The Star Trek War!
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Star Trek War! |
| Creator: | George Alvarez |
| Date(s): | May 1975 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Star Trek War! is a 1975 Star Trek essay by George Alvarez.
It was printed in Keep On Trekkin' v.2 n.3.
Some Topics Discussed
- a fannish origin story, a fannish pep talk
- a fan's view of complicated and unknown goings-on with CBS and NBC
- good guys vs bad guys
- fan empowerment
From the Essay
There is a war going on. A war between the T.V. establishment (the bad guys) and the viewing public(the good guys).
The bad guys are a strange lot, they believe in myths like; "A show is only good if it can sell soap" & "The TV viewing public are a bunch of mindless dummies". They worship Great Gods called "Nielsen Ratings" and follow them blindly.
The good guys are tired of the trash seen on TV and just want to see some good programs for a change (in this case, Star Trek).
The war started back in the early 1960's, with Gene Roddenberry (the leader of the good guys) submitting his idea of an adult, continuing sci-fi T.V. series (Star Trek) to various studios, and revising various rejections. It was too different and impossible to do it a series, they said. It was then that good guy Gene lost his first battle with bad guy CBS. CBS, believe it or not, turned Star Trek down be cause it had (gasp!) Lost In Space (yeech!). That's one point for the bad guys'. Then, in 1964, a major victory for the good guys: NBC hired Gene to write 3 ST stories. Out of the 3, "The Cage" (later to be come- "The Menagerie") was selected to be the pilot for Star Trek! One point for us!!! As luck would have it NBC rejected the pilot. The score now: BG- 2, GG- 1. Yet all was not lost: Mort Werner, NBC Vice
President in charge of programming (who was largely responsible for the first pilot) convinced NBC to let Gene do a second pilot! After much re-working of the cast etc. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was made, and Star Trek was sold! (That's right, one more point for our team!).
Yet even though ST was a hit in the eyes of Sci-fic fans, NBC did not like ST's ratings and threatened to cancel the young show. Another point for the bad guys, and it seems that they have won the war...
BUT, Gene was not the only good guy now! Star Trek had an army of fans, one of which (a lady named Bjo Tremble [sic]) organized the "Save Star Trek Campaign" and the rest is history. Star-Trek was put into a second season, and even though the enemy attacked again, threatening cancelation after season two, the good guys retaliated with another campaign, and won a third season! Let's see, now the score is four up.
Yet the third season, in a rotten time-slot and Roddenberry-less, was so bad that the enemy struck the greatest blow of the entire war: ST was canceled, this time for good...
Or is it for good? After ST was cancelled it was put into syndication. All those re-runs have recruited the now gigantic army of ST fans!
Next the good guys won a point by holding the first ST convention, a monument to the series' popularity. Now a "Revive Star Trek" campaign is started and the good guys win one more point by having Star Trek made into a cartoon. Yet bad guy NBC has now canceled the cartoon, so the score is even, at six to six.
But now, possibly the greatest victory of all; the fall of '76 is planned to herald the coming of the Star Trek Movie!!!
So now the good guys are winning by a score of 7-6. Will the movie make it big? Will it give the good guys a score of 8 (vs. the bad guys 6) if the movie should influence another ST series on TV? Or will score even up to 7-7 if the movie should fail? (Isn't this dramatic?) Who will win the war?!? Frankly, my money's on the good guys, because we all know that...
STAR TREK LIVES!!!!!