Leonard Nimoy was very forthcoming about how the quality of the writing deteriorated in Season 3 (the episode "Spock's Brain" was perfectly emblematic). And on that end, he was really relived when NBC canceled the show when they did. The new producers (e.g. Fred Freiberger) didn't really have a good feel for what Star Trek could be and wear it should go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wUiZxawqYM
Yep, the quality started to slip half way through season 2 when Desilu was sold to Paramount. Star Trek did not fit the mold of Gunsmoke or Bonanza where it was reasonable to fill a 30 episode season with decent if not good episodes. Star Trek really should have only had an 18-20 episode season to insure quality. "The Alternative Factor" could have been kicked down the road to the point where it could have been made into a coherent episode.
shareIt's true that the 3rd season largely sucked, but I've also heard that everyone knew the show was going to be cancelled so not much effort was put into the later episodes. So it's possible that if the show had a future, they would gave made more of an effort to find decent scripts.
As long as they kept "Spock's Brian", which is a treasure - perhaps the finest piece of unintentional camp in science fiction!
It was a blessing, on multiple levels. If the show had been lasted many years, a lot of the cast would probably not have been willing to do any "reunion" movies (which probably would have been made for TV instead of being the theatrical releases we know). I could imagine Shatner or Nimoy telling interviewers why they didn't star in some 1983 NBC TV movie because "7 years on TV was enough" or because they did everything they wanted with the character and there was nothing new.
Additionally, I don't think it would have been as well liked in syndication because there would be a glut of terrible episodes. It wouldn't be looked on as fondly. A lot of people became Star Trek fans in the '70s because they stumbled upon a syndicated rerun of one of the truly great episodes. With a lot more terrible episodes, the odds of landing on a good episode would have dropped significantly.
I also believe that Star Trek the Next Generation would never have taken off if the original series had lasted a long time.
There HAD to be a third season. Star Trek couldn't have gone into syndication with only 2 seasons and that's where Gene Roddenberry struck gold. Star Trek was far more popular in independent syndication than it ever was on prime time network TV. The rest was history.
shareActually, it was not the quality that slipped, as in anything there were mostly average stories, and some below average, but the thing about Star Trek was the inspiration.
Many of the best ideas were ruled out by studio execs who thought Americans were too stupid or not ready for them. There was lots of cool science fiction writers, such as Harlan Ellison who wrote for Outer Limits that had great story lines that were not used for some reason.
I think Star Trek as subversive, that is it was deliberate how Gene Roddenberry put certain ideas out in society in ways that were not threatening, and when the establishment saw how popular it was they attacked it based on ratings, kind of like how they do that with good news shows these days.
Was it a blessing in disguise that the original Star Trek ended after three seasons?
"If the plan was to continue to follow the Lost In Space plan of going for silliness rather than real scifi, then yes. Watching the crew using their "whistle finger guns" to defeat Mudd's androids was as about a cringe inducing moment I can remember on any program."
But that "I Mudd" episode at least had the charisma of Harcourt Fenton Mudd going for it. Most of the season 3 episodes lacked anything at all redeeming. There's only a couple I would call good or better: Spectre of the Gun (only for its eerie qualities and sense of impending doom), Day of the Dove, Tholian Web. Even the weaker episodes ending season 2 are gems by comparison. You would've thought that somewhere along the line somebody would have said, "You know guys, it's getting awfully coincidental that every planet our federation heroes visit just happens to be based on periods of earth's history. How about some real sci-fi?"
I never cared for any of the new series or films. Would have been better if they'd taken a few month off and found some fresh writers.
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