Rerun dates?

[Treknicalities]

I know there are probably hundreds of places to get the original air dates of the TOS episodes, but I'm looking for information like what was shown on the weeks that NBC pre-empted the show and what were the dates the shows were rerun between seasons.

Any help would really be appreciated.

[ToddPence]

If you don't mind doing a few hours of research, you can visit your local library and check microfilm for the newspapers from 1966 through 1969. The television listing usually say what episode was aired or rerun for a given date.

[Botany Bay]

Welcome to the forum, Treknicalities

TOS history buffs are always welcome here. Hope you enjoy the forum.

Off the top of my head, the only preemption I know of is Turnabout Intruder, which was pushed back several months in 1969 due to the death of former president Eisenhower.

This fantastic website has just joined my bookmarks list - I think it has all the info you're after.

Seems Star Trek was replaced by football games, comedy specials, moon landings, circuses - you name it, Trek got replaced for it

[Treknicalities]

Botany Bay wrote:

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This fantastic website has just joined my bookmarks list - I think it has all the info you're after.

That's exactly what I had in mind! I had seen that same website one time about three months ago but failed to bookmark it. I've been trying for the last month to find it again. This time I've got it bookmarked and I put a shortlink to it on my desktop. I'm considering painting the url on my office wall.

Thanks again.

Seems Star Trek was replaced by football games, comedy specials, moon landings, circuses - you name it, Trek got replaced for it

I can understand replacing the show with a special about the death of a former President, but highlights from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus? NBC just didn't know a good thing when they had it in their hands!

[ToddPence]

It says that NBC planned to air "The Alternative Factor" in February but was "forced at the last minute" to replace it with "Court-Martial". I wonder why?

[Botany Bay]

I noticed that as well!

For years in this forum we've been trying to figure out just what the hell was going on with this episode.

Stuff we know :

• The guy who was supposed to play Lazarus (John Drew Barrymore) disappeared just as the episode began filming. His replacement, Robert Brown was dragged straight to the set to begin filming the minute he signed his contract.
• The show was on such a tight schedule to make its airdates, that had this show been scrapped, the show may have missed its delivery date, and probably would have been cancelled there and then.
• A large chunk of the episode dealt with Masters falling for Lazarus, and helping him steal the crystals. (Check out this great article if you want to know more) But for some reason, at the very last minute this was changed in favour of long, talky scenes between Kirk and Spock, and Lazarus falling off Vasquez rocks multiple times.

Stuff we don't know :

• Who gave the order to change the script.
• Was the order given to cut an interracial romance?
• Now another mystery - why was it not aired as scheduled? Perhaps it was considered so bad that it shouldn't be aired so soon in the show's run?

[ToddPence]

That's not uncommon. I can give you numerous examples of TV shows where an episode filmed early or in the middle of the season, which was considered to be an inferior or poor episode, was held off for airing till the end of the season when ratings don't matter.

[Captain Robert April]

Or, in the case of the first episode filmed, "The Corbomite Maneuver", the effects just weren't ready (and that is one effects-heavy offering).

[Captain Robert April]

Botany Bay wrote:

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This fantastic website has just joined my bookmarks list - I think it has all the info you're after.

Seems Star Trek was replaced by football games, comedy specials, moon landings, circuses - you name it, Trek got replaced for it

Fantastic resource, although there are a couple of omissions, namely "Operation: Annihilate!", the first season finale, and "Friday's Child" on December 1, 1967. Clearly just an oversight on the author's part and easily remedied.

[DeepSpaceWine]

This list is from some website that had the airdates every week for every Star Trek show, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT. I don't know where the site is unfortunately (I copied the actual text a few years ago, but that's on another computer). There's a comprehensive archive somewhere for The Twilight Zone too, including what those pre-emptions were (it was pre-empted in the 1960 summer for political convention coverage).


Something I'm curious about but it seems no one has done is look at what the original schedule was for those few days that everything was pre-empted due to the JFK assassination. It cancelled everything on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I think Monday too. And it shuffled airdates too- everything wasn't postponed by 1 week. The Twilight Zone episode intended to air 11/22/63, "Night Call", aired in Feb 1964, for example. There are rumors the Route 66 ep "I'm Here to Kill a King" was intended to air on 11/22/63, though I haven't been able to verify that (for those who haven't seen it, umm... while it's set at Niagara Falls and involves some arab leader and a twist that didn't occur in the real event, it involves a philosophical wanderer using a rifle to shoot from a grassy hill at around noon). That episode was postponed, airing after the series finale in 1964. I forget which Outer Limits episode was intended for 11/25/63. I think it was "Tourist Attraction" but I can't remember exactly. Someone has to have kept a tv guide from that week somewhere, but I'm not sure if the info in it is online.

That's not uncommon. I can give you numerous examples of TV shows where an episode filmed early or in the middle of the season, which was considered to be an inferior or poor episode, was held off for airing till the end of the season when ratings don't matter.

Yes, this was particularly common back in the 50s/60s. Look at Leave It to Beaver production numbers and their air order. In May or June, you'll see some episodes filmed early in the season air there. In fact, the 2nd to last episode is one of the series' worst episodes. It was filmed at the beginning of the last season. It got less common as season size shrank, meaning there's less of a stock of episodes to pick from if a show thinks an ep is weak.



There are some episodes that get barely salvaged, having a lot of behind the scenes stuff we never really learn about. I know the X-Files episode "Detour" was a trainwreck, taking 19 days to film and being waterlogged for much of the time, they needed to recreate some wooded scenes in a studio and film it there. Of course, X-Files always barely made their airdate, and "Gethsemane" even had differences between the East Coast feed and the Pacific Coast feed of the original broadcast. And there are things that get scrubbed from memory (DS9 "Rules of Aquisition" [no c], and VOY "Basics" having 2 versions circulating around, "Basics" and "Basics, Part l"- VOY always favored "Title" & "Title, Part ll", never "Title, Part l", though they used "Basics, Part l" for the original broadcast in 1996), and the Babylon 5 season 1 finale having a missing effects shot in its original broadcast (Londo walking around some hedges in a small studio instead of in a giant outdoor hedge maze). I know other shows had behind the scenes problems in producing episodes like "The Alternative Factor", with recasting or quickly doing major changes to the script though I'm drawing a blank which series/episodes though.

Oh yeah!! Xena. In Season 2, you'll notice a strange episode where it's Gabrielle & the villain Callisto, but she's acting like Xena. Lucy Lawless had a horse riding accident and broke something, so they quickly modified the ending of another episode (aired back to back but it was produced several eps earlier) so that Xena & Callisto switched bodies for a time and just had the Callisto actress take Xena's part with a few minor dialogue changes and 1 new scene on the end when Lucy Lawless could return to the show. Hercules had something similar. Kevin Sorbo had a shoulder aneurysm in Season 4 so couldn't do much lifting or heavy work, so the supporting cast became the stars of several episodes or they used actors from an associated series (Young Hercules) to film an episode or two. It had a lot less action compared to other seasons and a lot more comedies and episodes with a lot of talking compared to other seasons.

Voyager has a small trace like this, 4 Season 1 episodes being held over for Season 2 and 4 Season 2 episodes held over for Season 3, with Season 3 only having 22 episodes produced (instead of the standard 26). The reason seems to be Paramount thought the 4 episodes would air in June, like how DS9 & TNG aired, but UPN refused to air episodes after the final May sweeps week, thus they were held back. This created a backlog, so instead Season 2 being 30 episodes, they offset 4 Season 2 eps and cut 4 eps from Season 3 (UPN perhaps being cheap and not wanting to pay for 4 "extra" episodes). I have no clue why Voyager Season 5 premiered so late (mid Oct 1998) though. The surrounding premieres were around the beginning of Sept (95, 96, 97), or mid Sept (99), with the 2000-1 season being postponed to early Oct because of avoiding competition with the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Voyager aired 3 episodes in December 1998 (must be a record for Star Trek since TOS). I tried to dig around but couldn't find any record of a reason for the delay. The closest event was a fire/smoke damage on the bridge set, but thst was during the filming of "Bride of Chaotica!" (mid-Season 5 ep). Not sure if anyone knows the answer.

[Elder Knight]

Let me note this before I forget: I seem to recall that the ABC-TV debut of Star Trek III was moved up a few weeks because the NFL was on strike, and they needed to fill the Monday night time slot.

[ToddPence]

DeepSpaceWine wrote:

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There are rumors the Route 66 ep "I'm Here to Kill a King" was intended to air on 11/22/63, though I haven't been able to verify that (for those who haven't seen it, umm... while it's set at Niagara Falls and involves some arab leader and a twist that didn't occur in the real event, it involves a philosophical wanderer using a rifle to shoot from a grassy hill at around noon). That episode was postponed, airing after the series finale in 1964.

To answer DeepSpaceWine's question: "I'm Here to Kill a King" was originally scheduled to air on 11/29/63, the week after the Kennedy assassination. It was pulled for the obvious reasons you described above. The "Route 66" episode which was supposed to air on the fateful day of 11/22 was "Kiss the Monster, Make Him Sleep" guest starring James Coburn. This episode was later aired the following winter. An episode titled "A Cage in Search of a Bird", guest starring Stefanie Powers, aired on 11/29 in place of "King".
I can find no evidence that "I'm Here to Kill a King" ever aired during "Route 66"'s original run. I've heard different claims that the episode aired on Feb. 28 or on Mar. 20, but TV listings published for that date show different episodes scheduled to air. However, the episode did make it into syndication, and the cable station Nick at Night included it in an "Evil Twin Marathon" they ran sometime in the mid-80's.

[Maurice]

Actually, looking at that listing, Star Trek was only pre-empted a few times per season, and usually around the Holiday season and just before or after sweeps. It's be interesting to see how often it was preempted compared to other shows in similar timeslots.