If there had been a Season 4 of TOS ...

[mos6507]

If there'd been a 4th season of TOS, the bad episodes would probably start outnumbering the good. So I'm glad it never happened.

With alternate reality, you have to be open to the possibility of uncertainties rather than just drawing a simple straight line based on the trendlines up until that point. We're just assuming that Trek would continue down a spiral of creative brain-drain. For all we know someone else could have been brought in to reinvigorate the thing. I mean, if the suits really wanted the show to continue enough not to cancel it and they saw the warning signs in the quality of the scripts, they'd probably do something proactive rather than just continue to slash budgets and let people go through the motions.

 

[Warped9]

A couple of third season stories ideas went unused until TAS. But I'm reading TATV Vol. 3 and there might be one or maybe two stories that get ressurected for Phase II. Certainly not more than that.

If Lucy hadn't sold Desilu and managed to hang on that likely would have had a ripple effect affecting stories during the latter part of Season 2 and into Season 3. The likelihood is Season 3 wouldn't have unfolded as it did, and certainly not exactly as it had. And so a hypothetical Season 4 would most probably not follow what we had been seeing in the third season we actually got.

Indeed if Lucy hung on and TOS managed to get the timeslot initially promised to TOS then Gene Roddenberry would have stuck around in a much more active capacity. Roddenberry overseeing the writing of the third season would have been distinctly of higher calibre than what we got under Freiberger's stewardship. And if Roddenberry stayed then they quite possibly wouldn't have lost Robert Justman and DC Fontana. A Season 3 guided by Roddenberry, Justman and Fontana just had to be better than what we got.

 

[Maurice]

Still, a million page views is impressive. I haven't reached an audience close to that size on my blog!

Assuming the number is real. Where's it coming from?

 

[USS Triumphant]

Assuming the number is real. Where's it coming from?

Do you find that you make a lot of friends by calling people liars without any data to back it up?

I believe it makes sense based on where the story has been referenced - even if a lot of them are only people who clicked, said "oh, okay, that's what that is", and then left. But it really, REALLY, REALLY doesn't matter.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Assuming the number is real. Where's it coming from?

Do you find that you make a lot of friends by calling people liars without any data to back it up?

I believe it makes sense based on where the story has been referenced - even if a lot of them are only people who clicked, said "oh, okay, that's what that is", and then left. But it really, REALLY, REALLY doesn't matter.

That's an unnecessarily personal attack. No one has called anybody a liar. We've asked questions to get answers. If the claim were substantiated that almost or roughly a million people were interested in this piece of fan fiction [edit - or perhaps speculative fiction is a better term for it], then I'm sure we'd all concede that it were true. OK?

It just happens to be a rather incredible claim, first of all, and second of all, the conflation between "views" (which are page hits) and audience size was evidently made by the person making the original claim. That evident and inappropriate conflation is part of what has prolonged this side bar. We'd also like to understand whether that conflation was accidental, a misunderstanding, or what.

 

[USS Triumphant]

That's an unnecessarily personal attack. No one has called anybody a liar.

Very well to the latter, but I don't think saying that someone has called someone else a liar is a "personal attack".

My point is that there is an interrogation of the matter going on here that it certainly does not merit. In the slightest. Not on the scale of important world events, nor even on the scale of what is "important" on a casual message board.

If it helps, I take my own word on things very seriously, and I will say that either the people who have cited the million number in *any* context here - including myself - are either correct, or if incorrect, we are simply misinformed. I firmly believe that there has been no intention on the part of anyone - including the creator of "That Wacky Redhead" - to deceive anyone.

I'll further add that I find it preposterous that I've have to put finger to keyboard to even type such a thing - because it does not matter.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That's an unnecessarily personal attack. No one has called anybody a liar.

Very well to the latter, but I don't think saying that someone has called someone else a liar is a "personal attack".

Calling it a personal attack may have been the wrong way to put it. Sorry.

because it does not matter.

Our time in this forum is spent discussing minutia of Star Trek. It brings us pleasure, but how does that matter, in the grand scheme of things?

I also apologize, if anything I said came off as belittling the worth of the speculative fiction (I called it fan fiction upthread, but this may be a better term for it). While I believe that it's fair to comment on how realistic its premises are, especially in the context of this thread's topic, it can bring joy to people in any case, which is largely all that Star Trek does for us.

 

[Ronald Held]

Wouldn't Bob Justman have left in season 3 real or alternate due to being burnt out?

 

[Warped9]

Wouldn't Bob Justman have left in season 3 real or alternate due to being burnt out?

My read on it is that Justman felt abandoned as well as tired. With Roddenberry and Fontana gone Justman felt he was the only one left who really understood the show and the way it needed to be done. There was no fight, and no joy, left in him.

 

[Maurice]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's all. Why is that such a problem? I know I'm in the minority here, but I like sources. It's why I cite them all the time.

 

[Emperor Norton]

Replies: 4,213
Views: 929,856

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Replies: 4,213
Views: 929,856

Thank you. And because that is a vBulletin board, the same as TrekBBS, we know a thing or two about it.

The "Who Posted?" page for the thread is here.

You can see that the total number of users who have posted in the thread is, at least as of the time of my post here, 146.

Hmmm. Seems like the link got edited out of your post, but I got it in time.

 

[Emperor Norton]

Who posted in the thread is not the sum of who has read it, as AH.com does have quite the number of lurkers (probably more so than members), and the membership that have posted are not the only ones who have looked at the thing. The reply count was included because I copied and pasted from the webpage directly. The link was there, and then edited out, for said reason.

Regardless, the purpose of showing that a lot of people have looked at the thing is in reply to the jab about "masses" from earlier, after I tried to lighten things up a bit with some "Jee-whiz, guys" posts; something which evidently did not work. And I wasn't saying a million people had read it, but a sizable portion of those views probably has, at least in part, which is good on Brainbin's part. The fact that its all this is rather silly and unneeded.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Point being, the actual audience size (anyway that's interested in following the thread, posters plus lurkers) is somewhere in between the two extremes. It's a matter for statisticians to estimate which end it's more likely closer to, though I've got a pretty good idea.

Anyway, thanks for getting back on it.

 

[USS Triumphant]

My guess would be that MOST of the people who read Brainbin's alt history are not registered users of the board. I know I didn't become one until I had completely caught up, and had specific matters I wanted to discuss with the author.

But you're right, the actual number of distinct readers would be somewhere between those two numbers.

 

[Orphalesion]

Of course the idea of the history of Star Trek changing would catch the eye of most Star Trek fans (and there are a lot of us) enough to check it out. I have too (though I admit I have only read the posts concerned with Trek, thanks crtl+f!) It is a bit wishfullfilment fulfillment, but a lot of alternate timelines are. I won't fault it for that.
I can also live with the idea of TOS becoming a sort of "American Doctor Who".

However one bit what got me go was how Gene Roddenberry's idea to update the Klingon makeup (giving them ridges like in our timeline) got "laughed out of the room" by everybody else and their "love for strong continuity".
That was a bit far reaching, only because the show lasted longer wouldn't turn everybody involved with it into a fanboy who has the same interest in keeping things from changing many fans have. The new makeup looked cool, that's why it was implemented.
Even the designs of Doctor Who villains got updated throughout its run.

 

[plynch]

I think it looks silly. Bad guy = crunchy and spiky with narsty teeth. Ho hum.

 

[Orphalesion]

And smearing them with shoe creme is better?

 

[Maurice]

I seriously doubt Gene would have come up with the bumpy head look for the Klingons if things had gone differently. In the real world the failure of the Genesis II pilot resulted in the Planet Earth pilot, which featured very familiar spine-headed looking guys called the Kreeg . I'm betting it was the Kreeg which in part inspired the TMP Klingons, in which case no Planet Earth = no idea for bumpy headed Klingons.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmmTqfVLw6c[/yt]​

Anyway, I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade if they enjoy "The Wacky Redhead". It just smacks of too much fannish implausibility for my personal taste.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

If there'd been a 4th season of TOS, the bad episodes would probably start outnumbering the good. So I'm glad it never happened.

With alternate reality, you have to be open to the possibility of uncertainties rather than just drawing a simple straight line based on the trendlines up until that point.

That's why I included the word "probably." We can't ever really know, but I'd say that that was the most likely scenario.