WI:No Star Trek
- Thread starter mojojojo
- Start date
I'm sure it would. The UK had a very strong SF Genre apart from the Doctor with series such as Quatermass and the various Gerry Anderson productions plus radio adaptions such as the BBC's dramatisation of 1984. No Star Trek might result in the BBC commissioning Terry Nation's proposed Dalek spin off series to fill the gap in the schedule. Or maybe someone in the UK or US might be inspired to do an English language version of Raumpatrouille Orion.
Cheers,
Nigel.
Books in sci-fi were around long before Roddenberry, so the overall impact might not be that huge, although the peculiars to Star Trek would not happen.
Dayton Kitchens
Banned
I think it would be a huge blow to televised space opera science fiction. Science fiction of the epic space opera type would more than likely be largely confined to film.
But "epic space opera" movies owe a lot to the ground work carried out by Star Trek. I've never been a trekie, but I recognise the fact that it spread SF image to a vast audience...
usertron2020
Donor
Speaking as someone whose earliest memories of serious TV watching was the original airings of ST:TOS, I can say it would have been devastating. Sci-fi suffered terribly in the USA due to the malignant influence of the "suits" (1) in TV corporate leadership. They saw sci-fi on TV as being for kids and weirdos. They had no problem with cheap animation for saturday morning cartoons, but they didn't like the expense of Sci-fi in a weekly television series.
So when they did try Sci-fi, it tended to be in short story format, like the classic Twilight Zone, the not so great Outer Limits, and much more forgettable Science Fiction Theater. The closest you had way back when to a Star Trek was the zero budgeted Captain Video, which to be blunt was just a live action children's show in the same vein as Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers.
When David Gerrold, the author of the ST:TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", asked CBS about the possibility of doing a live action sci-fi series, the CBS suits told him: "We've already got a science-fiction series. Lost In Space."
Gerrold has had many words to say over the years about that response he was given, none of them kind. Lost In Space's first season, their only BW one, WAS a serious attempt at a sci-fi series, if with a strong lean towards the "Outer Limits-style" episodal writing of "monster of the week". Similar to be honest to the early seasons of Smallville, with it's "kryptonite freak of the week". But after LIS went to COLOR, it metamorphed into a saturday morning cartoonish tale of "A Boy and his Robot", and turning the detestable villain into some kind of ill-defined Big Brother to the Boy. I remember screaming at the TV: "Alright already! When is Major West going to blow Dr. Smith out the airlock in his underwear!?"
For a Star Trek fan like myself, being too young to stay up late enough to watch Star Trek in the 3rd season when it was moved to Fridays at 10PM, the late 60s to the late 70s were a desert.
You could read the novelizations of the series, true. But they were mostly terrible since James Blish apparently didn't know how to write in any format except that of the First Person Main Protagonist. Meaning every time Kirk was unconscious or out of the scene, which wasn't often in a series that I have derisively called "The Kirk & Spock Show", Blish simply skipped the action and showed Kirk learning of the events after the fact, if at all.
After a five year drought, you had the saturday morning cartoon series, which actually wasn't too bad, considering. But the regular non-canon novels didn't start getting churned out until after Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The sci-fi TV series being produced on TV in the 70s were mostly either fantasy (Wonder Woman) or post-apocalyptic dreck. Special honors however for the Six Million Dollar Man and (esp) the Bionic Woman. Battlestar Galactica of the 1970s? The less said, the better.
TBH, without the push of ST, most TV networks won't take the risk of a space saga pre-CGI, IMO. Though once we reach the 1990s, anything goes.
I keep getting the feeling that I'm forgetting about something huge in the 80s in TV Sci-fi other than STNG, but I can't remember?
1) In fairness to the suits though, Star Trek was always a ratings hole (heavy competition) and very expensive to make. Between ST and the costs of making Mission Impossible, together they ran Desilu Studios into bankruptcy. That's why you see the dancing Orion slave girl at the end of every Season One episode (Desilu), while you see Balok and a starfield at the end of seasons Two and Three (Paramount).
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I'd agree, the impact is going to be huge. Recall, the typical SF series at the time was along the lines of "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" or "Time Tunnel". The very idea of SF for adults...
OTOH, networks are imitative. If "LiS" did remotely well, NBC or ABC might order something based on period SF (if loosely). Paranoid as the times were, *"UFO" (or *"Space:1999"), or an adaptation of "The Puppet Masters", wouldn't be unlikely (tho Hollywood seems not to know SF has been written since 1900, so maybe not...); maybe a TV version of "WotW" (like the one done for Canadian TV). Nor would "Buck Rogers" or (something AFAIK never done) "Doc Savage" be impossible.
You have butterflied all the "ST" jokes on "SNL", & about half the script of an average episode of "Big Bang Theory". And you've wiped out earnings of a couple of hundred novelists who probably wouldn't have sold a book otherwise. Not to mention several promising screenwriters...unless they work on the notional replacement.
As far as the Trek Cons go, IDK how big that influence is.
You've also wiped out the inspiration for at least one astronaut, Mae Jemison.
On the better side, tho, Wil Weaton never becomes famous & Wesley Crusher never happens.
The very idea of SF for adults...OTOH, networks are imitative. If "LiS" did remotely well, NBC or ABC might order something based on period SF (if loosely). Paranoid as the times were, *"UFO" (or *"Space:1999"), or an adaptation of "The Puppet Masters", wouldn't be unlikely (tho Hollywood seems not to know SF has been written since 1900, so maybe not...); maybe a TV version of "WotW" (like the one done for Canadian TV). Nor would "Buck Rogers" or (something AFAIK never done) "Doc Savage" be impossible.
You have butterflied all the "ST" jokes on "SNL", & about half the script of an average episode of "Big Bang Theory".
And you've wiped out earnings of a couple of hundred novelists who probably wouldn't have sold a book otherwise. Not to mention several promising screenwriters...unless they work on the notional replacement.As far as the Trek Cons go, IDK how big that influence is.
You've also wiped out the inspiration for at least one astronaut, Mae Jemison.
On the better side, tho, Wil Weaton never becomes famous
& Wesley Crusher never happens.UFO would be unlikely to be butterflied away. It was made in 1970 by Gerry Anderson's Century 21 Productions as an adult, live action series inspired by his earlier Captain Scarlett supermarianation series. Star Trek was first broadcast in the UK in 1969. Anderson had wanted to move into live action production for a while and had already produced the film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun in 1969.
Cheers,
Nigel.
von kressenstein
Banned
Star Trek would be a huge loss .. But i think twilite zone would be a much bigger loss
I see. It could happen - Lew Grade was always keen on trying to sell his series in the US market and the lack of competition from ST might help. I think that UFO would have to be a bit more family-friendly to be a big success in the US. Maybe one of the networks could buy it to be shown late evening and it is enough of a success for them to form a joint venture with ATV to make the proposed UFO:1999 series as something more suitable for a family audience.
Cheers,
Nigel.
usertron2020
Donor
I forgot about UFO and Space:1999, both being British TV. IDK what their effect will be in a universe with no ST.
Oh, and no Wil Wheaton means no nemesis for Sheldon.
IDK what their effect will be in a universe with no ST.Oh, and no Wil Wheaton means no nemesis for Sheldon.
Lost in Space was a kid's show, and 2001 was such a weird movie that even fans went "wth". Besides, much of it was hard science, not really the same kind of SF as Star Trek. Dr Who started in 1963, before Trek, and only arrived in the states in 76; and I bet Trek helped...
Another problem with no Trek: no Shatner or Nimoy!
And what's wrong with that? I mean, post-Season 1 Lost in Space was pretty crappy but are you knocking kid's shows? Heck, Dr. Who started as ,and still is in many ways ,a kid's show. I'm sorry if i'm coming off too harsh. I might be misinterpreting you due to the limitations of text. Please clarify.Lost in Space was a kid's show, and 2001 was such a weird movie that even fans went "wth". Besides, much of it was hard science, not really the same kind of SF as Star Trek. Dr Who started in 1963, before Trek, and only arrived in the states in 76; and I bet Trek helped...
Another problem with no Trek: no Shatner or Nimoy!