Star Trek having a cheap / low budget a misnomer?

[1001001]

You probably all know this story…

We recently did a VIP Tour of Paramount.

Lucille Ball had a small park built on the studio lot. Apparently she got a bit of criticism in the press for being a working mom and not spending enough time with her kids.

So they would take publicity photos in that small park and pretending it was their backyard.

The things women have had to put up with…

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

You probably all know this story…

We recently did a VIP Tour of Paramount.

Lucille Ball had a small park built on the studio lot. Apparently she got a bit of criticism in the press for being a working mom and not spending enough time with her kids.

Plus harrassing William Holden at lunchtime. But revenge was sweet.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

That's actually not true at all. Allan Asherman's 1981 The Star Trek Compendium, published less than 14 years after "Catspaw" came out (dated January '81 and thus probably on the shelves by December '80) and decades before TOS was remastered in HD, points out that the alien puppets were "disappointing" because they were "operated with thick, black threads that are painfully obvious even after the puppets have stopped moving." Even for its day, it was a badly done effect.

As I recall, part of the reason the Lydeckers' miniature ships were flown on horizontal wires is that it was easier to hide horizontal wires in a TV image because they could vanish between the scan lines, while vertical wires tended to be easy to spot.

I remember the thick black strings. They were perfectly visible on a decent CRT tube.

Regarding horizontal wires on Lost in Space, I thought that was only done for "The Reluctant Stowaway" when the Jupiter 2 is being pelted by meteors. They hung the Jupiter by its nose, and dropped the meteors straight down on it. With the camera tilted 90°, the filmed image was thus correct and hugely effective. All of those early fx shots of the Jupiter 2 were mind-blowing to me as a kid. When they landed inside "The Derelict," I lost my mind. And I still kinda do.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Well if they cost so much, and if the ratings really were no better than Star Trek, then why did M:I get seven seasons?

That's a really good question.

This is as good an explanation as you will get.
By January 1967, twenty-five of the thirty-four series introduced the prior September had already been canceled. Since Mission ended the season at 51 in the Neilsen ratings with a 29 share, many felt that its days were numbered. Luckily, the show's greatest ally was CBS. Despite audience reaction that could be called lukewarm at best, the network renewed the show almost immediately. Says Perry Lafferty, "It was such a classy show and so well done that you just didn't have the heart to kill it. It was a superior piece of work and that's what kept it alive." The fact that the founder and chairman of the company liked the show didn't hurt. It was William Paley's faith that kept in on the air. "His taste was extraordinary," adds Lafferty, "and his commercial sense was very good." For its second season, CBS would move Mission to Sundays at 10pm. It turned out to be an ideal time slot for the show, and Mission would stay there for three years. It didn't hurt that Mission won four of the six Emmy's that it was nominated for that year, including Outstanding Dramatic Series. Producer Bruce Geller said, "Had we been on ABC/NBC, we would have been thirteen weeks and off."
So, it all comes down to the network and the fact that it was considered a "Prestige" show by the people in charge.​

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Did it cost CBS an additional $84,000? I would have thought any budget overruns would have been paid by Desilu, on the principle of deficit funding. Desilu would in theory start to get their money back when the show entered syndication. That's one reason why Lucy sold the studio to Paramount. It was a relatively small entity with four network shows on air, three of which were costing more to make than the networks were paying them.

From the 'M:I' book.
The network even kicked in additional funds to help defray Desilu's enormous deficit. "We had to come up with some monies to help them out," Mike Dann acknowledges. "No matter what your licensing cost is, you have the problem of them saying, 'Okay, we'll do the next four shows in one room,' which they can, legally. So we did have to come up with the extra monies." It wasn't nearly enough to keep Mission out of the red - but that was Desilu's problem.​

 

[Christopher]

It could've been an interesting experiment to do an M:I caper that played out entirely in a single apartment -- starting in medias res and revealing the nature of the caper as it played out, perhaps even in real time, sort of like Hitchcock's Rope (although trying to make it look like a single continuous shot would've been too complex for a weekly-TV shoot trying to save money).

 

[Ssosmcin]

Desilu was a studio. They filmed Trek, M:I, and Mannix on their own studio lot on Gower Street and the Culver City backlot, both of which they'd purchased from RKO in 1957. The Gower Street lot was adjacent to the Paramount lot, and the two were merged when Gulf & Western bought them both. (Paramount didn't buy Desilu; G&W bought Paramount Pictures and Desilu in succession and renamed Desilu as Paramount Television.)

Yep you're right, they were a legit studio, just a smaller one - I guess I was thinking they were still primarily a "studio rental space" at that time. Fox did have larger facilities and the movie studio. Bob Justman was asked to compare Star Trek's production costs with Voyage and if I remember his memo correctly (I lost the book with it some time ago), the Fox studio absorbed costs that Desilu couldn't. Or Fox simply didn't report them.

In Roddenberry's original 1964 series pitch, he proposed a couple of budget-saving measures that weren't used: acquiring sets from recently completed movies or TV movies, and setting 3-4 stories on the same world so the sets could be reused. I'm surprised they never did either of those. (I particularly like the latter; how can you explore an entire world in just a few days? Sticking around the same planet for multiple adventures would've made a lot of sense.)

I'm not so surprised, because the episodes would have to be able to be aired out of order, unless they are official multi-part episodes. This happened on I Spy for the entire run and there was a loosely serialized 3 part story on 12 O'Clock High where the 918th was on a shuttle raid, but they aired out of order and weeks apart. Land of the Giants first batch of episodes was written to show the slow reveal of the planet and the people, but ABC jumbled them so that plan and some minor (for surprising for Irwin Allen) character development was ruined. If one of three alien planet stories was awful, NBC could have buried it at Christmastime and air the rest of the episodes where they would do better.

I'm also surprised they never built an episode around stock footage like The Time Tunnel did routinely. There weren't that many Paramount sci-fi movies that would've worked, but maybe something historical could've worked for an Earth-parallel planet. They did use a bit of historical-movie stock footage in the Guardian of Forever, but that was it.

I get the feeling from what I've read that the Roddenberry and company looked at the Irwin Allen shows as an example of what not to do.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Mission's ratings were no better than Star Trek.
Season One - #51
Season Two - #32
Season Three - #11
Season Four - #53
Season Five - #33
Season Six - #31
Season Seven - #57

Seems to me the #11 spot is better than Star Trek's rating. Even in seasons the 30's.

Season Two - #32
Season Three - #11
Season Five - #33
Season Six - #31

Did Star Trek get those numbers?

Well if they cost so much, and if the ratings really were no better than Star Trek, then why did M:I get seven seasons?

CBS vs NBC. If Star Trek were on any other network, it may have been a different story. It probably would have done well on ABC, they loved that kind of show.

Also, NBC vs Roddenberry.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not so surprised, because the episodes would have to be able to be aired out of order, unless they are official multi-part episodes. This happened on I Spy for the entire run and there was a loosely serialized 3 part story on 12 O'Clock High where the 918th was on a shuttle raid, but they aired out of order and weeks apart. Land of the Giants first batch of episodes was written to show the slow reveal of the planet and the people, but ABC jumbled them so that plan and some minor (for surprising for Irwin Allen) character development was ruined. If one of three alien planet stories was awful, NBC could have buried it at Christmastime and air the rest of the episodes where they would do better.

Still, there were a fair number of shows in the era that had some degree of continuity and aired episodes in order. The Beverly Hillbillies often did connected pairs of episodes with the same guest stars and situation, not 2-parters per se but two consecutive single stories sharing a loose arc.

If ST had done something similar, maybe 3-4 episodes telling different standalone stories on the same planet with recurring sets, costumes, etc., they wouldn't necessarily have had any story continuity beyond the shared setting and thus could've been shown in any order, although presumably the first episode would generally need to come first. Or they could've shot 3-4 episodes on a starbase that the ship returned to periodically over the season. They basically did do that with Starbase 11 in "Court Martial" and "The Menagerie."

I get the feeling from what I've read that the Roddenberry and company looked at the Irwin Allen shows as an example of what not to do.

Maybe, but building episodes around stock movie footage wasn't exclusively an Irwin Allen thing. The Incredible Hulk and MacGyver both did it in their first seasons, and The Twilight Zone got a lot of mileage (light-yearage?) out of stock footage of the C-57D from Forbidden Planet.

CBS vs NBC. If Star Trek were on any other network, it may have been a different story. It probably would have done well on ABC, they loved that kind of show.

Also, NBC vs Roddenberry.

That's a myth. Roddenberry always liked to paint the network as the bad guys to make himself look good, but according to Solo & Justman in Inside Star Trek, NBC loved ST because it was a classy, prestigious program that got Emmy nominations three years in a row (for Nimoy and for the visual effects), and their parent company RCA loved it because it promoted sales of color TV sets, for which they owned the patent. Indeed, that's the main reason TOS got renewed twice despite losing money every season -- because the profit RCA made from it compensated for NBC's losses, so they kept it on the air as a loss leader, and as a prestige show that made them look good. If anything, NBC was the only network that would have renewed TOS beyond the first season, because the other networks weren't owned by RCA and thus couldn't have afforded to keep losing money on it no matter how much they wanted to keep it on. (Laypeople always assume that cancellation is the result of executives' animosity toward a show, but it's purely about money. No matter how much execs love a show, they can't keep making it if they lose money on it. It's audiences that kill shows by not watching them, but audiences don't want to admit that, so they blame the execs.)

And I doubt any other network would've had a better relationship with Roddenberry than NBC did, since he always sabotaged his working relationships with networks sooner or later, which is why he never got another non-Trek series on the air after TOS.

 

[Airin]

As for NBC scheduling ST at 10-11 p.m. on Fridays during season three, how much did that damage the ratings? Members of the cast and crew often cite this as a decisive factor for cancellation, as the young audience of ST would be "out in parties or with dates". Which seems a bit inconsistent with the claim that ST attracted all types of viewers, from all ages and professions.

 

[Phaser Two]

As for NBC scheduling ST at 10-11 p.m. on Fridays during season three, how much did that damage the ratings? Members of the cast and crew often cite this as a decisive factor for cancellation, as the young audience of ST would be "out in parties or with dates". Which seems a bit inconsistent with the claim that ST attracted all types of viewers, from all ages and professions.

The death slot scheduling almost certainly didn't help anything. A lot of the rest depends on whom you ask.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

I do find it interesting that in there are a couple of times in my 'Mission: Impossible' book where 'Star Trek' is mentioned, and it is in the context that some of the executives at Desilu/Paramount considered 'Mission' to be the 'Prestige' show, while 'Star Trek' was the 'silly little sci-fi' show.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

I think the only ''cheap'' aspect related to classic TREK is its cringeworthy UHF reception during syndication. My first ''clear'' or pristine TREK watching was THE MENAGERIE on RCA ClunkerDisc at Woolco!

 

[Christopher]

I do find it interesting that in there are a couple of times in my 'Mission: Impossible' book where 'Star Trek' is mentioned, and it is in the context that some of the executives at Desilu/Paramount considered 'Mission' to be the 'Prestige' show, while 'Star Trek' was the 'silly little sci-fi' show.

That was the pervasive prejudice against science fiction in those days. Even prose SF was ghettoized and seen as disreputable compared to mainstream fiction. The dismissal of SF film and TV as silly kid stuff was worse, because most of it was silly kid stuff compared to the prose, but that was largely because network execs assumed SF had to be silly kid stuff and thus required shows conceived for adult audiences to be dumbed down for the kids. And those few shows that managed to be more intelligent and adult, like Star Trek or The Incredible Hulk, were still dismissed as silly kid stuff by people who didn't watch them, or who did watch them but blinded themselves to the parts that didn't reinforce their prejudices.

 

[fireproof78]

I do find it interesting that in there are a couple of times in my 'Mission: Impossible' book where 'Star Trek' is mentioned, and it is in the context that some of the executives at Desilu/Paramount considered 'Mission' to be the 'Prestige' show, while 'Star Trek' was the 'silly little sci-fi' show.

Sadly, that's what science fiction was often regarded as was silly and for kids. Star Wars was often called a "silly kid's movie" by some working on it.

There was not high regard for it as a genre and Star Trek was no exception.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Maybe, but building episodes around stock movie footage wasn't exclusively an Irwin Allen thing. The Incredible Hulk and MacGyver both did it in their first seasons, and The Twilight Zone got a lot of mileage (light-yearage?) out of stock footage of the C-57D from Forbidden Planet.

I am not disagreeing with you, stock footage doesn't necessarily mean cheap or bad. The Incredible Hulk's first season stock footage episodes were hit or miss though. "747" was excellent (Airport 75) but "Earthquakes Happen" (Earthquake) was middling. "Never Give a Trucker an Even Break" (Duel, I think) was at least a comedy and legitimately funny (Banner Huling Out at the pay phone), but nothing that memorable. However, Nicholas Corea wrote "Mystery Man" and made a that two part clip show into one of the best and most pivotal of the series. Naturally, TV shows need stock footage if they want to tell stories of scope, like "Mystery Man" which had the central jeopardy be a raging forest fire, so there's a lot of stock shots of raging fires, fire crews, rescue planes and the like. Otherwise, the whole episode would have been shot at the local park with no real scope. The Bionic Woman built "Doomsday Is Tomorrow" around stock footage and it was also a really good two parter. So, yep it can absolutely be done well.

(Remember when two part episodes were epic events?)

But at the time, Irwin Allen was using stock footage as the reason for shows (The Lost World footage was used in all of them and Voyage really ran it into the ground) and since they were running concurrently with Star Trek and the staff was well aware of those series, I could understand if they felt they wanted to distance themselves from that sort of TV making. Or maybe, they simply didn't think of it or there weren't films with footage to match the stories. To be fair, they did use some great NASA footage for Assignment: Earth, which turned out well in that regard. Not the best episode, but it looks great.

In the end, Star Trek didn't really need it other than for NYC establishing shots in "City on the Edge of Forever" and other Earth type planets where it was appropriate. Of course, none of this include stock shots we saw every week.

That's a myth. Roddenberry always liked to paint the network as the bad guys to make himself look good, but according to Solo & Justman in Inside Star Trek, NBC loved ST because it was a classy, prestigious program that got Emmy nominations three years in a row (for Nimoy and for the visual effects), and their parent company RCA loved it because it promoted sales of color TV sets, for which they owned the patent. Indeed, that's the main reason TOS got renewed twice despite losing money every season -- because the profit RCA made from it compensated for NBC's losses, so they kept it on the air as a loss leader, and as a prestige show that made them look good. If anything, NBC was the only network that would have renewed TOS beyond the first season, because the other networks weren't owned by RCA and thus couldn't have afforded to keep losing money on it no matter how much they wanted to keep it on. (Laypeople always assume that cancellation is the result of executives' animosity toward a show, but it's purely about money. No matter how much execs love a show, they can't keep making it if they lose money on it. It's audiences that kill shows by not watching them, but audiences don't want to admit that, so they blame the execs.)

And I doubt any other network would've had a better relationship with Roddenberry than NBC did, since he always sabotaged his working relationships with networks sooner or later, which is why he never got another non-Trek series on the air after TOS.

Yup, I read all the same books you did But that's not what I meant. I meant what you concluded with: Gene himself being the problem. For a show NBC was allegedly proud of (something stated in books decades after fans made it a success and by retired execs not wanting to be villains anymore), they moved it to Fridays for 2 years and in the third season made no attempt to save it. Call it a myth, but considering how audiences responded to high promotion (The Man from UNCLE and Batman), investing in a strong ad campaign and putting it in a better slot would support the claim that NBC wasn't going out of their way to keep the show on.

As for another network having a better relationship, considering how ABC was more open to SF, gave it better time slots and let their producers have at it, they may very well have had a longer run there (NBC probably would have ash canned Voyage after 2 seasons if not 3). But naturally, it's all hindsight and fanciful speculation.

And those few shows that managed to be more intelligent and adult, like Star Trek or The Incredible Hulk, were still dismissed as silly kid stuff by people who didn't watch them, or who did watch them but blinded themselves to the parts that didn't reinforce their prejudices.

The Incredible Hulk is a textbook example of a show made to appeal to kids and adults. I was glued to the series as a kid and my dad watched it. Generally he thought it was great aside from the Hulk parts, but it was much better than many of the shows around it of the same style.

And, nostalgically, it represents my favorite Friday night line up on CBS: Hulk, Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas. While my sister and I generally walked away from the Duke to make a snack and talk, we always came back to Dallas.

 

[Christopher]

I am not disagreeing with you, stock footage doesn't necessarily mean cheap or bad. The Incredible Hulk's first season stock footage episodes were hit or miss though.

I'm not making any value judgments. I'm just saying that, given how much TOS needed to economize to get on the air, it's surprising that they never attempted to build an episode around stock footage, as various other shows did. Just as it's surprising that they didn't follow Roddenberry's suggestions of borrowing sets from just-completed movies or doing multiple episodes set on the same planet or station to amortize the cost of the sets (Starbase 11 being the only time they did that).

Or maybe, they simply didn't think of it or there weren't films with footage to match the stories.

But it would be done the other way around, of course -- they'd find what potentially useful footage they had available, then build the stories around it.

As I already said, maybe the problem was that Paramount didn't have that many color SF films in its catalog that might have had material adaptable to a Trek episode. Maybe they could've written a planetary-disaster story around FX footage from Crack in the World, say.

Yup, I read all the same books you did But that's not what I meant. I meant what you concluded with: Gene himself being the problem. For a show NBC was allegedly proud of (something stated in books decades after fans made it a success and by retired execs not wanting to be villains anymore), they moved it to Fridays for 2 years and in the third season made no attempt to save it.

The show was on the bubble in seasons 1 and 2, but NBC kept it on despite the low ratings that would normally have gotten it cancelled. So hell yes, NBC made an attempt to save it, successfully, twice. But by season 3, they just couldn't afford to keep it on anymore. Although, don't forget, they did bring it back in animated form just four years later. They wouldn't have done that if they hated it as much as Roddenberry's myth claimed.

Besides, the show got Emmy nominations three years running, if only for Leonard Nimoy and the VFX. Why wouldn't NBC be proud of that?

Call it a myth, but considering how audiences responded to high promotion (The Man from UNCLE and Batman), investing in a strong ad campaign and putting it in a better slot would support the claim that NBC wasn't going out of their way to keep the show on.

It wasn't in a vacuum. They tried to put it in a good slot in season 3, but George Schlatter insisted that Laugh-In should have that spot, and Laugh-In was a hit, so it won. A network has to juggle dozens of shows, and there are going to be winners and losers. So it doesn't make sense to assume the scheduling decision for a given show is exclusively about that show. Sometimes it's just outweighed by other shows.

As for another network having a better relationship, considering how ABC was more open to SF, gave it better time slots and let their producers have at it, they may very well have had a longer run there (NBC probably would have ash canned Voyage after 2 seasons if not 3). But naturally, it's all hindsight and fanciful speculation.

All three of Roddenberry's creations that made it to series, The Lieutenant and the live-action and animated Star Treks, were NBC shows. He never successfully sold a series to any other network (since TNG was syndicated). CBS turned down Genesis II (after having previously rejected ST) and ABC turned down Planet Earth. NBC passed on Spectre, but did pick up The Questor Tapes as a series until Roddenberry himself scuttled the deal. So I'm skeptical of the idea that he would've had a better relationship with a different network. NBC seemed to be the only network that was willing to do a show with him.

The Incredible Hulk is a textbook example of a show made to appeal to kids and adults.

Age range has nothing to do with the intelligence or sophistication of a show. There are brilliant kids' shows out there, and plenty of idiotic adult shows. Hulk was more intelligently written than any other '70s-'80s superhero show, the only one of its genre that managed to resist network pressure to dumb down its writing.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I don't agree with everything you said, but I appreciate the counterpoint.

As for the last, yes, I agree there are a lot of great, intelligent kid's shows. Usually the shows that wind up in primetime spots, like the Hulk, are also geared to appeal to adults with appropriate storylines. And it's why I still enjoy it today, but on the flip side. As a kid, I was there for the action and music (I always dug the scores). As an adult, I appreciate the storylines a bit more.

 

[Christopher]

Usually the shows that wind up in primetime spots, like the Hulk, are also geared to appeal to adults with appropriate storylines. And it's why I still enjoy it today, but on the flip side.

No, most of the prime time sci-fi and superhero shows in the '70s were under network pressure to dumb down the stories for children, even when they aspired to be more intelligent -- compare the first season of The Six Million Dollar Man to the later seasons, for example. As I said, Hulk was pretty much the only genre show of the period that managed to resist dumbing down and maintain its sophistication.

After all, it's a mistake to equate "prime time" with "adult." Traditionally, the 8 PM prime time slot was considered the family hour, the preferred slot for shows intended for younger viewers to watch alone or with their parents. 9 PM shows were intermediate, and the more grown-up stuff was saved for 10 PM after the kids had gone to bed. One can roughly analogize the three slots to today's TV-G, TV-PG, and TV-14 ratings, though only very roughly, since it wasn't always consistently applied, and shows sometimes got moved from one time slot to another. (The 1986 Starman TV series, based on the John Carpenter movie and co-developed by one of Hulk's producers, was designed to be a wholesome, kid-friendly family hour intended for 8 PM viewing, but the network chose to put it on at 10 PM as a contrast to the adult soaps on the other networks, which hurt its ratings because it wasn't reaching its intended audience. By the time the network finally moved it to the producers' preferred 8 PM slot, it was too late to save it from cancellation.)

 

[Noname Given]

I do find it interesting that in there are a couple of times in my 'Mission: Impossible' book where 'Star Trek' is mentioned, and it is in the context that some of the executives at Desilu/Paramount considered 'Mission' to be the 'Prestige' show, while 'Star Trek' was the 'silly little sci-fi' show.

It' more that BOTH series were expensive so they thought they could only do one and with shows like I Spy and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. doing well in the ratings for multiple networks. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE was seen as having a better chance to sell and do well.