Star Trek Movie Memories - William Shatner & Chris Kreski

Title: Star Trek Movie Memories
Author: William Shatner & Chris Kreski
Published: 1993

Available at:
Amazon
Amazon UK

Review:
“Star Trek Movie Memories” is pretty much William Shatner and Chris Kreski’s sequel to their earlier memoirs book, “Star Trek Memories”. However whilst “Star Trek Memories” focused on the creation, production and reception of the original series, this book looks at what happened after the series was cancelled and how the various Star Trek movies came to be.

The book basically chronicles the production of the first seven Trek movies right up until Shatner has to face Kirk’s death in Generations. It provides an insider’s perspective of the moviemaking process including the rather intriguing thought processes of the studios etc. Shatner personalises it all though by providing the odd funny story and behind the scenes antics that I will be trying to spot when I next watch the movies.

As someone who was born in the 1980’s it was the Star Trek movies that actually ignited my love for the franchise and so I was looking forward to delving into this book. So maybe there is some bias in the fact that I did enjoy this book more, but I do think the book seemed a little bit deeper, probably because Shatner’s memories of this period were much fresher.

As with the previous book, Shatner’s humour is evident throughout and I feel that he managed to keep his ego under reasonable control. In fact the only really Shatner centric element of the book is in regards to his touring across the country after the original series was cancelled and I actually found it rather interesting anyway. However once again we don’t get much from the other cast members in terms of interviews and opinions which I assume is due to some of the issues that they have with each other. This meant that the book was focused on a lot of the backroom and business issues rather than on cast escapades and other potentially interesting personal stories.

An interesting observation I had in regards to Shatner’s relationship with his cast mates is that when he commented on the various issues between them I found that he managed to avoid actually placing blame. He simply acknowledges the state of affairs and moves on which isn’t something you see in today’s world which is full of twitter spats etc. I am sure some people would still have rather seen him delve into a fiery blame game here but personally I found it all very tactful and was happy that he kept away from it.

Overall I think Shatner really did put his heart into writing this and whilst there are some elements of bias here and there due to people remembering things differently I still felt it was a reasonable attempt at some form of neutrality when you consider his close involvement with what went on. Other than that it was quite simply an interesting, entertaining and fun read that should appeal to most fans of Star Trek.