In a msg on , BILL NICHOLS of 1:133/1023
writes to ZORCH FREZBERG:
ZF>> MW> What is the best, biggest, and most canonical Star Trek
ZF>>Bjo Trimble's STAR TREK CONCORDANCE.
ZF>>Reports the facts, no 'interpretations'.
ZF>>After that, the STTNG Tech Manual, and the ST Chronology.
 BN> Re TOS timeframe, Z, what's your general opinion of Franz 
 BN> Joseph??
He was a wonderful architectual draftsman, and a fine man to discuss things 
with on long book-signing publicity road trips.
Keep in mind, he was not a fan prior to this; he was doing this for his 
daughter, and using his skills as an draftsman to make her and her friends 
happy.
He cut corners, and he made things up as he went, and a few things he 
obviously went overboard on (like the circuit diagrams), but overall, he did 
a fine job in most of his work.
I only wish he had been around long enough to have done the TNG version, 
because I hoped he would have made corrections or updates to the original.
Enough dodging...for the person who needs "absolutely everything", it's a 
must.  For the drawings and details on what we see on screen, it's a very 
good resource.  For the non-televised portions, however, too much was made up 
as he needed it...and that's where it suffers, especially with respect to his 
concept of Starbase One's external design.  When artificial gravity is 
available, the "space wheel" concept is unnecessary, something most SF fans 
have known for some time, but cover artists insisted on drawing until the 
mid-1970s.
Likewise, the things left out, like the phaser rifle and phaser cannon, and 
the _other_ tools we saw Scotty use...these would have been nice to include, 
but for now, we can only guess.
So long as the manual stays on what was on-screen with regard to TOS, it's 
dead-on.  As well, some of the items (like the Cygnus shield, for example), 
have been seen since then in later versions of Trek, whether TOS, TAS, TMS, 
TNG, DS9 or VOY, and make those portions of the Tech Manual acceptable beyond 
it's original worth.
And mine's autographed...
-zf-  Plerb!
--- msgedsq 2.1
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