Season 1 - that's all folks?

[Maurice]

More myths of Star Trek exceptionalism: Lots of shows get syndicated with only a few seasons, including Lost In Space (3 seasons), Gilligan's Island (3 seasons) and Land of the Giants (2 seasons). 5 years is an ideal because you can run a show 5 days a week for 6 months before having to start over.

 

[Harvey]

I recall the light-show ending of Altered States (1980) being compared to the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But, yeah, it certainly didn't inspire cheap imitators like Star Wars would a decade later. Too bad, really -- how amazing would a Roger Corman rip-off have been?

 

[Melakon]

Most of Corman's sci-fi was in a contemporary Earth setting, I think, dealing with alien invasions. Too bad he didn't do television, he had low budget shooting down pat. But he probably would have lost money in tv, and would have had to tone down the sex and violence. Networks were wary of sci-fi anyway, considering it kids stuff and expensive. A Corman Spock ripoff probably would have looked like one of those guys in Invasion of the Saucer Men.

 

[johnnybear]

I once read somewhere that Star Trek was exceptional in being syndicated for reruns with only 3 seasons, and that normally a show would have needed 5 seasons to be considered for syndication at that time.

I don't know if that's true or not, but they certainly got a lot of mileage out of those seventy-nine episodes. Speaking for myself back in the day I watched them tirelessly and never seemed to get enough. Considering how things unfolded I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.

I count 80, since I always include "The Menagerie" in my viewing.

Don't you mean The Cage?
JB

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I don't know if that's true or not, but they certainly got a lot of mileage out of those seventy-nine episodes. Speaking for myself back in the day I watched them tirelessly and never seemed to get enough. Considering how things unfolded I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.

I count 80, since I always include "The Menagerie" in my viewing.

Don't you mean The Cage?
JB

You're right, of course. I often switch the titles...

 

[BeatleJWOL]

It's not just you, I've seen the pilot referred to both ways.

 

[Myko]

That's because Roddenberry switched the title from The Cage to The Menagerie while writing the script. When they made the "envelope" episode they called it The Menagerie. When the original pilot was finally released they used the The Cage title to distinguish them, although I believe it was Allan Asherman who first used the title in his Star Trek Compendium for the same reason.

 

[Warped9]

Also, if I'm not mistaken, the pilot episode's title does not appear in the episode as it does in WNMHGB and every subsequent TOS episode. In "The Cage" we only see the title Star Trek.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

It's conceivable that after some time someone could have rebooted it in much the same way Chris Carter rebooted (in a sense) The Night Stalker into The X-Files. The Night Stalker was cool overall, but inconsistent in its only season--certainly it wasn't anywhere near as consistent as Star Trek's first (or second) season.

I would not use Kolchak: The Night Stalker as a reference, as it was already a highly successful concept before the watered down series (one record-breaking TV movie & a sequel almost as potent). So, for Kolchak, it was a case of a starting high, then sinking as it moved forward. That is the opposite of a series which failed in its lone season, and required rediscovery / reboot to give it a life it did not earn the 1st time around (ex. Firefly).

It wouldn't have become a phenomenon if there had only been one season. There wouldn't have been enough episodes for much of a life in syndication, and you wouldn't have The Making of Star Trek, Star Trek Lives!, The World of Star Trek, or anything like that. And without those books, and especially without the long life in syndication, you probably wouldn't have Star Trek conventions, either.

That is a very important point; 1960s sci-fi was on shaky ground for most of the decade--if it failed, it was forgotten as quickly as one turns off a light.

On that note, if TOS went the way of The Time Tunnel, those all-important, semi-academic, but fan encouraging books would not exist (would a 1960s publisher care about a single season series the audience did not support?), which lends much weight to your point about TOS' chances of "living" to see another day. Moreover, without TMOST being a reflection of the interest in a continuing series, I also doubt the early interest in adapting TOS as an animated series happens at all--thus another major anchor for ST as a thriving property would be lost.

As wonderful & powerful season 1 was, there's no reason to think studios of the 70s were going to explore bringing it back in any form--animation, Phase II, or a big screen production. At best, it would have shared the same fate as The Time Tunnel or the Planet of the Apes TV series in the early 1980s: episodes edited together to make TV "movies" for the weekly programming / marathon blocks.

 

[Warped9]

The Time Tunnel was mentioned upthread and someone did try to reboot that sometime ago. So the precedent is there that something most people might have forgotten or have only dim memories of could be rebooted several years to decades later. But I think The Night Stalker example can still apply. Chris Carter took the essence of The Night Stalker and re-imagined it successfully as The X-Files. So someone decades later could have taken Star Trek and adapted it to more contemporary sensibiities.

We continue to find the framework of Star Trek appealing even though it is very much a Golden Age era of science fiction idea: a large cruiser sized spaceship, part of a star spanning fleet, setting out on a voyage of discovery. This idea goes back to the pulp fiction of the 1920s right through to the 1950s. What helped sell it for Star Trek was the approach of updating the material as well as writing and execution that was generally stronger and more credible than most genre works up to that time. Star Trek also tapped into the public fascination and support of the ongoing U.S. space program with its goal to land on the Moon by the end of the decade. A good film like Forbidden Planet a decade earlier, also built around the same Golden Age idea, was sheer fantasy for but very few of the movie going public. But Star Trek came along when real manned space travel was beginning to happen and could gain a measure of credibility from that.

So the possibility of rebooting the idea, moderately or drastically, could be open years done the road. Even today, considering how things really did unfold, the possibility remains open assuming someone with the right perspective and ideas is in a position to push it. Star Trek could be restarted for television (as it should be) after the JJ reboots are done or someone could rethink the whole thing and manage to find a winning formula for it while retaining the essence of what made Star Trek successful in the past even though it could have a completely new non Trek face.

 

[Noname Given]

I once read somewhere that Star Trek was exceptional in being syndicated for reruns with only 3 seasons, and that normally a show would have needed 5 seasons to be considered for syndication at that time.

I don't know if that's true or not, but they certainly got a lot of mileage out of those seventy-nine episodes. Speaking for myself back in the day I watched them tirelessly and never seemed to get enough. Considering how things unfolded I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.

You can in effect thank GR for selling the Star Trek IP and syndication rights lock, stock and barrel to Paramount for Star Treks syndicated success in that once Paramount had it, they wanted to recoup their investment so they syndicated it fairly aggressively.

Had GR held on to the rights, one can question if he would have really attempted to get it into syndication at all as at the time, even he didn't think it was marketable in the long run except to its small but intense fanbase during its network run on NBC.

 

[Harvey]

Roddenberry/Norway Productions never had complete control of the property. It was always split between Desilu (later Paramount), Norway, NBC, and (reportedly) Shatner.

An early syndication deal with Kaiser Broadcasting was cut during the 1966-67 broadcast season, in fact.

 

[Karzak]

Not to sidetrack, but the STAR TREK novel franchise would likely be considerably different today as well. No seasons two and three would have robbed the novel writers of some excellent stories and callbacks, in particular characters like Gary Seven, Garth of Izar, Koloth, Kang, Trelane, Sarek would never have been known to us.

 

[Warped9]

Trelane was from first season's "The Squire Of Gothos" so he would have been known.

 

[Karzak]

Ah. My mistake. The larger point, however, remains of course.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I think of a show like Honey West, which I'd heard of for years and years, but only actually saw recently when Me-TV had it in a late-night time slot.