The New Trek Programme Guide

by Paul Cornell, Martin Day, Keith Topping

"Star Trek" and its progeny, "Star Trek: the Next Generation" and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" constitute a popular science fiction television phenomenon. "The Next Generation" was number one in the US syndicated TV ratings almost every week, and "Star Trek" book regularly feature among the top ten science fiction best-sellers. This book contains information about the entire series of "The Next Generation" and two completed seasons of "Deep Space Nine". It includes plot summaries, cast and crew details and British transmission dates. As well as the facts, this guide takes a look at the stories themselves, examining them under such headings as future history, new life forms and Riker's conquests.

Genres: Star Trek, Reference

Paperback

First published August 17, 1995

About the author

Paul Cornell is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy prose, comics and television. He's been Hugo Award-nominated for all three media, and has won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, and the Eagle Award for his comics. He's the writer of Saucer Country for Vertigo, Demon Knights for DC, and has written for the Doctor Who TV series. His new urban fantasy novel is London Falling, out from Tor on December 6th.

via Wikipedia @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cor...

Reviews

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

TOPIC: In the style of their Doctor Who DisContinuity Guide, the authors have fun covering each episode with amusing or irreverent categories like Dialogue Triumphs/Disasters and tracking Poker Games, the Picard Maneuver (the snapping of the shirt), and whether Troi is underused (often). Among other things.

REVIEW: I enjoyed the DisContinuity Guide (and its continuation for books and audios online) quite a lot. The Trek book, however, is only so-so. Where the authors were experts on Who, I would only call them fans of Trek, and it makes a difference in the value of the information. Listing tech and planet names is a boring use of page space, for example, and while it's amusing to track the various tropes of the show(s), telling me Picard snaps his shirt twice, Wesley once, in any given episode gets repetitive. I also take exception with the way the content is structured, throwing all the facts and trivia as part of "Notes" after the episode review. Those reviews, while short, and pithy and the best thing about the New Trek Guide, no question. So why undermine their impact by following them up with dull factoids? The Who book was also full of fan theories and ways to connect different things. Nothing like that here, except for Cornell's essay on metaphor, thrown at the back like an afterthought. Indeed, we could also inquire of Virgin Books how it made sense to make the book end in the middle of things, with a just episode titles to end DS9 S3 and give us a peek at Voyager, instead of letting the authors shop further volumes down the line. During a certain rewatch of these episodes, I did follow each episode with just the one-paragraph review to compare thoughts, but I have rarely revisited anything else.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

READ it for the wonderful reviews. BEAT your breast & CRY bitter tears over it for the ridiculous, half-baked research in the facutal sections. As Chief Engineer Scott might say, "this book was put together by monkeys!"