Scott Atwell Star Trek Discussion thread (Series and Films) (4 Viewers)

[Nelson Au]

Ion storm is correct! I was thinking of the Mirror Mirror incident. (And Court Martial too! That got Kirk in hot water with Starfleet, indirectly ) Before I posted the question, I looked it up because I wasn't sure exactly what an ion storm is, if it was a real stellar occurrence or made up. It seems to be real. Depending on how you define it. The Empath situation had another kind of stellar occurrence. I'm not sure if it qualifies to be called an ion storm. There's that definition problem again. (Spoken like Logan Ramsey)Two more, with one that doesn't put the ship in peril, and the last one as mentioned above.I would have to agree regarding the recycled shots of the ship in orbit and the fly-bys. They are iconic. Especially the one on the cover of The Making of Star Trek.There's a certain coolness to most of the shots in the remastered version. There are episodes where it really helps to show the ship doing new moves. They kept a restraint on it. And the efforts really tried to copy almost exactly the original stock shots of the Enterprise. But some of the new shots are a bit jarring and it goes back to our familiarity and comfort with the original shots as you pointed out, Lee.

 

[FanCollector]

Yes, you're definitely right about The Empath. Was it solar flares?

 

[Nelson Au]

Aye! The planet's atmosphere would protect the landing party. But Kirk wanted the ship out of there!

 

[FanCollector]

So the one remaining answer is a real space phenomenon that the Enterprise encounters but from which it is not in any danger?

 

[Nelson Au]

Lee, I double checked my notes, the remaining encounter the Enterprise has with a stellar phenominum does not threaten them. But I found I left out one more different instance. It's an uncommon thing the ship encounters but they exist. And the ship wasn't threatened by it either.

 

[Nelson Au]

I had another late night of work, but I read a few more pages of the Cushman book. He talked about John and Mary Black's departure and the reasons. And he talked about the budget problems and how far behind they were on finished episodes. And the exit of Grace Lee Whitney. His findings for why her character didn't continue sort of surprised me. He does quote from Grace Lee Whitney's book and her unfortunate experience. But the other reason quoted seem as plausible by just not renewing her contract because the show was so over budget. It was unfortunate. And similarly odd that Roddenberry and Justman wanted her to stay and hoped to bring her back in future episodes, but that never happened. Perhaps the mystery executive saw to it she wouldn't return.Also never discussed before as far as I know is the description of the 2 week break after Miri for rest for Justman, for others to catch-up on completing post production of episodes and for Shatner to go and promote the series. There is only one piece of video evidence I've seen of that. YouTube has the video of the Shatner and Nimoy interviews on the set as they were filming Little Girls. The story was consistent, promoting it as mature grown up stories in a science fiction back drop. That was cool that they were promoting themselves not as science fiction, but as people stories and branding it as the anti-Lost In Space kind of shows. It's also surprising this was the halfway point of the first season. So many great episode still to come. And yet they had not even been on the air yet.

 

[FanCollector]

Well, it would have been closer to the halfway mark if NBC hadn't ultimately ordered extra episodes at the end of the year. In these days of frequent preemptions and May sweeps, it's so different thinking about an entire season of episodes running straight through with only one or two preemptions.I guess story and budget converged and spelled the end of Grace Lee Whitney's time on Star Trek. It would be strange to see her coming back on a more occasional basis. But given Gene Coon's reaction to Yeoman Barrows in Shore Leave (read on...), it seems very unlikely that he would have allowed Rand to return.Her salary seemed to reflect the early outline importance of the character ("the most popular member of the crew" and also the many publicity photos with her) but the actual series just didn't play out that way. And then in the second year, they tried to get DeForest Kelley out on TV to publicize the show more, but by then the interviewers and news outlets only wanted Shatner and Nimoy.So both of the remaining answers were harmless to the Enterprise?

 

[Nelson Au]

Lee, the remaining answers don't actually harm the Enterprise, but are part of the events. I felt like I had to throw these last two in. They fall into the premise of the question, but not exactly cause any trouble for the Enterprise.You are right, I was thinking they had 14 episodes done because of Miss Whitney's departure. But it was only 10.Also cool to read was Deforest Kelley's stature and growing importance that they had to keep him on. And yes, Miss Whitney was being paid well for not that much to do, except zap coffee and make Miri jealous. It is how amazing to look at those early publicity photos with Kirk, Spock and Janice and the promotion was she was a vital part of the crew. I've never watched Gunsmoke, but I understand the Miss Kitty idea. It just never played out that way. The Motion Pictures sort of rectified her situation, but not really, the damage was done. Hmm, you got me curious now about what happens with Yeoman Barrows.

 

[Nelson Au]

Wow, I just had a look at the Jacobs Brown page for the Cushman book, and there's some nice new endorsements there from Mr. Nimoy, Miss Whitney, Mr. Keonig and Mr. Mars. They had very nice things to say. Plus they are selling a version with autographs by the two authors and Mr and Mrs. Black. I wished I could have gotten one autographed! That's okay. I was just checking to see when the Season Two volume is coming, if its still on track. I didn't see a date. I'm kind of liking this slower pace I'm reading, as when I finish will hopefully time with the release of the next volume.

 

[FanCollector]

Now I read that the second volume isn't due out until January. You'll have plenty of time to finish...

 

[Nelson Au]

Agh! I'll have time to read it twice! I hope that is not indicative if a problem.

 

[FanCollector]

Not sure if it's a phenomenon or the absence of one...the star desert in The Squire of Gothos?

 

[Nelson Au]

Lee, I had considered the star dessert, but I decided it was as you said, an absence.

 

[Nelson Au]

I read the section on the ratings. That was quite enlightening. I didn't know that the ratings at the time were paid for and only available to the networks who subscribed to them. Producers and actors were not able to share in that data. No wonder the book claims these numbers are available for the first time.The next part I found a bit confusing; Cushman describes how Star Trek premieres and wins its slot with no help from the show before or following it, and then goes on to lead or pull in high ratings the following weeks with Charlie X, Where No Man, Mudd, and The Enemy Within, beating ratings giant Bewitched or coming in number 2. He said that Lucy personally sent Gene Roddenberry and his team her congratulations for their success in their premiere. Did she know how well Star Trek did? Perhaps Lucy is such a powerful woman, the network shared some info with her? And interesting how the series scored highest in the big cities and scored not as high in the rural areas. I guess the series appealed to a particular demographic. This is pretty amazing information! I know Lee you hint that later the numbers are not as spectacular, so I'll be looking for that as I progress into the book. The series obviously struck a chord with the audience or we wouldn't be here today! . Hopefully Cushman has information for the second season and the background information for the fans who deluge NBC with the write-in campaign.Equally, fascinating, is his continuing tally of strikes against Gene Roddenberry noted by the network. So he basically made enemies with NBC by his actions and Star Trek's fate sounds like it was more due to bad feelings and egos then ratings.

 

[FanCollector]

The ratings stuff is endlessly interesting to me too. I can answer a couple of your questions, but some of the ratings stuff is a mystery to me. Nielsen ratings data is still a subscription service; that's how they make a profit. Even in those days, there were subscribers other than networks. Advertisers, for example, would be just as motivated to know the intricate ratings data as the networks. Newspapers would frequently print the top 10 shows for the week, too. The trick, I think, is that there are myriad forms the data can take and there is a different subscription fee depending on the desired information. Overnight Trendex urban ratings? Weekly nationals? Sweeps month? Whole season? Whole year, including summer? Primetime? All day? Top 10? Top 30? Entire schedule? Networks would have gotten the top-to-bottom, in-and-out complete set because they needed to know all that and it was worth the expense to them. Other potential subscribers, like studios or media outlets would probably have found such data unnecessarily expensive. So for Star Trek's premiere, which rated very highly, Lucy might have had a variety of ways to have learned of its status. As it leveled off into the middle of the pack, details were probably scarcer.

That premiere is also a little misleading...NBC started their season a week before everyone else to get a jump on the audience that year. (FOX did the same thing last week.) The only non-rerun show on the other networks that night was The Tammy Grimes Show on ABC, which stands as one of the biggest ratings disasters of the 1960s. So it stood to reason that Star Trek would do well, although I'm sure advertising helped too. The next few episodes did well (at least in their first half-hours; less so in the second), but not nearly in the same ballpark as the premiere. Traditionally, people have blamed the bad reviews and the selection of The Man Trap for the fall-off, but I really think it is just the fact that starting in the second week, there were new episodes of Bewitched on ABC and new (to TV) movies on CBS.

The ratings were not spectacular as the year went on, but they were certainly respectable. It was one of the first shows for which NBC ordered additional episodes, and then they ordered even more at the end of the year. (There was actually supposed to be one more.) Of course, the ratings were respectable for NBC; CBS would almost certainly have canceled a show with those ratings, but that's always the case with networks at different levels of ratings success. Today, CBS cancels series that would be among NBC's top 5 hits. Looking back, many authors have seized on the number "52" for Star Trek's place in the ratings for the 1966-1967 season. Although Cushman did not license the end-of-year averages, that number could certainly be right. However, both the networks and the advertisers would have known that the seasonal ratings were only counted from October-April that season. So Star Trek's first four or five showings, with high ratings, would not have counted in that average. Also, they knew that the summer reruns for the show starting in late April had excellent ratings. Plus, they saw the edge the show had with moneyed, urban viewers. So even if the 52nd place statistic is correct, it doesn't tell the whole story that the network would have known. It's pretty clear from the picture painted by the numbers that Star Trek was not really in ANY cancellation danger in its first season. (And Cushman told me as a little preview that while the second season ratings did drop, Star Trek was almost invariably NBC's top-rated Friday night show all that year.)

I think the thesis toward which Cushman is working is that all the "strikes" against Roddenberry led to the show being rescheduled in worse and worse ways. NBC couldn't legitimately cancel a show with the first season's numbers, so they moved it around until the numbers were low enough that they could cancel it. There's also the question of expense. A real argument could be made that Star Trek and Mission: Impossible bankrupted Desilu, and when Paramount bought them out, they cut the budgets to reduce the weekly loss on the series. But it was still losing money and unlike Mission, it seemed unlikely to have the potential for a great syndication deal, which is how studios make the money back on shows. So Paramount probably didn't put up much of a fight to keep the show alive either. Cushman hasn't really made his argument yet; that will come in the second and especially the third books. He may have counterarguments for these points, but there is opposing evidence to the NBC-hated-it theory. Grant Tinker, who was a top NBC man at the time, has said that they did like the show and more importantly, new shows are expensive to develop. Networks would always prefer to have a show succeed because it is beneficial to them. Plus, in this instance, NBC owned 26 2/3% of the profits on Star Trek. So whether they liked Gene Roddenberry or not, they had a lot of incentive to see the show do well. At the same time, networks are run by individuals, so it is certainly possible that those individuals were not acting in the most logical way to further the network's best interests. I'm very curious to see some of the ratings discussion in the next two volumes.

 

[Nelson Au]

Great post Lee!Who knows how Bewitched would have turned out had Tammy Grimes took the role. It may not have done as well? Montgomery seems so right for the role. I'll have to look up who Tammy Grimes is.I recall Roddenberry discussing in interviews fighting with NBC and the change in time slot to Friday would kill the show. And you are saying it actually did well on Friday! The idea that Star Trek and Mission Impossible were hemmoraging cash from Desilu is new to me. I knew they were expensive, but I didn't realize that. In the end, with Star Trek as big as its become, must have earn way more back today then Mission did. And these weird Hollywood deals probably still says Star Trek is in the red! Shatner probably still hasn't gotten his cut. I had the same thought as I read that NBC did the sneak peak week and premiered a week early that that helped spike the shows ratings. I thought it was great that it maintained a good level of high ranking through the first and second year. Gosh, I hate to finish this book. I'm enjoying it so much. So I hope the second volume is out soon!

 

[FanCollector]

I think the first move to Friday (at 8:30) was not great but not terrible. All shows do worse on Fridays (except maybe Sanford and Son and Dallas), but it didn't bottom out until the second move to 10:00 on Friday. That's always been the death slot and especially for a show whose demographics skewed younger and more urban. NBC couldn't really have expected a hit there.I think that by the time Paramount took over in the second year, Mission's ratings had gotten better so the license fee from the network would have been higher and the loss each week would have been less. Star Trek's ratings were dropping, so the license fee from the network wouldn't have gone up and it would probably have been a bigger money loser week to week even if the budgets were slightly lower than Mission's. The 1968-1969 season was very good to the old Desilu dramas on CBS (Mission and Mannix), as they had both rebounded from poor first season ratings to be moderate hits. It was a bad year for Star Trek and so that was the end of the line. One wonders, though...if they had moved it to Mondays at 7:30 as proposed, could Star Trek have lasted seven or eight years like Mission and Mannix? It would all be so different if we had another 100 episodes, no?

 

[FanCollector]

And this was just posted today:http://www.missionlogpodcast.com/discovereddocuments/060/Turns out Star Trek was a major hit in NYC! Check out the ratings for Spectre of the Gun!

 

[Ockeghem]

And this was just posted today:http://www.missionlogpodcast.com/discovereddocuments/060/Turns out Star Trek was a major hit in NYC! Check out the ratings for Spectre of the Gun!

Lee,Do you think the ratings would have been even better had Spectre Of the Gun (rather than "Sigma Draconis") aired as the first third-season episode?

 

[FanCollector]

That's a great question. I don't think I know enough to answer it now. What I would look at is the change in ratings from Amok Time to Who Mourns for Adonais? in September of 1967 and then compare it to the change in ratings between Spock's Brain and The Enterprise Incident in September of 1968. If Who Mourns held or increased the audience for Amok Time and The Enterprise Incident dropped significantly after Spock's Brain, then the premiere choice made a real difference. I will defer my answer until the next two volumes come out and I can see the week-to-week changes.