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.

It is not a full history of the Ashes, but a recollection of the Ashes series that Berkmann remembers from the early seventies. Quite depressing in parts when you realise just how dreadful we were as a cricket team. That and the partisan nature of the selectors must have driven people to drink. I didn't watch all of the 81 Ashes when Botham was at his best, but I remember seeing some of it on the telly. I saw as much of the 2005 series as i could.

A must read for a cricket fan, but not as show more funny as his other cricket books. show less