Block And Erdmann Talk Star Trek 365 Book
2 min readA new illustrated Star Trek book, Star Trek The Original Series 365 will be appearing in bookstores between now and early September, and the authors of the book, Paula Block and Terry Erdmann tell fans to expect new photographs.
Star Trek The Original Series 365 is a “definite, authorized guide to Star Trek,” and will cover all seventy-nine episodes of the original series.
The authors were instructed to find “unprecedented details” that would be new to fans, a tough task since it has been forty-four years since Star Trek first aired. “Our assignment was to find some [unprecedented details],” said Erdmann. “Talk about pressure! We counted on Paula’s familiarity with everything Star Trek as the baseline for what was ‘unprecedented’ (or at least ‘very rare’). She’s been looking at Star Trek images for four-plus decades, initially as a fan, and later as a ‘pro.’ Most readers are aware that she worked in the consumer products department at Paramount Pictures, and later CBS, for nearly two decades as director of Star Trek publishing.”
Block was able to access the Star Trek Consumer Products photo library. “Those would be the images that the department keeps on file for companies that make Star Trek products,” she explained. “If you’ve ever wondered where a manufacturer gets a picture of Kirk to plaster on a t-shirt, or a model manufacturer gets references to sculpt a model of the Defiant, that’s where they get them.”
“So Paula is very familiar with what exists in terms of the studio’s cache of Star Trek imagery,” Erdmann added. “And yet, while we were working on this book, she found surprising images that even she hadn’t seen before, or that she felt hadn’t been seen by the public in many, many years.”
Fans and actors alike helped in donating images for inclusion in the book. “I interviewed Tanya Lemani (the belly dancer from Wolf in the Fold) for the book and she sent us a great shot of herself in costume,” said Erdmann. “Paula managed to track down Bruce Hyde, Kevin Riley from The Naked Time, who now teaches acting at a university. He provided an amazing behind-the-scenes shot from his episode. Richard Jefferies, brother to Trek’s art director Matt Jefferies, allowed us to reproduce some of Matt’s sketches and gave us a photo of Matt at work that’s never been published.”
Star Trek The Original Series 365 can be ordered here.
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