi has a long history of transfixing the Western world. A hundred years ago it was the novels of H.G. Wells; the 1950s spawned a generation glued to monster movies; whilst recent incarnations have become all the more sophisticated. Despite its now seeming comic beginnings, Star Trek has long prospered to stretch various TV series (the Worm recommends The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine), eleven and soon to be twelve Hollywood movies (recommended: The Wrath of Khan, The Undiscovered Country, and the recently rebooted Star Trek), as well as hundreds of novels and comics that have truly created a unique universe.
Modestly deemed ‘A Brief Guide’, this book actually spans close to three hundred pages. The author does a competent job of telling the story, from start to finish; beginning with the genesis of the idea in the brain of Gene Rodenberry, its shaky first series in the 1960s, cancellation, death and then rebirth via fan power in the 1970s. This revival explains the special relationship between Trekker and the “franchise” (the Worm apologies for using such a vacuous term), and why fans of the show have obtained a place in popular culture: either being celebrated, or as is much more likely, lampooned. All of the original cast movies are dealt with in an orderly fashion, with a chapter given to each succeeding series (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the ill fated Enterprise).
Orderly is the key word here. Despite a close connection with Star Trek stretching back many years – including serving as editor on The Official Star Trek Magazine – Brian J. Robb never peels away the layers of the story. For example, much of the information has been gleamed from newspaper reports, with minimal quotation from the central players. Direct interviewing, comment, and the nitty gritty of getting to the heart of the story was perhaps beyond the remit from the publishers when they set on their ‘Brief Guide’; but it all has the feel of reading a dry Wikipedia article, rather than glimpsing into an author’s true thoughts and feelings. Opportunity knocks with this book: written on the recent trend of Star Trek becoming officially cool once more with its blockbuster reboot from 2009. This is seen clearly in the book’s opening paragraph when the author writes in a world in which readers have already seen ‘J.J. Abrams blockbuster movie from 2009 or the sequel’: at this time of writing, in July 2012, the sequel has still not been released.
The future of Star Trek looks assured; a statement that would have seemed slightly far fetched in uttered a mere seven or eight years ago after the flops that were Enterprise and the last Picard film, Nemesis. More adventures will be told, and the knock on effects will be ever more reading material. This book will capture the interest of the serious fans – the Trekkers – without bothering the hearts of the many Trekkies. This is just as well; the world can keep its ‘Brief Guide’ as the Worm waits for something more substantial and bold.
* Trekkers are in good company. Fans of the show are an eclectic and rather fantastic bunch, including Frank Sinatra, Barack Obama, Tom Hanks, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Eddie Murphy, Stephen Hawking, Seth MacFarlane, Alex Salmond and Martin Luther King.
Buy it here:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brief-Guide-Star-Trek/dp/1849015147
