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What went wrong on season 3 of TOS

steamwrightsteamwright Member Posts: 2,820
edited February 2015 in Ten Forward
The Truth About What Went Wrong With The Third Season Of Star Trek

Interesting article referencing newly published material. Some of this I'd heard before but a lot was new. I'd heard Gene could be difficult to work with, but wow. And...Jerry Lewis? It's also enlightening to hear Doohan's insight of Shatner's efforts. It's almost respectful, which I find surprising given the off-screen history between those two.
Post edited by steamwright on

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  • UnknownUnknown
    edited February 2015
    This content has been removed.
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,483 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    crashdragon wrote: »
    Think everyone is really more interested in the truth as to what the hell happened to STO Delta Rising.
    What happened to STO Delta Rising? People got exactly what they were demanding. They just didn't think through what they were demanding.

    They wanted to explore the Delta Quadrant, from what was arguably the very worst-written Star Trek series ever, and possibly one of the worse television series ever. They wanted a level-cap increase, and they wanted as much new content as LoR (which included twenty levels of Klingon content, and all the new Romulan stuff), and never considered that to pack that much into ten levels would require leveling to take longer (not to mention the "locust" issue, of people racing to the top and then complaining because it was the top - which has already happened despite STO's best efforts).

    There's an old saying - "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it." Folks wished, and they got, and then they were unhappy because they still didn't realize what they'd wished for.
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  • gfreeman98gfreeman98 Member Posts: 1,201 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    Interesting article, thanks for posting.

    I haven't read any of Cushman's These Are The Voyages yet, but I am aware of them. At some point I'll add them to my library.
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  • kojirohellfirekojirohellfire Member Posts: 1,606 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    I had always suspected that Jerry Lewis was a narcissist... but... wow....

    I have to say, though, I always thought "The Enterprise Incident" was one of the more brilliant Season 3 episodes. To learn about its scripting issues is significantly surprising.
  • steamwrightsteamwright Member Posts: 2,820
    edited February 2015
    kojirohellfire wrote: »
    I have to say, though, I always thought "The Enterprise Incident" was one of the more brilliant Season 3 episodes. To learn about its scripting issues is significantly surprising.

    Agreed. At least half of season 3 was good, and "The Enterprise Incident" was among them. I made a quick tally of the rest, most were at least tolerable. I only found five to be rubbish, though that's still almost 21% of the season.

    It mentions one of the ongoing questions I've had about TOS: why was attorney Melvin Belli cast as Gorgon, rather than a bonified actor? (Not that it would have saved the episode.) It almost sounds like the story of Otto Preminger manipulating his way into the role of Mr. Freeze, then giving everyone grief on the set of Batman from the 1960s.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    Yeah.... Star Trek became popular in spite of it's creator, not because of him. :/

    That and this was back when shows were often centered around an actor, and without the lead the show wasn't the show. TOS.... didn't completely fit that bill.
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  • lindalefflindaleff Member Posts: 3,734 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    The Original Series was a Space Western. That alone speaks to why it failed. As people lost interest in Westerns, Space Westerns vanished along with it.
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  • steamwrightsteamwright Member Posts: 2,820
    edited February 2015
    lindaleff wrote: »
    The Original Series was a Space Western. That alone speaks to why it failed. As people lost interest in Westerns, Space Westerns vanished along with it.

    That is an interesting viewpoint, but I'm not certain it completely holds up. While it is true that the 50s & 60s were the high point of the western genre, westerns were still popular well into the 70s. At the time of TOS' cancellation, several were still playing and very popular: Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Wild, Wild West, Daniel Boone, The Virginian, and Big Valley to name a few. High Chaparral, Alias Smith & Jones, Little House on the Prairie, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, and Father Murphy are all examples of shows that either were just underway or were still to come. And that is not counting the scores of western movies made in 1970s which covered everything from the humorous like The Apple Dumpling Gang films, to legends like the last of John Wayne's films, popular works of Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone, as well as a still vibrant Spaghetti Westerns sub-genre.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    Yeah, they kept showing westerns regularly into the 90s... At least on some channels anyways.
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  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,483 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    It was originally pitched as "Wagon Train to the stars", because Gene had been working in Hollywood for a while and knew better than to try to sell the suits on something new. However, in practice it was a tad more than just "a Western in space".

    (The original Battlestar Galactica was more like that, as pointed out in the MAD Magazine parody.

    ADAMA: Get Hoss and Little Joe, saddle up the horses, and let's ride!

    TIGH: Sir, you're not on Bonanza any more.

    ADAMA: Oh, right. Get Apollo and Starbuck, launch the Vipers, and let's fly!)
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  • trek21trek21 Member Posts: 2,246 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    lindaleff wrote: »
    The Original Series was a Space Western. That alone speaks to why it failed. As people lost interest in Westerns, Space Westerns vanished along with it.
    And yet, one week after TOS's final episode aired, the real-life launch of the first space rocket got everyone excited about it (beforehand it was simply fiction; sounds good, but could it ever really happen?) - and on reruns, there was significantly more interest in ST than ever at it's first run

    Plus, the network itself didn't like the show (and/or really understood what it was supposed to be doing), which is part of it
    Was named Trek17.

    Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
  • steamwrightsteamwright Member Posts: 2,820
    edited February 2015
    trek21 wrote: »
    And yet, one week after TOS's final episode aired, the real-life launch of the first space rocket got everyone excited about it (beforehand it was simply fiction; sounds good, but could it ever really happen?)

    Your phrasing is a tad odd. Did you mean "one month" and "the first lunar landing"? The last episode aired June 3, 1969, delayed when the originally schedule date was swiped by news coverage of Dwight D. Eisenhower's death. Apollo 11, the first lunar landing was launched July 16, with the moonwalk on July 21. Apollo 10 was launched May 18, bracketing the final episode.
  • trek21trek21 Member Posts: 2,246 Arc User
    edited February 2015
    steamwright wrote: »
    Your phrasing is a tad odd. Did you mean "one month" and "the first lunar landing"? The last episode aired June 3, 1969, delayed when the originally schedule date was swiped by news coverage of Dwight D. Eisenhower's death. Apollo 11, the first lunar landing was launched July 16, with the moonwalk on July 21. Apollo 10 was launched May 18, bracketing the final episode.
    In hindsight, yeah, my wording was a little off, but the general point still stands hehe XD
    Was named Trek17.

    Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
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