Does no one use that word any more? Yes, interstellar (far) Poontang is what my lame little joke was about - which stirred up far more responses than it was worth.
I trust that this illustrious audience is familiar with Sturgeon’s many stories about sex - second only to Phil Farmer in that regard. However I’m pretty sure that he never said 90% of poon is crap.
I’ve been too busy lately to look up the reference. I’ve got all the books you mentioned, as well as the version of the writer’s guide that they sold while the show was on the air. My version was pretty early, and Klingons aren’t mentioned.
The Whitfield /Roddenberry book (or Goddenberry as someone called him due to those capital letter pronouncements) was written from inside, while Gerrold’s book was written from outside. You’d get the impression from the Tribbles book that Gerrold was just some fan who sat down and wrote a script - I’ve recently read something that shows he was far more connected to the script writing community than he let on. Gerrold’s books also came out afte the show was over, while Whitfield’s came out during production.
I’m not aware of an earlier “Making of” book about a TV series. Now they’re standard. Anyone. I think Agel’s book on 2001 might be the first in that regard also.
I’m pretty sure that Gerrold’s comment about Kilingons came from his Tribbles book. I was cleaning last night and stumbled across my copy, but I didn;t looom for that line. You have to take it in context – Gerrold was describing Klingons and what they’re like. This was back in the original series days, well before the movies, and you couldn’t say that Klingons “were like Frat Boys with Bushido”, because they weren’t like that yet. He listed a bunch of characteristics, among which was that “Klingons fart in airlocks”. That wasn’t meant seriously, but to describe their attitude and behavior, and did so prett well, I thought. One reason I think it was in the Tribbles book was that it did go to the trouble of describing Klingons, who were an important element in that episode. I’ll check my copy tonight.
I wouldn’t say that the book reads as if a fan just sat down and wrote the e[pisode – Gerrold makes it pretty clear that he was a screenwriting student, and that he wrote premises for other shows. Heck, he describes getting an Agent in the book. I think Voyager mischaracterizes his book.
It’s true that Gerrold’s two books came out after Whitfield’s, but so what? Whitfield’s book is something interesting – it came out during the run of the original series, describing how it was put together. I can’t think of another example of that, either. Star Trek was also the first series that issued books that gave adaptations of individual episodes of the show. Aside friom the Alan Dean Foster books adapting the animated series, I can’t think of any other TV series that did that (novelizations of individual episodes, rather than books based on the TV series. Eventually, they issues 13 books covering all the episodes, all of them written by James Blish, except for the last (called “Mudd’s Angels”, adapting the two Harvey Mudd episodes plus some original material) by Blish’s wife, J.A. Lawrence)
“The Making of Kubrick’s 2001” came out a couple of years after The Making of Star Trek. I know because my Freshman English teacher told me about the studemnt’s analysis of 2001 that was to be included in an upcoming book – and that was in 1969-70.
I just dug out my copy of [B[The Trouble with Tribbles** and speed-skimmed it. I can’t find the line about Klingons and air-locks in it, and I perused the relevant section closely. So it must be in The World of Star Trek, which didn’t turn up when I was cleaning. Yet.
In Arena where the Gorn attack a colony, Kirk and Spock return fire with a mortar. It does fire some nuclear or fusion warhead, but it is indirect fire. Saves in the special effects, too.
Actually, it looked like Kirk was dropping ping pong balls into a mailing tube, but there was this really cool phaser flash on the other side of the cliff…
Don’t forget that the beam magically hits the target and envelopes it (unless its one ship firing on another) instead of punching a hole through it and exiting out the other side. The only time you see it hit a human/alien and not surround them is if you’re firing the gizmo on “Stun.”
Captain Kirk and his international crew use feet, miles per hour, inches etc. I used to think it meant that in the future the United States would not only continue its pigheaded refusal to go metric, but would finally get the rest of the human race to understand that there has to be 5280 feet in a mile, etc.
But then, in TNO, they seem to use metric. A friend of mine said that the hidden message was that it would take another 300 years for the US to accept metric conversion!