Star Trek THE ORIGINAL SERIES Autograph Card, produced by Rittenhouse Archives (2016) and personally signed by Joan Collins. The signature is in silver ink on a black card.
LIMITED EDITION: PLEASE NOTE THAT RITTENHOUSE only produced between 200 and 300 cards to be autographed by Joan Collins.
Dame Joan Henrietta Collins, DBE (born 23 May 1933) is an English actress, author and columnist.
Born in Paddington, west London, and brought up in Maida Vale, Collins grew up during the Second World War. After making her stage debut in A Doll's House at the age of nine, she trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. She then signed an exclusive contract with the Rank Organisation and appeared in various British films.
At the age of 22, Collins headed to Hollywood and landed sultry roles in several popular films, including The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955) and Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1958). Joan Collins appeared in the last of the "Road to..." series of films, "The Road to Hong Kong" with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. While she continued to make films in the US and the UK throughout the 1960s, she also guest starred in an episode of Star Trek in 1967 named "The City on the Edge of Forever", as Edith Keeler.
Her career languished in the 1970s, when she appeared in a number of horror flicks. Near the end of the decade, she starred in two softcore pornographic films based on best-selling novels by her younger sister Jackie Collins: The Stud (1978) and its sequel The Bitch (1979).
She began appearing on stage, playing the title role in the 1980 British revival of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, and later had a lead role in the 1990 revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives.
In 1981, she landed the role of Alexis Carrington Colby, the vengeful ex-wife of John Forsythe's character, in the 1980s television soap opera Dynasty, winning a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 1982; she is credited for the success around Dynasty, which was the most-watched television show in America during the 1984-85 broadcast season. Collins also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983 for career achievement.
Since the late 1970s, Collins has written several books (including beauty and autobiographical books). In 1988 she published her first novel, Prime Time, and she has continued to publish various kinds of writing.
Films:
Joan Collins made her feature debut as a beauty contest entrant in Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951) followed by The Woman's Angle (1952) in a minor role as a Greek maid. Next was a more significant role as a gangster's moll in Judgment Deferred (1952). Her big break came when the Rank Organisation signed her for a major role in I Believe in You (1952). Other roles to follow included Cosh Boy (1953), Decameron Nights (1953), Turn the Key Softly (1953), The Square Ring (1953), and Our Girl Friday (1953). She was chosen by director Howard Hawks to star in his lavish production of Land of the Pharaohs (1955) as the scheming Princess Nellifer opposite Jack Hawkins. This role led to a contract at 20th Century Fox which had Collins appear or star in such films as The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), The Opposite Sex (1956), Sea Wife (1957), The Wayward Bus (1957), Island in the Sun (1957), Stopover Tokyo (1958), The Bravados (1958), and Rally Round the Flag, Boys (1959).
She finished her Fox contract with the crime caper Seven Thieves (1960) and the biblical epic Esther and the King (1960). One notable film release in the 1960s was The Road to Hong Kong (1962), the last "road" picture of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. She took a hiatus from her film career to concentrate on having a family after marrying Anthony Newley, and when she resumed her career, it was in the medium of television. Her notable guest appearances on American television during the 1960s and 1970s included Batman, The Virginian, Mission: Impossible, and Police Woman, and Star Trek; in the latter, she acted out the role of Edith Keeler in the episode titled "The City on the Edge of Forever." In the 1970s, Collins made several films, few of them notable, and then starred in the film versions of her sister Jackie Collins's racy novels The Stud and The Bitch. The films were extremely successful financially. The Stud, made for $600,000, went on to gross over $20,000,000 internationally. Dynasty: In 1981, Collins was offered a role in the second season of the then-struggling new soap opera Dynasty (1981–89) playing Alexis Carrington, the beautiful and vengeful ex-wife of tycoon Blake Carrington (John Forsythe). Her performance is generally credited as one factor in the fledgling show's subsequent rise in the Nielsen ratings to a hit rivaling Dallas. In 1985, Dynasty was the no. 1 show in the United States, beating out Dallas, which ranked at no. 2. For her portrayal of Alexis, Collins was nominated six times for a Golden Globe Award (every year from 1982 to 1987), winning once in 1983, the same year she was nominated for an Emmy as Best Actress in a Drama Series. Upon accepting the award, Collins thanked Sophia Loren for turning down the part of Alexis.
At the age of 50, Collins appeared in a 12-page photo layout for Playboy magazine shot by George Hurrell. In 1983, Collins starred in Making of a Male Model with young model-actor Jon-Erik Hexum, and in 1984 played a soap star in The Cartier Affair with David Hasselhoff. In the same year, she co-hosted the ABC-TV special Blondes vs. Brunettes. With Dynasty at the height of its success, Collins began producing and starred in the 1986 CBS miniseries Sins and Monte Carlo. But both of these last two were critical and ratings disappointments.[citation needed] In the 2001 E! True Hollywood Story episode featuring Dynasty, former ABC executive Ted Harbert stated, "The truth is we didn't really believe that we had this thing done as a hit until Joan Collins walked down that courtroom aisle." Co-star Al Corley noted that Collins "just flew" in the role that was "tailor made...just spot on." In Dynasty producer Aaron Spelling's final press interview, he said of Collins: "We didn't write Joan Collins. She played Joan Collins. Am I right? We wrote a character, but the character could have been played by 50 people and 49 of them would have failed. She made it work." After the end of Dynasty in 1989, Collins took time off. She rejoined her co-stars for Dynasty: The Reunion, a 1991 miniseries that concluded the series which had been left with a cliffhanger ending after its abrupt cancellation. In the 1990s, Collins made several guest star appearances on series such as Roseanne, The Nanny, and Will & Grace. She also appeared as the main characters of films such as Decadence (1994) and Annie: A Royal Adventure! (1995) (in the latter of which she plays the main antagonist, Lady Edwina Hogbottom) during this period. In 1990, Collins played Amanda in a revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives. She would later appear in the same play in 1992, starring alongside Simon Jones. In 1991 Collins also appeared in Noël Coward's Tonight at 8:30. She was selected as the cover model for the relaunch of the popular celebrity magazine OK! when it changed from being a monthly to a weekly. In 1999, Collins was cast in the film version of musical theatre show Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She played two roles in this film: a pianist and Mrs. Potiphar, the wife of Egyptian millionaire Potiphar.
In 2000, Collins joined the cast of The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, a prequel to the 1994 Universal Studios live-action film The Flintstones. She reprised the supporting role of Pearl Slaghoople, Wilma Flintstone's mother, that Elizabeth Taylor had originated. In 2001, she co-starred in the television film These Old Broads with Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine, and Taylor. The film was written for television by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher. In 2002, Collins returned to soap operas in a limited guest run on the American daytime soap Guiding Light. In 2005, actress Alice Krige impersonated Collins in Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure, a fictionalised television film based on the creation and behind-the-scenes production of Dynasty. In early 2006, Collins toured the United Kingdom in An Evening With Joan Collins, a one-woman show in which she detailed the highs and lows of her career and life, directed by her by-then husband Percy Gibson. In 2006, she reunited with her Dynasty co-stars for the nonfiction special Dynasty Reunion: Catfights and Caviar. Later that year, she began a tour of North America in the play Legends! with former Dynasty co-star Linda Evans, which concluded in May 2007 after a 30-week run. In 2005, Collins joined the cast of the hit British television series Footballer's Wives for a limited run. She also guest-starred in the BBC series Hotel Babylon in 2006 as a lonely aristocrat desperate for romance. Collins appeared in "They Do It with Mirrors," a two-hour episode of the murder-mystery drama Marple in 2009, as Ruth Van Rydock, a friend of detective Miss Jane Marple. On 24 January 2010, it was announced that Collins was joining the German soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love) for a short run. She played an aristocratic British woman, Lady Joan, who takes a young prince, portrayed by German actor Stephan Kaefer (Stephan Käfer), in tow. Collins started shooting on 22 February 2010 and appeared on-screen in April 2010.
She made her pantomime debut in Dick Whittington as Queen Rat at the Birmingham Hippodrome during the 2010 Christmas season, starring alongside Nigel Havers, Keith Harris, and Julian Clary. In May 2013, Collins announced on her Twitter profile that she would be joining the cast of British TV sitcom Benidorm in a guest role. She lent her voice to the animated feature film Saving Santa (2013) and starred in the fantasy Molly Moon, which was slated for release in 2015. In August 2014, People reported that Collins would guest star on the forthcoming E! drama series The Royals as the Grand Duchess of Oxford, the mother of fictional British Queen Helena (Elizabeth Hurley). In June 2015, Collins backed the children's fairytales app GivingTales in aid of UNICEF, together with Roger Moore, Ewan McGregor, Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, ael Caine, David Walliams, Charlotte Rampling and Paul McKenna.
Collins has been married five times, first to Northern Irish actor Maxwell Reed, whom she married on 24 May 1952 after he allegedly raped her, and divorced in 1956. She then married Anthony Newley in 1963 and Ron Kass in 1972; she had two children, Tara and Sacha, with Newley and her third, Katyana, with Kass. Collins's marriage to Kass ended in divorce in 1983. On 3 November 1985, Collins married Swedish singer Peter Holm in a ceremony in Las Vegas. They were divorced on 25 August 1987. She married Percy Gibson (born 1965) on 17 February 2002 at Claridge's Hotel in London. Collins is also the godmother of model turned actress Cara Delevingne. As of 2013, Collins has three grandchildren. Collins maintains residences in London, Los Angeles, New York City, and France, describing her life as being "that of a gypsy". Collins' younger sister was Jackie Collins, a pioneer of romantic novels, who died in September 2015. Collins was told only two weeks before her sister's death of the breast cancer she had had for over six years
Political views:
After decades of flirting with British politics, on 24 May 2004, Collins joined the United Kingdom Independence Party. In early 2005, Collins commented that she had rejoined the Conservative Party, stating, "The Labour Party doesn't care about the British people." Collins contributes to The Spectator as a guest diarist, something she has done since the late 1990s. Collins also writes occasionally for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Lady, and in the USA, Harper's Bazaar. In September 2008, Collins signed on to the Sunday Telegraph as a weekly opinions columnist through the final quarter of the year before leaving to pursue other projects. She noted that she was a huge supporter of the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and was one of the handful of guests to be invited to Thatcher's funeral on 17 April 2013. Collins is also a staunch monarchist, stating "I'm a big monarchist and I love the Queen." Collins favours British withdrawal from the European Union.
Charitable work:
Collins has publicly supported several charities for several decades. In 1982, Collins spoke before the U.S. Congress about increasing funding for neurological research. In 1983, she was named a patron of the International Foundation for Children with Learning Disabilities, earning the foundation's highest honour in 1988 for her continuing support. Additionally, 1988 also had the opening of the Joan Collins Wing of the Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. In 1990, she was made an honorary founding member of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In 1994, Collins was awarded the lifetime achievement award from the Association of Breast Cancer Studies in Great Britain for her contribution to breast cancer awareness in the UK. Collins is patron of Fight for Sight; in 2003, she became a patron of the Shooting Star Chase Children's Hospice in Great Britain while continuing to support several foster children in India, something she has done for the past 25 years. Collins serves her former school, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, as the Honorary President of the RADA Associates.
Books:
Joan Collins has established herself as a successful author. In addition to her bestselling novels, 'Prime Time', 'Love & Desire & Hate', 'Infamous' (aka 'Too Damn Famous'), 'Star Quality', 'Misfortune's Daughters' and 'The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club', she has also written six lifestyle books, 'The Joan Collins Beauty Book', 'Health, Youth & Happiness: My Secrets', 'My Friends' Secrets', 'Joan's Way: Looking Good, Feeling Great' (aka 'The Art of Living Well'), and 'The World According to Joan', as well as memoirs, 'Past Imperfect', 'Katy: A Fight for Life', 'Second Act' and 'Passion For Life'. To date, she has sold over 50 million copies of her books which have been translated into 30 languages. In the 1990s, Collins was embroiled in a high-profile legal battle with the publisher Random House, which was televised daily on Court TV. Collins had signed a two-book deal with the company for $4 million and they had given her a $1.2 million advance. In September 1991, Collins delivered a 690-page manuscript of a novel entitled The Ruling Passion to Random House. However, the publishing firm deemed the manuscript to be of such poor quality that they demanded the return of the $1.2 million advance they had paid to Collins, claiming she had failed to deliver completed books as per her contract. Collins countersued, arguing that her contract required her only to submit a "complete manuscript" not an "acceptable" one. Since she had turned in two novels to the publishing company, A Ruling Passion in 1991 and a second novel, Hell Hath No Fury, in 1992, as her contract stipulated, she felt Random House owed her the rest of the $4 million. She contended that Random House had not provided the editorial assistance she had expected. Her Random House contract, negotiated by agent Irving Lazar, required that she be paid even if her completed manuscripts were not published. When the case was finally heard in February 1996, a court determined that Collins could keep the advance given to her plus a further $1 million for the first completed manuscript, but that the publisher did not have to pay for the second manuscript since it was essentially a reworking of the first. The Guinness Book of World Records cites Collins as holding the record for retaining the world's largest unreturned payment for an unpublished manuscript.
STAR
TREK (The Original Series TOS)
Star
Trek is an American science fiction
television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the
adventures of the starship USS Enterprise
(NCC-1701) and its crew. It later acquired the retronym of Star
Trek: The Original Series (Star
Trek: TOS or simply TOS)
to distinguish the show within the media franchise that it began.
The show
is set in the Milky Way galaxy, roughly during the 2260s. The ship
and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), first
officer and science officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and chief medical
officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Shatner's voice-over
introduction during each episode's opening credits stated the
starship's purpose:
Space:
the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new
life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone
before.
The
series was produced from September 1966 to December 1967 by Norway
Productions and Desilu Productions, and by Paramount Television from
January 1968 to June 1969. Star Trek
aired on NBC from September 8, 1966, to June 3, 1969, and was
actually seen first on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network.
Star Trek's
Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network canceled it
after three seasons and 79 episodes. Several years later, the series
became a bona fide hit in broadcast syndication, remaining so
throughout the 1970s, achieving cult classic status and a developing
influence on popular culture. Star Trek
eventually spawned a franchise, consisting of six additional
television series, thirteen feature films, numerous books, games, and
toys, and is now widely considered one of the most popular and
influential television series of all time.
The
series contains significant elements of Space Western, as described
by Gene Roddenberry and the general audience.
Creation
On March
11, 1964, Gene Roddenberry, a long-time fan of science fiction,
drafted a short treatment for a science-fiction television series
that he called Star Trek.
This was to be set on board a large interstellar spaceship named S.S.
Yorktown in the 23rd century bearing a
crew dedicated to exploring a relatively small portion of the Milky
Way Galaxy.
Roddenberry
noted a number of influences on his idea, some of which includes A.
E. van Vogt's tales of the spaceship Space
Beagle, Eric Frank Russell's Marathon
series of stories, and the film Forbidden
Planet (1956). Some have also drawn
parallels with the television series Rocky
Jones, Space Ranger (1954), a space
opera which included many of the elements that were integral to Star
Trek—the organization, crew
relationships, missions, part of the bridge layout, and even some
technology. Roddenberry also drew heavily from C. S. Forester's
Horatio Hornblower novels that depict a daring sea captain who
exercises broad discretionary authority on distant sea missions of
noble purpose. He often humorously referred to Captain Kirk as
"Horatio Hornblower in Space".
Roddenberry
had extensive experience in writing for series about the Old West
that had been popular television fare in the 1950s and 1960s. Armed
with this background, the first draft characterized the new show as
"Wagon Train
to the stars." Like the familiar Wagon
Train, each episode was to be a
self-contained adventure story, set within the structure of a
continuing voyage through space. All future television and movie
realizations of the franchise adhered to the "Wagon Train"
paradigm of the continuing journey, with the notable exception of the
serialized Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
and the third season of Star Trek:
Enterprise.
In
Roddenberry's original concept, the protagonist was Captain Robert
April of the starship S.S. Yorktown.
This character was developed into Captain Christopher Pike, first
portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter.
Development
In April
1964, Roddenberry presented the Star
Trek draft to Desilu Productions, a
leading independent television production company. He met with Herb
Solow, Desilu's Director of Production. Solow saw promise in the idea
and signed a three-year program-development contract with
Roddenberry. Lucille Ball, head of Desilu, was not familiar with the
nature of the project, but she was instrumental in getting the pilot
produced.
The idea
was extensively revised and fleshed out during this time – "The
Cage" pilot filmed in late 1964 differs in many respects from
the March 1964 treatment. Solow, for example, added the stardate
concept.
Desilu
Productions had a first-look deal with CBS. Oscar Katz, Desilu's Vice
President of Production, went with Roddenberry to pitch the series to
the network. They refused to purchase the show, as they already had a
similar show in development, the 1965 Irwin Allen series Lost
in Space.
In May
1964, Solow, who previously worked at NBC, met with Grant Tinker,
then head of the network's West Coast programming department. Tinker
commissioned the first pilot – which became "The Cage".
NBC turned down the resulting pilot, stating that it was "too
cerebral". However, the NBC executives were still impressed with
the concept, and they understood that its perceived faults had been
partly because of the script that they had selected themselves
NBC made
the unusual decision to pay for a second pilot, using the script
called "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Only the character
of Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, was retained from the first pilot,
and only two cast members, Majel Barrett and Nimoy, were carried
forward into the series. This second pilot proved to be satisfactory
to NBC, and the network selected Star
Trek to be in its upcoming television
schedule for the fall of 1966.
The
second pilot introduced most of the other main characters: Captain
Kirk (William Shatner), chief engineer Lt. Commander Scott (James
Doohan) and Lt. Sulu (George Takei), who served as a physicist on the
ship in the second pilot but subsequently became a helmsman
throughout the rest of the series. Paul Fix played Dr. Mark Piper in
the second pilot; ship's doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley)
joined the cast when filming began for the first season, and he
remained for the rest of the series, achieving billing as the third
star of the series. Also joining the ship's permanent crew during the
first season were the communications officer, Lt. Nyota Uhura
(Nichelle Nichols), the first African-American woman to hold such an
important role in an American television series; the captain's
yeoman, Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), who departed midway through
the first season; and Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), head nurse
and assistant to McCoy. Walter Koenig joined the cast as Ensign Pavel
Chekov in the series' second season.
In
February 1966, Star Trek
was nearly killed by Desilu Productions, before airing the first
episode. Desilu had gone from making just one half-hour show (The
Lucy Show), to deficit financing a
portion of two expensive hour-long shows, Mission:
Impossible and Star
Trek. Solow was able to convince
Lucille Ball that both shows should continue.
Production
Once
the series was picked up by NBC the production moved to what was then
Desilu Productions Gower street location. It was previously the main
studio complex used by RKO Pictures and is now part of the Paramount
Pictures lot. The series used what are now stages 31 and 32. The
show's production staff included art director Matt Jefferies.
Jefferies designed the starship Enterprise
and most of its interiors. His contributions to the series were
honored in the name of the "Jefferies tube", an equipment
shaft depicted in various Star Trek series. In addition to working
with his brother, John Jefferies, to create the hand-held phaser
weapons of Star Trek,
Jefferies also developed the set design for the bridge of the
Enterprise
(which was based on an earlier design by Pato Guzman). Jefferies used
his practical experience as an airman during World War II and his
knowledge of aircraft design to devise a sleek, functional and
ergonomic bridge layout.
The
costume designer for Star Trek,
Bill Theiss, created the striking look of the Starfleet uniforms for
the Enterprise,
the costumes for female guest stars, and for various aliens,
including the Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Tellarites, Andorians, and
Gideonites among others.
Artist
and sculptor Wah Chang, who had worked for Walt Disney Productions,
was hired to design and manufacture props: he created the flip-open
communicator, often credited as having influenced the configuration
of the portable version of the cellular telephone. Chang also
designed the portable sensing-recording-computing "tricorder"
device, and various fictitious devices for the starship's engineering
crew and its sick bay. As the series progressed, he helped to create
various memorable aliens, such as the Gorn and the Horta.
Season 1
(1966–67)
NBC
ordered 16 episodes of Star Trek,
besides "Where No Man Has Gone
Before". The first regular episode
of Star Trek,
The Man Trap,
aired on Thursday, September 8, 1966 from 8:30–9:30 as part of an
NBC "sneak preview" block. Reviews were mixed; while The
Philadelphia Inquirer and San
Francisco Chronicle liked the new show,
The New York Times
and The Boston Globe
were less favorable, and Variety
predicted that it "won't work", calling it "an
incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities".
Debuting against mostly reruns, Star
Trek easily won its time slot with a
40.6 share. The following week against all-new programming, however,
the show fell to second (29.4 share) behind CBS. It ranked 33rd (out
of 94 programs) over the next two weeks, then the following two
episodes ranked 51st in the ratings.
Star
Trek's first-season ratings would in
earlier years likely have caused NBC to cancel the show. The network
had pioneered research into viewers' demographic profiles in the
early 1960s, however, and, by 1967, it and other networks
increasingly considered such data when making decisions; for example,
CBS temporarily cancelled Gunsmoke
that year because it had too many older and too few younger viewers.
Although Roddenberry later claimed that NBC was unaware of Star
Trek's favorable demographics,
awareness of Star Trek's
"quality" audience is what likely caused the network to
retain the show after the first and second seasons. NBC instead
decided to order 10 more new episodes for the first season, and order
a second season in March 1967. The network originally announced that
the show would air at 7:30–8:30 pm Tuesday, but it was instead
given an 8:30–9:30 pm Friday slot when the 1967–68 NBC schedule
was released making watching it difficult for the young viewers that
the show most attracted.
Season 2
(1967–68)
Star
Trek's ratings continued to decline
during the second season. Although Shatner expected the show to end
after two seasons and began to prepare for other projects, NBC
nonetheless may have never seriously considered cancelling the show.
As early as January 1968, the Associated Press reported that Star
Trek's chances for renewal for a third
season were "excellent". The show had better ratings for
NBC than ABC's competing Hondo,
and the competing CBS programs (#3 Gomer
Pyle, U.S.M.C. and the first half-hour
of the #12 CBS Friday Night Movie)
were in the top 15 in the Nielsen ratings. Again, demographics helped
Star Trek
survive. Contrary to popular belief among its fans, the show did not
have a larger audience of young viewers than its competition while on
NBC. The network's research did, however, indicate that Star
Trek had a "quality audience"
including "upper-income, better-educated males", and other
NBC shows had lower overall ratings. The show was unusual at the time
in its serious discussion of contemporary societal issues in a
futuristic context, unlike Lost in Space
which was more "campy" in nature.
The
enthusiasm of Star
Trek's
viewers surprised NBC. The network had already received 29,000 fan
letters for the show during its first season, more than for any other
except The
Monkees.
When rumors spread in late 1967 that Star
Trek
was at risk of cancellation, Roddenberry secretly began and funded an
effort by Bjo Trimble, her husband John and other fans to persuade
tens of thousands of viewers to write letters of support to save the
program. Using the 4,000 names on a mailing list for a
science-fiction convention, the Trimbles asked fans to write to NBC
and ask ten others to also do so. NBC received almost 116,000 letters
for the show between December 1967 and March 1968, including more
than 52,000 in February alone; according to an NBC executive, the
network received more than one million pieces of mail but only
disclosed the 116,000 figure. Newspaper columnists encouraged readers
to write letters to help save what one called "the best science
fiction show on the air". More than 200 Caltech students marched
to NBC's Burbank, California studio to support Star
Trek
in January 1968, carrying signs such as "Draft Spock" and
"Vulcan Power". Berkeley and MIT students organized similar
protests in San Francisco and New York.
The
letters supporting Star Trek,
whose authors included New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller,
were different in both quantity and quality from most mail that
television networks receive:
The
show, according to the 6,000 letters it draws a week (more than any
other in television), is watched by scientists, museum curators,
psychiatrists, doctors, university professors and other highbrows.
The Smithsonian Institution asked for a print of the show for its
archives, the only show so honored.
In
addition:
Much
of the mail came from doctors, scientists, teachers, and other
professional people, and was for the most part literate–and written
on good stationery. And if there is anything a network wants almost
as much as a high Nielsen ratings it is the prestige of a show that
appeals to the upper middle class and high brow audiences.
NBC—which
used such anecdotes in much of its publicity for the show—made the
unusual decision to announce on television, after the episode "The
Omega Glory" on March 1, 1968, that the series had been renewed.
The announcement implied a request to stop writing, but instead
caused fans to send letters of thanks in similar numbers.
Season 3
(1968–69)
NBC
at first planned to move Star Trek
to Mondays for the show's third season, likely in hopes of increasing
its audience after the enormous letter campaign surprised the
network. But in March 1968, NBC instead moved the show to 10:00 pm
Friday night, an hour undesirable for its younger audience, so as not
to conflict with the highly successful Rowan
& Martin's Laugh-In on Monday
evenings, from whose time slot Laugh-In
producer George Schlatter had angrily demanded it not be rescheduled.
In addition to the undesirable time slot, Star
Trek was now being seen on only 181 of
NBC's 210 affiliates.
Roddenberry
was frustrated, and complained, "If the network wants to kill
us, it couldn't make a better move." He attempted to persuade
NBC to give Star Trek
a better day and hour, but was not successful. As a result of this
and his own growing exhaustion, he chose to withdraw from the stress
of the daily production of Star Trek,
though he remained nominally in charge as its "executive
producer". Roddenberry reduced his direct involvement in Star
Trek before the start of the 1968–69
television season, and was replaced by Fred Freiberger as the
producer of the television series. NBC next reduced Star
Trek's budget by a significant amount
per episode, as the per-minute commercial price had dropped from
$39,000 to $36,000 compared to the Season 2 time slot. This caused a
significant decline in the quality of many episodes for the 1968–69
season, which emphasized "monster of the week" stories.
Nichols described these budget cuts as an intentional effort to kill
off Star Trek:
While
NBC paid lip service to expanding Star Trek's audience, it now
slashed our production budget until it was actually ten percent lower
than it had been in our first season ... This is why in the third
season you saw fewer outdoor location shots, for example. Top
writers, top guest stars, top anything you needed was harder to come
by. Thus, Star Trek's demise became a self-fulfilling
prophecy. And I can assure you, that is exactly as it was meant to
be.
The last
day of filming for Star Trek was January 9, 1969, and after 79
episodes NBC cancelled the show in February despite fans' attempt at
another letter-writing campaign. One newspaper columnist advised a
protesting viewer:
You
Star Trek fans have fought the "good fight," but the
show has been cancelled and there's nothing to be done now.
In 2011,
the decision to cancel Star Trek
by NBC was ranked #4 on the TV Guide Network special, 25
Biggest TV Blunders 2.