Star Trek: Action!

23,719 That's how many minutes have been committed to film during the thirty-year-- and counting-- history of Star Trek. Since its inception as a groundbreaking show, through its current incarnations on television and as a series of motion pictures, more than 395 hours of Star Trek have been filmed. If you watch it all consecutively, you'd be glued to your television set around the clock for more than 16 days.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to create just one sequence of scenes that can last as little as a minute or two? Minutes may not seem like a lot out of thirty years' worth of science fiction magic, but for the thousands of men and women both in front of and behind the cameras, each and every one of those minutes has been a labor of love, blood, sweat, and tears, all created without a net.

With the author as our guide, we will follow the creation of three separate sequences-- one each from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and the upcoming motion picture Star Trek: Insurrection. From the first meetings of the writers to the preproduction meetings, from the concept sketches to the realized set, from the early morning makeup session to the bleary-eyed midnight shooting the author has been there. Peering over the shoulders of the writers, the filmmakers, the graphic artists, and the visual-effects wizards, the author reports each Herculean task as it is accomplished. "Action!" takes you there for each moment.

After reading "Action!", an utterly unique work, you will never watch Star Trek quite the same way again. (Oh, and in case you haven't timed this, it took you about two minutes to read this flap copy.)