Trek Throwback Thursday: The Star Trek Encyclopedia

Throwback Thursday

The Star Trek Encyclopedia

The Star Trek Encyclopedia.  The indispensable reference guide to the final frontier.  The must have bookshelf anchor for all hardcore fans.  Also a staple reference for most if not all Trek fiction writers, be they professional novelists or fan fiction writers.  No doubt every Trekkie in the 1990s had a copy of at least one of the first three editions of the Okuda's "bible" of franchise lore.

Star Trek Concordance

Before diving into the various editions of the Star Trek Encyclopedia, I want to talk about the Star Trek Concordance.  The precursor to the Okuda's encyclopedia, the Concordance was written and compiled by Trek superfan (and letter writing campaign organizer) BJO Trimble.  Initially a series of individual volumes written in 1969, the first full, professionally published edition was released in 1976.  The book covered the Original series and the Animated Series.  The book uses abbreviations for the episodes, a key to which is included.  Following a stardate timeline the first major section is an episode by episode breakdown of the Original Series in airdate order, followed by the animated episodes.  The rest of the book is the "Lexicon" section, an encyclopedic listing of people, places, things and ships in the series.  The cover includes a spinner to quickly find the page number for a specific episode (episodes are in alphabetical order).  In 1995 a new, updated edition was released, including not only TOS and TAS but the first 7 movies (TMP through Generations) and the episodes of TNG (Encounter at Farpoint 1/2, Unification 1/2, Relics) and one episode of DS9 (Blood Oath) that included TOS characters.  The second edition drops the episode spinner in the cover in favor of a simple alphabetical episode list at the beginning.  In addition, instead of one big lexicon, the 1995 book separates ships into a separate section, ditto astronomical references, actors, and production personnel.

First Edition

The first edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia was published in 1994 and included TOS, movies 1-6, TNG seasons 1-6 and DS9 season 1.  It was published in black and white.  It was written and compiled by Star Trek scenic and visual artists Mike and Denise Okuda and co-written by Debbie Mirek.  Trek designer Doug Drexler also contributed to the first (and all other) editions.  It did not include material from The Animated Series, as that series was considered (mainly by the opinion of Gene Roddenberry) to be not canon.  This stance would remain for all subsequent editions.

Second Edition

In 1997 an updated second edition was released, including material from TNG season 7, movies Generations and First Contact, DS9 seasons 2, 3, 4 and part of 5 and Voyager seasons 1, 2 and most of 3.  Unlike its predecessor the second edition was printed in full color on glossy pages.  It was also released only in hardcover, whereas the first edition was available in both hardcover and softcover editions.

Third Edition

1999 saw the release of a third edition, again in full color, and like the first edition available in hard and softcover.  The cover proudly announces "Just added! 128 pages of the latest STAR TREK info!", however, instead of integrating the new info into the encyclopedia proper the third edition (in a time and cost saving measure) included a 128 page appendix section after the main encyclopedia with information covering Voyager season 4 and almost half of season 5, Deep Space Nine seasons 5, 6 and part of 7 (with info on the individual episodes and main characters covering the final episodes).  

Fourth Edition

In 2016, to coincide with Star Trek's 50th anniversary a fourth edition was released, consisting of two hardback volumes in a slipcase.  This newest edition covers all of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, the movies (through Nemesis) as well as Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness.  Many existing ship graphics and diagrams created by Doug Drexler from the previous editions were replaced by CGI images by Eaglemoss digital artists Fabio Passaro and Ben Robinson.