Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story

Yes, to clear this up, I'll explain.
A PRO (performing rights organization) like ASCAP or BMI, the two main PROs in the USA, deal with distributing royalties to composers and lyricists. The royalties have two parts. One half (the writer's share) goes to the composer, composers, and lyricist (if there is one) and is shared evenly by the parties who wrote the piece. Sometimes a big star will record the works of an up-and-coming composer but adds their name to the credit in order to share the royalty. The other half of the royalty payment goes to the publisher. In many cases, the composer has their own publishing company and gets 100% of the royalty.

So in the case of the Trek theme, Sandy Courage wrote the main title music and is entitled to the writer's share of the royalty. Because it was a work-for-hire, as most TV/film scores are, the production company owned the publishing. Delis (later Paramount) got 100% of the publishing royalty. Very typical arrangement. When the show went to series, Roddenberry wrote lyrics (not very good ones) and claimed himself as lyricist, thus making him eligible for 50% of the writer's share, reducing Courage's share to 50%. This was a drag for Courage because he didn't get paid very well for the pilots or the series score that he wrote. It ate into his BMI royalties, although he did well.

That said, Roddenberry made good by using Courages fanfare in TNG for 7 years plus syndication, thereby giving Courage 50% of the TNG theme and Goldsmith the other 50%.

A composition with lyrics will pay a royalty to the lyricist if the words are sung or if just an instrumental.

The words to Trek were never meant to be sung, only meant to give GR another source of income.

 

I have a new post discussing how the series performed in color television households: http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2016/02/star-trek-and-color-television.html

Still working on my piece about second pilot episodes, among others.

 

And today, I have a new post fact-checking the claim that 'Where No Man Has Gone Before' was the first time a television show had a second pilot (or the first time a network ordered a second pilot after rejecting the first one -- it depends on the source):

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2016/04/second-pilot-episodes-before-star-trek.html

 

Once again fascinating and excellent work Harvey.

 

Ok, I'm reading Season Three.

I admit that the books are entertaining to read. That's why it's so irritating to not know what is true or and what isn't. (I'm skipping any discussion of ratings.)

Of course Cushman continues to crash and burn on two subjects: Music and special effects. He again states that Alexander Courage didn't write music for season two. Surely someone had to tell him before this was written that this wasn't the case. Then after stating again how there was this terrible fued with Roddenberry and Courage he offhandedly mentions how it's Courage who comes in at the last moment to score Plato's Stepchildren. What happened to the fued?

As for effects, sometimes he mentions the FX companies using stock footage of the Enterprise, other times he lauds them for new Enterprise footage. Paradise Syndrome is the one I'm thinking of, which is all stock footage. As far as I can tell there is only ONE new shot of the Enterprise in season three and it isn't seen until That Which Survives (which I havn't gotten to yet). My theory is that even this shot was unused footage from season two. This particularly bugs me because if I'm wrong about this I'd like to be corrected. But he's calling out episodes that I KNOW only have stock footage as having new Enterprise shots. So his reputation for being full of it continues.

 

Nice article. The Dick van Dyke show was the first one that came to my mind.

 

Excellent article, Michael.

 

Yep, more myths comprehensively busted. Well done Harvey and other contributors.

At this point my gut tells me Trek getting on the air and staying there owes a huge debt to Herb Solow, his reputation, ability as a salesman and connections in the industry.

 

Quite surprising -- that's a longstanding myth definitively busted.

Also fascinating to see that Vincent Price-Peter Lorre pilot Collector's Item. The Variety item said the first pilot was a comedy-adventure, but the second pilot that survives was definitely not a comedy. Unfortunately, it wasn't very interesting either. It seems a waste to put Price and Lorre together and have the show be about art crimes instead of something more macabre. And Lorre mostly phoned in his performance.

 

Mine, too! I know that after TOS, Three's Company and All in the Family also had multiple pilots.

...Didn't Gilligan's Island have multiple pilots, too? Or was that after TOS? (EDIT: I just checked, and they were filming the pilot in 1963 during JFK's assassination. The series then premiered in September 1964, but it looks like they didn't do a full second pilot. They just made the changes and went straight to series, reusing the pilot scenes where they could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilligan's_Island#Pilot_episode)

I can't imagine what a Double Indemnity television series would've been about. Would the lead character just kill a different woman's husband for the insurance money every week?

 

It only had one pilot, and was bought by the network, but they heavily altered the show prior to full production.


†

 

Isn't that exactly what I said?

 

Maybe the insurance investigator would be the main character, and has to investigate the exact same kind of incident in every episode. I think that would get stale, though.

Kor

 

The Edward G. Robinson character, you mean? I was assuming it'd center on Fred MacMurray's character, but who knows?

 

Yeah, I was thinking of the Edward G. Robinson character, technically a "claims adjuster". I don't think a TV show with a bad guy as the main character would have been OK in those days.

I couldn't think of any TV shows about insurance investigators/adjusters off the top of my head, so I did a quick Google search and came up with "The Investigators" (1961), "Longstreet" (1971-1972), and "Banacek" (part of an anthology show from 1972-1974).

I think the idea is workable; it's really just a more specialized form of detective/procedural story.

Kor

 

Huh. I didn't know that Longstreet or Banacek were about claims adjusters. I thought they were just straight-up detectives (I've heard of, but never watched, either show). Of course, when you think "thrilling detective series" you rarely think "insurance salesman."

 

It would probably follow the investigator handling all sorts of crimes, not just double indemnity cases. Some series keep using a title for name recognition even when it doesn't literally apply to the stories. For instance, the recent Minority Report TV series was a sequel to the movie of that name, but didn't really do any plots that revolved around the kind of "minority report" depicted in the film (except in the finale, to an extent, but it turned out not to be a true minority report). And Friday the 13th: The Series had nothing to do with the date of Friday the 13th, or even with Jason Voorhees. Then there are things like the Pink Panther and Thin Man film series, where the title was kept long after the thing or person it referred to was no longer involved, or TV series that keep their titles after they no longer apply, like Blake's 7 or The 100.

Banacek was part of a "wheel" series rather than an anthology per se. It was part of a mystery movie wheel that was spun off from the wheel that included Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan and Wife -- same idea, different night, different detectives. It didn't do so well in first run, but in the '80s and '90s it was included in the syndication package with those three, so I got to see it several times. It was basically George Peppard being the same smug smartass he was in The A-Team, but with less gunplay and more womanizing.

 

I like listening to old-time radio drama while I'm doing other tasks, and there is one I particularly enjoy called Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, with an insurance investigator as the hero.

It was billed as "the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account - America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator."

That sounds kind of silly now, but it was actually pretty good.

Kor

 

Nate Ford in Leverage was an insurance investigator before the series, and there were a number of episodes involving his former colleagues. White Collar was about the FBI White Collar Crimes Division, but insurance investigator Sarah Ellis was a recurring (and briefly regular) character.

 

"Jacob's Brown's mission is to publish only meticulously-researched historical 'biographies' designed to dispel folklore and shed new light on events from America's pop cultural past."

Oh.

Neil