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If there had been a Season 4 of TOS ...

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Talos IV

Talos IV

Lieutenant Commander
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... who would have produced it?

I'm reading THESE ARE THE VOYAGES: SEASON 3 right now. A couple of quotes in it (not from Roddenberry!) ponder, "If we'd gone to a fourth season, Fred Freiberger would have done such-and-such."

But I have to think that Freiberger definitely would not have been asked back for a fourth season. Roddenberry grew increasingly critical of Freiberger's work as season three wore on (in one memo he mentions possibly firing him), and I wonder if Roddenberry would have come back and produced a fourth season himself. Or maybe Bob Justman would have come back. Or Gene Coon. Or .... ?
 
Well, your first problem is you're reading These Are The Voyages, a book series rife with errors and misattributions by a pornographer moonlighting as a writer with little (if any) journalistic integrity or any grasp of what constitutes actual scholarship and research.

Secondly, this is the obligatory "There is a fourth season! It's called STAR TREK CONTINUES!" post.
 
doubleohfive said:
Well, your first problem is you're reading These Are The Voyages, a book series rife with errors and misattributions by a pornographer moonlighting as a writer with little (if any) journalistic integrity or any grasp of what constitutes actual scholarship and research.
Click to expand...

I get the feeling you are holding back. How do you really feel about the man and his books? :devil:
 
Here's the thing: you can't look at such things as isolated and in a vacuum.

For TOS to have had a Season 4 then things would have had to unfold differently during Season 2 and into Season 3.

- TOS would have had to do better ratings wise in Season 2.
- The better ratings might lead to a better timeslot for Season 3.
- Paramount doesn't cut the budget to allow for more flexibility in dressing up the stories.
- Maybe GR stays more directly involved with Season 3 including massaging some of the stories and weeding out lesser efforts while choosing (hopefully) better ones.
- Maybe Gene Coon still leaves, but hopefully DC Fontana and Bob Justman stay and Justman is made producer.

The gist of it is that Season 3 has to have certain things happening differently for a Season 4 to even be a possibility. And then with a (hopefully) better timeslot Season 3 would also hopefully get better ratings.

If Season 3 did reasonably well enough and with Justman as producer it's possible he could have stayed in place for Season 4. Or maybe FF is brought in for S4 if Justman feels burnt out.

Something else. Desilu being sold to Gulf & Western and merged into Paamount during Season 2 was a punch in the gut for TOS. Lucille Ball was something of a guardian angel for the show and with her gone TOS became just another expensive show to the Paramount bean counters.

It really comes down to a lot of things having to happen differently for TOS to have played out for four seasons. And in that event then it's next to impossible to guess who could have been producer.
 
Season three was hit and miss in terms of quality, but if season four was simply a continuation of three then there would be some shining gold episodes in the mix.

Would have like to of seen "it."

:)
 
Another question might be: if there was a Season 4 but not 5, what would that have done to the sequence of events leading to TMP?
 
Ronald Held said:
Another question might be: if there was a Season 4 but not 5, what would that have done to the sequence of events leading to TMP?
Click to expand...

TAS probably wouldn't have happened. I would imagine that there would be fewer films with the original cast, maybe one or two. Shatner , Nimoy and others might have been even more adverse to being typecast after a 5 year tour. In this alternate reality, I would hope that the first Star Trek film would have a better story, visual effects and action than what we were given. Later TV series like TNG and on may have still been produced to carry on the franchise. But it all depends on whether TOS ended on a high note instead of progressively worse and forgotten seasons like the X-Files towards the end.
 
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T'Girl said:
Season three was hit and miss in terms of quality, but if season four was simply a continuation of three then there would be some shining gold episodes in the mix.

Would have like to of seen "it."

:)
Click to expand...

Though given the budget issues I'd kind of like to know if they could have a whole four people on the bridge at once, and if they'd maybe just stop doing corridor shots altogether to save on shooting expenses ...
 
Bob Justman, as was often the case, said it best :

"No doubt by the time we reach our fifth year on air, our show will consist of one long sequence in which Kirk, Spock and McCoy discuss what has just happened to them on the ship in a 62-page Briefing Room scene."

As to who would have produced it, well, with Coon, Lucas, Fontana and Justman all either burned out, fired or totally disenchanted with the show, I can only imagine Freiberger and Singer might have had to continue -- there was just nobody left.
 
Just think we might have had more Klingon stories, another Romulan episode, another lost starship adventure, time travel escapades and maybe even a return from one of the aliens seen in the first season! I say bagsy The Gorn! ;)
JB
 
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