Star Trek: The Classic Episodes Volume 1: The 25th Anniversary Edition

by James Blish

Book Overview

Features 27 stories adapted from Star Trek's landmark first season. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553291386
• ISBN13: 9780553291384
• Release Date: September 1991
• Publisher: Spectra Books
• Length: 646 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Collection of the Original James Blish Adaptations

James Blish began adapting the stories of the original Star Trek television series in 1967 in a series of 12 books. Bantam books has collected these books into three volumes, reorganizing them in the process. James Blish passed away many years ago, to the great chagrin of his fans, and D.C. Fontana introduces this collection. This book is the first book of the set. There are 27 stories, representing the first season of Star Trek. Each story has a title page with a black and white picture from the television episode. The title page also lists the writer or writers, the director and guest stars. James Blish needed to modify some of the stories a little because of the differences between a television show and a written story. However, the stories match the television shows quite well. Blish does explain in the prefaces to the original books, all of which are provided at the beginning of this collection, the kinds of changes he made and the logic behind them. While he was afraid that fans might be upset at the modifications, these books were well-received when they came out, and the original stories remain prized. These stories range in quality, as did the original television show. "The City on the Edge of Forever" was one of the best shows in the first season, with Joan Collins as a beautiful social worker. Many other episodes challenge a viewer's mind. "Miri," guest starring Kim Darby, had adults aging rapidly, becoming paranoid and psychopathic. How could McCoy and Spock identify and cure the disease in a one-hour episode? In the "Squire of Gothos," we learn about childhood from a different perspective. In "Devil in the Dark" the crew of the Enterprise discovers a new definition of life, and that life is as protective of its children as we are of ours. There are other stories that were weak, and yet, this television show was the best science fiction available in the 1960s. We treasured each and every show. Star Trek will forever be one of the ground breaking shows of science fiction. The show was a promise of what was yet to come, and helped to inspire many people to become scientists and engineers. These wonderfully adapted stories, each running about 20 pages or so, are fun to read again, both for fans that saw the shows when they first came out, and for new fans. This book is a wonderful addition to any Star Trek fan's library. Enjoy!

The Brilliant First Season and Now in Print!

Some of the best episodes of all the 3 seasons are in this the first season e.g. "The Menagerie" and "The City on the Edge of Forever" and yet we get here very well-written stories that although are not exactly the same as the episodes themselves, we get a greater understanding of what's happening because of the greater details. Watch the eps and then read this.

James Blish's adaptation of the first season of "Star Trek"

In the late 1960s James Blish began writing "The Star Trek Readers," a series of paperbacks in which he adapted the scripts of what was then the late lamented original "Star Trek" series. When first published Blish basically started with what fans voted as the most popular episodes and eventually worked his way through the show's three seasons. However, for the 25th Anniversary editions the adaptations were reorganized so that there were not only three volumes, each representing an entire season. Therefore, "Star Trek: The Classic Episodes, Volume 1" represents the first season in 1966-67.The volume includes an introduction by D.C. Fontana, and the prefaces that Blish wrote for his original paperbacks, along with the forward Judith Ann Lawrence wrote for "Star Trek #12." The first season episodes are arranged in order of their television appearance: "Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Enemy Within," "The Unreal McCoy [The Man Trap]," "The Naked Time," "Charlie's Law [Charlie X]," "Balance of Terror," "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," "Dagger of the Mind," "Miri," "The Conscience of the King," "The Galileo Seven," "Court Martial," "The Menagerie," "Shore Leave," "The Squire of Gothos," "Arena," "The Alternative Factor," "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," "The Return of the Archons," "A Taste of Armageddon," "Space Seed," "This Side of Paradise," "The Devil in teh Dark," "Errand of Mercy," "The City on the Edge of Forever," and "Operation-Annihilate!"The most memorable story is "The City on th Edge of Forever," because as Blish notes in his footnote the script for the story different drastically from Harlan Ellison's original version (which Harlan shared with Blish). Blish attempted to preserve what he thought were the best elements of both scripts and freely admitted that he might owe apologies to everybody. Ultimately Blish is forced to go with Gene Roddenberry's televised version, where McCoy is the person who gets accidentally gets injected with cordrazine and it is Kirk who acts to let Edith Keeler die, but he does manage to work in Ellison's original ending where Spock speaks to Kirk about offering the universe for love. For years this was the only indirect look we had at Ellison's original script, which was reprinted in an obscure science fiction collection until he included it in a published diatribe against what Roddenberry did to the episode. Blish was a well-known science fiction author, who has won the Hugo Award for his novel "A Case of Conscience," and what he brought to these adaptations was a great ability to flesh out both the characters and the actions. In many ways these adaptations hold up better than the original episodes, where the special effects are less than what an eight-year-old can do on a home computer today. But throughout Blish shows an understanding of both the characters and the Star Trek universe that was being created, which explains why he was also the author of the first "Star Trek"