The prologue describes the approximate outline of the book:

This book would seem to be in the vein of Whitfield's 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek, though its focus is somewhat different. As Gerrold himself notes, Whitfield's book more than adequately covers the details of the production of the series, so Gerrold does not spend too many words repeating these details. The book's opening ("Part One: The First World of Star Trek–Gene Roddenberry's Dream") repeats the familiar details from The Star Trek Guide and the original series format, much like Whitfield's. But where The Making of Star Trek examines how the series's premise works to make a show that could be produced within the constraints of a television budget, The World of Star Trek considers how it enables interesting stories:

Gerrold has some definite ideas about the way stories ought to be told. For example:

The second part of the book ("The Star Trek Family–The People Who Made The Enterprise Fly) generally avoids focusing on the production aspects of the show, considering them adequately covered by Whitfield's book. Instead, the bulk of the text is made up of extended excerpts from interviews with some of the principal figures in Trek: Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, George Takei, and Nichelle Nichols; also included is an interview with William Campbell, who played Trelane in The Squire of Gothos.

The interviews are very interesting, giving a look at how the actors felt about the show and the characters they played. Since these interviews were conducted at a distance of a few years from the show, they make a nice complement to the interviews in The Making of Star Trek, which was published while the show was still in production.

Following the interviews is a complete listing of each Star Trek episode, its writers, and its guest stars. A handy reference, in the days before the internet!

The third part of the book ("The Star Trek Phenomenon") discusses the well-known letter-writing campaign to save Star Trek, organized by , then discusses the fandom more generally, touching on fanzines, conventions, and other details. A very interesting look at how scifi fandom–and especially /Trek* fandom–was organized at the time, and how it was viewed.

In fourth part of the book ("Star Trek Analyzed–The Unfulfilled Potential"), Gerrold examines some of the specific elements that make up Trek episodes, both good and bad. For example, he criticizes Kirk and Spock always going out on dangerous away missions:

Gerrold suggests a specially trained "Contact Team" should be sent on away missions instead. Actually, his idea is a good one, and was vindicated in The Next Generation, years later: Riker was not at all interested in allowing Picard to go out on dangerous away missions, and when Riker was himself in command of the ship he too was reminded by the crew that he was too important to be risked in that way. Better late than never, eh?

The final section of the book ("The return of Star Trek…?") looks at the possibility of the show's return, and gives details on some of Gene Roddenberry's then-upcoming projects: "Spectre", "Questor", "The Tribunes", and "Genesis II". And finally:

I think that the foregoing excerpts give evidence enough that, even if you don't entirely agree with Gerrold's ideas about drama, he has plenty of insightful things to say about Star Trek. And besides being informative, the book is entertaining. The excellent little parody of bad Star Trek plots, "Green Priestesses of the Cosmic Computer", is not to be missed. I know that I gave a pretty strong recommendation of Whitfield's book before, but if you are more interested in the stories of Trek than the production of TV episodes, you might prefer to give that one a miss and read The World of Star Trek instead.

David Gerrold is the author of the TOS episode The Trouble With Tribbles and its sequel, the TAS episode More Tribbles, More Troubles, among other Trek-related work, plus a number of original novels. Published simultaneously with this book was another by Gerrold, The Trouble With Tribbles: The Birth, Sale and Final Production of One Episode.