Star Trek: Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise

This book is really an appendix to Star Trek: Star Fleet Technical Manual. It brings this old standby up to speed with the TOS movies, ending with Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition). Of course this book is meant to be fun, be it for personal amusement, or curiosity about what those Star Fleet Ranks actually mean. Books like this, or the original Star Fleet Technical Manual, or Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (Star Trek Next Generation (Unnumbered)) or 24: The Counter Terrorist Unit Handbook also serve a backdoor purpose. They are great sourcebooks for anyone playing a generic role-playing systems, such as GURPS Basic Set: Characters, Fourth Edition, the Hero System 5th Edition (revised), or d20 Modern Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook. You have the background information, the uniforms and ranks, and the like. The world, heroes, and situations are ready-made. Unlike the original Technical Manual, this book included some sweet stills from the movies. They are eye-catching, and enhance the bare-boned schematics. But the main drawback with this book is that it--as the title indicates "Enterprise"--focuses only on the Constitution-class cruiser retrofits. It does not focus on any of the other ships--the destroyers, tugs, Dreadnought! (Star Trek, No 29), Miranda-class (Star Trek 1:50 Scale USS Reliant NCC-1864 (TWOK)- Mattel Hot Wheels), or the starbases. We would assume that the other classes had similar retrofits. We also would have liked to seen information on the Excelsior-class ships, since they did last into the 24th Century with ST:TNG. The Star Trek franchise is ongoing, with the six television series, the movies, and now this reboot. As Star Trek has grown, it has matured. The producers have made an extra effort to have some semblance of sense behind the ships. The funny scene in Galaxy Quest (Deluxe Edition) with the large crankshaft and firepit accents this: many times the studio does not take time to think through things. The writers invent things ad hoc, and they sometimes don't mesh with common sense. These type of books--really refined versions of the series bibles--give depth and solidly to the series. Puck's observation, "And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream" does not hold true.

This book is quite useful and I have found data in it I was looking for for a long time, especially in the deck plans. Still, it has some quite big faults. Biggest of all is the dates, the first Enterprise served 2221-2285, not some time around the turn of the century and the NCC-1701-A did not possess a Transwarp Drive like described in the book. But overall this book is very useful for its vast amount of details not seen anywhere else

This book is the most in-depth resource available on the NCC-1701 and NCC-1701-A as they appeared in the first four Star Trek films. Its deck plans appear to match the actual sets very closely, and it refers to details of the starship model and mattes of sets such as the recreation deck in such a way that you can tell that Mr. Johnson has definitely done his homework. I recommend it to any fan of the film era or later. Many of the sets shown here would later be redressed to serve as rooms of the NCC-1701-D, the 1701-A in the fifth and sixth movies, and the USS Voyager from Star Trek: Voyager.For years Trekkers have debated over which books are Trek "canon," and which aren't. Many fans do not consider this book to be canon. If you want to be anal about it, no Star Trek book is canon, not even the Sternbach/Okuda works, or the writer's guides or bibles themselves. Since the episodes and films contradict each other from time to time, one could argue that no single episode or film is canon when held up against the Star Trek universe as a whole.Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda have argued that each fan must decide what he or she believes to be canon. To me, this book is. Buy it.

Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise is a good book with lots of information. However, some of the information is speculation. Cool picts, it is a really popular book and I like it.

My parents bought this book for me several years ago for Christmas. My knowledge of Star Trek has grown over the years, and after reading it again recently, I've noticed a few inaccuracies. However, this book gives the reader AN EXCELLENT INCITE and information into the movie version of the starship ENTERPRISE.