GR was quoted in the Solow/Justman book as saying (paraphrased) “This 3rd year is going to be the best ever and Star Trek will go on forever.” That’s before GR and TOS parted ways.
I might have that book. Never read it... a good friend gave me a copy of it for Xmas, and my (censored) ex used it unceremoniously like a coaster, all while otherwise griping about certain Futurama episodes unironically. But I'm not bitter, I only digress.
Well, it didn’t quite come to fruition, but if TOS did survive Freiberger, the time slot, etc. how many years do you think it would have survived in the wild world of network television?
Another 1 or 2 for sure. Especially if there was enough room to bypass "the planet earth parallel trick" and increased number of bottle ships... Now, I dig stories where the ship's innards are explored, but... every single week? It'd get harder to find a way to involve the ship that remained authentic and not gimmicky or overused. But once in a while, heck yeah! You know fans want it!
Syndication, which the show miraculously got, had been wildly popular compared to the original run - either people were looking back, never heard of it, word of mouth, and/or ratings tabulations changed and found that, oops, the audiences were there all along... a few reruns would be inevitable as stations needed something other than new shows and all those old film cans were laying around and stuff...
Freiberger's season isn't all that bad. Some episodes did caricaturize Kirk more than before, noting that season 2 already was going down that path as well, and considering I remember Kirk's "Fizzbin" and "U Plebneesta" speeches more than most of season 3's damp sponge stuff as being superficial and sub-par... and elements of "Omega" are genuinely great...
Without the Friday timeslot, which is where the likely audience was more likely at what is coyly referred to as "Lovers' Lane™" it probably would have continued more easily... but as the show was facing the ax after season 1 and the timeslot move was already in place for season 2, it's no wonder Gene was getting frustrated... Indeed, season 3 was originally going to be put on Mondays thanks in part to the write-in campaign, until Laugh-In's creator got upset as that show would have to be moved...
A shame that the show ended without the 80th episode being filmed. William Shatner was apparently slated to direct it (he would do episodes of TJ Hooker, Star Trek V, and others, of course), but TOS as directed by Shatner in 1969 would have been cool. STV has a feel that fits in with TOS and is arguably underrated, but he nailed the tone - even if it was different to what moviegoers were expecting. I
liked V at the time, others loathed it. It's not perfect, but take away the extreme silliness in some scenes (thank IV for the need for that) and there's more that's certainly worthy...
Considering that thousands of shows don’t even make the airwaves or they get cancelled very quickly, I’m guessing that TOS would have barely made their 5 year mission before the Enterprise was decommissioned.
^^this. It would have ended, without a proper finale (which was generally unheard of at the time anyhow), after the 4- or 5-year mark.
Most shows in the 60s ended after the second year or so, regardless of how popular and/or well-crafted they were. Only "The Beverly Hillbillies" and a handful of others did more, and even by 1969, "Hillbillies" was losing steam...
