Gary 7 spinoff?

My wife and I watched ASSIGNMENT EARTH last night, just before HELL's KITCHEN, and we really like that episode. We all know that it was a backdoor pilot to a possible spinoff show...but then I got to wondering; why? Even by the end of SEASON TWO, Star Trek was a ratings flop. And yet NBC was willing to roll the dice on a sequel?

I also wonder, had the GARY 7 show gone forward (and looked lot more cheaper to produce than TREK) if NBC would have just cancelled Season 3 and gone with Gary-7 and if Roddenberry would have been okay with that...my gut tells me "YES". Roddenberry would have thrown TREK under the bus if it meant he could do GARY 7 show.

What do you think???

Rob

 

Would you really say it was a "ratings flop"? My recollection is that while it didn't have great ratings, it wasn't a flop. If it had been a flop, no letter-writing campaign would have been enough to save it.

 

I am not sure where I read this..but I think the highest rated episode of TREK was CITY..and it was like #28 or something like that. The show was almost cancelled because of low ratings and only the letter campaign saved it. But from what I have read through the years, shatner-nimoy books and others, it wasn't a hit in the way they gathered ratings in those days...

Rob

 

Or maybe like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH8h_FxVWts

 

THAT is funny! Pretty good timing of the video with the theme music, too.

 

Excellent mock-up of an Assignment Earth TV series intro. I couldn't find enough details from the comments about the theme music. I wonder if the submitter created it or borrowed it from some other period work. It definitely goes well with it... kind of a Man from U.N.C.L.E. flavor.

Personally, I think it would have been a good show if talented writers could have been found. Certainly the actors were "just right" for the roles. Plenty of material, especially with the Cold War still on. Kind of a "Mission Impossible" but with a "friendly alien" stepping in with superior technology to dispense with the baddies. And a little hint of James Bond, too.

 

That was pretty cool...I am really impressed with how imaginative some of us fans are...

Rob

 

IIRC, it was originally a show without a connection to Star Trek. Roddenberry reworked the pilot's script into a Star Trek episode as a way to sell the show to NBC. Sorta like changing Majel's hair color and recasting her in a different role after the network said dump her

 

^That's what I understood to be the case, too.

 

But if it had sold, had they used ASSIGNMENT EARTH as a 'pilot' and had sold it to NBC, I think TREK would have been cancelled,because of its cost, and they would have gone with GARY SEVEN simply because it looked like a cheaper show to do....

I contend that by not selling GARY SEVEN, STAR TREK got one year of life...even if it was the must derided season three...

Rob

 

But why would they have to pick one over the other?

 

Yeah, I'm sure Star Trek wasn't the only show NBC could have canceled that year.

 

Because, at that time, they had already axed TOS because its lack of ratings. Had they given Roddenberry a choice, one or the other, I think he would have ditched TOS for many reasons; budgets being one, and increasing friction between him and Shatner/Nimoy....sure, the letter campaign saved it for a third season..a third season that Roddenberry was MIA for and suffered in quality as well...

IMO of course..

Rob

 

I think he would be more than happy to cash two paychecks.

 

Networks generally don't do spinoffs of flops, they do spinoffs of shows that are either hits or have the potential to become hits. For instance, Battlestar Galactica finished the season in the top 25, which ain't bad. It just wasn't good enough in 1980 to justify $1 million an episode. Galactica 1980 was a misguided attempt to cash in on what success Galactica had generated, only at a greatly reduced cost (the move to early Sunday evenings, and the restrictions that the FCC put on shows in that timeslot, coupled with Glen Larsen just not caring anymore, only served to seal the show's doom).

With that in mind, NBC still felt they had something with Star Trek. Not quite sure what, but they knew they had something (if they'd started going with the demographic numbers a year earlier, they'd have known what they had, namely the Number One show on television with the soon-to-be-hotly-desired 18-34 year old male segment of the audience). So NBC showing interest in possible spinoffs show that they still had some faith in Star Trek at some level (supposedly, there was also interest in a "Harry Mudd: Space Pirate" spinoff, but it didn't go anywhere; Roger Carmel didn't hear about it himself until several years later, when Roddenberry told him about it).

 

Does this include the recent mini-series from IDW Publishing with nice art by writer/artist John Byrne.

Try this link and see if that's what you're looking for.
http://www.trekweb.com/articles/200...-Assignment-Earth-Comic-Book-MiniSeries.shtml