An Introduction

Welcome to The Fanbeing's Guide to Star Trek. This is where you can find all sorts of information about the episodes and films of the classic television series Star Trek and its various spinoffs. From Classic Lines to Alien Love, you can find it within these pages. This is a sort of Star Trek version of such books as The DisContinuity Guide, The Babylon File, and X-Treme Possibilites. We've always enjoyed that type of thing, and so we decided to try and do our own version for Star Trek. The format is similar, but we've tried to go our own way in devising certain categories. Everything here is our own, but we're indebted to the following sources for supplementing our personal research:

• StarTrek.com is the official Star Trek website, useful for cast listings and such.
• Chrissie's Star Trek transcripts and Star Trek Sickbay's TOS transcripts are great for when we need to check a line of dialogue without finding it on the VHS/DVD/BD.
• Memory Alpha is the Star Trek wiki for licensed works and is an invaluable resource for cross-checking facts, such as when exactly the Enterprise changed from Starship-class to Constitution-class (the answer, incidentally, is not until the Next Generation episode "The Naked Now").
• TrekCore is a fabulous resource for screenshots from the series and other information.

The goal is to ultimately have entries for every episode and film in the Star Trek franchise, from the original series to Picard and beyond. One thing to note: unless stated otherwise, entries refer to the original transmitted version of the episode, not the remastered version. (Although we'll flag any significant changes as they come.)

Now briefly, here's a breakdown of the categories you'll find in The Fanbeing's Guide to Star Trek:

Stardate: Simple enough; the stardate given as to when the episode takes place.

Captain's Log: A summary of the plot of the episode.

Whoops!: Here's where any fluffed lines, mistakes on camera, and logical plotholes will be listed. However, minor repeated inconsistencies (such as vents appearing on the back of the nacelles of the original Enterprise) won't be included. We may be pedantic, but we have our limits.

Classic Lines: Some of the best lines of dialogue from the show, ones that can be quoted again and again.

Cringe Lines: The worst lines of dialogue Star Trek produced, these are the ones that make you wince and ashamed to be a fan.

Technobabble: Star Trek may have pushed the boundaries of scientific accuracy in television, but they also created a lot of gibberish. Here's where you can find some of the more memorable instances.

Don't Wear a Red Shirt: Star Trek is famous for its killing of red-shirted security guards. This describes the numerous instances. Once we get to the Next Generation and beyond, this will become Casualty Report (since they went along and changed the disposable guards from red to gold shirts, and "gold shirt" just doesn't have the same ring to it).

Alien Love: The name says it all, really. Not necessarily alien love, this category chronicles the numerous affairs that the casts of Star Trek had. Kirk, Riker, Paris, and the rest of the gang - they're all here.

Library Computer: The real meat of the entry, this part lists the facts that were stated during the course of the episode.

Final Analysis: Our final take on the show.

Note that anything in [ ] is our own conjecture and is not to be treated as fact. [But it will hopefully help make sense of some of the plot holes and inconsistencies.]

So have a look around, read up, and enjoy!

[A note about episode numbers: normally, we probably would have just numbered these by airdate and moved on with our lives. However, Paramount took to numbering the episodes in order of production, not transmission, for their VHS releases of the original series (thus "Where No Man Has Gone Before" becomes episode 2 instead of episode 3, etc.), and these numbers took hold. (And let's be honest; it makes sense to have "Where No Man Has Gone Before" be second.) We've therefore decided to keep the numbers as Paramount has them, but to list them in order of original transmission, much how they are on the DVDs and Blu-rays. That's why episode 6 of the original series comes before episode 3, and so forth. This is also why the numbers jump up to the thousands for the Animated Series before heading back down to the hundreds for The Next Generation - because they're the production numbers.]

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