More successful has been Bantam Books' series of Star Trek novels that has about 3.4 million copies in print. Based on scripts from the show, six books have already been published and another is scheduled to go to press soon. The most popular book on the series, "The Making of Star Trek," describes many of the problems in creating the show. In its ninth printing, the book has sold 438,000 copies.

TRADE IN Star Trek memorabilia is brisk, and even the Smithsonian Institute has gotten into the game, securing a copy of the pilot show and several props. For the noninstitutional collector-investor, film clips are highly popular and those showing the usually stoic Mr. Spock smiling are worth their weight in Martian gold. (Publicity photos are also popular, but some of the more ambitious fans photograph the show for themselves while it's on their television screens. Another big seller is sound recordings of the show, and Trekies have been known to memorize entire scripts. Most popular, however, are the properties from the show.) "I'd love to have one of the uniforms, but I can't afford it," lamented one fan. "Leonard Nimoy's shirt went for $200."

Not surprisingly, Star Trek fans have organized into clubs all across the country. The largest, STAR (Star Trek Association for Revival), started only last year but already has a membership of over 4000. "The majority of our members are under twenty-five," said Jan Donaldson, a member of the group, "but a lot of our members are doctors, lawyers and professors."

Besides meeting through clubs, Star Trek fans come together at mammoth Star Trek conventions. At a Star Trek convention in New York last year the sponsors expected 800 Trekies but after 3000 showed up they stopped counting. This weekend the city of Santa Barbara, Calif, is bracing itself for the onslaught of 10,000 Star Trek aficionados.

Conventions are devoted to discussion groups and lectures as well as to showings of Star Trek clips and episodes. Trading among fans takes place at the Trading Post area, named after a section of the Enterprise, and participants often dress as characters from the series.

All of this has great marketing appeal, and it was only a matter of time before the stations that own rerun rights to the show began to cash in on it. For example, the Kaiser Broadcasting chain, which owns rights to the show in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit, gave its own Star Trek conventions as part of its fall promotion campaign for the show. In addition, the chain is taking heed of fan complaints and suggestions: it owns the series unedited and in the same order as NBC did. (A common complaint is that callous station managers have butchered the reruns by editing or cutting vital parts in order to squeeze in more commercials.)

With so much interest in the show and with all of its marketing possibilities it is hard to believe that NBC cancelled the show, yet it did. A collection of charges and counter charges surrounds the network's decision to axe Star Trek. "When you're working in television," said NBC Vice President Stanley Robertson, "you've got to realize that some shows are going to make it and some aren't. Star Trek was never a hard core success in the ratings, and we would have been justified in cutting the show after the first season."

Trekies, however, see the situation differently. "The advertising types at NBC," said Bjo Trimble, "are afraid of anything that doesn't fit into a formula. The show scared them. They said it couldn't last, and they had to kill it to prove it couldn't last."

Fans maintain that the constant juggling of the show's time slot was the reason it failed to gain good ratings.

NBC denies this charge. "We kept switching it to save the show," Robertson said. 'NBC is not in the business of not being successful. We all liked Star Trek and we wanted to see if the show could do better in a different time slot."

But besides network and rating problems, Star Trek also had internal troubles. Throughout the first season Roddenberry kept firm control of the show, but talk of cancellation prompted him to take more of a background role during the second season. "I told them I would continue to produce it only if we could get a reasonable time slot," he said. "But I couldn't budge them, and I had no choice but to live up to my promise."

After Roddenberry left, Fred Frieburger, whose previous television experience consisted mainly of the short-lived Ironhorse series, was called in to run the show. Two separate sources say that Frieburger's first contact with Star Trek was when network executives locked him into a screening room and made him watch eight or nine hours of the program. "Most of Frieburger's scripts were due to nepotism, favors he owed people. Some of that stuff was so bad it made me ashamed to be a fan," says Bjo Trimble who followed the switch closely. "It literally killed the show."

NONETHELESS, SOON after NBC cancelled Star Trek it was picked up by the local stations where it began to build an even larger audience. This audience has grown to such an extent that people in the industry are now talking about reviving the show. Foremost among the lobbyists for the return of Star Trek is Roddenberry. "I feel sure something will happen," he said with an air of confidence. "We've talked about a lot of things. Maybe a feature length movie, maybe a movie for television, and maybe a television series."

But talks with NBC have already come to a screeching halt because the network wants Roddenberry to do a pilot episode for the series. "Hell, I've got 78 in the can, and I'm not going to do a seventy-ninth," Roddenberry said. "Having made 78 it's not reasonable to ask me to make the investment necessary to do a seventy-ninth."

Robertson and the people at NBC in the meantime are playing things cool, and attempting to maintain an air of disinterestedness. "We've discussed possibilities," Robertson said, "but NBC has no financial or contractual arrangement for the return of Star Trek."

The people at Paramount are more enthusiastic. "The chances of bringing it back as a television series are pretty remote, but a movie is a definite possibility," said Robert Newgard, vice-president of network and syndication sales at Paramount. "The problem is that we don't know if people who watch Star Trek on TV are willing to go to the movies to see it." It appears, however, that Paramount has not made any hard decisions yet.

In the meantime, Star Trek fans seem fairly content watching reruns. Even if Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise must visit the same planets over and over again, the Trekies demand that the show go on. Says Kaiser Broadcasting executive Barry Thurston, "This program will never die. It's a classic."

At a Star Trek convention in New York last year the sponsors expected 800 Trekies, but after 3000 showed up they stopped counting. This weekend the city of Santa Barbara is bracing itself for the onslaught of 10,000 Star Trek aficionados.