Television Obscurities' "A Look At Star Trek"

[BigJake]

I'm not sure if there's been a discussion of this previously -- but another discussion brought me across this quite fascinating piece on Television Obscurities which has some claims I hadn't heard before. Among them:

- The popular legend that the fan letter-writing campaign led to a third season may not be entirely accurate, since NBC claimed never to have been contemplating cancellation at that point.

- Demographics were part of the network decision-making process about ratings in the year the show was finally cancelled, contrary to a story I've frequently heard about the network's marketing team marching angrily into the office of the Head Poobah after the cancellation and telling him he'd forgotten about demographics.

- I smiled to see this New York Times review of Star Trek's opening episode:

‘Star Trek’ makes clear that life in space will probably be more traumatic than on earth. [...] The accent was less on the super-duper gadgetry usually associated with travel in the heavens than on astronautical soap opera that suffers from interminable flight drag. It was TV’s first psychodrama in orbit.

How do you like that? The common complaint about TNG made its first appearance in the first reviews of the original series. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

Anyway, I figure if there's anywhere I could find people up for picking apart and disputing any of what appears in that article, it would be here. Or, if people just find it an interesting read, that's fine too.

 

[Harvey]

This has been posted here several times, and for good reason, although I don't think it's ever had a dedicated thread. It's a great piece that is well researched.

Not sure what you're referring to about the show moving to Mondays in its third season -- the show played on Friday nights at 10pm during the third year.

The nonsense about demographics is probably a Roddenberry-fueled myth. It's certainly false.

Too tired to comment beyond that at the moment.

 

[BigJake]

Not sure what you're referring to about the show moving to Mondays in its third season -- the show played on Friday nights at 10pm during the third year.

Sorry, that was a misread of the piece. Removed from the OP with apologies for the error.