The way it worked then: In 1966 NBC sent word to it’s suppliers that they were looking for an hour western for fill the Tuesday 7:30-8:30 slot. NBC would pay $185,000 per episode. Gene Roddenbury had been working on a sci-fi series since 1964 and convinced Desilu to present it NBC as “a Wagon Train to the Stars.”
Martin Landau was the first to be asked to play Spock and he says he turned it down because he did not want to play the same character every week, especially one without emotions. And William Shatner took it on the condition that he got 5% of the profits. The original producer thinks he still does.
Each episode of Trek would cost about $230,000. The most expensive episode was “The City on the Edge of Forever” which cost $250,00. After an expensive episode they would have a “bottle” show, taking place on the ship so no new sets or costumes need to be made.
Star Trek was actually, by network standards a TAPED show, not a filmed one. First, they would shoot the live action on 35mm film. The special effects were on video tape and they would combine the two and give it to the network on tape.
Star Trek was one of the networks highest rated shows, but they didn’t know it. That is, the Neilson ratings, at that time, counted the number of people watching. The very next year Neilson began displaying demographics, in other words, who was watching. The networks wanted viewers 20-40 years old and that is where Star Trek excelled.
How it Became Famous:
In the late 1960s, the FCC allowed UHF broadcasting to expand. The owner of several of those stations wanted something for young people to be put against the evening 6 PM news. Because Star Trek only had 79 or so episodes it was offered to him at a VERY cheap price. He took it. Against the local news Star Trek took off. Once it did stations across the country jumped on it and put it against their local news.
Before streaming, Paramount thought it would be a great idea to upgrade Trek and place it on Blu-Ray. On tape, it could never be more than 480i. So they went back to the original 35 film, stored very well, and restored the film.
But instead of restoring the old tape, they completely redid them, with modern technology. They also upgraded some of the film. For example, instead of using the footage original shot when Spock returned to Vulcan (Time Amok) they used footage from Star Trek III. Then film and tape were combined again. At the same time, they did the Next Generation and the total cost was 18 million bucks. They later thought it was a mistake, because people began to stream and not buy discs, so they stopped the process and didn’t do Deep Space Nine, Voyager or Enterprise.
Boy, do these discs look great. The colors are fantastic and so is Spock’s complexion. It really looks brand new. The sound is surprisingly good too; it fills up the room with it’s DTS-HD MA 7.1 soundtrack.
If you don’t want the new effects, or you want to compare the old to the new, you can do so with a push of a button, and the old effects will appear.
There are a ton of extra features on the three discs, including the weekly coming attracts. Also shown are how they “remade” these discs including the scoring. Plus hours more. If you like Stra Trek, these discs are the way to go.
While season three actually has some good episodes, it also has “Spock’s Brain” and a few bad ones. BUT it also has a great restoration of the Star Trek pilot, “The Cage.” For years the full episode, in color, was not available. It is here and not only does it look great, it is one of my favorite episodes.
The season two disc set also contains the wonderful episode from Deep Space Nine where the crew go back in time to the enterprise and meet Captain Kirk and the Tribbles. Trials and Trbble-atiions looks just great.
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