Again, though, that's assuming the decision was exclusively about
Star Trek itself, independent of any other factor. That's not the way television programming works. The network executives had to consider dozens of different shows and weigh their interests against each other. They had to figure out a whole schedule, some
23 hours' worth of prime-time programming, more than two dozen shows that had to be juggled and arranged in the best possible pattern. Moreover, they had to keep the other two networks' schedules in mind and counterprogram against them. So
Star Trek was just one of more than 80 variables that they had to weigh against each other.
In this case, the plan to move
Star Trek to Mondays fell through because the producers of
Laugh-In objected.
Laugh-In was a far more successful show than ST, and NBC couldn't afford to antagonize its producers. So the decision to bump ST was more about
Laugh-In than it was about ST itself. Sure, maybe they could've moved some other show to make room for ST, but look at the link above and see how many top-30 shows were in its lineup. They had to make those producers happy, and the less profitable shows had to come second in importance. That's not a petty vendetta against any single show, it's the kind of hard decision that has to be made by any responsible person who has to weigh conflicting priorities.
Correct. In terms of the history of TV production, Trek is the one scifi show where the network wasn't the villain, but the production company. It fascinates me how Trek broke new ground everywhere, not just in front of the camera.
Okay, that I can buy. It makes more sense that Gulf + Western/Paramount would want to get rid of the show than that NBC would, since new owners often shut down their predecessors' projects in order to develop their own.
I doubt creating their own shows had anything to do with it. That implies they might have spent similar money and taken similar risk if it was their own creation. History shows us that was not the case. No, they owned Trek after the sale. And their reasons beyond disliking Gene (and he earned their contempt, they weren't just picking on him) were the same as they are today when it comes to an expensive production that is not a runaway hit. Profit margin. Star Trek started with the little production company that could, Desilu, and that's who we really owe our respect, after Gene. Herb Solow, and queen herself. I can honestly say I really love Lucy. The fact that Desilu died keeping Trek alive seems to me worth quite a bit historically. Paramount stepped in *it, wiped if off their wingtips in disgust and then years later jumped on the Trek bandwagon. They weren't evil, they were a BIG company. Big companies by nature concern themselves with money first, not art. And it should be noted that after Paramount GOT Trek, they have spent decades supporting it.
I'm not convinced the letter campaign "saved" anything. That's the conventional wisdom, but there's no proof that NBC was ever actually going to cancel ST in the first place. All we really know is that it was "on the bubble," neither renewed nor cancelled yet. Per
Inside Star Trek, the meaning of the NBC renewal announcement wasn't really "Okay, you win, we've changed our minds about cancelling the show" -- rather, it was just, "Hey, guys, we're not actually cancelling the show, so please stop overloading our mail department for no reason."
It didn't save the show. It quickened it. The campaign brought critical embarrassment to both Paramount and NBC. Companies that are supposed to make shows we like were exposed as not knowing at all what we like. It was a slap in the corporate face. The proof is the unprecedented tv announcement that NBC ran stating Trek was renewed for s3, not canceled as was widespread rumor. But neither forgot that Gene, who was their man(employee, contractor, whatever) did an end run and embarrassed them.
I'm certainly not saying Freiberger was a good writer or producer. But no one is entirely without merits. ST season 3 isn't nearly as well-written overall as seasons 1 or 2, but it's arguably less sexist than previous seasons and less prone to basing aliens on Orientalist/tribal stereotypes, and it arguably reverses season 2's trend of solving more problems with violence than with positive moral examples. So for all that there are things about season 3 that deserve criticism, it does have saving graces that I think are overlooked -- and season 2 has faults that I think are overlooked.
Credit for season 3 goes to the remaining crew and the cast, not to FF. On Trek he didn't have total control so some of it turned out ok. On S1999 s2, he had total control and ran it into the ground.
I figured out that the way to approach season 1 of
Space: 1999 is as a work of surrealist, existentialist fantasy. It's sort of in the vein of Stanislaw Lem's
Solaris, in that it embraces the idea that the universe is endlessly bizarre and unknowable and our human constructs of knowledge and perception are inadequate to define or cope with it. There's a lot of
Twilight Zone in it too, those episodes where strange and impossible things happen to people who probe the frontiers beyond existing knowledge.
It's actually horror-scifi as a genre which I never heard of before a few years ago. However being aged 6 at the time, some of the eps scared the fertilizer out of me, so I can attest to its classification. It is way trippy and slow burning. Everyone whispers. It's totally non-military, and the heroes were just people that sometimes behaved selfishly. I loved it because it's everything Trek is not, and we can all agree that we have room for more than one scifi show in our hearts.
