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Reviewed by:
  • Star Trek and American Television ed. by Roberta Pearson, Máire Messenger Davies
  • Nick Bestor (bio)
Star Trek and American Television
edited by Roberta Pearson and Máire Messenger Davies
University of California Press, 2014
256pp.; paper, $34.95

In “star trek” and american television, roberta Pearson and Máire Messenger Davies offer an important contribution to the study of Star Trek, using the show as a fertile case study to chart the history of television production practices. As the authors acknowledge in the introduction to their book, the franchise has been so thoroughly studied that “within the academic community Star Trek is the most written about of all television shows” (9). Pearson and Davies set their book apart through its focus and methodology; eschewing the audience studies, fan studies, or reception studies approaches that dominate much Star Trek scholarship, the authors draw upon television studies and production studies to write “the first full-scale examination of internal issues—of the people, practices, and institutions that made the Star Trek artifacts” (10). The authors offer an in-depth examination—supplemented with interviews with a wide range of actors, writers, producers, and production personnel—that deepens our understanding of the production history and culture of Star Trek and its significance within broader trends of television history over the past fifty years.

The original Star Trek aired on NBC from 1966 to 1969, fostering a devoted fan following and establishing itself as a perennial hit in syndication. Over the next two decades, attempts were made to revive the franchise, including Star Trek: The Animated Series (NBC, 1973–74) and Star Trek: Phase II, intended for a 1978 premiere on the planned Paramount Television Service. The long-term return of Star Trek came in 1987, when Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in first-run syndication, followed by Deep Space Nine (syndication, 1993–99), Voyager (UPN, 1995–2001), and Enterprise (UPN, 2001–5). As Pearson and Davies demonstrate, the long-lived Star Trek franchise serves as an excellent case study for charting shifts in television production practice.

Pearson and Davies structure their book around three principal themes: first, the authors foreground Star Trek within the context of the television industry; second, they continually explore [End Page 126] how the franchise is both typical and atypical of dominant production practices of different historical periods; third, the authors examine the agency of individuals throughout the production hierarchy. The six chapters of the book are split into three broader sections. The first chapter focuses on the production history of The Original Series (the retroactive subtitle for the original Star Trek, widely used by both fans and the corporate stakeholders of the franchise itself) and the revival of the franchise, examining the series’ adherence to aspects of network era television production while also prefiguring the multichannel transition. The second, third, and fourth chapters focus on the eighteen-year period of production between Next Generation and Enterprise, highlighting the unusually high degree of continuity in production personnel, the collaborative efforts of above- and below-the-line workers to realize the world of Star Trek, and the agency enjoyed by actors in crafting and developing their characters over years of performance. In the final two chapters, the authors turn to narrative and textual analysis to explore how the world and the characters of Star Trek were collaboratively developed and refined over the course of the franchise.

The authors credit much of their access to the Star Trek production apparatus to the support of Patrick Stewart, star of The Next Generation, who provided them with introductions to interview a broad swath of producers, writers, actors, and craftspeople. (Stewart also wrote the foreword.) This unprecedented access—granted in 2002, during the production of the film Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and early in Enterprise’s run—offered Pearson and Davies an opportunity to compare previous productions as well. Production personnel in the television industry generally work in environments defined by exploited freelance labor and fleeting job security; however, the Star Trek productions between 1987 and 2005 provided a highly atypical production process that allowed some members of the crew, both above and below the line, to be employed consistently...

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