Not-actually-sorry to do two PDF Hobbies in a row, but I found the original (and Next Generation) Star Trek internal writers’ guides online and they are too good not to share. Disclaimer: I am not 100% conversant in the lore, because I am only an entry-level Star Trek nerd insofar as I’ve only watched, like, three of the series and six or seven of the movies and gone to Star Trek: The Experience and Star Trek: The Exhibition and read a bunch of the books and the in-universe technical manual and also I was Data in a LARP that one time. So I’m not, like, a serious fan. That might sound like a humblebrag if you haven’t met a serious fan.

(Also not-actually-sorry that the post image is a little blurry, because it’s a photo of Jupiter and its moons that I took from my backyard and taking it was more than just a photo op. Most of what you learn about other planets feels very abstracted, like reading about molecules or the Earth’s core; I don’t doubt that people with fancy instruments and fancy math have proven their existence logically, but they’re not quite real to me the way that houses and trees are real. It felt like a revelation to look up and zoom in and see, not just a point of light, but clouds and moons and it’s right there, it’s a real place, you can see the color of the clouds, this isn’t some artist’s impression of blips on a radio telescope, it’s a thing that exists in the same world as me.)

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The 1967 Star Trek Guide is a fascinating mix of sci-fi ambition, television-producer practicality, and a cagey statement on page 29 that stories should not be set on Earth because “television today simply will not let us get into details of Earth’s politics of STAR TREK’s century; for example, which socio-economic system ultimately worked out best.”

It starts with several reminders that Star Trek is a story about people, not technology, and they would rather have the technology be a bit glossed-over than have the characters’ actions ring false. You see that, picky nerds? They did it on purpose! Because emotional impact is the important part! And you know, what, emotional impact is the important part to you if you’re watching Star Trek and not a physics lecture!

The document gives exact numbers on warp factors (they increase geometrically, not linearly), but then tells writers that a “Stardate” is whatever XXXX.X number they feel like using. Also, the Enterprise is not allowed to land on a planet, leave the galaxy, or explain exactly what sensors it has or how they work. Spacewalks are only allowed under exceptional circumstances because, the document explains, the production does not own any spacesuit costumes.

A similar practicality comes up when the document suggests that some nice settings for a planet might be a jungle because they have that on the backlot, or maybe a nice local park. The Enterprise’s artificial gravity never fails and almost all aliens look like slightly modified humans, because c’mon folks we’re not made of money. The available sets are listed out – there’s a lot that were re-dressed to be different locations as needed, like all the crew and passenger quarters being the same room. The shuttle hangar deck is only allowed if you really make a good case for it because the effects it requires are expensive.

The character summaries are mostly things we all already know and love (via cultural osmosis, even if you haven’t seen the show), albeit with some weird comments on the characters’ ethnicities. Kirk is specifically not meant to put space-babe kissing above his duties (though he is prone to “unwise romantic liason[s]”). Sulu is meant to be so American that he finds Asians “inscrutable.” Scotty’s accent “drips of heather and the Highlands.” Uhura is from the “United States of Africa” and off duty is a “warm, highly female female.” Yeomans are “played by a succession of young actresses, always lovely.” TBF it’s still wildly progressive by the standards of white people in 1967: there’s a requirement that extras be racially diverse and that female crewmen are to be “treated co-equal with males of the same rank, and the same level of efficient performance is expected.”

(“Crewman” is still the canonical term regardless of gender, just as female officers on Star Trek are often addressed as “Sir.”)

The document ends with a Q&A:

Q: Are you people on LSD?

A: We tried, but we couldn’t keep it lit.

(And then the PDF has a second TOS writers’ guide which is mostly the same as the first, but undated. I guess it’s a revision? IDK. I’m not going over it in depth because it’s 90% the same. It does mention that the name “phaser” was chosen for their weapons because lasers might become household objects soon, and they thought it wouldn’t feel futurey enough if the audience could say “you mean the thing I use to annoy the cat?”)

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The Next Generation Writers/Directors Guide, from 1987, has a similar guiding philosophy – human relationships are the most important thing, technology exists to support the plot.

The character profiles are again pretty expected, although it’s before the beginning of the first season so Picard has a French accent, Data was made by “unknown aliens”, Tasha Yar is still around, and Wesley Crusher isn’t an ensign yet, he’s just one of the many children that the Enterprise-D insists on hauling into active war zones. (The document actually notes that Picard isn’t comfortable with this, but, like, not to the point that it stops him flying a kindergarten right up to a wide variety of wibbly-wobbly swirly things in space.)

There’s a list of stories that are not allowed: nothing involving TOS characters, no “swords and sorcery,” nothing melodramatic, no stories with Vulcans, no stories with mad scientists, no stories where Starfleet technology fails… okay so they ended up violating all of these, but, you know, it’s a framework. They also forbid stories about psychic powers and then immediately remember Deanna Troi exists and sorta mumble why that doesn’t count. I do appreciate that they explicitly forbid “stories which cast our people and our vessel in the role of ‘galaxy policemen” […] nor is our mission that of spreading 20th century Euro/American cultural values throughout the galaxy.”

They do have Stardates a little more organized this time; they have to start with 41, and have to be in chronological order across a season. The document notes that having everyone wearing a combadge all the time makes it harder to create conflict, then heavily hints that maybe the combadges could be blocked by something? Like maybe all the time? Like maybe whenever anything happens?

There’s a lot more sets available than TOS, although all the quarters are still one set with the decor shuffled around. The bridge is described in such granular detail it tells you where the bathroom is. (Out the door to stage right.)

Then there’s more character detail, featuring this aside: “Women of the 24th century consider a man in his early fifties like Picard [as] having just entered his best years. Active duty Starfleet males (and females, for that matter) have the double attractiveness of being in prime physical condition usually though their seventies, and being more aware [than] most humans of the rich variety of personal relationships.” Gene Roddenberry was, at the time he wrote this, 66 years old.

Then we get a weird bit about how Riker is a little too committed to “sexual equality” and needs to learn more about how different women are from men.

“Data” is specified to rhyme with “that-a,” which, well, that didn’t stick. Most of his backstory ended up being different from what the guide lays out – he was supposed to have been created by aliens and to contain all the memories of all the members of “a doomed Earth-Asian space colony.” But the guide is consistent about what really matters – the words “fully functional” are underlined.

We do not learn what Deanna Troi’s accent is supposed to be or why everyone else gets a uniform but she has to wear an adult onesie.

The description of Tasha Yar is… I’m just going to quote this: “Tasha’s (unspecified) Ukrainian descent gives her an unusual quality of conditioned-body beauty that would have flabbergasted males of a few centuries earlier. With fire in her eyes and a muscularly well-developed and very female body, she is capable of pinning most crewmen to the mat — or being just an exciting sensual and intellectual challenge to males who enjoy (win or lose) full equality between the genders.”

Geordi is described as having kinship with Data because they both want to be fully human, which wow, kinda harsh. I always thought their friendship was more of a “they’ve both got Engineer Brain” thing.

wesley crusher is the smartest and bestest and most specialest boy ever

There’s a lot more detail about the technology, but writers are still not supposed to explain anything about the sensors. SensORs do whatever the hell you need them to do and that’s canon. Also, photon torpedos are actually little bottles of antimatter, which is very cool, even if it doesn’t explain why they usually hit with the force of maybe a hand grenade.

We close with some accurate-enough real-life space facts, noting that we still can’t leave the galaxy because even at Warp 10 it would take 300,000 years to get to Andromeda.

(Whether this is true depends heavily on what “Warp 10” means, which has been inconsistent. If we go off the TOS guide where Warp 1 is c, Warp 2 is 8c, Warp 3 is 24c, Warp 4 is 64c… that’s not really a geometric progression is it? Okay, assuming 24 is a typo and it should be 27c, warp 10 is 1000c and will get us to Andromeda in 2500 years. Well, that’s still a long time.)

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If you’ve actually read this far, thank you for accompanying me on this indulgent nerd ramble. I am still available to play Data as I am extremely good at saying socially inappropriate things.