Star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual: Training Command Starfleet Academy (Star Trek)

List Price: $17.95 Discount Price: $10.68

Customer Reviews:

They don't make futures like they used to [Posted on 2007-02-03]
I had one of these when I was a kid and remember my Mom, seeing my 11-year-old delight at receiving the book, urging my Dad to build me an engineering section (I don't think she realized what it was) ... Dad and I looked at each other and laughed. Sure the book has its "inaccuracies" and sure you can argue about whether it's canon and if so, which parts (and how'd you like to try to dock a starship in one of those spheres at the edge of the spinning Starfleet HQ?) ... but c'mon, it's FUN! As for canon, Trek, like Doyle's Holmes, would build a backstory until it became unwieldy to keep straight or convenient to abandon, and it was still FUN! So pick up this reminder of the days before Trek took itself so seriously. Oh, I also recommend the gloriously "outdated" Spaceflight Chronology with its Sternbach illustrations and since-discarded backstory; it's more (dare I say?) FUN than anything that happened aboard NX-01.

For original series lovers [Posted on 2007-06-27]
This book is good only if you love the original series. It is an extrapolation of the original concepts and it is very unique. I already knew this book in a very previous edition and this one lets nothing in debt for the late one. I recommend.

Older version of this [Posted on 2007-12-04]
I'm confused. This say the book was published in 2006. Is this for the Next Generation? I have a hard cover Star Trek Starfleet Academy Manual from the original Star Trek, publishes in the 70's I think. Is this one on Amazon now a reprint?

Reprint of a seminal work in Trek lore [Posted on 2008-02-20]
Yes, this is definitely a paperback reprint of that legendary Tech Manual (note the "Star Trek 40" anniversary logo.) About the copy you own, I know you really don't mean "hard cover" as it was in a leatherette binder that, behind the sales rack card on the front, had STAR FLEET TECHNICAL MANUAL stamped in gold in that Microgramma font Franz Joseph established as part of the Trek universe to this day.

The binder and the red paper-bound manual inside were meant to simulate that this was a partial document that the Omaha Air Force base discovered it had intercepted in a data stream from the Enterprise when it slingshotted to 1969 Earth in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday." That also explains the very irksome tables of contents that refer to pages that aren't in the manual. Your vintage copy may have a letter Ballantine Books slipped into later printings to explain why there was this discrepancy. (I always assumed there would be a follow-up volume to fill in those gaps. As a kid I did a couple of pages of my own, such as a transporter control schematic.)

The Tech Manual takes me back to getting it new when I was 12 and eating it up. What it does -- and all good tech manuals since for any genre -- is adds to the appeal of wanting that universe to feel so real you'd step right into it if you could. It's not perfect -- the biggest for me being the communicator dimensions -- but for its day, long before CGI, when all Franz Joseph had was a draft pen, Zipatone screens, and rub-on lettering, plus a few stills and publicity photos, you have to admire the effort he put into making Trek more believable.

Standard Fare [Posted on 2008-11-13]
When this work first came out it was a gift for Star Trek fans, but it has grown considerably longer in tooth since that time.

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