Has Fred Freiberger been misblamed for Season 3 over the years?

[LMFAOschwarz]

Gotta love the narration in the video that has the tone which suggests that naturally this is all good.

Funny you should mention that. I was thinking the tone of the narrator reminded me of a training video from the human resources department!

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

​

Most action packed episode of 1999 evahr!

Took me a while to get to this video. Actually it's quite good! I love how well it mimics the type of directing and camera work you'd see on 1999. The moving camera in the Eagle cockpit was actually a nice touch. There's also very little ambiguity of story considering without dialogue, it's essentially a silent movie.

My favorite little touch has to be the floppy antenna on the moon buggy.

All that, and even a light-hearted joke ending that actually made me chucle!

 

[trevanian]

The other Roddenberry pilot that got produced in his lifetime was the supernatural-themed Spectre, which I've never seen, so I can't speculate on how it would've worked as a series.

I remember forcing myself to sit through SPECTRE and finding it hard to believe that with such a great couple of principalcast members, it could be so flat and almost unwatchable.

I think QUESTOR shot its wad for a different reason than having already resolved Questor's nature (his incompleteness actually does work to make the characters complementary if it went to series); the series wouldn't have had John Vernon's character, which is what gave the thing its genuine complexity and depth (I've always thought that character was nearly entirely Coon's.)

Having bought QUESTOR on DVD recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Vernon character is just as good as I remembered (I pretty much remembered the dialog at the end verbatim, even though it had been decades.)

I suppose that they could have had a similar character in the series, but I can't imagine him having the ethical weight. I absolutely see Vernon's perspective about man, and I always tear up when he takes the homing device (have watched the last 10 minutes about 5 times already since buying it.)

 

[Christopher]

True, it is strange that the movie cuts off much of what would've been interesting to see in a series. But it does make it more satisfying as a movie than a lot of TV pilots, because it has more closure.

 

[Maurice]

Well, let's not forget that it wasn't always the case that pilots were aired. Had the show been picked up it's possible the pilot would have never aired, especially if it contradicted the series to follow.

 

[Christopher]

Well, let's not forget that it wasn't always the case that pilots were aired. Had the show been picked up it's possible the pilot would have never aired, especially if it contradicted the series to follow.

Not in this case, because The Questor Tapes was a "backdoor" pilot, designed to work as both a standalone TV movie and a pilot for an ongoing series. That way, if the series didn't go forward, the expense of the pilot would not be wasted, because it could still be aired and syndicated as a movie, which it was. So it was always going to be aired. This is how all of Roddenberry's '70s pilots were done. Other notable '70s series like The Six Million Dollar Man and The Incredible Hulk also began as TV movies (2-3 movies, in fact) before debuting as weekly series.

Indeed, TQT was picked up as a series before the pilot aired, but it aired anyway. It fell through because Roddenberry had a falling out with Universal and NBC about the direction for the series. They wanted to drop Mike Farrell's character, and -- yes -- to disregard the ending of the movie. Roddenberry refused, so the deal fell through. They may have been right about the latter, but Roddenberry was right about the former: the show needed the Questor-Jerry relationship.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

B.J. Hunnicutt was really good for M*A*S*H. I think TV got the better bargain, as it was.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, but Roddenberry was entitled to fight for the good of his show, not some other show that would benefit from his loss. The Questor-Jerry relationship was the heart of the movie. It had the potential to be as compelling a pairing as Kirk and Spock. I can't believe NBC (or Universal?) wanted to get rid of it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, but Roddenberry was entitled to fight for the good of his show, not some other show that would benefit from his loss. The Questor-Jerry relationship was the heart of the movie. It had the potential to be as compelling a pairing as Kirk and Spock. I can't believe NBC (or Universal?) wanted to get rid of it.

You know, I'm not saying that the behind-the-scenes info that we have on The Questor Tapes is false (I mean, how would I know, right?), but we already know that Roddenberry's version of events with respect to, how do I put it, some of the other shows he's worked on are at least somewhat dodgy. Given that we're talking about something that arguably would have sabotaged the premise of the show, I'd like to understand more fully what the sources are for the narrative. Because it sure sounds incredible.

 

[Christopher]

You know, I'm not saying that the behind-the-scenes info that we have on The Questor Tapes is false (I mean, how would I know, right?), but we already know that Roddenberry's version of events with respect to, how do I put it, some of the other shows he's worked on are at least somewhat dodgy. Given that we're talking about something that arguably would have sabotaged the premise of the show, I'd like to understand more fully what the sources are for the narrative. Because it sure sounds incredible.

Actually this information doesn't come from Roddenberry, for the most part. There's a great article with interviews with all the major decision-makers which unfortunately went offline five years ago, but thank goodness for the Internet Archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20081121211450/http://www.retrovisionmag.com/questor_tapes.htm

Although proud of what had been accomplished in the film, Roddenberry had a number of run-ins with network and studio executives that made bitter the making of a film that would ultimately be embraced by the critics. Despite this, a 13-episode go-ahead was given for The Questor Tapes, with Foxworth and Farrell continuing in their roles. Joining the actors behind the scenes, besides Roddenberry, were producers Michael Rhodes and Earl Booth and story editor Larry Alexander, who notes that there were numerous creative differences with NBC and Universal.

...

Perhaps the biggest "innovation" was the decision to abruptly drop the Jerry Robinson character. This alteration is best summed up in a November 7, 1973 revised bible to the series which is simply called "New Questor Series Format." On page one, it notes, "Questor is a dual-quest series. He is being sought and, at the same time, is a seeker himself. Questor is a fugitive from the five-nation combine headed by Darro or a Darro-type. They know the android is alive somewhere and want to recover what they consider to be a fantastically valuable ambulatory computer. Questor is himself a seeker, his quest being to discover his purpose and reason for having been constructed and given the imperative of helping mankind. Why am I here? Who and where is this mysterious Vaslovik who created me?" The paragraph concludes with this particular beauty, "We ignore the ending of the pilot in which he did find Vaslovik and got a full explanation of his identity and purpose."

...

One of the primary proponents behind this shift was producer Michael Rhodes, who points out that it was his suggestion; a suggestion the studio seemed to support completely.

"What Universal had bought in their own minds, maybe without realizing it, was the relationship between Mike Farrell and Robert Foxworth," opines Rhodes. "But in developing the scripts for the series, we realized that each character was flawed in their own way and as long as they were together they were perfect. They made a complete person, so you really couldn't create any jeopardy for them because they had each other to handle what the other was missing. You had to separate them, but when you separated them you didn't have the relationship. It was really a vicious circle. It didn't work."

Rhodes is the one who thought it would be best to forget Questor's discovery of his purpose. "It was radical surgery," he says, obviously the only person on the creative team who thought that this was the way to go. "It's The Fugitive, then, because you've got all these government bad guys chasing him. He is still very vulnerable because he's incomplete. He's got parts missing and can make the same kind of relationships in each episode that he had with the Mike Farrell character."

Earl Booth was not pleased with this direction, noting that it felt like the decision to drop Robinson was made "overnight."

"It mystified me," he admits, "because whatever the thrust of the show was, you had an alien -- really -- whose communication with the modern world was completely nil unless he had someone to talk to, and it was then that I began to see that what the people at Universal wanted was basically a carbon copy of The Fugitive, which they have tried to copy many times and for the most part have been unsuccessful. I personally felt that this was wrong. To have this unique being constantly chased by people who are after him for whatever stupid reason, I could never tell, was ridiculous. From that point on, things went downhill."

...

Throughout the preparation period, Farrell was in almost constant contact with the producers and Gene Roddenberry. One day, however, his phone call to Michael Rhodes went unreturned. He wasn't concerned until a second phone call wasn't returned either.

"It was a Friday -- I'll remember that for the rest of my life," he reflects. "Over the weekend, all of those little gremlins went to work on me. Finally, my agent called and said, 'I don't know what this is about, but I've got a message here that you and I are being asked to come to a meeting at the Tower on Monday morning.' Over the weekend I didn't sleep well and I thought, 'I'm being dropped from this goddamn show and I can't understand it.' I finally got a hold of Gene and he said, 'Oh my God, nobody called you? Yeah, there's a problem. Some people think the series will work better without the Jerry character.' I may be creating dialogue to serve myself but as I recall, Gene said, 'I think it's a crazy idea, but we have to bow to some degree to the powers.' Anyway, the long of the short of it was that the decision was made that Questor would more likely be in jeopardy if he didn't have Jerry to get him out of trouble, so they were dropping the Jerry character."

Farrell's tale doesn't end there, though. A couple of months later he received a phone call from an executive named Mervin Gerard, who had been given the assignment of making the series "happen." The first thing he did was view the original pilot film.

"I will forever hold Mervin high in my regard," smiles Farrell. "He told me that after watching the pilot he went to [Universal's] Frank Price and said, 'Tell me who the idiot is who decided he wanted to drop Mike Farrell from the show.' 'I'm the idiot.' 'What works about this show is the chemistry between these two characters; they together become the one person that we root for and you destroy it by eliminating the human character. I'm not going to do this show unless we resurrect the Jerry character.' By this point I said to Merv, 'You're very sweet to tell me this story, because it obviously does a lot for my ego, but I wouldn't touch this thing with a ten-foot pole after what they did to me. That feels like exactly the wrong move.' He tried to persuade me, but as I understand it, for reasons having nothing to do with that, they finally decided just to shelve the whole thing.

...

By the time that Gerard had tried to convince Farrell to come back to the series, Roddenberry himself had decided that he had had enough and left. Having come off of his well-documented battles with NBC executives during the run of Star Trek, he had no interest in going through that again.

"I think the Jerry Robinson character was vital to Questor," he said in the mid '70s. "You can't have just the android; you've got to have a partnership between an android and a human. Then they wanted Questor to be constantly on the run from the scientific consortium. That's not the way I wanted to go and maybe I was wrong. But I really didn't want to do a chase series. So I just let it die."

So that's confirmation from multiple people, including the very person whose idea it was to drop Jerry and change the ending.

I think Rhodes was shortsighted there. You could say that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy make one perfect person among them, complementing one another's weaknesses, but that doesn't mean it was impossible to put them in jeopardy or conflict.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Wow, thanks! Just to clone The Fugitive, huh? Well, The Incredible Hulk was that, and I guess, in the Hulk, Frank Price got a successful Fugitive clone.

 

[Maurice]

Well, let's not forget that it wasn't always the case that pilots were aired. Had the show been picked up it's possible the pilot would have never aired, especially if it contradicted the series to follow.

Not in this case, because The Questor Tapes was a "backdoor" pilot, designed to work as both a standalone TV movie and a pilot for an ongoing series. That way, if the series didn't go forward, the expense of the pilot would not be wasted, because it could still be aired and syndicated as a movie, which it was. So it was always going to be aired. This is how all of Roddenberry's '70s pilots were done. Other notable '70s series like The Six Million Dollar Man and The Incredible Hulk also began as TV movies (2-3 movies, in fact) before debuting as weekly series.

Indeed, TQT was picked up as a series before the pilot aired, but it aired anyway. It fell through because Roddenberry had a falling out with Universal and NBC about the direction for the series. They wanted to drop Mike Farrell's character, and -- yes -- to disregard the ending of the movie. Roddenberry refused, so the deal fell through. They may have been right about the latter, but Roddenberry was right about the former: the show needed the Questor-Jerry relationship.

True that. I didn't recall they'd aired the pilot after deciding to pick up the series. One wonders if they'd have ultimately changed Questor's background since they'd "spoiled" it in the TV movie.

 

[Christopher]

One wonders if they'd have ultimately changed Questor's background since they'd "spoiled" it in the TV movie.

As I said, they would've disregarded the movie's ending. Whether that meant just having Questor still not know his origins or having those origins change, though, is unclear.

Although we have a precedent, or maybe a postcedent: TNG's Data (who was, of course, based on Questor) was originally going to have been built by advanced aliens who'd used him as a sort of "ark" for the memories of the human colonists on the world where he was found, but the series quickly disregarded that origin in favor of the whole Noonien Soong angle, and the stored-memories angle was ignored except in "Silicon Avatar" where it was retconned as just storing the colonists' journals and such. So maybe Questor's origins would also have been changed in the series, if they'd gone ahead with the revised plan.

It's worth noting that The Six Million Dollar Man's pilot movie was contradicted in a number of ways by the sequel movies and weekly series, rendering it out of continuity. In the pilot, Oliver Spencer (Darren McGavin) is the head of the bionics project instead of Oscar Goldman (which is strange, since it was Goldman in the original novel the film was based on), and Steve is a civilian astronaut instead of the Air Force colonel he was in the series. Also, Barbara Anderson's character, a nurse whom Steve falls in love with while he's rehabilitating, is replaced by a different character and actress in a second-season episode that reflects back on the events of Steve's origins. So while the same basic story was still assumed to have occurred, a number of the details, including the identities of two of the key figures, were changed.

 

[trevanian]

Yeah, but Roddenberry was entitled to fight for the good of his show, not some other show that would benefit from his loss. The Questor-Jerry relationship was the heart of the movie. It had the potential to be as compelling a pairing as Kirk and Spock. I can't believe NBC (or Universal?) wanted to get rid of it.

You know, I'm not saying that the behind-the-scenes info that we have on The Questor Tapes is false (I mean, how would I know, right?), but we already know that Roddenberry's version of events with respect to, how do I put it, some of the other shows he's worked on are at least somewhat dodgy. Given that we're talking about something that arguably would have sabotaged the premise of the show, I'd like to understand more fully what the sources are for the narrative. Because it sure sounds incredible.

I"m pretty sure there's a STARLOG interview with Richard Colla (and one in some unauthorized Trek book too) that covers GALACTICA and QUESTOR, including some mention of Nimoy for Questor and how THAT fell through (GR!!!) ... I don't know if it is part of the online STARLOG archive or not, but maybe that would shed a bit of light (the GR version on INSIDE STAR TREK is all about him wanting the robot to sleep with Dana Wynter and the network not letting him, which sounds like all the GR stories to me.)

 

[Christopher]

I"m pretty sure there's a STARLOG interview with Richard Colla (and one in some unauthorized Trek book too) that covers GALACTICA and QUESTOR, including some mention of Nimoy for Questor and how THAT fell through (GR!!!) ... I don't know if it is part of the online STARLOG archive or not, but maybe that would shed a bit of light (the GR version on INSIDE STAR TREK is all about him wanting the robot to sleep with Dana Wynter and the network not letting him, which sounds like all the GR stories to me.)

I found a scan of a Colla interview by Edward Gross in Starlog #137 (an issue I still have, by the way) that has two paragraphs about Questor:

http://www.byyourcommand.net/cylongallery/displayimage.php?album=1306&pid=24940#top_display_media

He basically just says he chose directing Questor over doing The Six Million Dollar Man because he thought the former had more of a message, that quality is no guarantee of popularity, that it was revisiting Spock/Kirk themes of intellect vs. emotion, and that he liked doing it and was sorry it didn't get picked up. Nothing about Nimoy or the network/studio politics.

I can't find any other Colla interviews in Starlog.

 

[trevanian]

Hmm. Then I'm guessing it might in I AM SPOCK. I know that in one of these interviews Colla talks about GR's THE GOD THING, and provides a more complete view of that story than I've heard anywhere else.
...

I just checked around and according to trekweb, Ed Gross' STAR TREK THE LOST YEARS has the Colla interview about THE GOD THING.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I recall seeing Spectre when it was first broadcast and liking it a lot. Of course I haven't seen it since.

 

[Harvey]

Gene claimed he told NBC he would come back and line produce the show in the 3rd season based on the timeslot he was promised, but when the show got bumped to Friday at 10 (because of Laugh-In) he felt that in order to have any credibility with the network in future bargaining he had to stick by his guns and step back, since his coming back to line produce was contingent on the timeslot. (I can't speak to how true this is.)

I can't speak to what happened behind closed doors, but I think the following will be of interest to people here. I've been holding this for a blog post at some point in the future, but that could take ages, so I'll quote it here...

(From a February 1, 1968 letter from Roddenberry to Herb Schlosser at NBC; there are two versions of this letter at UCLA -- one has this paragraph and one has it edited out):

Again, as indicated to you in our meeting, I am prepared to take on the line producer job of STAR TREK, no doubt due to some inherited mental weakness. The only provision, and one which John Reynolds of Paramount and Alden Schwimmer of Ashley Famous indicate is workable, is negotiation of a new contract for myself which promises some return on this investment of time and energy. Some aspects of this to be discussed with Mort.

 

[Christopher]

I just checked around and according to trekweb, Ed Gross' STAR TREK THE LOST YEARS has the Colla interview about THE GOD THING.

Oh, darn... I think I used to have that book, but I sold it off years ago, because I felt the Reeves-Stevenses' Phase II book covered most of the same ground and I was running out of shelf space.

 

[FredH]

Then there was Battleground: Earth, the pilot that was posthumously made into Earth: Final Conflict. I gather the aliens were more unambiguously villainous in the original, meaning it would've been more like V (which was why it was changed).

Interesting. I seem to remember a bit in Yvonne Fern's Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation that referred to a series idea about what Roddenberry called "rational Hitlers," aliens effectively ruling Earth using fascist means, but to good ends; there would be specific exploration of whether "beneficient fascism" was possible, and whether humanity needed it. It sounded a little like what became Earth: Final Conflict, and I wonder if this might have been the same thing--though the implication in the passage I recall was that the aliens weren't villainous. (Unfortunately, I got rid of the book years ago, and can't confirm the details.)