Harlan Ellison: Star Trek Was Just "A Cop Show"

[FormerLurker]

My headcanon tells me that Jim West was Kirk's several times maternal great grandfather.

I have an old Best of Trek with a history of Jim Kirk, where George Sr. tells his younger son his ancestors include the Lone Ranger and Tarzan.

I point you to the TOS novel Ishmael. Literally Here Come the Brides meets Star Trek. Cameos by Hoss and Little Joe, Paladin, and Kain.

I have that book! Somewhere!

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Certainly, it was better than most shows. But other dramas at the time were tackling harder issues, such as abortion and drug addiction. It's just that Trek gets remember most whereas those other shows vanished out of the social consciousness.

The reason it's more well known than the others of its time that tackled the same issues is because those shows weren't rerun as much or at all as TOS would be in the '70's (and unlike The Defenders, got forgotten [East Side/West Side, Breaking Point, Slattery's People being the most notable one]).

 

[MacLeod]

His point about being a cop show isn't entirely without merit, but procedural shows are a dime a dozen some make an impact others quickly forgotten about. But it is what a show does with that formula that counts.

 

[Tim Thomason]

The reason it's more well known than the others of its time that tackled the same issues is because those shows weren't rerun as much or at all as TOS would be in the '70's (and unlike The Defenders, got forgotten [East Side/West Side, Breaking Point, Slattery's People being the most notable one]).

I'll let @Ryan Thomas Riddle know.

 

[Tim Thomason]

His point about being a cop show isn't entirely without merit, but procedural shows are a dime a dozen some make an impact others quickly forgotten about. But it is what a show does with that formula that counts.

Yeah, it's kind of a cop show (or Western or military post drama), but's it in the Future. Eliot Ness is cool and all, but he didn't fight salt vampires, robots, or giant space amoeba. The imagination and fantasy of it all made it especially appealing for syndication, and, as a result, history.

Ellison wanted it to be more than a cop show set in the future, but what it was was still groundbreaking and amazing.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The reason it's more well known than the others of its time that tackled the same issues is because those shows weren't rerun as much or at all as TOS would be in the '70's (and unlike The Defenders, got forgotten [East Side/West Side, Breaking Point, Slattery's People being the most notable one]).

I'll let @Ryan Thomas Riddle know.

Thanks for letting me know.

However, I already knew Star Trek was reran more and that's why it's in the social consciousness. Nevertheless, thanks @Shaka Zulu for pointing it out in the thread.

 

[Crisp Conditions]

The observation that TOS was rerun more than other perhaps edgier shows "begs" the question: would those other shows had garnered higher ratings than TOS, had they been run instead (in the 1970s)?

 

[Thanos007]

The observation that TOS was rerun more than other perhaps edgier shows "begs" the question: would those other shows had garnered higher ratings than TOS, had they been run instead (in the 1970s)?

No. The question is WHY weren't those show rerun more in the 70s? Heck TOS didn't even have the magic number for syndication.

Cop show shmop show. Wagon Train to the stars. What ever. That's the show at a very simplistic level. It must have more to offer. Why are we all here instead of on the Adam 12 fan site or The Defenders or East Side/West Side or Breaking Point, or any number of critically acclaimed or noted shows from the 60s? Why have these shows not obtained the fame that the Star Trek franchise has?

 

[Crisp Conditions]

No. The question is

Sorry, we can ask more than one question at a time!

 

[MANT!]

Maybe ...

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[Lance]

Tbh I always thought the 'Wagon Train To The Stars' was a weak connect. Trek hasn't really got a lot in common with Wagon Train, it was obviously just a good line Roddenberry came up with to pitch the show to networks.

 

[Santa Kang]

Tbh I always thought the 'Wagon Train To The Stars' was a weak connect. Trek hasn't really got a lot in common with Wagon Train, it was obviously just a good line Roddenberry came up with to pitch the show to networks.

All it meant was that like Wagon Train the show would be about people traveling to new places and meeting new people. And sometimes we'd met people on the ship/Wagon Train that plot would revolve around. It gave advertisers and network a reference point about the type of show Star Trek would be.

 

[SantaEddie74]

In 1964 the one-hour Western was quite simply the most popular television format and if you could somehow tie your sci-fi series concept to the Old West and adventure out on the open plains battling dastardly criminals and enforcing the law where little existed then you could probably at least get the network execs to listen to your pitch. At the time Roddenberry filmed the two TOS pilots the most popular scripted shows on TV were escapist fare like Bonanza and The Beverly Hillbillies and if you wanted to try to get your show into a network slot it helped if you had a hook that made it more than just a weekly sitcom revolving around a family with precocious kids or an hourly courtroom procedural.

Star Trek was already a high concept show idea but finding a way to make it sound like a Western set in outer space was definite plus when dealing with NBC executives. Who wouldn't want another hit "Western" on their schedule to take down the competition from the other networks?

 

[Lance]

All it meant was that like Wagon Train the show would be about people traveling to new places and meeting new people. And sometimes we'd met people on the ship/Wagon Train that plot would revolve around. It gave advertisers and network a reference point about the type of show Star Trek would be.

In 1964 the one-hour Western was quite simply the most popular television format and if you could somehow tie your sci-fi series concept to the Old West and adventure out on the open plains battling dastardly criminals and enforcing the law where little existed then you could probably at least get the network execs to listen to your pitch. At the time Roddenberry filmed the two TOS pilots the most popular scripted shows on TV were escapist fare like Bonanza and The Beverly Hillbillies and if you wanted to try to get your show into a network slot it helped if you had a hook that made it more than just a weekly sitcom revolving around a family with precocious kids or an hourly courtroom procedural.

Star Trek was already a high concept show idea but finding a way to make it sound like a Western set in outer space was definite plus when dealing with NBC executives. Who wouldn't want another hit "Western" on their schedule to take down the competition from the other networks?

Exactly right, folks As I said, it was a good pitch line, but had almost nothing to do with what Star Trek became after it got the green light. It was just the bait for the networks to reel them in

TNG at least had the 'generation ship' idea, which in many ways made it a little closer to Wagon Train, in theory.

Star Trek is whatever it needs to be in any given episode. Like Doctor Who, it can cross genres with ease. It can be a law drama/police procedual one episode, a western in space the next, submarine thriller the week after that. That is it's skill.

 

[Maurice]

Tbh I always thought the 'Wagon Train To The Stars' was a weak connect. Trek hasn't really got a lot in common with Wagon Train, it was obviously just a good line Roddenberry came up with to pitch the show to networks.

All it meant was that like Wagon Train the show would be about people traveling to new places and meeting new people. And sometimes we'd met people on the ship/Wagon Train that plot would revolve around. It gave advertisers and network a reference point about the type of show Star Trek would be.

Actually, it was more than that. Wagon Train was considered a prestige show with quality writing and its format was such that guest stars would come in and the story would be about them, with the regulars as the comfortable framework to keep it from being an anthology. It was a very shrewd choice on Roddenberry's part to use it as an example because network honchos knew what he meant even if we don't at a many decades remove.

Again, this is the problem with TV history, if you only see what survives because of syndication, you lose the context and can draw many erroneous conclusions.

 

[Lance]

True @Maurice. Context is everything, and at 50 years removed it can be hard for some of us to see the context into which TOS belonged.

Whatever his other faults, as a showrunner and as a human being, Roddenberry was a great salesperson (mostly, it must be admitted, of himself ), and "Wagon Train To The Stars" did that admirably. His goal was to get his show on the air.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

TNG at least had the 'generation ship' idea, which in many ways made it a little closer to Wagon Train, in theory.

Unfortunately, TNG never lived up to the premise of a "generation ship" on a long-term exploratory mission.

Star Trek is whatever it needs to be in any given episode. Like Doctor Who, it can cross genres with ease. It can be a law drama/police procedual one episode, a western in space the next, submarine thriller the week after that. That is it's skill.

I've said something similar in the past and just now on Twitter.

Star Trek can be anything. That's the beauty of the show's format. It can be action-adventure. Space western/opera. Thought-provoking science fiction. Or social commentary.

 

[drt]

Unfortunately, TNG never lived up to the premise of a "generation ship" on a long-term exploratory mission.

Yeah, I remember before the show aired reading that the 1701-D was heading on a multi-year mission to deep, deep space, far beyond the Federation, which is definitely the idea they tried to put across with “Encounter at Farpoint”, but that idea seemed to have been dropped after the pilot.

 

[SantaEddie74]

Which is funny because Deneb IV was already mentioned in the second pilot of TOS. Kirk and Gary Mitchell had already visited there at least once prior to the events of "Where No Man Has Gone Before(TOS)," which was set in 2265 so that means Farpoint Station can't have been THAT far out on the frontier of unexplored space if at least one ship from over a century before had already visited there.

 

[Henoch]

Unfortunately, TNG never lived up to the premise of a "generation ship" on a long-term exploratory mission

Nothing unfortunate there. Like Picard, I'm not fond of children on the ship. "Whee, we can blow up as a family, together!" Aside from a few "kid" themed episodes, I think seasons went by without seeing a single kid. I guess Riker did his job right.