Anyone receive "These Are The Voyages..." Season 2 yet?

I am not getting that vibe at all that NBC was out to deliberately screw it's own show. I think they were just not gong to go out of their way for a moderately successful show whose producer was a pain in the tail to deal with. Robertson and the Genes were not always seeing eye to eye on stories. The problem was the stories Robertson was pushing for were expensive. It was a catch 22

-Chris

 

The problem was they sold the show on the basis of the "strange new worlds" concept which they subsequently could not afford to deliver weekly. That's hardly NBC's fault.

 

Yes, but the "strange new worlds" was but one of the three parts of the stated mission in the teaser. What about "seeking out new life and new civilizations" and "boldly going where no man has gone before" neither which necessarily requires a visit to a planet. Honestly for me it never bothered me when they did bottle shows. Although the "strange new worlds" concept may have been part of the sales pitch to NBC; for the viewers I'm not sure that they cared. Some of my favorite episodes are the bottle shows.

 

I'd have to look at the pitch document again, but I believe the language you're talking about wasn't written until the last minute in 1966, right before the series debuted.

 

Harvey's correct. The title monologue wasn't added until after the second pilot, and the original pitch does lean pretty heavily on the planet of the week concept.

 

Indeed, the preamble was penned so late in the game the first episode aired without it.

 

As far as I know, it appeared at the top of "The Man Trap" in 1966.

 

You're right, my bad, it was Where No Man Has Gone Before that did not have the preamble.

Here's a link to the full episode if anyone wishes to (not) hear it for themselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXuRfmApREc

 

To the best of my knowledge Shatner's narrative was absent only in WNMHGB.

 

This is not my quote.

 

That's what the Solow/Justman book indicated... they had to keep after GR to write the intro up to a month before premier week.

 

Sorry about that. Sloppy quote tag editing on my part...

M.

 

Oh, I love the in-character letters that Kelly and Nimoy wrote to Spockinalia! Hysterical!

 

Interesting, Star Trek beat 2001 in airing a story about a computer controlled ship trying to kill people to preserve its existence.


-Chris

 

Arrived yesterday. Was planning on saving it for a long plane trip, but ended up reading a quarter of it last night. Oops.

Initial impressions :

Once again a mountain of scripts and memos were analysed and if you are a student of writing you will really enjoy tracing the evolution of the scripts and judging for yourself whether changes were for the better or not.

Presentation of the written text is a lot better this time. There's still typos, but not as many so far. Unfortunately the referencing is a shambles again here. I would love to know what went wrong. It won't bother many fans, but if you are interested in finding sources for assertions, you will be frustrated.

The author is of the belief that Star Trek was a smash hit that was cruelled by a network who didn't like Roddenberry. He hasn't made the case for me yet, but this argument is infused through the text, which may or may not bother you.

Justman's memos steal the show again. Some of them are truly hilarious. What an asset he was to that show.

This volume is worth a buy for the detailed script evolutions and the rare photos (although they are black and white), but if the other points above will bother you, wait for the e-book.

 

I don't think that he thought Trek was a smash hit, he is just showing it wasn't the ratings disaster that people made it out to be in the 70s and 80s. Yes, the narrative is that one of the big checks against Trek was that NBC was getting fed up in dealing with Roddenberry.


-Chris

 

Yes, this is the impression I get as well.

 

Reading interviews like this...

http://trekmovie.com/2013/10/27/exclusive-interview-with-these-are-the-voyages-author-marc-cushman/

...make it pretty evident that Cushman believes the ratings weren't low and in fact were good. He is, of course, quite wrong in this belief, which isn't supported by the facts. It seems likely that Cushman saw how Trek was performing in its timeslot (at least, on the half hour), decided Trek was a hit, and worked backwards from there. Suffice it to say, this isn't a strong way to conduct research or make an argument, but I am sure it helps sell books to have a marketing hook like that. Which is not to say I believe Cushman is primarily motivated by sales -- he just a very enthusiastic fan who, unfortunately, doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

All of that said, the question I have is what do the ratings that he's printed really say then? I have both books, for every episode he lists the "share" or the percentage of the television audience watching a given program, and the number of households that equates too. If and when Star Trek has the larger numbers in each case, what does that really mean? He also laid out at least one weeks overall rankings for all network programs. Star Trek wasn't in the top ten, but it was in the top 40, ahead of other shows like Gunsmoke, Hogan's Heroes, all of Irwin Allen's sci-fi, and Mission: Impossible. He may have cherry picked that example to publish, but could you explain what these numbers really mean? Or is it the consensus he's lied and just made these numbers up? I am sincerely curious.