"The Longest Trek"

The Longest Trek (My Tour of the Galaxy)
-by grace lee whitney
1998
Seen through her own eyes, grace's life is thought-provoking and often horrifying. A stage/screen actress/singer most famous for playing yeoman janice rand on season 1 of STAR TREK, most serious fans know that her life spiraled into drug/sex addiction after she left the show. The book is partly a tale of redemption, as she finally got clean and appeared in several TREK movies, plus one memorable episode of VOYAGER. The book ranges much further than her career, as she shares how her adoption paved the way for the decades she would spend trying to fill the holes inside her, and how her religious upbringing poisoned her sexuality. She reminisces about performing with billie holiday, phil silvers, and marilyn monroe.
The most disturbing part centers on how she left the show. She tells of being raped by one of the show's executives, then a week later finding out she'd been written off. Though she goes into great detail, she refuses to name the assailant. Tellingly, she refers to him as "The Executive". Her conspicuous, continuous use of improper capitalization speaks volumes. Her inference is unmistakable. In addition, she spends an entire chapter refuting gene roddenberry's secular humanist philosophies (though that could just be the result of a fundamentalist's uncomfortable association with a show that takes religion out of humanity's future).
The book is a hopeful testament from a human who has confronted the very worst parts of her dysfunctional past, and dedicated herself to honesty and making amends. So it feels a bit heavy-handed to be critical. But for all the strides she's made in self-awareness, it feels like she still has a long way to go. There are moments when you might find yourself thinking, "grace...are you LISTENING to what you just said?" The great gift of this book is that i feel i understand alcoholics and addicts better than ever. There is a tendency to mystify addiction, to give its victims a certain kind of "free pass", as the physiological/genetic component lends itself to the notion that these people aren't responsible for their behavior. On a certain level, that's probably true...just perhaps not in the way most of us think. We ALL have those holes in our spirits that addicts spend a lifetime trying vainly to fill...indeed, i think ultimately the line between "addict" and non-addict is pretty blurry, if not non-existent altogether. Grace herself is wise enough to point out that the more rabid TREK fans use the show as a lush uses a bottle...the only difference being that STAR TREK doesn't lead to vehicular manslaughter. The blind spot in her awareness is the understanding that her new "clean" life, with her devotion to god and Alcoholics Anonymous, is just another stage of ongoing addiction. God and AA haven't solved her addictions, they've simply replaced them, providing a new escape and a new set of coping mechanisms.
It's fascinating to think of how TREK might have developed had rand never left. Most people aren't aware of how central she was to the original vision. In gene's words, she was the "miss kitty" to shatner's marshal dillon. The book's cover is an early publicity photo featuring just her, bill, and leonard. Although a part of me can't help thinking that it was right to cut janice, as kirk's celebrated (and enjoyable) libido might have been stunted with the presence of an ongoing shipboard romance...yet too, rand was great when she was given the chance, and perhaps a more rand-y TREK would have been less feministly-regressive.
I heartily recommend this book for trekkers and non-trekkers alike. It's a fascinating look into how horrifically broken we all are...yet so unwilling to let our hopes, and our humanity, die.