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One truism about "Star Trek" in the 1960s was that its ratings were mediocre. Some have since claimed that the show was actually more popular at the time because of errors in the way ratings were determined back them. Were any of you around back then and enjoyed the show in its original run?
I remember the show from the 60's and I absolutely loved it. Hardly ever missed an episode. But as I recall now, I thought Mr Spock was absolutely dreamy....with those smoldering eyes and those pointed ears and the way he could squeeze you till you passed out!!! I also liked the aliens they dealt with - spooky scary to a kid and who didn't love a good monster back in the day? (Remember Shock Theater?) So, yeah, I got it, I loved it, I watched it, and I also liked the second series with Capt. Picard and that crew.
Could it be said that Star Trek's primary audience was precocious teenage boys ("geeks") and young men in college - not considered important demographics by advertisers at the time?
I wouldn't be surprised if the show was more popular in California, where the aerospace industry was centered.
I'd say that the precocious part is right. Then buying power was not in teenagers and early adulthood but mom and dad. But I disagree about the 'boy' part. Us females were also intranced with it and I don't think it primarily appealed to one sex or another, just the 'differently wired' that science fiction has always drawn in.
I attended the second Star Trek Convention ever, Equicon 1 in Los Angeles in 1971. There had been one a few months before in New York which was the first. It ran into 'too many people' problems and the one in LA was planned for about 400, but they ran an ad during the daily trek repeats and could have gotten 4000 if the fire department had let them all in. Nobody really 'got' how many fans they were since we were not a 'market' then. The thousands of letters which got the third season were considered a fluke. But were not.
Trek is still popular even if its now just movies, and the online sites which run the episodes all get huge hits on the trek shows. And its moved from being its little corner of sf fandom to part of the whole. It wouldn't have been unless there was something so special about the show you couldn't ignore. But if you were a fan at heart and didn't know it yet it showed you a new world.
It was one of the first shows which really went for a 'nitch' audience which didn't score on the number counters scale but its been around for fifty years and we're still making new movies and watching the old, and its phrases have become part of the general language. This shows there was something there from the start. How many people go around calling themselves proudly fans of Lost in Space? Its a fond memory but Trek is still alive and the new movie broke the line of seperation between old fans and new, so I see a long future for our cherished universe.
I was 5 when it went off the air, so I didn't get to see the original run. I do remember seeing them in the early 70's. It seems incredible now that the episodes with Kirk kissing Uhura and the one on racism actually aired in Augusta, Ga at the time.
I like the old series a lot. This was before the cult of the Vulcan and the Enterprise was just one ship of many that had their own adventures. Nothing special about the ship or its crew. I think making the crew and the Enterprise the messiah of the Federation took away the specialness of the original run IMO.
I like the old series a lot. This was before the cult of the Vulcan and the Enterprise was just one ship of many that had their own adventures. Nothing special about the ship or its crew. I think making the crew and the Enterprise the messiah of the Federation took away the specialness of the original run IMO.
Roddenberry had called the premise "Wagon Train to the stars" but at bottom, "Star Trek" was basically "Space Cops"...they went around the galaxy saving people from the bad guys, The Prime Directive serving vaguely as their moral mandate. Some of the shows were exceptional and quite imaginative, most were them doing their space cops thing. But whether the episode was good or bad, the characters always remained interesting. Shatner and Nimoy were excellent.
The original Star Trek was a great followup to the old 1950s sci-fi movies like Forbidden Planet, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, This Island Earth, When Worlds Collide, It The Terror from Beyond Space, and many more movies during that era dealing with space travel and human imagination of "going where no man has gone before."
Yes, I got Star Trek and never missed it as a young person.
Too bad the Trek franchise holders don't do a series like Hornblower, following a cadet/midshipman from the Academy to Admiral. I know they were thinking of doing a Starfleet Academy series, but following the career of one person would let the show change up the mix to freshen the show from time to time.
Too bad the Trek franchise holders don't do a series like Hornblower...
Also too bad that when A&E did put together a Hornblower series, they tampered with Forester's stories to such a great degree that they were almost unrecognizable.
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