Classic episodes now considered "lame" - ?!

[Phaser Two]

I never caught that, although I did stay for the whole series in first run. Long time ago.

If DS9 stopped using the Ops set, it must have been for budgetary reasons. Sound stage floor space is a budget item, like rent, and maybe they moved DS9 to a smaller stage. This happened to both Lost in Space and Space: 1999.

In the case of Space: 1999, the Main Mission set took up so much space that they had to assemble it for all necessary scenes and then take it down to make room for other Alpha interiors to be stood up. The second season budget cut, IIRC, forced the production to move to a smaller stage elsewhere, and that's why the "Command Center" came about. And that was still a nice big set, just not as spectacular.

No, it wasn't anything like that, although I enjoyed your post. Ops remained fully available as a set.

The Defiant basically supplanted Ops heavily and the writers drastically cut back on having scenes set in the latter. (Note that I'm excluding Sisko's office, which continued to be used, although it too started seeing less time.) With the sorts of stories they decided to tell during the war arc, the Defiant was more suitable, and they just didn't have as much need to show Ops as the nerve center of the station. And Odo and Quark/Rom and Garak always got their scenes on the Promenade and had little reason to be in Ops. Neither did Nog or Ezri. I did an S6/S7 rewatch not long ago and was highly surprised at how little Ops was used. Since it was an amazingly cool set, it contributed to my overall disappointment. But as I said before, the "tough little ship" compensated.

 

[Just a Bill]

I'm not sure where the idea that they stopped using [Ops] after season 4 comes from.

I don't think that statement was meant to be literally absolute. He wrote that they "basically" stopped using it, meaning it stopped being a centerpiece of every episode since most of the command-center scenes had moved to the Defiant bridge.

Edit: Uh, yeah, as just explained in the post right above mine. Next time I'll try to remember to read ahead.

 

[suarezguy]

It's competion was The Tammy Grimes Show for four weeks until ABC yanked that and made an evening The Dating Game to fill the void until a mid-season replacement was possible.

It's my opinion that launching with "The Man Trap" was the worst choice they could have gone with for the premiere, as it reinforced the idea that sci-fi shows were about monsters, so they squandered their chance to make a good impression right out of the gate. I think a lot of people who did check it out checked out and never came back.

Honestly, of the handful of episodes they had available, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the only solid choice for selling the concept, plus it had good guest stars.

I think, though "WNMHGB" was/would be better, "The Man Trap" was not bad and The Twilight Zone had memorably shown there was/could be a lot of variety in type of plots, I think most people willing to give ST a chance would not be particularly offput by "The Man Trap" and/or would be willing to initially try 2 or 3 episodes.

 

[Phaser Two]

I don't think that statement was meant to be literally absolute. He wrote that they "basically" stopped using it, meaning it stopped being a centerpiece of every episode since most of the command-center scenes had moved to the Defiant bridge.

Edit: Uh, yeah, as just explained in the post right above mine. Next time I'll try to remember to read ahead.

Not at all—after all you said it more concisely than I did!

 

[Maurice]

I think, though "WNMHGB" was/would be better, "The Man Trap" was not bad and The Twilight Zone had memorably shown there was/could be a lot of variety in type of plots, I think most people willing to give ST a chance would not be particularly offput by "The Man Trap" and/or would be willing to initially try 2 or 3 episodes.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

 

[Greg Cox]

It was also up against Bewitched, a top rated and Emmy nominated show.

I dimly remember being torn between Star Trek and Bewitched on occasion, back in the dark days before VCRs spared us from such dilemmas.

 

[Takeru]

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

But there wasn't a significant dop off between the first episode and the following ones.

 

[Phaser Two]

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

What's the contention here? It all worked out. Heck, with all the horror elements in S1 (brought back with a vengeance in S3) it might have even intrigued people who might otherwise not have been hooked.

 

[Maurice]

What's the contention here? It all worked out.

Worked out that the show never made it out of the bottom half of the shows on the air?

But there wasn't a significant dop off between the first episode and the following ones.

Where'd you get that idea? The Nielsen average audience count between the 1st and 2nd episode dropped from 11.36 to 10.1 million, which means the show shed 12% of its audience or 1¼ million viewers. By the 5th episode it was pulling under 10 million, and the average for the entire season was 9.9 million, which was slightly less than Lost In Space.

 

[Takeru]

Where'd you get that idea? The Nielsen average audience count between the 1st and 2nd episode dropped from 11.36 to 10.1 million, which means the show shed 12% of its audience ...

Yes, but that's not a significant number, series premieres often generate more interest than regular episodes. The more important part is how stable the audience is over time and TOS stabilized between 9 and 10 million for the first season. Those weren't exactly great numbers but I doubt it would have been different with another premiere episode because whichever they aired first would have had no influence on the rest of the season, people either liked the show or didn't and those who did for the most part stuck with it.

 

[Phaser Two]

Worked out that the show never made it out of the bottom half of the shows on the air?

No.

 

[CoveTom]

No.

The point is that if we're being honest, TOS was a failure in its original run. Well, perhaps failure is being too harsh. It did well enough to barely hang on for three seasons, but the ratings were never good and it was always a fight to get to stay on the air. TOS was only truly successful in syndication.

 

[Phaser Two]

The point is that if we're being honest, TOS was a failure in its original run. Well, perhaps failure is being too harsh. It did well enough to barely hang on for three seasons, but the ratings were never good and it was always a fight to get to stay on the air. TOS was only truly successful in syndication.

SPOCK: Thank you, Doctor. I was able to gather the meaning. ["Patterns of Force"]



I believe I got his point. But I believe the underlying premise of the debate (for which I asked for and received no clarification, so forgive me if I'm incorrect) was that if TOS had begun with some other episode aired first, the viewership outcome would have been different. Not only could I not disagree with that more, and not only is that an unprovable counterfactual, but if the offered episode is "Where No Man," you're talking about a difference of weeks before it aired. Asserting that a bunch of viewers saw "The Man Trap" and then fled for the hills, never to return, AND would have done otherwise if "Where No Man" had kicked things off, is an argument I can't get behind. Did those folks really never come back to check things out ever again, at any time over the rest of S1 and S2? (I'll omit S3 to spare us all from the slings and arrows typically targeted thereat.)

And as I said, it all worked out pretty well in the end, so it doesn't really matter.

 

[mb22]

WNMHGB was different enough from the the other episodes in terms of cast, costumes, makeup etc. that the producers and network executives didn't want to use it for the premier.

Had the intended premier episode "The Corbomite Maneuver" not gotten bogged down in its special effects production, things might have been different, but whether viewership would have stayed significantly higher as time went on is an unknown.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I've been wasting a lot of time on other forums, Reddit for one, and there are a lot of younger fans. A lot of them consider the entire series "cringe." One even wondered how a show this bad could be the basis of a long running franchise.

I do wish more people would watch older TV shows and movies in context of their era, but there you go.

This is also why a lot of younger fans are all over the "remake TOS" thing that gets tossed around. For them it's a chance to enjoy characters from a show they consider too old to tolerate.

That's nothing; a podcast I came across goes to town on TOS completely with some of the episodes.

 

[scotpens]

. . . But I believe the underlying premise of the debate (for which I asked for and received no clarification, so forgive me if I'm incorrect) was that if TOS had begun with some other episode aired first, the viewership outcome would have been different. Not only could I not disagree with that more, and not only is that an unprovable counterfactual, but if the offered episode is "Where No Man," you're talking about a difference of weeks before it aired.

Just two weeks, in fact. "WNMHGB" was the third episode broadcast, after "The Man Trap" and "Charlie X."

 

[Phaser Two]

Just two weeks, in fact. "WNMHGB" was the third episode broadcast, after "The Man Trap" and "Charlie X."

Thanks. I recalled the order and didn't think there had been a skipped week so early in the run, but didn't look it up to see if it was September 22 for "Where No Man." I appreciate you fixing my laziness.

 

[Ovation]

Honestly, of the handful of episodes they had available, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the only solid choice for selling the concept, plus it had good guest stars.

It remains my favourite of the pilots, by far, and in the top five of my favourite episodes of all Trek (I’ve seen all of it save Prodigy and whatever the show for 3 year olds is called).

 

[Maurice]

I'm a busy guy and I can't always reply to these right away,

Two or more things can be correct at the same time. The premiere of a show can have a big falloff in audience if people decide it's not to their taste. In fact, Star Trek's audience share dropped every 15 minutes "The Man Trap" aired (the Nielsens tracked audience size by quarter hour).

The critics were not kind to the first segment of the show, and while I can't speak to how much or little impact TV critics had on audiences in 1966, the critical word of mouth about the show was largely not good after "NBC Week" and that might have prevented some people from giving the show a chance at all in following weeks.

The second pilot is generally regarded as a better episode than "The Man Trap," and the former is certainly a better vehicle for demonstrating Shatner's on-screen charisma.

Whether airing it first would have made any difference is debatable and unknowable at this point, but my opinion is that it would have been a better first episode for getting people to give it a second chance than "The Man Trap," which is pretty joyless.

 

[johnnybear]

I may be super-biased, but the only episodes of TOS that I find to be relatively unworthy of repeat viewing are:

Mudd's Women
Turnabout Intruder
Plato's Stepchildren
Miri

Plato I agree wholeheartedly with. Mudd's Women is the better of the two, Turnabout is okay and Miri is great as it's not one I had the ability to see for myself until 1983.
JB