Upon opening the cover Star Trek FAQ 2.0 I expected to see basically a sort of encyclopedia, starting from the letter A all the way to Z. I didn’t get that, and while I was initially disappointed, I quickly came to the realization that for such a book to exist it would probably call upon the chopping down of every tree in the Brazilian Rainforest just for the paper. Instead we have a book that deals with Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as the movies, all broken up into sections from the Star Trek universe (Movies, Villains, Friends and Family, etc.), and within each section are a listing of episodes, characters, and even actors, as they pertain to that particular category. There are full episode descriptions from the much maligned second season of Next Generation which goes into detail the problems that the series was facing from fan anticipation mixed with an ugly Writer’s Guild strike.
This book also goes into further detail some of the issues surrounding Star Trek Phase II, the never produced series which would eventually spawn Star Trek: The Motion Picture and that entire film franchise, and even though this book carries the disclaimer of being “unofficial and unauthorized,” the author (Mark Clark) spent a great deal of time researching this material. Perhaps it is for this reason that I occasionally found a story item that I did not entirely agree with, but in no way did that take away from my enjoyment of the book. And while it may not be considered a “primer” for people wanting to discover Star Trek, it is in no way written for the die-hard fan either. What we have here is a book that anyone can read, regardless of where they are in their Star Trek degree of fandom.
