Was the cancellation a blessing in disguise?

[Harvey]

I suspect the series would have ended after 5 or 6 seasons regardless.

All of the actors were signed to five year contracts, which would have needed to be renegotiated for a sixth season. Since the show could barely cope with the little raises they were contractually guaranteed each year, let alone big ones that might have been negotiated after the actors' contracts expired, I doubt a sixth season would have been in the cards unless the ratings had been a lot, lot better.

 

[Christopher]

All of the actors were signed to five year contracts, which would have needed to be renegotiated for a sixth season.

Which was the only reason for the "five-year mission" line in the first place -- Roddenberry probably figured that was the longest run he could expect.

 

[plynch]

Having read GR's memos (and Justman's et al.) in MOST, GR seemed to be pretty astute as to story structure and spotting plotholes. GR back with S3 makes a somewhat better S3 (and yes, I am on record preferring it to S2, but it did get cheezier, I admit). And GR with S3 would eliminate the surety on set that it was the last season with the concomitant senses of being "short-timers" that brought.

Question: How accurate do you all think was GR's recollection about pledging to get involved in S3 if NBC put it in a better slot? Was that true, or was it post-cancellation BS coming from the beak of the Great Bird?

 

[Christopher]

Question: How accurate do you all think was GR's recollection about pledging to get involved in S3 if NBC put it in a better slot? Was that true, or was it post-cancellation BS coming from the beak of the Great Bird?

On p. 388 of Inside Star Trek, Bob Justman recalls that when NBC tentatively offered to move ST to a prime Monday slot for its third season, Roddenberry was "reenergized" and "enthusiastic about getting back to work.... The future seemed bright." But when the decision was made to put it in the undesirable Friday time slot, "Gene's enthusiasm disappeared... he just seemed to give up." So I'd say that corroborates GR's version of events.

 

[Tribble Herder]

It could be argued that the pent up frustration over Star Trek's premature cancellation helped fuel the whole sci-fi surge of the mid 70's, i.e., without Star Trek getting cut off after the third season, other shows and movies (Star Wars, CE3K, Space: 1999) might not have received as much attention, and the market might not have flourished as well as it did without all us frustrated Trekkies clamoring for a new fix to tide us over until Star Trek could be resurrected.

 

[Christopher]

It could be argued that the pent up frustration over Star Trek's premature cancellation helped fuel the whole sci-fi surge of the mid 70's, i.e., without Star Trek getting cut off after the third season, other shows and movies (Star Wars, CE3K, Space: 1999) might not have received as much attention, and the market might not have flourished as well as it did without all us frustrated Trekkies clamoring for a new fix to tide us over until Star Trek could be resurrected.

I think you're overestimating how big SF fandom was before Star Wars. It was much more of a cult following back then. Trek fandom may have contributed some to creating the conditions that let Star Wars and its successors flourish -- George Lucas said as much in Rod Roddenberry's Trek Nation documentary -- but I don't think it was the primary contributing factor, because Star Wars had a revolutionary impact on the popularity of SF/fantasy, far greater than anyone expected when it was made.

 

[Silvercrest]

All of the actors were signed to five year contracts, which would have needed to be renegotiated for a sixth season.

Which was the only reason for the "five-year mission" line in the first place -- Roddenberry probably figured that was the longest run he could expect.

Now when I listen to Shatner's opening narration, I'm going to mentally substitute "...my five-year contract..."

 

[alchemist]

First off, the letter campaign brought in nowhere near a million letters; it was more like 12,000. Even for that, the NBC mail room needed to hire a couple of extra people to handle it all, so there's no way the system could possibly have handled anything near a million.

"NBC's corporate office in New York was deluged with more than one million pieces of mail. Network officials were aghast."

From "A Vision of the Future" by author Stephen Edward Poe. http://books.google.com/books?id=Mi...e_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=million&f=false

From the March 16, 1968 TV Guide:

I think Mort Werner's number approximately supports Nimoy's from I Am Not Spock.

 

[Christopher]

As with Roddenberry's figure, that may be counting viewers who sent in petitions, so the actual number of pieces of mail (and telegrams) would be smaller.

And just to play devil's advocate, the possibility exists that there could've been a typo in that letter, or in TV Guide's reprinting of it. He could've meant "more than 10,000." According to the person interviewed in Inside Star Trek, that amount would be one of the largest totals in the network's history, while 100,000 would be a record-breaker by a huge margin.

 

[Tribble Herder]

Maybe if you add in all the letters that Paramount and the various local stations got in with the 10,000 that NBC got, it might get closer to that one million figure.

 

[awiltz2]

It could be argued that the pent up frustration over Star Trek's premature cancellation helped fuel the whole sci-fi surge of the mid 70's, i.e., without Star Trek getting cut off after the third season, other shows and movies (Star Wars, CE3K, Space: 1999) might not have received as much attention, and the market might not have flourished as well as it did without all us frustrated Trekkies clamoring for a new fix to tide us over until Star Trek could be resurrected.

Precisely what I was thinking! I feel that if the show did finish it's 5th season, it would have garnered the whole "this show has gone to shit" attitude that some shows get after stretching (diluting) their idea out too much. Some shows are AMAZING for a season or two, then they complicate plots too much and it gets boring/cliche/stupid.

This is why sometimes, I've noticed that shows are actually cancelled not exactly when they are no longer popular, but maybe a season before, so the show is still memorable and retains longevity in it's core fan base (probably to secure DVD sales and interest in the show's main cast).

 

[awiltz2]

First off, the letter campaign brought in nowhere near a million letters; it was more like 12,000. Even for that, the NBC mail room needed to hire a couple of extra people to handle it all, so there's no way the system could possibly have handled anything near a million.

"NBC's corporate office in New York was deluged with more than one million pieces of mail. Network officials were aghast."

From "A Vision of the Future" by author Stephen Edward Poe. http://books.google.com/books?id=Mi...e_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=million&f=false

From the March 16, 1968 TV Guide:

I think Mort Werner's number approximately supports Nimoy's from I Am Not Spock.

This scan is so, so cool! I love the threats .

 

[Tribble Herder]

It could be argued that the pent up frustration over Star Trek's premature cancellation helped fuel the whole sci-fi surge of the mid 70's, i.e., without Star Trek getting cut off after the third season, other shows and movies (Star Wars, CE3K, Space: 1999) might not have received as much attention, and the market might not have flourished as well as it did without all us frustrated Trekkies clamoring for a new fix to tide us over until Star Trek could be resurrected.

Precisely what I was thinking! I feel that if the show did finish it's 5th season, it would have garnered the whole "this show has gone to shit" attitude that some shows get after stretching (diluting) their idea out too much. Some shows are AMAZING for a season or two, then they complicate plots too much and it gets boring/cliche/stupid.

This is why sometimes, I've noticed that shows are actually cancelled not exactly when they are no longer popular, but maybe a season before, so the show is still memorable and retains longevity in it's core fan base (probably to secure DVD sales and interest in the show's main cast).

In 1969!?!

 

[Christopher]

Maybe if you add in all the letters that Paramount and the various local stations got in with the 10,000 that NBC got, it might get closer to that one million figure.

Closer to the 100,000 figure from the TV Guide letter, perhaps. But I think the preponderance of evidence is that the "million letters" claim was just typical Roddenberry bluster.

Precisely what I was thinking! I feel that if the show did finish it's 5th season, it would have garnered the whole "this show has gone to shit" attitude that some shows get after stretching (diluting) their idea out too much. Some shows are AMAZING for a season or two, then they complicate plots too much and it gets boring/cliche/stupid.

Well, again, let's keep in mind the difference between '60s/'70s TV and modern TV. Back then there was no serialization except in daytime soaps, so the plots in later seasons wouldn't have gotten "complicated" in the way I assume you're suggesting. Each episode would've still just been a completely self-contained entity with little or no reference to anything before it and little or no impact on anything after it.

Certainly '60s and '70s shows did tend to go downhill in quality as they aged, but it wasn't due to plots becoming more complicated, more like they became lazier or simpler-minded or more repetitive. There was often network pressure, particularly on genre shows, to dumb things down or go more for the lowest common denominator. Or the writing staff changed and the writing grew weaker or less authentic to the premise and characters.

(Or sometimes it got worse for no discernible reason. The third season of Batman was deeply lame and stupid compared to the first two, with only the introduction of Batgirl as a saving grace, yet it had the same writers and producers as before. It gave up the 2-part cliffhanger-based format of the first two seasons due to a scheduling change, so that may have thrown off the writers' rhythms, but that alone wouldn't have explained how much the quality plummeted. Although really, the quality was already dropping off in late season 2.)

 

[awiltz2]

It could be argued that the pent up frustration over Star Trek's premature cancellation helped fuel the whole sci-fi surge of the mid 70's, i.e., without Star Trek getting cut off after the third season, other shows and movies (Star Wars, CE3K, Space: 1999) might not have received as much attention, and the market might not have flourished as well as it did without all us frustrated Trekkies clamoring for a new fix to tide us over until Star Trek could be resurrected.

Precisely what I was thinking! I feel that if the show did finish it's 5th season, it would have garnered the whole "this show has gone to shit" attitude that some shows get after stretching (diluting) their idea out too much. Some shows are AMAZING for a season or two, then they complicate plots too much and it gets boring/cliche/stupid.

This is why sometimes, I've noticed that shows are actually cancelled not exactly when they are no longer popular, but maybe a season before, so the show is still memorable and retains longevity in it's core fan base (probably to secure DVD sales and interest in the show's main cast).

In 1969!?!

Haha, I was referring to modern TV . Shucks.

Hard to imagine living in the 1960s and 1970s. If I wanted to see the entire series as I am right now, I would have had to ... probably develop the proper episode order from TV guide records, then watch reruns until each episode was covered. Probably would have taken months if not years, with the less popular episodes. If I missed an episode of Star Trek in 1968, I would have ... had to talk to other human beings about the episode ... and, socialize ... how ... barbaric .

 

[Christopher]

Hard to imagine living in the 1960s and 1970s. If I wanted to see the entire series as I am right now, I would have had to ... probably develop the proper episode order from TV guide records, then watch reruns until each episode was covered. Probably would have taken months if not years, with the less popular episodes.

Depends. At least by the late '70s or so, syndication packages tended to be broadcast in production order, though that wasn't always the case earlier. I certainly remember a long swath of my younger life when I could count on the Star Trek reruns cycling straight through from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" to "Turnabout Intruder" and then back again -- although I don't think that was the case when I started watching in 1974, because I know the first episode I saw was "The Corbomite Maneuver" and I'm pretty sure I saw a Chekov episode not very long after that (because I distinctly remember 5-year-old me complaining that "Check-off" wasn't a real name).

If I missed an episode of Star Trek in 1968, I would have ... had to talk to other human beings about the episode ... and, socialize ... how ... barbaric .

I believe a lot of fans made audio recordings of ST episodes with their tape recorders, just putting the mike in front of the TV speaker. Very low-fidelity, but for many it was the only way to preserve a record of the episode. (Doctor Who fans over in the UK did the same thing, which has proven valuable, because those off-air audio recordings are often the only surviving records of the episodes the BBC later erased. I believe they've managed to reconstruct the full audio of every erased episode, often by combining the most legible bits of multiple fan recordings.)

 

[awiltz2]

Maybe if you add in all the letters that Paramount and the various local stations got in with the 10,000 that NBC got, it might get closer to that one million figure.

Closer to the 100,000 figure from the TV Guide letter, perhaps. But I think the preponderance of evidence is that the "million letters" claim was just typical Roddenberry bluster.

Precisely what I was thinking! I feel that if the show did finish it's 5th season, it would have garnered the whole "this show has gone to shit" attitude that some shows get after stretching (diluting) their idea out too much. Some shows are AMAZING for a season or two, then they complicate plots too much and it gets boring/cliche/stupid.

Well, again, let's keep in mind the difference between '60s/'70s TV and modern TV. Back then there was no serialization except in daytime soaps, so the plots in later seasons wouldn't have gotten "complicated" in the way I assume you're suggesting. Each episode would've still just been a completely self-contained entity with little or no reference to anything before it and little or no impact on anything after it.

Certainly '60s and '70s shows did tend to go downhill in quality as they aged, but it wasn't due to plots becoming more complicated, more like they became lazier or simpler-minded or more repetitive. There was often network pressure, particularly on genre shows, to dumb things down or go more for the lowest common denominator. Or the writing staff changed and the writing grew weaker or less authentic to the premise and characters.

(Or sometimes it got worse for no discernible reason. The third season of Batman was deeply lame and stupid compared to the first two, with only the introduction of Batgirl as a saving grace, yet it had the same writers and producers as before. It gave up the 2-part cliffhanger-based format of the first two seasons due to a scheduling change, so that may have thrown off the writers' rhythms, but that alone wouldn't have explained how much the quality plummeted. Although really, the quality was already dropping off in late season 2.)

They were trying to "complicate" the plot by giving McCoy a daughter it seems. Usually when they run out of good stories, they start simply manipulating the characters. Like taking out Spock's brain. Or making poor old Spock achieve pon-farr. Giving them all an alien fever that will kill them in 24 hours. Or having them get squirted in the face by a plant. Or silicon-based parasites (in the episode where Kirk's dead brother is seen). Or making Kirk, Scotty, Checkov, McCoy or even sometimes Spock fall in love with some random (inexplicably humanoid) alien chick, followed by a broken heart. It's the same story, different character. They were cute for a while, but Kirk-alien kissing sessions can only be sexy so many times.

 

[plynch]

Blasphemer! You are not of the body!

 

[Christopher]

They were trying to "complicate" the plot by giving McCoy a daughter it seems.

Define "they." At the start of the second season, story editor D. C. Fontana sat down with the actors and asked them their thoughts about their characters. DeForest Kelley himself suggested that McCoy had a broken marriage and a daughter (many actors come up with their own backstories for their characters to give them a handle on the performance). Fontana put that into the revised writers' guide, adding that she was named Joanna and was training to be a nurse. It was there for any staff or freelance writer to pick up on it if they so desired, but nobody did anything with the idea for over a year. In 1968, after Fontana had left the story editor position to become a freelancer, she submitted a story outline called "Joanna" to the show. The third-season producers bought the outline (for she'd gotten a contract guaranteeing her at least three scripts for season 3, and this was her third), but they decided not to proceed with the story about Joanna McCoy, based on a misconception that Dr. McCoy was too young to have an adult daughter. So they rewrote it as "The Way to Eden," with Irina Galliulin replacing Joanna.

This is another important difference between '60s TV and modern TV. These days, the creative process is very centralized and organized; there's a showrunner and a staff, a "they" who plan out the whole season and have a hand in every episode. But back then, it was much looser, much more decentralized -- you had a producer or two, you had a story editor, and you had a bunch of freelancers who contributed the bulk of the episode concepts and scripts. So the only "they" behind the concept of Joanna McCoy were DeForest Kelley and Dorothy Fontana.

Usually when they run out of good stories, they start simply manipulating the characters. Like taking out Spock's brain. Or making poor old Spock achieve pon-farr. Giving them all an alien fever that will kill them in 24 hours. Or having them get squirted in the face by a plant. Or silicon-based parasites (in the episode where Kirk's dead brother is seen). Or making Kirk, Scotty, Checkov, McCoy or even sometimes Spock fall in love with some random (inexplicably humanoid) alien chick, followed by a broken heart.

The problem there is that you're mentioning storylines from all three seasons, so it doesn't make sense if your intent is to talk about a show running out of ideas as it gets older.

As for romances of the week, that was a convention throughout episodic television for decades. As I've said, the standard back then was strictly episodic storytelling, each hour being a complete, self-contained narrative. They didn't have DVDs or the Internet or the like to give them a sense of a series as a unified whole. As you just observed a little while ago, if you missed an episode, you probably wouldn't get to see it at all. So each episode had to be a complete story from beginning to end, independent of other episodes. So of course any romance was going to come out of the blue and be over by the end of the hour, the same as any trial or any war or any disease or any takeover or any other plot whatsoever. It wasn't a symptom of running out of ideas, it was just the nature of the medium at the time.

Also, the parasites in "Operation: Annihilate" weren't silicon-based. That was the Horta in "The Devil in the Dark."

 

[awiltz2]

Also, the parasites in "Operation: Annihilate" weren't silicon-based. That was the Horta in "The Devil in the Dark."

From Operation: Annihilate:

"SPOCK: Incredible. Not only should it have been destroyed by our phasers, it does not even register on my tricorder.
ZAHRA: Captain, it doesn't even look real.
SPOCK: It is not life as we know or understand it. Yet t is obviously alive, it exists."

When it didn't register as a life form, I could swear Spock suggested it to be silicon-based. Also, if it wasn't carbon-based, silicon-based life forms are theoretically the only other possible corporeal forms of life as we know it. I definitely did mix it up with Horta though. There goes my credibility!

I should probably hold off on making claims until I've read at least one book on the topic, and finished at least one of the series! (currently watching "The Cloud Minders," definitely one of my favorite episodes so far).