Does Anybody Know Why?
- Thread starter Keith1701
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From what little info I could find, after the original contract for TAS ran out, NBC only ordered six more episodes.
I recall a newspaper article contemporary with the cancellation. It said NBC simply found that kids were willing to watch the same few ST cartoon eps over and over (and I sure was at age 11-12), so there was no need to spend money on new ones.
It's ironic (if it's true) that audience loyalty would kill the show, but in those days the market was different. Later animated shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy were kept alive by loyal audiences because new episodes keep interest up, and thus the merchandising gravy train keeps flowing. They have T-shirts, DVDs, endless stuff for sale. ST TAS had almost no such secondary markets to incentivize the studio.
It's ironic (if it's true) that audience loyalty would kill the show, but in those days the market was different. Later animated shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy were kept alive by loyal audiences because new episodes keep interest up, and thus the merchandising gravy train keeps flowing. They have T-shirts, DVDs, endless stuff for sale. ST TAS had almost no such secondary markets to incentivize the studio.
I thought the animated was very good, and some episodes had some good stories too.
And, it's far from uncommon. Twenty years later Batman: The Animated series did the same thing. Also, although I don't know this for a fact, I think it's sister shows, Superman and Justice League did this too.
They were all Warner Bros. productions, and the WB tends to get a lot of mileage out of their animated shows, even putting them into syndication.
Most old cartoons are still available through syndication--including Star Trek TAS--for any TV network or local channel that wants them.
I believe that this was standard procedure for cartoons and other child-oriented programming: do a few new shows each season to pad out the reruns.
Rather like they do with prime-time series nowadays!
Rather like they do with prime-time series nowadays!
This was common for animated Saturday morning shows in the '70s. A number of other Filmation shows only had one season that kept getting rerun for years. I grew up seeing the same episodes over and over and finding it normal.
Me too. And it never got old. I watched the same cartoons over and over, but if I got distracted by something else, well, there you go. Kids are kids.
I was 13-14 when TAS aired. I'd try to watch when I could, even if it were a rerun. In those days there was only one TV in the house, and the younger sibs often beat me to it and watched whatever it was they liked.
If I didn't like what was on, I had to find something else to do. Read, go outside, ride my bike, whatever. There was no internet, no gaming consoles, nothing. We literally had to think outside the box.
But in the 22 episodes of animated Trek, I still wonder why there was no episode number 12?
^I didn't know what you meant there, but I checked the episode list on Memory Alpha, and indeed, the production numbers jump from 22011 to 22013. I suppose they had an episode #22012 in development but it was abandoned for some reason. Sometimes that happens -- a script in development just can't be made to work.
Gasp! What if the episode was produced, but never aired due to suspicious reasons and lost forever? What was in that episode? What are they trying to hide from us?! False flag, JFK, Masons, et cetera!
Yep. The standard operating system for animated series in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, was to seed the usually-shorter second season with repeat episodes. To the ongoing bemusement of Saturday morning programmers, viewer numbers would not waiver whether the episode was a brand new episode or a repeat.
Contractually, it was also very common for an animated series to restart under a new name every few years, rather that have all the Season Three clauses kick in, such as big jumps in actor salaries. (eg. "The New Adventures of Gilligan" becoming "Gilligan's Planet", etc.) The best example of this strategy is the 80s and 90s "Batman" cartoons, which often underwent series title changes and visual revamps even if the voice talent stayed the same. Sadly for the actors, it was like starting a whole new series, and their salaries would be pegged to keep the budget in check. Young viewers barely noticed.
Actually New Adventures had been off the air (except in syndicated reruns as part of the Groovie Goolies and Friends "wheel" package) for five years when Gilligan's Planet came along. So that's not a workable example of that pattern. It was really more a Hanna-Barbera practice than a Filmation practice; Scooby-Doo, for example, went through nine different incarnations between 1969 and 1985. The only times when Filmation renamed a series from season to season was when it added a new show to a package of multiple shows, usually consisting of reruns. CBS's Tarzan and the Super 7 had most of its segments (except Tarzan and Jason of Star Command repackaged as reruns on NBC as Batman and the Super 7, and The Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour (combining reruns of the former with the debut of the latter) expanded into The Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour when the third series was added the following year. Most Filmation shows didn't run long enough to go through the kind of sequential identity changes you're talking about. Except for Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and the only time that changed its name was when it moved to syndication in 1984, getting The Adventures of prefixed to the title.
Again, that's not correct. First off, there were no Batman animated series per se between Filmation's The New Adventures of Batman in 1977 and Warner Bros.' Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, although he appeared in various incarnations of Superfriends through 1986. Second, while B:TAS did undergo a title change to The New Batman and Robin Adventures in 1994, that was just a repackaging of the last 3/4 of the already-produced second season when FOX moved the show to Saturday mornings; they hoped that adding Robin's name to the titles would help the show attract younger viewers. (The 20 episodes of season 2 were dribbled out over three broadcast seasons, with the first 5 aired under the B:TAS title and the other 15 under the TAoB&R title -- although that's not in production order.) The show was then cancelled, and it wasn't until it was revived three years later on The WB as part of The New Batman/Superman Adventures that it underwent a "visual revamp" to streamline the character designs for easier animation and bring it more in line with the Superman design style. They were able to reunite most of the cast, although some roles were recast.
Agree.
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