Unfilmed 3rd Season Episodes

It's my understanding that NBC ended the third season rather abruptly, and that there were a few more episodes slated to be filmed after "Turnabout Intruder." I even recall reading that William Shatner was tapped to made his directorial debut on one of them. Does anyone know anything more about these unfilmed episodes? They must have been working on them even while "Turnabout" was filming, meaning that they would have been scripted, and sets should have been designed, if not already under construction when the plug was pulled. Does anyone know of set drawings, photos of sets/props under construction, or if there are scripts that we could read?

 

I really don't think there has ever been any set or prop built for an unfilmed episode of the original series. There are several unfilmed stories (in various stages of development) written during all the three seasons of the series, as it happens more or less in any TV series. Here you can find a list and an analysis of some of them: http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/
And of course also Memory Alpha has a section dedicated to the unfilmed TOS episodes: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Undeveloped_Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_episodes
Apparently William Shatner was supposed to have his directional debut on "The Joy Machine" (http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/joy_machine.htm) written by Theodore Sturgeon. Shatner also wrote an unused storyline himself, "The Web of Death" (http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/web_of_death.htm), which Roddenberry considered to be not so bad.

 

I think some of the animated episodes were from earlier scripts.

 

Sounds like the ultimate Doctor Who episode title.

 

Was Turnabout Intruder always the final episode of season three?

I always assumed it was, and that TOS was cancelled for a new season, not that it was cancelled during season three.

Perhaps the Shatner directorial debut was for season four?

 

I have story outlines for five unproduced episodes at Forgotten Trek:

https://forgottentrek.com/the-original-series/

 

The Memory Alpha page of undeveloped TOS episodes is atrocious. Several of its entries are from concepts and outlines that eventually became episodes, e.g., "Joanna," so they were hardly undeveloped. Also, and importantly, there's no differentiation on that page between concepts that were thrown about casually, with no significant chance of being developed, and those that were serious efforts that made their way to the scripting phase.

 

Yes, you are right. It may be a starting point to do some extra research, but basically it's a mess.

 

I think I read that the cast was given the bad news during filming of TI in the pages of Star Trek Lives!. It may have even been mentioned there that Shatner was doubly disappointed because he was slated to direct the next one. Weirdly that would mean Shatner was leading an episode and not doing any prep work a week before he would have been shooting. Anyways, how long before that Freiberger knew, I can't guess.

 

After everything I’ve read over all these years I was long under the impression everyone knew long before season’s end that the show wasn’t coming back for a fourth season. The Friday night timeslot in the ‘60s was considered the graveyard for series to be killed off—no one expected the show to survive that.

 

Or maybe not, according to Fact Trek:

“Ten o’clock on Friday nights.”

”That was a bad time slot for Star Trek.”

“Gene knew nobody stays home and watches television on Friday night, that’s movie night, that’s date night.”​

Or so says 50+ years of Trek mythology, and yet in its 1965–66 season The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was rated #13 overall with an average 24.0 rating in that very 10–11 p.m. “death slot” on Friday nights…on NBC. No one ever discusses that. Why? Perhaps because asking such questions would be an inconvenient truth to the oral tradition that’s been handed down as gospel for 50+ years.​

 

The idea that Shatner was slated to direct the very next one sounds like the kind of detail that comes in as a story gets better with time. Not that I know anything about this story.

Also, if there was a next episode planned after Turnabout, wouldn't it have been deep into pre-production? When TNG was in full swing, it famously had 11 episodes in the various stages of pre- and post-production at a time. The one being filmed was in the middle of the list. So TOS must have had at least some kind of pre-production work to do in the week before a show was actually filmed.

 

As much as the history of this particular show has been mined, wouldn't somebody have published something on it, somewhere along the way?

@Harvey, @Maurice, this one seems right up your guys alley.

 

Interesting. Reading those outlines it’s not hard to see why they didn’t happen. There is really nothing special about them. Candidly “The Way To Eden” comes across definitely better than “Joanna..”

 

The cast found out mid-season that there wasn't going to be a fourth season but as to when they found out it was only going to be 24 instead of 26 episodes in season 3 is another matter completely. The network certainly decided long before the final episode was in production that there wasn't going to be a 25th and the 26th episode. Because as has been stated above it would have been active set building and casting if there had been an episode about to be filmed in less than a week.

 

I am surprised how closely Joanna and the way to Eden ended up being. The flower children aspect the searching for an Eden type planet the taking over of the ship the stealing of the shuttle. It seems like when they rewrote it all they did was spend more time on how the cultists took over the ship and they threw in the musical segments. Personally I prefer the way to Eden better with the obvious exception of the Space Jam scene. If they had had the sense to make them a little less direct copies of what they thought 1960s hippies look like and just gave them something unique to the 23rd Century it would have been an above-average third season episode. The part I dislike most about the Johanna script and the way to Eden was forcing in a relationship with one of the Enterprise crew members. Was it written into the Bible of the third season that every other episode one of the crew members has to have a love interest? Scotty and Mira, McCoy and Natira, Spock and Zarabeth, Chekov and Irina, Etc. And that's besides Kirk having a fling in virtually every other episode. But as usual nothing for Lieutenant Uhura.

 

I thought it was good that Scotty, Sulu, and Uhura were named in the outlines (not that they could not have been replaced). It does show that writers did consider them in stories at least. I think not being seen as a love interest actually benefitted Uhura. I wish Chapel, Rand, and a whole host of female guest stars could have been left out of love interest territory more often.

 

Shockingly, Memory Alpha cites Marc Cushman's 'These Are The Voyages' books as a source in some cases. If that's a valid starting point for their article, I consider the whole thing to be suspect.

 

One would have to check his sources: what they were, and how he interpreted them.

 

Sadly I only checked out his sources after I’d polluted my mind with his trilogy of books. Which means my head is full of even more rubbish! Much of what he has to say in his books have been widely criticised and brought into contention though. Sometimes he outright fabricates stuff to suit his narrative.