Blake’s 7, despite having what now seems an emphatic and thematically appropriate ending, was cancelled — the final episode apparently wasn’t intended to be. While devastating at the time, in the long run, that’s fine!
Well, not exactly. The producers approached the end of Series C as a series finale, and were surprised when the renewal for a fourth season was announced right after the finale was broadcast. So if anything, it was the opposite of cancelled -- they got an extra season they hadn't expected. The Series D finale was written to work as a cliffhanger
if they were lucky enough to get a fifth season, but that doesn't mean they "intended" to do a fifth, because they didn't know if they'd get picked up or not. Back then, it was almost unheard of for any show to have a long-term plan beyond "Do the current season and hope we get another."
Still hoping for a political style Star Trek show in the vein of The West Wing meeting Andor. I would call it Star Trek - Federation.
A show set just after ENT, during the birth of the Federation. It's about the first Federation president and its staff and the ambassadors from Vulcan, Andor and Tellar and about those first Federation worlds and how they respond to Earth, the Federation council and the growing pains of a galactic cooperation. A political thriller, with intrigue and political handy work. Could be something different for Star Trek.
Mike Sussman announced yesterday that he's pitched an
Andor-like series about Archer's term as Federation president.
https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-enter...ael-sussman-paramount-scott-bakula-2000640810
In the meantime, if you want a story about the formative years of the Federation, there's always my five-book
Rise of the Federation novel series, which hasn't been contradicted by canon yet (aside from the brief material about Rigel VII in book 2).
It's only a fanon retcon that WNMHGB is Kirk's firs mission commanding the Enterprise, which Goldsman
has already said he's going to ignore in SNW S5. Indeed, even the novels have always assumed Kirk had plenty of adventures as Captain of the Enterprise prior to WNMHGB.
It was common for shows back then to begin with an established status quo rather than having an origin story. Heck, "The Cage" itself was a "sequel" to the incident on Rigel VII that we never saw. I'm surprised that anyone would try to twist things to convince themselves that "Where No Man" was Kirk's first; there's not a shred of evidence of that in the episode.
For what it's worth, I've written a version of Kirk's first mission as
Enterprise captain too, in
The Captain's Oath, which also covers his previous four years as captain of the
Sacagawea (which is very, very close to being contradicted by SNW, since it starts in 2261, the year of SNW's current season -- and it certainly looks like they're setting up the
Farragut as Kirk's first command).
