These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s. Volume 2 (1975-1977)

It’s kind of amazing that you can write over 600 pages about the time between the original series of Star Trek and the first feature film, but you can. Cushman painstakingly chronicles the many attempts by Gene Roddenberry to resurrect, reboot, or otherwise revive and reinvent the show.

But that’s not the real story here.

The real story is how the fans and conventions saved Star Trek, and that’s where These Are the Voyages shines. Lovingly exploring how fan investment, dedication, affection, and enthusiasm showed the cast and crew, and then the world, exactly what Star Trek meant to the fandom… now that’s the story worth telling.

Honestly, the Roddenberry bits are mostly boring, paling in comparison to the baffling, brilliant rise of convention fandom and how it changed perceptions of the show. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a terrific read, a true history of Star Trek‘s fallow period in exacting detail. But trimmed down or split into two parts (Roddenberry and the fans on parallel journeys), this could have been a barnstormer of a read.