Back in the mid-1990s, Phil Farrand debuted a book, “The Nitpicker’s Guide for Next Generation Trekkers,” which catalogued how often communicators and holodecks didn’t function the same from episode to episode, as well as other incongruities, foibles and oddities. The book was wildly successful and led in short order to nitpicker’s guides for Classic Trekkers, Deep Space Nine, the X-Files and a second volume for the Next Generation.

(NOTE: For some reason, both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have misinformation and display the Volume 2 cover for both books; however, I’ve verified the ISBN numbers. The links above are correct, although whether the resellers offering books through their service realize which one they’re linking to is a good question. I’m contacting Amazon to get them to sort it out.)

As a huge fan of the books, I loved them and was eagerly anticipating further volumes…but they never appeared. I had always wondered why. A few years back I found Farrand’s Nitpicker’s Central online, where people were submitting further nitpicks for the Next Gen movies and episodes as well as other series. I figured he was collecting data and was working on something big…perhaps a revised volume for the complete Next Generation series, even.

Unfortunately, the reason for the ending of the Nitpicker’s Guide series was far more sinister, as revealed in this archived 1998 newsletter post. Shocked by this discovery, I sought out an interview with Phil Farrand so that I could break the story of this seven-year-old occurrence that everyone knew about but me. It’s a tragic tale of the crushing of a successful book franchise by a confluence of an errant judge, an unrelated legal case, the fear of lawsuits and America’s lack of loser-pays laws.

Read on. You will be shocked or at least interested.

Monitor Duty: The reason for nitpicking is obvious, but how did you first get started doing an actual published book about nitpicking Star Trek?

Phil Farrand: I was working on a novel at the time and having no luck getting anyone to look at it. Having no idea how the publishing industry worked I thought that if I could get some other kind of book published I could improve my chances of getting my fiction published. (As I said, that was before I understood how the publishing industry works!) So, I started looking around for a project that I was certain I could get published. I had a contact with a book publisher named Steve Ettlinger who specialized in non-fiction. He was also acting as an agent for a friend of mine. I thought if I could find a good book publishing project that was non-fiction, I could get him to represent me. At the same time, my buddies and I were nitpicking Star Trek: The Next Generation. It started with the communicators because we couldn’t figure out if you needed to hit them or not to open the channel. Of course, once we started, the nitpicking quickly spread to everything about the show. And it was fun–really, really fun! Not because we didn’t like the show but because we really did enjoy the show. Then, one day, everything just clicked into place and I thought that there had to be other people out there nitpicking and if there were maybe they would be interested in reading a Nitpicker’s Guide. One thing lead to another, I teamed up with Steve, he found an senior editor at Dell Trade Paperbacks, named Jeanne Cavelos, who was very interested in the project and the Nitpicker’s Guide for Next Generation Trekkers was born.

Monitor Duty: Were there any legal concerns when you first started?

Phil Farrand: Copyright law allows for works based on other copyrighted material for the purpose of analysis and critique. Dell’s lawyer provided us with certain guidelines that we follow and we never had any problems. (Sorry to be so vague.)

Monitor Duty: What is your favorite nitpick, out of all the goofs, flubs and oddities you’ve found?

Phil Farrand: My favorite is in the guide that was never published: The Star Wars Nitpicker’s Guide. There’s a scene in Episode IV: A New Hope where storm troopers march into a room that houses C3PO and R2D2. One of the storm troopers apparently hasn’t figured out that he’s too tall for the doors on the Death Star and he cracks his helmet on the top of the doorway, staggers for a moment and then keeps marching in!

Monitor Duty: Have you ever attended Star Trek conventions? If so, do you still attend them?

Phil Farrand: When I was writing the first Nitpicker’s Guide I was concerned that if I went to a convention I’d end up with a Klingon dagger in my back but five minutes after I started my first presentation I knew I was among friends! One thing that always helped was the fact that I took my research for the Guides very seriously. I would watch the shows so many times that by the time the book was finished I could practically quote the dialog word for word. That always gave me credibility with the convention crowds. They knew I was a fellow fan. When the Guides ended, I became very busy, very quickly. I haven’t been to a convention for many years.

Monitor Duty: What book were you working on when you were told there couldn’t be any more new Nitpicker guides?

Phil Farrand: The aforementioned Nitpicker’s Guide to Star Wars. (We hadn’t come up with the final title yet.)

Monitor Duty: Let me see if I can summarize the reason you stopped doing Nitpicker Guides, as best as I can from what you wrote back in 1998. The books had been going fine, without any legal challenges due to existing “fair use” guidelines. Then someone was going to publish an unauthorized guide to Godzilla timed to debut when the major American Godzilla movie appeared, and the moviemakers sued. They wanted to ensure that if anyone made book profits from the Godzilla movie, it was them. Unbelievably, a judge found in their favor and prevented the book’s release. This set a new legal precedent, and almost immediately Paramount sued the makers of another Trek book, “The Joy of Trek” for a whopping $22 million. The possibility of being sued for more money than the book could possibly earn scared most publishing houses and they started avoiding all such unofficial books with ties to trademarks for that reason. And so, even though Paramount hadn’t made any threats towards your book, your publisher said they couldn’t do any more Nitpicker guides. Is that essentially it?

Phil Farrand: That’s essentially it but with a few caveats. From what I understand of the unauthorized Godzilla guide, it had detailed plot synopses and pictures which was a violation of the copyright law. I’ve never read the Joy of Trek so I can’t comment on the legality of its approach but I did speak with the author of that book and he told me that during his trial, Paramount’s lawyers held up a copy of the Nitpicker’s Guide and said that it was an example of what was legal. As far as the publishers go, book publishing is a difficult business and it really didn’t matter whether or not the Nitpicker’s Guides were legal or not, the only question was: Was it likely that Dell Trade Paperbacks would get sued if they continued to published the guides because simply defending a lawsuit had the potential to cost more than the projected profits of the book.

Monitor Duty: Has anything happened in the ensuing 7 years to change that new status quo?

Phil Farrand: Not that I know of but I have been out of the business for many years!

Monitor Duty: You seem to be taking it all rather well. Is that just the passing of time, or something else?

Phil Farrand: It was a wonderful time in my life but I do have other employable skills! I originally wrote the Guides to make it easier for me to get my fiction published. (That’s because I didn’t know how the publishing industry worked.) What I learned is that it really didn’t matter how copies of the Nitpicker’s Guide sold, it wasn’t going to help me get my fiction published. In the publishing industry, you are “only as good as your last book in the genre of that book.” So, if you write Nitpicker’s Guides and you try to get fiction published, you are treated nearly the same as someone who has never had a novel published.

Monitor Duty: Do the Guides that are already published still sell well enough to show continued interest?

Phil Farrand: All of the guides are out of print at this point. [EDITOR’S NOTE: While they are no longer being printed, they are still widely available.]

Monitor Duty: What were you planning to do if the Guides hadn’t been quashed? Collected revised volumes? Other TV shows? Movies?

Phil Farrand: As I’ve said, the Star Wars guide was on the schedule and there was talk of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer guide.

Monitor Duty: What are you doing currently?

Phil Farrand: I work as an independent computer consultant and thankfully, I stay busy!

Monitor Duty: Are you looking into self-publishing anything?

Phil Farrand: I kept working on that original novel all through the years of writing the Nitpicker’s Guides, showing it to the editors at Dell Trade Paperbacks, revising it, etc. At one point, one of the editors did tell me it was publishable but that it was too long for most publishers to take a chance on a first-time novelist. So, I let it sit on my shelf for five years and finally got tired of that and self-published it last year. It’s called “The Son, the Wind and the Reign” and it’s available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Monitor Duty: How would you describe “The Son, The Wind and the Reign“?

Phil Farrand: Well…the tag lines are: “It’s a new millennium. Jesus Christ and his followers have returned to rule the earth with a rod of iron for a thousand years. Or, have they. And, how would you know the difference between aliens and the divine?” “The Son, the Wind and the Reign” is a novel about belief. If fact, it is a novel specifically designed to expose the beliefs of the reader. I don’t write to entertain. I write to evoke discussion. So–while the book is well-written–it requires a certain commitment and mental stamina on the part of the reader. (I don’t expect to be popular as a novelist. I’m just hoping to make my readers think.

Monitor Duty: Are there any series besides Star Trek that you’d still love to tackle?

Phil Farrand: At this point, if I was going to spend time writing anything, I’d work on my own fiction because I have several universes queued up in my head waiting to be written. (I just keep tell the characters in those books to be quiet and be patient. My plan is to make as much money as I can as a computer consultant and retire early and write.

Monitor Duty: If publishers approached you today to say that there weren’t any legal concerns anymore and they wanted more Nitpicker’s Guides, would you be interested in doing them or is that all behind you?

Phil Farrand: Doing the guides was a blast but I don’t know that it would have ever allowed me to reach my goal of being a full-time novelist. On the other hand, computer consulting is a lucrative business. Certainly, writing Guides is a whole lot easier but I’m not the kind of person that does what it easy.

Monitor Duty: What was the best thing to come out of your years of doing the Nitpicker’s Guides?

Phil Farrand: Each of the guides took approximately seven months to write, leaving me five months to work on my fiction. And, the Guides gave me access to several editors at Bantam Double Day Dell. It was their suggestions and guidance that helped my find my “voice” as a writer. (Of course, given that I’ve been out of writing for so long, my writing chops are in horrible shape but it would only take me six months or so to get back up to speed.) Beyond that though, writing the Guides allowed me to meet lots and lots of great people, including actors from the show. I spent an afternoon signing autographs next to Chase Masterson and another next to John DeLancie. I’ve met nitpickers from California to New York. It was a fantastic ride.

Monitor Duty: Finally, as a nitpicker, what are your feelings towards Mystery Science Theater 3000?

Phil Farrand: I haven’t seen the show in many, many years but when it was on in the early days, it was fabulous!

Thank you very much, Mr. Farrand, for the interview.
NOTE: In the above interview, Mr. Farrand’s text has only been edited only in the correction of small grammatical typos. All emphasis markings (bolds, italics and links) are mine.