What if it Went Longer

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by dougiezerts, Jul 15, 2014.

  1. Green Shirt

    Green Shirt Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Star Trek fifth season: some guy sitting at a table reading the Captain's Log. :(
     
  2. Zaku

    Zaku Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Star Trek sixth season: they fired the guy (too expensive) and sold the table. The log text appears directly on tv screen.
     
  3. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I like to pretend that the reason for there being less background crewmen in Season 3 is because so many red shirts bit the dust in Seasons 1 and 2. ;)
     
  4. Otto Harkaman

    Otto Harkaman Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    I am glad I enjoyed the series for a long time without being interested in its production because the more you know it some what takes away from its enjoyment. Now I'll start to notice less people onboard the Enterprise in later episodes :(
     
  5. E-DUB

    E-DUB Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Fans complained after the first season that Captain Pike was replaced by Kirk. Roddenberry says it was always part of the plan to do so.
     
  6. Ssosmcin

    Ssosmcin Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Not for me. The show stands on its own in spite of all I know about everything. It's more interesting to me to have answers to questions I've had about the series as it went on.

    I don't follow you.
     
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Babylon 5 in-joke.
     
  8. Ssosmcin

    Ssosmcin Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Ahhhhhh, got it. Thanks.
     
  9. TREK_GOD_1

    TREK_GOD_1 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well, its a matter of what really distracts someone, or feel is important to their enjoyment; for decades, I did not hear many complaining about the use of pilot Enterprise footage mixed in with regular series Enterprise, even when the modifications were apparent. They just accepted it as being a part of the show--like the changing numbers of visible crew in a ship said to carry 430.
     
  10. Keith1701

    Keith1701 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I agree, if the TOS had gone into fourth season, the franchise might have ended then and there instead of having TNG, then into DS9, onto to Voyager, and movies, plus Enterprise.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    First off, how does that agree with what Maurice said about TAS? It seems completely unrelated.

    Second, I don't understand the cause and effect you're positing. What made Star Trek popular enough to get all those sequels and spinoffs was its spectacular success in syndicated reruns. If it had had a fourth season, it would've had more reruns; indeed, the season would've needed only 21 episodes to hit the "magic 100" number that was considered the optimal minimum for effective syndication (though TOS's success with only 79 episodes somewhat gives the lie to that). So I don't see how having four seasons' worth of reruns instead of three would have been in any way detrimental to ST's popularity. Even if the fourth season had been horrible, fans would still have liked the first two just as much. Sure, they would've gotten to see the good episodes only about 3/4 as often, but given how ubiquitous ST was in syndication, that wouldn't have been that great a reduction in their availability.
     
  12. dougiezerts

    dougiezerts Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Reminds me of the Saturday Night Live parody. They're shutting down the show and pulling down the set, while the cast is saying their lines. Only Shattner remains onstage vainly trying to boldly go where no man has gone before!:rommie:
     
  13. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Yeah. Huh?
     
  14. E-DUB

    E-DUB Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I don't know that a longer running original series would have deprived us of spin-offs. Look at "Law and Order". What we might have gotten could have been no TNG, (of course, many of the TNG stories would work as original series eps). We also could have seen DS9 and Voyager only with 23rd century settings. With the L&O model, some of them could even have ran concurrently with the original.
     
  15. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    You mean the TNG/DS9 model, since they ran concurrently for a few years.
     
  16. Nebusj

    Nebusj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Ah, thank you. I wasn't aware that contemporary documentary evidence had been found. (No need to bother finding it; I'm fine, for discussions like this, accepting that it did appear in Broadcasting or the equivalent.)
     
  17. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I don't see that. I mean, there's an 18-year gap between the end of TOS and the start of TNG. No way would a longer-running TOS have made it anywhere near that long. Heck, TNG itself was the first American science fiction show that ever ran longer than five seasons.

    After all, the adventures of the original cast did continue in movies -- but they still created TNG because they were aware that the original cast was getting older (and more expensive) and thus wanted to start over with a fresh cast. So I just don't see why a longer TOS would've prevented TNG or the 24th-century setting from being created.
     
  18. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    No need, maybe, but I am obsessed after all...

    From the March 4, 1968 issue of Broadcasting (p.25):

    [​IMG]
    The three figures next to each series represent per minute advertising prices for the fall/winter, spring, and summer.

    As you can see, Star Trek was drawing advertising rates not far removed from the Tuesday 10 o'clock news hour on CBS -- not a good sign.

    On March 15, 1968, NBC decided to shuffle its forthcoming schedule to better accommodate Rowan and Martin's Laugh In, which had risen to the #21 spot in the Nielsen ratings during the 1967-68 season (and would subsequently take the #1 spot the following season). As a side-effect of that move, Star Trek ended up in the 10:00 spot on Friday nights.
     
  19. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Those numbers further make the case that the show was not performing well.
     
  20. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    But, wow, they were going to put ST up against Gunsmoke? That implies they felt it could be a strong performer. Just not as strong as Laugh-In, as it turned out.