Reddit reviews Making of Star Trek

I'm going to add to the chorus of voices here saying that Star Trek has always been a character-based show, and that it would be a mistake to depart from that.

If you wanted to widen the scope of a series, you could do that while still remaining character-based. Game of Thrones is an example of a character based show where there are multiple storylines all going on at once with their own characters, for instance. But it's not just a disconnected series of stories all taking place in the same universe.

Interestingly, Stephen Whitfield's The Making of Star Trek, which seems to copy liberally from Roddenberry's show bible and extensively quotes his pitch letters, makes it clear that one of the defining characteristics of Star Trek that it isn't an anthology series.

Roddenberry was periodically approached by companies wanting to know how the show's writers had gotten ahold of the idea that the company was working on. For instance the medical beds that automatically tracked a patient's stats. Or a company producing automatically opening sliding doors who wanted to know how the ST people got them working so quickly (there was a film crew guy pulling on a pair of ropes at the right time) because they hadn't gotten it working that quickly yet.

The original Star Trek might seem cheesy to people these days because of the improvements in special effects, but it was absolutely amazing for the time (I remember watching it as a kid when it first came out), and has had a profound impact on our view of technology.

You should check out: The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Whitfield - an older book but very interesting.

The basis of the Enterprise carried on in Doctor/Captain Crusher's ship the Pasteur. The back story is in this Memory Alpha article.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Olympic_class

I remember reading about this in The Making of Star Trek. If you are interested in the backstory and history of the series I highly recommend it. I read mine too literal tatters years ago.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Star-Trek-Stephen-Whitfield/dp/0345340191

This reminds me that I had a book from around the time TOS was on the air about the production of the series which had a section on the design of the ship and such and specifically mentions saucer separation even pointing out that those cool arrow-shaped thingys on the underside of the saucer were the landing pads (with the third coming down where from where it used to connect to the secondary hull) that would come out so it could put down in an emergency.

I think I still have that book in storage over at a friend's house that I'm actually planning on picking up this week. If I find it I'll post relevant bits here.

Just searched Amazon, I'm pretty sure this is the book in question. http://www.amazon.com/Making-Star-Trek-Stephen-Whitfield/dp/0345340191

I also highly recommend The Making of Star Trek: The Book on how to Write for TV! it was written while the show was actually in production. It's a very interesting book detailing why certain design choices were made such as why they use teleporters, designing costumes to be risque, reusing the pilot to stay in budget, to wacky shenanigans such as Shatner's distaste of fruit salad, Roddenberry trolling a tailor, and why Takei wasn't allowed to wield swords after the Naked Now. (SPOILERS: He would chase crew members around with it.)

I really recommend it, even if you're not into Star Trek it's a great look into how shows get pitched and then created.