The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, From the Next Generation to J. J. Abrams

July 11, 2016
With this volume, Altman and Gross complete their two-part oral history of Star Trek, which began with The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years, with verve. They begin in 1986 with the announcement of Star Trek: The Next Generation, going through to the J.J. Abrams–directed films in 2009 and 2013. An infectious giddiness underlies the interviews; people are sincerely excited to talk about Star Trek. Of the panoply of voices in the book, those involved with The Next Generation are the most insightful. This spin-off, after all, marked the biggest question in the series’ history: could they raise the show from the dead? With the success of Next Generation, the three subsequent series, and Abrams’s film reboots, it’s easy to forget what a gamble this represented. Luckily, it paid off, and now another film is coming in 2016, with a new television series scheduled for 2017. This is an intimidatingly lengthy book, but also a page-turner. Longtime fans will find a lot to chew on, and newer fans will feel like old pros after reading this splendidly crafted work.

June 15, 2016
The oral history of the Star Trek franchise boldly continues. Writer and producer Altman and Gross (Voices from Krypton: Superman on Film and in Comics, 2015, etc.), who did a terrific job in their first volume, have once again meticulously selected and chronologically arranged a massive number of comments from more than 200 people involved in the TV shows and movies. This book takes us through the many iterations of Star Trek since The Next Generation premiered in 1987. When Gene Roddenberry was approached to do it, "I turned them down....I really feared doing it until I got angry enough to try." When producer Robert Justman said he wanted Patrick Stewart to play the captain, Roddenberry responded, "Jesus Christ, Bob, I don't want a bald man." He later changed his mind and was glad he did; as Justman noted, Stewart was everything "a captain ought to be." The tenth ST movie, Nemesis, with The Next Generation crew, was a huge failure. Actress Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) said director Stuart Baird "was an idiot." There was trepidation about ever trying a ST movie again, but J.J. Abrams, who was not a huge ST fan in the beginning, was approached to do another film. His thinking was, "you would have to do it in such a way that it would bring it to life in a way that never had been done before." He felt the characters of Kirk and Spock were the keys: get them right and it could work. It did. His second try, Into Darkness, went "further than the first movie in every way." Trekkies' appetite for all things ST will be sated this summer with Star Trek: Beyond, directed by Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious). Actor Chris Pine (Kirk) says it's a "close-up look" at the crew. A new TV series launches in 2017. Is too much of a good thing bad? Not when it's Star Trek.

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Starred review from July 1, 2016
The second volume of Altman and Gross' comprehensive oral history of Star Trek is even more massive than the first, which covers the first 25 years, because it has more ground to cover as it tackles the four spin-off shows (a fifth is on the way in 2017) as well The Next Generation and J. J. Abrams' feature films. After several attempts to bring Star Trek back to the small screen, Star Trek: The Next Generation set sail with a new captain and a new Enterprise in 1987. Though the show grew to be both a ratings and a critical hit, the behind-the-scenes drama made for a rocky experience. Once Michael Piller took the reins in season three, however, the show stabilized, and its success paved the way for Deep Space Nine, which pushed the limits of the franchise by focusing on complex, serialized stories and nuanced interpersonal conflict among its characters; Voyager, which ventured into a heretofore unexplored area of the galaxy; and Enterprise, the prequel, which struggled to find its footing. J. J. Abrams' 2009 reboot movie breathed new life into the franchise, proving Trek still had plenty of life in it. A must-read for fans, this lively oral history offers a plethora of insight into the making of the enduring popular franchise.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)