Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on autobiographical, biographical, historical, and rare archival materials, author Micheal Pounds explores the relationship between Star Trek and ethnic equality, one of America''s most enduring social issues. Using two television series formed around a common vision and produced by the same studio and executive producer (Gene Roddenberry), Race in Space determines the extent to which social attitudes, values, and beliefs about ethnicity have changed during the more than twenty years that separate them. The book begins by examining the history of American television, both as a business and a social institution faced with confronting the civil rights movement-centered demands for reform of employment and images of the African-American. The second half of the book analyzes the principal recurring characters in each Star Trek series and their relationships with other characters, as well as the specific racial themes of certain episodes, and how these episodes represent ethnicity and cultural attitudes both as part of the series, in the contemporary world, and in the larger vision of the future that the series portrays.
Trade ReviewThe value of Race in Space is that the author remembers and takes into account the campaign racial minorities waged to create fully dimensional portraits of themselves within the dominant media. In doing so Pounds presents a history that is all too often overlooked by critics who ignore the social history behind television production in the 1960s...Pounds' coverage of the conflict over racial equity in Hollywood aspires us to pay attention to what was (and is) at stake in the multiracial future to which Star Trek aspires. It also reconstitutes the challenges faced by racial minorities and their white allies in the industry...Pounds' examination of the first two Star Trek series provides a wealth of information and makes a sharp historical argument which helps us mark the similarities and differences between them. The methods that he uses to make his points are a familiar part of the approaches used by historians and sociologists. * Black Camera: An International Film Journal *
