What if it Went Longer
- Thread starter dougiezerts
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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.
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.
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 
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
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.
Babylon 5 in-joke.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
Star Trek sixth season: they fired the guy (too expensive) and sold the table. The log text appears directly on tv screen.
Yeah. Huh?
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.
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.)
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.
No need, maybe, but I am obsessed after all...
From the March 4, 1968 issue of Broadcasting (p.25):
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.
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.
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