In the definitive reference to Starfleet's Galaxy-class starship, you'll learn about the ship's key systems, familiarize yourself with armaments ranging from hand phasers to the ship-mounted type X phasers and photon torpedoes, and perhaps even catch a glimpse of starship designs to come. By the time you reach the end of the book, you'll be beaming - down, that is, after familiarizing yourself with the transporter. Woven into the book from end to end are even more fascinating tidbits at the production reality behind the Enterprise sets, models, display panels, and props, explaining how and why the show's fictional science helps it maintain dramatic reality.

In 1991, about the time the Star Trek: The Next Generation merchandising machine was really just starting to tick over and get running, this was the Star Trek book to have, finally offering an official, sanctioned guide to the Enterprise. Because it featured both dry, tech-manual text for the mega-fans and humorous asides for those more interested in the behind-the-scenes angle, it had something for everyone. And that's why it's still one of the best bits of Trek publishing ever to hit paper.

One of the coolest things about these two seemingly disparate texts is that they dovetail beautifully. The tech manual explains how powerful the Enterprise's computer is, or how the transporter can/can't be used, and the behind-the-scenes portions of the text explain the dramatic necessity of making these things as powerful - or, in some cases, as limited - as they are. If the transporter could bring folks back to life...well, say goodbye to dramatic tension. The writers of the manual - who were, at the time, the series' technical advisors (Mike Okuda still serves as the gatekeeper of Star Trek's graphical look, while Rick Sternbach has since moved on and said some less-than-charitable things about his ex-bosses) - voice their sincere hope that the technology should support the dramatic reality of the stories told in the Trek universe, whether televised or otherwise.

It's a pity that more Trek scribes who have come along since this volume's publication skipped that part. Actually, this document is based in part on an internal Writers' Technical Manual, which explains the details and workings of the Enterprise in far more informal terms.

Getting back to this book, though, the diagrams, Okudagram reproductions, and other illustrations are lovely to behold. Some fans may be surprised to see that this book doesn't include a full set of blueprints; Okuda and Sternbach made it clear that no such beast officially existed, for fear of limiting the series' writers and set designers. (Pocket Books later gave in to popular demand and sold a separate packet of blueprints anyway.) Perhaps, in the end, it's not so much the fictional information that makes a big impression as it is the thought that went into it. The realities of television production (forever beholden to the unforgiving demands of budget and time) didn't limit the makers of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and at that time they couldn't cheat their way out of it with computer-generated imagery either. They learned to make the best of those limitations, and in so doing managed to lend the Enterprise-D a reality of its own - something that neither the Enterprise-E nor the namesake of the current spinoff series have matched as yet. The book documenting their thought processes is the only must-read title in the vast library of Star Trek "pseudo-non-fiction" books generated by pro authors or fan writers.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster

• Year: 1991
• Authors/illustrators: Rick Sternbach & Michael Okuda
• Genre: franchise science fiction

• Length: 183 pages
• Publisher: Pocket