Vaka Rangi: Three Year Anniversary

So I'm not going to put too fine a point on it, but this past year has not been an amazing one for me either. But I'm also not going to make a big deal about it-We all have our own suite of hardships to deal with in our lives, and all we can do is continue to carry on to the best of our abilities.

To the future then. Obviously, the post on “All Good Things...” (and some other stuff) goes out Monday, thus officially taking the blog out of Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as the joint coverage of it and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This is, to put it mildly, a major turning point. Apart from closing off a sustained block of writing for this project that dates back to 2014, this is also the place where I exit Star Trek permanently. Though my affection for the series never goes away and no matter how much my thinking and identity will remain bound up in it, from here on out Star Trek remains firmly and irretrievably a part of my past. There will be a rather lengthy epilogue of sorts once we hit TNN again in 2000, and then Enterprise the following year, both of which bring Star Trek back into my immediate life temporarily. And I suppose I'll have to say something about Star Trek (2009) and its subsequent film series as people have been clamouring to hear my take on it since 2009. But even so, Star Trek is never and will never be again what it was for me when Star Trek: The Next Generation was on the air. This is the point in which I follow Kei and Yuri's lead from last March and exit the narrative for good. My personal story is effectively over.

I've talked about this a few other places, but I thought I'd lay out the biographical reasons for this in one concise essay somewhere. After all, not all of you could be or should be expected to follow me through my scattered podcast appearances and my even more sporadic social media presences. Basically, the two reasons I fell out of Star Trek in 1994-5 can be attributed to two things: Satellite TV and Star Trek Voyager. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had been syndicated: For readers outside the United States, in this country we have a handful of national networks (ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX), and each of those networks has their own set of exclusive programming. But, because the United States is so large, we also have regional affiliate stations-Local TV channels that are associated with the national networks, but have news programming targeted to regional communities. Whenever these affiliates are not airing the news or national programming, they have free blocks of airtime they can fill with “syndicated” programming: Shows that aren't tied to a network and can be bought straight from a studio distributor and aired whenever the local affiliates have time to fill (these usually tend to be reruns of ancient, creaking sitcoms from the 1960s). Star Trek: The Next Generation used to be pretty much the only TV show that was produced exclusively for syndication, but things got dicey when Deep Space Nine premiered, leading to those exasperating cases of the shows competing with each other. And things only got worse for the syndication market from there, but that's not my actual point here.

Star Trek Voyager, and later Enterprise, would be different, because they *were* tied to a network, namely UPN, Paramount's short-lived attempt to create its own network to compete with ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. So, if you didn't get UPN, you couldn't watch them. Now, in 1995 my family got satellite TV to replace our aging analog antenna setup, and at that time the satellite provider we chose did not offer local affiliate channels as part of the package: Instead, you got satellite-exclusive generic versions of ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and public broadcaster PBS that aired the national shows, but *nothing* from syndication (or any local interest programming, which was PBS' specialty). So I couldn't watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine anymore even if I wanted to (and I did want to)...But neither could I watch Star Trek Voyager because our satellite package *also* didn't include UPN until 2001 (just in time for Enterprise, so, you know, put the pieces together). So I didn't watch any Star Trek, save for the odd VHS rental or snippet caught at somebody else's house, between 1995 and 2001.

I knew Star Trek: The Next Generation was over and I missed it, and I tried to keep up with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine by getting its quarterly official magazine from Starlog whenever it was in stock at my local market (which was *very* infrequently) and I'll introduce that on this blog in the near future. But I'll be honest. I made no effort to follow Star Trek Voyager. I can't say it was lingering resentment for the behind-the-scenes consequences of its creation (and you'd better believe I'm going to get into that more: There's way more to it than I've even touched on so far) because I didn't know about that back then (though in hindsight I probably could have guessed), but quite simply because the show didn't interest me at all. There was nothing about it that grabbed me whatsoever. I did try though, I really did: Every time I was over at a relatives' or a friend's house and I happened upon it I tried to give the show another chance, but every time I tried I couldn't last more than a couple of minutes. That attitude hasn't really ever gone away, to be perfectly honest with you. I think this is what separates me from most Star Trek fans: I do not get excited for a New Star Trek Thing simply because it is a New Star Trek Thing. I have no loyalty to the Star Trek name or universe per se, what I like are things that remind me of my happy memories from the late-80s and early-90s and works that reflect the best ideals I saw in them.

Obviously, all this is going to have an impact on a project I've pegged form the beginning as a personal journey. Vaka Rangi isn't just going to end because Star Trek Voyager is coming (in spite of what it did to its franchise), but it is going to change in a number of major and significant ways. The posts themselves are going to radically alter their structure and tone, though this won't be apparent for some time. What is going to be more readily apparent is that this blog's posting schedule is changing, effective immediately. “The Collaborator” will be the final essay to go out on a thrice-weekly schedule. From now on, at least for the foreseeable future, Vaka Rangi will post once a week (barring special bonus posts, like this one), probably on Mondays, unless I get really behind on something.

There are a number of reasons I decided to do this: It's not so much *because* of Voyager as much as I figured this generational shift would be a convenient time to implement the change. The bigger reason is that it was getting to the point where I was getting extremely burned out and stressed keeping the thrice-weekly schedule, and I think too many essays suffered because of it. Oftentimes I'd find myself up until 5, 6, 7 or even 10 in the morning with no sleep trying desperately to meet a self-imposed deadline and word count requirement. And no sooner had I finished the last 1000-2000 (sometimes 3 or 4000) word analytical essay, I had to immediately start work on the next one. That left me with next to no time or energy to devote to anything else, and I've had to table a lot of potential projects because I simply could not give them the attention they required. There reached a point where I simply could not handle it anymore: I needed to cut back somewhere for my own sake. I need more time and energy to spend other places, not just on other projects, but just in my own life (I do have one, believe it or not).

The end result of this is going to not only be better for me, I think it'll be better for the blog too. The first beneficiary is going to be Monday's “All Good Things...” post: I'm fairly proud of how it's turning out, and I know for a fact I could not have written it on the old schedule. I needed a full week to work on an essay of this complexity. And once the later structural changes take effect, I think the combination of them and the new schedule is going to actually speed up the pace at which Vaka Rangi gets through material, and honestly, that's a necessity. If I'd kept doing one episode per post three times a week, this project would never end, ever. There's frankly too much material to get that meticulous, at least as far as I'm concerned. And there's some really fun content coming: I was serious when I said Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine created a shared universe for themselves that takes on a life of its own (in spite of whatever nonsense the TV franchise ends up pulling), because that's the way I've always seen it. I'm going to go all the way to 1996 exploring the ramifications of this to the furthest limit I can. In its death state, Star Trek gets a second life in Summer, 1994: Some of my very dearest pop culture memories are coming, and I'm really looking forward to revisiting them.

And yes, there will be an Ultimate Episode Guide Master Post somewhere in there.

Incidentally, one of those other projects I mentioned above is the actual published, paper-bound version of the Vaka Rangi book series. It's the 50th Anniversary of the Original Series this year, and I really want a revised version of Volume 1, covering it, the Animated Series and Raumpatrouille Orion, out in a format people can buy and read in time for this September's festivities. Cutting back on the new material will also give me more time to do the necessary edits, revisions and expansions to the old material so I can start actually releasing proper books and finally call myself an actual published author! The second book in particular is going to require a *ton* of time because I'm adding an entirely new section. I'm not shopping for imprint labels and I don't think I'll need a layout copyeditor given the wonderful document processor I use, but I am probably going to need a cover artist. So if you're a visual artist or designer and you're interested, or know someone who you think might be, please say so in the comments.

The voyage continues, as it always does. Thanks as always to those of you who still support me and the work this blog tries to do after all this time. I like to think it's accomplished something.

Vaka Rangi: Two Year Anniversary

The Dirty Pair, by Alan Gutierrez

My entire past year can be summarised in just one phrase.

Dirty Pair.

It was almost exactly a year ago today that I began my week-long miniseries on the history of professional wrestling to lead into my essay on The Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair that would introduce Kei and Yuri and change the shape of this project forever. It was an intentionally cheeky move, I admit, and I took great pleasure in watching you all try and guess where on Earth I was going with that tangent. I enjoy making unpredictable moves like that and keeping my audience on their toes: Not only is it fun for me, but it keeps the project fresh and is a way of offering a subtle reminder that Vaka Rangi is meant to be far from another standard-issue history of Star Trek narrative.

But of course Dirty Pair was never an out-of-the blue, 90-degree turn for this project. Even though I've only been a fan of the series myself for the past three years or so, I've known about its existence, and its shared history with Star Trek, for decades. I've been dying to look at Dirty Pair from a Star Trek perspective, and vice verce, ever since I learned what huge geeky fans of the show Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda were. The Long 1980s are an age where truths are conveyed through aesthetics, images and emotions, science fiction is a genre primarily about ideas and possibilities, anime is a medium particularly well suited to broadening the imagination through cinematography, and the fact that it was the two design illustrators who were the most profoundly affected brings it all back full circle.

The fact Dirty Pair turned out to be one of the single greatest and most personally meaningful bits of narrative fiction I've ever experienced in my life is really just icing on the cake.

Even though Dirty Pair was always going to be a part of Vaka Rangi in some form or another, I didn't originally mean for it become so pronounced that it would end up standing on equal footing with Star Trek: The Next Generation. When I first started, I figured I'd give Kei and Yuri a Sensor Scan post, maybe a few-One for each broad category of the Classic Series. Then when I started to actually watch it for research, I immediately realised the series was way, way too good to be relegated to the between-season errata: This was actually leagues better than the stuff I was actually treating as my case study. At that point I knew it would have to be one of the major pillars of Vaka Rangi Volume 3-The book I spent almost the entirety of this past year writing. Even then though I wasn't planning to serialize it on the blog: The decision to cover Dirty Pair episode by episode and bit by bit was made at literally the last possible moment when the traffic hits were coming in on the Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair essay and after I discovered the whole series was on YouTube and Hulu freely and legally thanks to Manga Entertainment.

I should mention that this all came at an uncannily appropriate time for me. As exciting as the past year has been from a creative perspective, in my personal life it's been defined by incredibly intense upheaval, trauma and turmoil. It's been Dirty Pair, and the Singularity Archetype I read onto it, that's helped me through much of the turbulence of the past 10 or 11 months. Because we know that while the Singularity looks like the apocalypse from below, it always signifies a change that is positive and uplifting for the universe on the whole. And we know that Kei and Yuri always leave a situation better than they found it, no matter the incidental destruction they leave in their wake. That's only partially why Dirty Pair has become so important to me (a lot of it is also due to its aesthetic imagery, how I relate to Kei and the ideals I project onto her relationship with Yuri), but it's the part of my connection to the series that's seemed to speak the loudest to me of late.

And yet it also worries me. Others have likened Kei and Yuri to the Tarot cards of Death and The Tower, which are themes I didn't expand on a lot personally but did acknowledge. And it's almost scary how much I see those themes manifesting around me: I sometimes fear that as long as I stay a devotee of the Lovely Angels, I'll keep invoking those destructive themes into my own life. But I can't stay away, precisely because of how much Dirty Pair has come to signify for me. So here we are a year onward, and Dirty Pair has inspired its own spin-off blog, looking at themes of emotion, energy, memory and forgotten futures. Right now, it's just a glorified mood room and place to host specific writing experiments of mine, but in the very near future it's going to serve as the home for a Dirty Pair themed project I've been planning on the side for over a year. I hope with it I can weave benevolent, constructive vibes and summer thoughts.

If you remember my anniversary post from last year (or go back through the archives to find it), you might recall I posted a rough outline for the various planned Vaka Rangi volumes, and that book three was supposed to have *three* pillars. One was obviously Star Trek: The Next Generation (or rather the first three seasons of it) and the second was soon to be revealed as Dirty Pair. But the third was actually going to be Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: I initially had plans to do serialized coverage of the entire manga series chapter by chapter, and that plan was in place as late as my not-review of the movie that following June. Back then I said it was my favourite movie of all time, and I think I still stand by that...But Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a work I constantly have a hard time conceptualizing and articulating my relationship with, as is probably evidenced by the fact it's the one time I just flat out gave up and confessed it was impossible for me to write about.

It's one of those things I sort of forget precisely how important it is to me until I see it again, and then I feel awful for forgetting it. Even though I brought in a frankly ridiculous amount of metafictional, metaphysical, mystical and spiritualist themes into my reading of Dirty Pair, what Kei and Yuri represent for me has always been clear as day. As oversignified as Dirty Pair as a series is, I always find writing about it to be basically effortless-The work is already done for me because Kei and Yuri have so explicitly spelled exactly who they are and what they're about at every single level. All you have to do is pay attention and look for it. Nausicaä though is very different: I can't explain everything I see in it unless I just sit down and relate my entire life story, everything I've ever done (and why) and everything that's ever been important to me. I mean I do that to some extent on Vaka Rangi as is, but properly writing about Nausicaä would require getting even more autobiographical than I already tend to get here.

So that's part of the reason I scrapped the plan to do serialized coverage of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The rest of it is because it would have just made an already busy book even more overstuffed and because as much as I like it and as important as it may be to me (and as similarly influential on Star Trek: The Next Generation as it was), there's really not a whole lot in the way of the kind of utopianism Vaka Rangi is primarily interested in to be found there: That is, the motif of the voyaging starship. There is very much a case that could be stretched that Nausicaä is a traveller and people grow from their experiences with meeting her, but it's a slightly different setup than exists in the kinds of Star Trek I like, or even Dirty Pair for that matter (though the spiritual metaphors are similar). I wound up being able to say most of what I wanted to say about Nausicaä's link to Star Trek: The Next Generation in the essay on “Samaritan Snare”, and the rest I'm hoping to hit in “Tapestry”.

I of course have to talk about Star Trek: The Next Generation. The fact that we're finally in it means Vaka Rangi is right in the midst of what is without question the single most important historical period it's ever going to look at. For me, Star Trek is what existed between September of 1987 and May of 1994, and my personal story with the franchise does not meaningfully extend beyond those dates. I of course did the Original Series, the Animated Series and Star Trek Phase II and I'm obviously going to get to Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise, the latter of which will probably be when I get the most brazenly experimental I'm ever going to with this project, but they're ultimately background material for the true heart and soul of Vaka Rangi, which is where we're at right now. And yet this is also the very reason I can't talk a lot about Star Trek: The Next Generation here: Unlike Dirty Pair and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, this is something whose material artefacts I'm still actively thinking about and working through in the moment. The story of Star Trek: The Next Generation as it pertains to Vaka Rangi is far from over, in fact, in many ways it's only now beginning.

Strangely, even though I've been looking forward to this portion of the project since before I began it, it's also proven to be one of the most challenging sections I've done yet. There have been moments, most notably early in the first season, where I was uncertain about just how I should approach writing about Star Trek: The Next Generation, because its something that's really most meaningful to me in terms of aesthetics, memory and personal experience. I can do a rote pro-and-con analysis of each episode in my sleep, but that doesn't seem right to me and I feel it misses a lot of the fundamental truths about my history with the show I hope to convey. This was also not helped at all by my rediscovery of just how much of a slog I've always felt years 2-4 were.

Then there's the first season, which has always been the most ethereal and intangible for me; a set of ideals, images and vivid half-remembrances that exist well above and beyond anything the physical show ever did. In many ways that makes up the truest Star Trek: The Next Generation for me, and as tough to get a grasp on as it is I think I may have touched on it once or twice. Most notably, my essays on “Encounter at Farpoint” and “The Battle” spring immediately to mind as being ones I'm to date still the most proud of and that best encapsulate my thoughts and feelings about what Star Trek: The Next Generation has meant to me. Maybe “Yesterday's Enterprise” as well, which there was absolutely no way I could cover in any fashion resembling straightforwardly prosaic.

But now with Volume 4, we're well and truly reached the pinnacle of Star Trek's impact on me. Years 5-7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where I basically think the show was pretty much firing on all cylinders regularly and consistently for three years straight, with its definitive cast and crew and most iconic set of stories. The tail end of season 4, which sets that up. What I consider to be *my* Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the purest demonstration of its purpose and potential: Its first two seasons (excluding “The Jem'Hadar”, which is thematically part of the third season, and a different show, even if it's not chronologically). The comic adaptations of both shows. The 25th Anniversary celebrations, the video games and the Playmates toy lines. Volume 4 is definitely going to be the most packed and Star Trek-heavy of the books, so some of you will appreciate that I'm sure. I'm really excited for this phase of the project, but also a bit intimidated: As has always been the case with Star Trek: The Next Generation I worry my words and their scope won't be enough to properly convey and do justice to my positionality.

(And really, as I intend to argue, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as originally conceived should really be read as the same show, or at the very least compliments or sisters.)

And oh yes speaking of books, I hope that by this time next year you will be able to have your very own physical copies of Vaka Rangi, just in time for Star Trek's 50th Anniversary. It's obviously the first volume that's the most important to get out as that's the one that deals with the Original Series and Animated Series, but I plan to get all the books out as soon as they're ready and not worry too much about setting exact schedules. Volume 2 will take the longest to revise as that book turned out unsatisfyingly short for me and I'm adding in an entire new section (as I'm not interested in keeping a ton of secrets where this is concerned anymore, I'll just flat out tell you all it's going to be on Super Dimension Fortress Macross). Each volume is also going to come replete with a slew of new, revised and extra content to hopefully make it worth your while to double-dip. This also means I'm going to be looking for designers and visual artists who might be interested in doing some cover art sometime in the next 12-18 months, so if you are one or know one who might be a good fit, please keep that in mind.

But lastly I want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who's supported this project and who tunes in three times a week to see what I've come up with. I will never stop being stunned and amazed that people are actually interested in my extremely personal history with a long-forgotten old TV show and want to read what I have to say about it. Engaging with you all has been the most rewarding experience I've ever had as a writer, and I remember that each and every day.

Vaka Rangi: One Year Anniversary

Like any good student of synchromysticism, I'm well aware of the importance of dates, in particular anniversaries. Especially when they're mine.

It was, in a sense, inevitable that I would one day have to do a lengthy project about Star Trek. No large-scale media franchise, or indeed possibly no work of fiction, has consistently meant as much to me or been as much of a source of inspiration (and frustration) over the course of my life as Star Trek. I would have had to address my personal history and issues with Star Trek in some fashion at some point, and that was before my Internet writer colleagues pushed me to work them out through a large-scale serialized blog project.

So, first and foremost, Vaka Rangi has always been more about me than it has been about Star Trek. You may have noticed. Sorry about that. But, as someone trained to notice, analyse and compare positionalities, and also simply knowing it would be pointless to do *yet another* “Let's watch every episode of Star Trek in order and write about it” thing, I also figured my perspective might allow me to say some things that might not get said in mainline cult sci-fi discourse. But this also means this is a particularly personal project for me, as it's my reaction to Star Trek that informs not just the kind of critical perspective I offer, but that kind of person I am. I never wanted this to be a straightforward critical history, even a subversive one, and the project was never going to let me make it into one.

Growing up cut off from the kind of pop culture discourse that seems to have morphed into Nerd Culture, I guess I assumed the things I saw in Star Trek were what everyone liked about Star Trek, but it very quickly became evident that I was wrong, and any evidence I found to the contrary seems to have been deliberate misrepresentations in marketing buzzspeak. As a result, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to structure this project to get this across, and I eventually settled on the idea of comparing Star Trek's idealism (at least the way I saw it) to the philosophy of the ancient Polynesian navigators for various reasons. Obviously, as a cultural anthropologist I've read about and studied them a lot, as Polynesia is one of anthropology's favourite classic case studies and Hawai'i in particular has a very deep and spiritual connection to the night sky. But it's also a region I feel connected to myself in a very deep and personal way I can't exactly articulate (there are a few places around the world that are like this for me, but Polynesia was the first one I consciously noticed my connection to). More specifically, I genuinely do see and try to find a kinship in the way the navigators conceived of growing, learning, travelling and the concept of a global community and what I think Star Trek really ought to stand for. This project is for them as much as it is for me and you, if not actually more so.

The result is a reading, and really, a comprehensive reconceptualization, of Star Trek very much informed by the invisible, heretical, voiceless side of fandom, indigenous spirituality and comparative mythology, philosophies that are in many ways mine as well. This also means people like Gene Roddenberry and Nicholas Meyer are a constant analytical headache for me and I worry every single day about making a mistake and lapsing into cultural appropriation.

2013 seemed like the year that, if I was ever going to do something like this, would be the year to finally do it, with mainstream interest in Star Trek looming for the first time in years with the release of Star Trek Into Darkness. Not being entirely blinkered, I recognised an opportunity when I saw it and timed the launch of Vaka Rangi to coincide with the film's release. Of course the movie itself wound up bombing (or bombing as much as any hyper-blockbuster of that stature is allowed to these days), but this blog is still around a year later and still apparently manages to draw an audience, which I guess is a good thing. I remember being overwhelmed at the start of this project thinking “Oh My God: If I actually *am* still around a year from now, how far will I actually have managed to get?”. As it turns out, as I wrap up the final essay for Volume 2 as I write this, I'm about as far as I thought I was going to be, if not a little farther.

So, exactly one year after I set off on this journey, I wanted to take the time to reflect on what this project is and what it means to me and to thank everyone who decided to join me along the way. I'm especially grateful to the people who have gone out of their way to tell me how important this project has been to them: I never stop being moved to hear something I've written has resonated with somebody else, especially when I'm writing something as overtly personal and reflexive as Vaka Rangi has turned out to be.

You might also be interested in hearing a bit about where this project goes next. It's no secret that we're on the cusp of beginning the Star Trek: The Next Generation era and, all I can say to that is if you've been upset by how personal I've gotten so far...It's about to get a lot more personal, so, be forewarned. While I don't actively dislike the Original Series (except the parts that are misogynistic and reactionary, natch), it's not a show or a set of characters I have any particular affinity for, which I know is yet another thing that makes me a bit of an oddball in Trekker circles and why parts of the past year have felt more clinical than introspective. This next period, however, is something I actively and unapologetically love, or rather, I love the setting, characters, ideas and the memories and images it's left me with, and I'm really hoping to be able to convey this in the posts going forward. This also means that while I'm not going to stop being critical, I am going to loosely shift from the perspective of the offense to that of the defense, at least for a while. I mean yes, “Code of Honor” is every bit as bad as you think it is.

Aside from seeing a *lot* more of me cropping up in the blog, I'm also going to be changing the structure around a bit. Flatly, we're entering a period of Star Trek history that's incredibly long and incredibly monolithic: With three series of seven, 30-episode seasons *each*, plus one with four, there's an incredible glut of material to get through the likes of which I've never had to deal with before, and it also happens to coincide, at least partially, with an era of Star Trek history I know almost instinctively. This means there will be several occasions where, instead of doing one post per episode, I'll take three or four stories centred around what I find to be a unifying theme and look at them all together. I won't do this all the time, but I think it will help clarify the points I'm trying to make and further emphasize my positionality, the way I was exposed to these works and how I read them. And also, you know, believe it or not, I don't actually want to be doing this for the rest of my life.

Also, since I mentioned volumes earlier, I thought it might be fun to actually post a (highly truncated) version of my outline here. It's sort of an open secret that the ultimate goal for this project is a multivolume book set, and I've been planning and structuring this project with that in mind from the beginning. I'm not going to tell you *everything* I'm going to cover, of course, that would spoil the surprise, and I've got a *lot* of surprises planned. But, this should help anyone who might be trying to mentally work out the different categories and divisions I split Star Trek into and the different underlining themes and motifs I see in each era (and indeed, what the eras I see actually *are*):


Volume 1: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Animated Series and Raumpatrouille Orion (contains the posts from Foundation to “The Counter-Clock Incident”, plus bonus exclusive coverage of the entirety of Raumpatrouille Orion, among others).


Volume 2: Star Trek Phase II, The Lost Years and Star Trek in Pictures (contains the posts from Star Trek: Year Four, Issue Number 1 to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, plus bonus exclusive coverage of Star Trek Continues, among others). Also includes the movies Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.


Volume 3: To Be Announced, To Be Announced and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Seasons 1-3. Also includes the movies Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Covers the period roughly from Spring 1980 to Summer 1990.


Volume 4: To Be Announced, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Seasons 4-7 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Seasons 1 and 2). Also includes the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Covers the period roughly from Summer 1990 to Summer 1994.


Volume 5: Star Trek Voyager and the Dominion War (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Seasons 3-7). Also includes the movies Star Trek Generations, Star Trek First Contact and Star Trek: Insurrection. Covers the period roughly from Winter 1994 to Summer 2001.


Volume 6: Enterprise and other material to be determined, though likely including the movies Star Trek Nemesis, Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness.