Phil Farrand (born November 5, 1958) is an American computer programmer and consultant, webmaster and author. He is known for his Nitpicker's Guides, in which he nitpicks plot holes and continuity errors in the various Star Trek television programs and movies, and for the creation of Nitcentral, a website devoted to the same activity. Subsequent to his Nitpicker's Guides, he has ventured into fiction as a novelist.
Early life
Farrand was born in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and grew up in the Philippines, where his parents were missionaries for Assemblies of God. He first became interested in the original Star Trek as a child. After returning to the United States, Farrand earned bachelor's degrees in piano performance and music composition.
Career
Music
Farrand worked as a music editor, but became frustrated with working with music printed on paper, and worked for two years on a notation package for the Apple II series of computers, which later became Polywriter. Later, working with Coda Music Technology, Farrand created an award-winning, high-end desktop publishing software package for music notation called Finale. Now owned by MakeMusic, Finale won Best Book/Video/Software at the 2015 Music & Sound Awards and has been used to score films such as Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, Spider-Man 2, Sideways, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Passion of the Christ, Ratatouille, and Michael Clayton.
As a nitpicker
Farrand first became a Star Trek nitpicker when watching a scene in the 1990 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Offspring. In the scene, the character Wesley Crusher speaks to his mother, Dr. Beverly Crusher using his communicator badge. After responding to Dr. Crusher's reminder to get a haircut, Wesley utters a sarcastic remark, but without tapping his comm badge to terminate the connection, leading Farrand to wonder if Dr. Crusher heard the remark. This sparked a spirited discussion between Farrand and his Trekker friend as to how the communicators worked, and the inconsistencies in their depicted usage in the series.
In 1990, Farrand decided to try writing fiction, but could not find anyone to read his work. Because the only agent willing to represent him dealt only with nonfiction works, Farrand decided to attempt writing nonfiction in order to develop a reputation on which a career writing fiction could be based. A book producer liked Farrand's idea for a Next Generation nitpicker's guide, and so Farrand spent two years conducting careful analysis of the first six seasons of that series, spending eight to nine hours a day for months watching each episode multiple times, composing a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the plot holes, continuity errors and other trivia in the series. In 1993 Dell Publishing published the first guide, The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers. By 1994 nearly 800,000 copies had been sold, and four printings published. From 1994 to 1997, similar guides followed annually, including Guides for Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The X-Files, along with a second Next Generation volume. Watching the episodes and movies of each series in order to compile each Guide took about seven months, leaving Farrand five months out of the year to learn how to write fiction. Although exhaustive in their attention to detail, the Guides were not intended as critiques of the series' episodes or movies, but lighthearted musings that Farrand explained with the philosophy, "All nitpickers shall perform their duties with lightheartedness and good cheer," explaining that nitpicking should be about having fun with one's favorite television shows, not pointing fingers and assigning blame.