WI Star Trek: TOS continued until 1975?

The most likely scenario of Star Trek getting a fourth season is CBS picking it up after NBC cancelled it (continuing a long tradition of CBS taking NBC's rejects and running with them, from "Guiding Light" to "JAG" to "Medium"). The only reason it didn't happen in real life is because Nimoy had already signed with "Mission: Impossible", and one of the conditions CBS insisted on was that Nimoy still be available as Spock.

But let's run with this a bit. Let's say the MI producers balk a little too much at Nimoy's agent, Roddenberry gets the call from CBS at the right time, and the fourth season is a go, with Star Trek taking Lost In Space's old timeslot, Wednesdays @ 8pm/7pm Central & Mountain, Freiberger is shown the door and Justman is coaxed back to serve as producer. Very quickly, it's hailed as the Number One show on television, NBC looks like fools for letting it go, and it's quickly renewed for that fifth season.

More later, as I'm currently running out of time on this computer (gotta love the library and their broadband connections...)

 

I guess you can't avoid entropy.

 

Back at you.

 

Hey

I'm not the one hijacking every single thread into a diatribe on how I dislike Star Trek 09...


it's made the TOS forum rather monotonous to me now...



This was a "What If" thread...

one had to stretch to get the inevitable comments about ST09 in...


Please talk about something else for a change...


that's what the roll eyes was about...

I'm simply sick and tired of the usual suspects that have made their point over and over pushing their opinions on unrelated threads to get yet another dig at the film...

I want to talk about TOS NOT the new movie in every single thread...

quit being so obsessed...

 

^^ I won't use the language I should invoke here so I'll just resort to

If you don't like a dissenting opinion then just move along.

 

Picking up where I left off...

The show finishes up that cherished fifth season, guaranteeing a nice life in syndication, and goes charging into the '72-'73 season with a new resolve, in a television environment that's craving relevant storytelling, and science fiction now being much more popular than ever. The dedicated fanbase grows significantly, but are pretty much content, since their beloved show has not only escaped death at NBC, but is now the success they always believed it to be.

The fans become just as big a nuisance at the established SF cons, prompting them to start up their own Star Trek conventions, but aren't viewed as quite as unusual as they were in real history, since in this alternate timeline, Star Trek is a big hit in its own time, so it's not that hard to see why the fans want to hold a con. It's tougher to get the actors to show up, since they're still working (except for Grace Lee Whitney, who hopefully in this version, avoids some of the downward spiral in her personal life, and maybe even gets to return to the show, thanks to fan support).

We might very well get that Harry Mudd spinoff (hell, I remember the attempted Gunsmoke spinoff, "Dirty Sally", which lasted a few weeks, so "Harry Mudd, Space Pirate" is perfectly reasonable).

By the time of the final season, everyone is fat, dumb, and happy, there are enough episodes in the can to assure some fairly decent residuals for at least longer than the original 79, and nobody feels especially cheated. The cons continue on, especially now that the actors are more available for appearances, and the fanbase continues to chug along with fanzines and artwork, but very few clamoring for more new episodes, since we've got nine seasons' worth.

And this brings us to the crucial question: would there be a Star Trek movie?

Keep in mind that TMP, i.e., the resurrecting of an old tv series into motion picture form, was pretty unprecedented at the time. Once TMP was made, and was a box office hit, that's when the studios started going through their list of properties and started cranking out movie versions, with varying degrees of success. Before TMP, nobody in their right mind would've thought of sinking big bucks into a movie based on a series that only ran three seasons ten years earlier.

Under this scenario, I suspect it would've gone the route of the occasional tv movie, maybe something like the old NBC Mystery Theatre (which alternated episodes of Columbo, MacMillan and Wife, McCloud, and Banacek), maybe sort of a "Gene Roddenberry Presents", with alternating episodes of Star Trek, Genesis II, Spectre, Earth: Final Conflict, and Andromeda.

In other words, no, we would NOT have gotten JJTrek. We also probably would've been spared a couple of boatloads of crappy movies based on old tv series (without the precedent of TMP, nobody else takes the plunge). We might've gotten TNG, in a different form and at a different point in time, it'd be a stretch to see it going any further than that.

 

Keeping Roddenberry out might have been a requirement of Star trek having a fourth season, with either NBC or CBS, Bob Justman as executive producer might have been more agreeable the TPTB.

After the departure of Nimoy the show could have explored Roddenberry's original idea of a femme (non-Vulcan) first officer, the social consciousness having change since the mid-1960's. Providing the show was popular enough and if the money was right, acquire some like Glenda Jackson or her quality caliber of early 70's actress. This might have enabled Star Trek to play first run on the BBC, which only could have enhanced it prestige. Looking at the top rated shows of the time (admitedly comedies) lead by actresses, if Shatner were to have left the show at some later point (say to pursue a film career), the femme first officer could advance to femme captain for the final few seasons.

Also with Nimoy gone, in order to maintain a Vulcan in the mix, a Saavik/Xon like character could have been introduced, as a secondary character.

It hard to say if the other actors and actresses would have left the show of their own accord over time, or would a remained simply to have work.

(I wonder if being on Star Trek would prevent Glenda Jackson from becoming the next British PM?)

 

Like you just moved along after declaring you were "done with Star Trek?"

 

The whole "they started using demographics" after Trek was canceled nugget's been debunked before...part of the reason Star Trek stayed on the air in the first place is because it had a high number of viewers of color TVs, which RCA wanted to advertise to. That's a demographic group right there. The fact is that the show's ratings were never great, and NBC's moving it to the "death slot" on Friday nights just made them worse.

Assuming the show did get renewed again...well, who knows? To last 9 seasons the rating would have had to be REALLY good.

Also, it's not true that Roddenberry couldn't have worked on other shows if Trek was renewed. It's common practice for show creators to leave their shows in other hands after a few seasons. If Star Trek had been successful enough to run so many years, Roddenberry would've been in a better position to sell other shows.

 

All possible timelines converge at ST09. Then they diverge again. What is happening in others right now, I wonder? Maybe I am not wasting my time on Trek BBS and doing Nobel-winning research. Or reading Homer and Langley.

 

Yeah, how can we miss you if you won't go away?

 

I love that song!