By Aaron Harvey and Rich Schepis

Titan, out now

Pretty much everything you could want to know about the 1970s TV episodes…

Star Trek fans tend to have quite firmly held beliefs about certain elements of the show – and there’s a school of thought that maintains that Gene Roddenberry disassociated himself from the animated series that he himself created and thus it should be ignored. (We’ll politely draw a veil over the other elements that the Great Bird of the Galaxy also didn’t like but which the same fans will go round perdition’s flames to defend.) I’ve always been a fan of it – in the UK, it didn’t get that much airing but one particular piece of incidental music stuck in my mind (and was later used in other Filmation shows), and I loved the Alan Dean Foster novelisations (at least those that made it over here).

This coffee table book is a labour of love by the authors, who have put together a terrific collection of information, backed up with interviews with the key personnel still alive (notably Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold). There’s information that I’d never heard before, production drawings, connections to the wider Star Trek universe (up to and including Discovery season 2), and a lot of myths exploded. Novel writers Christopher Bennett (who’s used characters created for the animated series heavily in his novels) and Dayton Ward make contributions putting the show in context, and the illustrations are beautifully done.

The only thing missing, which rather surprised me, is more than a single sentence regarding the Foster books. These added a great deal to the show – and for many, like James Blish’s versions of the live action predecessor, they were the only way of experiencing the stories. Four of Foster’s Logs expanded 22-minute episodes into full length shows! (And it’s not as if Foster has not talked about them – there’s at least one interview in an official Trek magazine about them which I did!)

That doesn’t detract from the very high quality of the book – the ideal Christmas present for the Trek fan in your life, as they prepare for the new animated show next year!

Verdict: Well researched, written and presented, I think this will be the last word on an often unfairly overlooked part of Jim Kirk’s captaincy of the Enterprise. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk