10 Essential Star Trek Books For Pre-Internet Trekkies
1. The Nitpicker's Guides
Forged from a true love of the franchise, Phil Farrand's four volumes of inconsistencies, oversights, and general errors chunked out any self-respecting Trekkie's bookshelf in the mid-90s.
Taking each episode in turn and examining every onscreen fumble, the only downside was that fans never got to pour over the minutiae of later seasons of DS9 and all of Voyager. But the Nitpicker's Guides were a lot more than ripping the franchise to bits and showing all its missteps. It was written firmly with a tongue planted right at the centre of that cheek and offered both that dissection of the franchise but also quizzes, top tens, and more.
The entertainment value here was huge, made Trekkies kick themselves they'd missed something and could be regularly ticked off on that inevitable series rewatch via the wonders of VHS.
The Nitpicker's Guides expanded fans' experience of watching Star Trek and who can't watch Unification without watching Man Chewing Gum in the Glass Pyramid? Can you ever rewatch All Good Things without realising that the Enterprise isn't responsible for all three inverse tachyon pulses? Probably not thanks to these books.