So. It's been precisely three years since this blog debuted, and just over two since my last post.
Time for an update.
I've not been slacking on the Trek front since getting to the end of the first six first seasons. What's been taking up my time since then is adapting some of my posts into the first Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations book. This will cover the first season of TOS. That might seem like an odd choice, given the defiantly achronological nature of the blog. What can I say, though? There was no chance I could present the whole blog to date in a single volume - we're talking about a third of a million words or more. I considered doing a book on, say, the first five episodes of each season, but a) that's a bit of an odd structure, and b) it doesn't futureproof IDFC in the way going season by season will. I'm not going to be ignoring my approach completely; once the TOS Season 1 book is done I'll move on to a (doubtlessly much shorter) book on the first year of The Animated Series. Eventually the episode-by-episode series comparisons will live again, there just won't be any of that in the first book.
So what is in there? Well, there's a little room for movement on that, given the book isn't quite finished yet. It is currently 90% done, though, so I can say quite a bit. It's looking like it'll weigh in at around 300 pages, and include:
My essays on all 29 of the episodes in TOS Season 1, each and every one revised and expanded;
A significantly reworked essay on the season as a whole, to compensate for the change in ordering focus;
Five entirely new essays, one each on "The Cage", The Motion Picture, the first two spin-off titles for the franchise (Star Trek 1 and the Gold Key Trek comics), an analysis of what debt Trek owes to Irwin Allen, and (my personal favourite) a piece on how to conceive of believability in science-fiction, with reference to both legal theory and the laws of probability.
At the rate I'm going, I'll have the book done before the year is out. How it ultimately gets out into the world in terms of format/publication, I'm not yet sure on (though I assume I'll be self-publishing; this feels way too personal and quixotic a project to ask anyone else to spend money on). Hopefully, though, some time in 2025, Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 1.1 will be an actual thing you can pay actual money for.
That's not all, though. As I say, once that book's done, I'll be making a start on the second, but I don't want that to be all I'm doing, Trek-wise. Since I started this project, five new shows have debuted, with a sixth on the way. That's a lot of additional S1s for me to get my teeth into. Starting from New Year's Day 2025, then, I'll be releasing a new essay on the site on the 1st of each month, running through the first seasons of Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds (if Starfleet Academy debuts early enough for me to have a piece on its premiere ready for 1st June, I'll slot that in too, but I'm not expecting that to happen). This is, I realise, an absolutely glacial release pace - it'll take more than five years to do, and Prophets know how many more shows will have got going by then - but I've always been a slow writer, and I'm getting steadily slower. Much better to do it right (and avoid a breakdown) than rush through it. Maybe I can speed up once I get the TAS book done, though that will depend on how much motivation (including financial, wink wink) I have to move straight on to a book about TNG Season 1.
So that's the plan. I might have more updates on the book this year, but if not, I'll see you all on Wednesday 1st January 2025, and a look at "The Vulcan Hello".
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