Marcus Berkmann

Enjoyable as a light, humorous read about Trek episodes and films. As long as you have a sense of humour to go with your love of Star Trek, you will probably enjoy this.

My main criticism is something I used to get criticised for in writing at school 50 years ago - pacing. The book is chronological and works well through the Original Series, then goes to the films, and into Next Generation, then back to films - following the production timeline well. But it's almost like the writer realised show more that halfway through NextGen he was running out of pages, so that Deep Space Nine, then Voyager, then Enterprise are mentioned at an increasingly quick and throwaway pace and it was very noticeable.

It wouldn't sell, I don't suppose but a Vol II with those series looked at in the same detail as TOS and TNG were in this, would have been entertaining. As it is, this feels more than half a book but not by much. A shame as the writing on the first 2 series' - written about with more detail (and with more love, perhaps) are often very funny. show less

This book is a clear-headed assessment of 50 years of Star Trek. I was glad to see someone acknowledge the simple fact that while the new rebooted Star Trek movies might be decent action movies, they are Star Trek only in name. Sadly that seems to be the case for the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery also.
Marcus Berkmann, thanks for all the laughs.

Marcus Berkmann is a hugely funny writer, though much of the humour in this book is of the 'celebrating crapness' school that flourished in the 1990s. Despite this, it is a light, enjoyable read for the cricket fan.

A pleasant enough stroll through Berkmann's cricket drenched brain. A cricket tragic, Berkmann plays cricket almost as badly as I did in my heyday and watches and follows it obsessively.

Beyond letting us know that he played for the same team as Hugh Grant, Berkmann tells us of the fairly low level team he played for, of his batting average, of Hugh Grant getting annoyed at an awards night and leaving early, of his late night vigils watching Ashes matches from Australia on tv, and similar. show more Sometimes it doesn't quite flow but it's amiable enough for a pleasant read. show less