This book is not for everyone. Let me just warn you now. If you don't want the magic of Star Trek to be ruined for you or if you really aren't into the 'behind the scenes' kind of stuff, then don't read this book! But if you want to know everything you can possibly know about Star Trek or love the magic that created with things that surrounds us today to make the 24th century come to life, then this book is for you! I also would recommend to anyone who wanted to do anything in Hollywood. But instead of looking at the whole show, you'll see how much it really takes for just a scene of the TV show or movie. This is a great look for those of you who want to see a touch of reality behind the fame. The point of this book is to tell the story from each of the three active Star Trek shows in 1998; "The Next Generation", "Deep Space Nine", and "Voyager". You learn how a story gets set in motion, what special effects really take, and just how glamorous being on the set... isn't. For someone who just began reading the book that interested them in the beginning, it began to loss the flavor for me as all the shows are basically structured the same behind the scenes. You're just dealing with different characters and some of the names on the staff change. But a lot bleeds over for all the shows. The first that you get to see is "Voyager" and the episode 'Hope And Fear'. This was Jeri Taylor's last episode for the show, who I think is an ultimate genius in Star Trek. The story is also interesting in that they have a whole another bridge to build for the "Dauntless". This is the reader's first introduction to acts and beats. These terms become very familiar by the time the books moves on to the DS9 portion. One of the hardest things for me to comprehend is how the actors and actresses can just jump into a scene that happens after the scenes that they have yet to perform. A show is not shot in order of how it goes along. Instead, the schedule of the actors and actresses determines what scenes are shot in what order. DS9's portion deals with the episode that has the death of Jadzia Dax. Anyone who was a Jadzia fan and cherished that episode would love this portion of the book. All the ideas that were thrown out the window are mentioned here. Truth is, is that no one really knew how to handle Jadzia's death. First she was going to die in the beginning of the episode, then they wondered if she should get a chance to say good-bye to everyone or just die, and then how she should die was another argument they weighed heavily. If you think Jadzia died just once, then you'd better count the times it took for Terry Farrell to get the scene just right. Another thing is greatly emphasized on this scene is the music and how that affects the out-come of the scene. Last part of the book is on location of "Star Trek Insurrection" or perhaps lack of location. Remember the scene where Worf and Picard go after Data in his shuttle. That's the scene we're examining here. It's a little different with this portion of the book though, because it's a scene from a motion picture and not a TV episode. But the same people that were running the other two shows are basically here also with the same problems. They need the look of a new shuttle. That same shuttle then gets shown to us in real life as basically a bunch of plywood. That's right, Data's 24th century shuttle that almost escapes Worf and Picard is made of plywood. There went that magic of the moment, right? There's a little more action explained in this scene though. I enjoyed the first thirty pages of this book and then it just became repetitive. The people at "Voyager" do things a little differently then the people at "DS9", but not enough to hold your attention. I basically had to force myself to finish it, but I think they choose great scenes to examine. They were different from the scenes the other two shows were examining and that gives you different views of different aspects of 'behind the scenes'. It wasn't really enough to hold my attention, but I see it as a great book for people who are more focused on 'how' then the story and characters.
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Title: Star Trek: Action
Author: Terry J. Erdman
Review by: CL6 Amanda Sielu Paris
2-15-05
