Good Night America: Star Trek Special

News Media Commentary
Title:	Good Night America: Star Trek Special
Commentator:	Geraldo Rivera
Date(s):	January 23, 1975
Venue:	video
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
External Links:	on YouTube
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Good Night America: Star Trek Special is a 14:08 segment that aired on television on January 23, 1975.

A fan's description:

Star Trek Fandom was given an airing on American network television for what was probably the first time...

[...]

The show was taped during or just after Al Schuster's 4th Annual International Star Trek Convention, held earlier in the month. Footage of the convention was shown, with all the usual goggle-eyed shots tv crews look for at cons, including footage of child actor Mason Reece explaining how a hand phaser works. In the studio, the audience was heavily sprinkled with trekkers and sympathetic rerun watchers, who applauded triumphantly when Rivera noted that NBC received a million letters when it tried to can ST in '68, and other similar instances.

Bill Shatner, a guest of the con, appeared on the show during the ST segment. He seemed rather bemused by the whole thing, saying that he could think of nothing else in his career that compared with the ST phenomenon. He also helped add to the ST revival con fusion of the time, stating that although there seemed to be chances of the show being revived as a 90 minute mini-series for tv "as of the moment, it doesn't look like it (ST) is coming back." Shatner also seemed to have reservations about playing James Kirk again. "That's the problem I haven't solved in my mind," he said when asked Rivera. Shatner expressed fears that a revived ST might be unable to measure up to the legend of ST, and although his 3 years of work on ST became labors of "love and passion", he still was not entirely willing to commit himself. "I think we would suffer in comparison," said Shatner.

As stated earlier, the audience was sprinkled liberally with strekfen, many of them in outrageous ST and semi-ST costumes. Shatner defended them by saying "There are a group of intelligent people down there." At one point Rivera even tried on a pair of Vulcan ears; they were a crude flat looking affair, and Rivera found himself unable to wear them with a straight face. A piece of the infamous ST blooper reel (extensively pirated,says Shatner) was shown, along with a clip from "Journey to Babel". No mention at all was made of the animated ST series for which Kirk's voice is done by Shatner.