January 24, 2023 • 39 mins
Nowadays Star Trek is more than just a show -- it's a global pop culture phenomenon, with measurable impacts on the real world. In part one of this special two-part series, Ben, Noel and resident Trexpert Max explore just how close Star Trek came, multiple times, to extinction.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians on Earth and a
broad big shout out to our super producer, Mr Max Williams.
They called me Ben. We've got Mr Noel Brown on
the horn today as well. Uh uh okay, guys, let's
just I was thinking how to kick this off. This
(00:49):
is one we're very excited about. This is gonna be
a two parter on the cultural phenomenon Star Trek, which
has changed the world. Now. There are entire podcasts about
all sorts of specific things about Star Trek, but being
a history show, we love to talk origin stories and
I gotta ask you, guys, did you have a favorite
(01:13):
Star Trek character growing up or French? First of all,
have to say, I'm kind of bummed because I thought
we were doing the epic two part Mork and Mindy episode. Um,
but Stark Star Treks cool and honestly, there would be
no morkan Mindy if there were no Star Trek. I
would deposit I've never been a Trekky guy. I like it, um,
but I don't know that I'm familiar enough as a
(01:35):
fan to have a favorite character, you know, what now.
I always just like LaVar Burton as a as a
dude or Visa VI reading Rainbow. So and I liked
his little headgear. I thought it was a cool look.
So yeah, Jordie LaForge ft W. I do this all
the time when I'm recording by myself. I like to
pretend I'm either Cyclops or Jordie LaForge. Ben is placing
(01:56):
his his headphones uh down around his eyes like some
sort of Star Trek aviisor it looks great and thank you,
thank you for the visual note the So I would say,
of the three of us back, you were probably the
biggest Treky. You're also a research associate for this series personally. Uh.
Growing up, uh, Captain Kirk always reminded me of my
(02:19):
dad for several reasons. Uh. I always thought data was
super cool. And then when Next Generation came out, you know,
I remember freaking out because there was a Klangon on
the crew. You know. But as we'll see, that's almost
meta progressiveness in the world of Star Trek, which actually
had a lot of real life progressiveness. Here this shows
(02:40):
Star Trek not ridiculous history. Debuted on September eight, nineteen
sixty six, and uh, to your point, Noel, which which
I really enjoy, you can't look at the legacy it
left without acknowledging how many other things came into the
world because Star Trek paved the way. Stuff like Futurama,
(03:01):
of course, and then you know countless spinoffs of the
original series, but also stuff like U Mork and Mindy
and Star Trek Podcast and uh, some big wins for
civil rights which some people might not might not have
seen coming. But how would we loosely describe Star Trek
to someone who had never heard of it before? They
(03:21):
knew the word trek journey, they knew the words star right,
but they had no idea it was the TV show?
What what will we tell them? What would be our
log line for this show? Gentle soap opera in space Utopia?
I like it. I like it. It is about It
is about a semi utopian society, right, and the Federation,
(03:45):
which spans galaxies is not out to make a quick buck.
They're not out to do resource extraction. They're out to
learn more about the universe around them. Pretty cool stuff.
But as you know, they get they managed to get
too trouble every episode. Uh, and now as we're recording three.
There are twelve different series. They spanned over forty seasons.
(04:09):
We're talking eight hundred episodes. That's not even counting the
thirteen movies and a pop culture phenomenon. Right. There are
conferences for trek Ease. There are big and small get
togethers alike. We have several people listening in the crowd today,
ridiculous historians who might be in their Trek e costume. Actually,
(04:29):
since he said that, Um, I'm gonna get a little
more comfortable over here. Oh, here we go shows, there
we go. Okay, so yeah, Max has Donnes his spok
ears and a bit of a spock wig. Is that
sort of spock cut? Yeah, it's It's horribly uncomfortable, but
(04:53):
I'm going to stick through it the entire episode. It's
all one piece is it plastic? It looks a little
like this highly conditioned much like Star trek Uh like outfits,
makeup and everything. It is horribly uncomfortable, but I will
wear it. Well, can you give us a vulcan face?
I'm gonna take a screenshot. This is this is just
(05:14):
for me. Yeah, because they don't smile. Great, you know,
I can only do the Star Trek fingers with one
hand the other one. I can kind of do it,
but it's just a little more. It's hard. Yeah, you
guys are killing it. Well. This is actually from judaism.
Leonard Nimoi made this up. This is a blessing when
(05:35):
you do it with both hands for a specific type
of priest. But this is weird. We're running the weird
trivia out first. So okay, this is the thing you
might not recognize seeing this entertainment juggernaut. You might not
be aware of folks that Star Trek almost never existed.
(05:55):
And there's a great there's a great article that you
found Max from entertain Weekly ine titled how Star Trek
Almost Died, and it talks about how close the show
came to being canceled in the early years, like multiple times. Right, yeah,
I mean, you know, usually revolutionary ideas they don't come easy.
(06:18):
You know, people tend to fight them against the status
quo and things like the Grand Old Opry, which, don't
get me wrong, is a a cultural phenomenon in and
of itself, if not like the whitest kind of most
vanilla of cultural phenomenons that still exists to this day.
But it was a television show. You know, it's sort
of a variety show, and it was very, very very popular.
(06:39):
And in the South and Southwestern states, folks kind of
favored the Grand Old Opry. We're like, what's the Star
Trek business. So programmers, station managers, whoever was making these
decisions in local markets were very close to ditching Trek
entirely in favor of of this kind of you know,
scuting and Newton Country Western program Yeah. NBC tried to
(07:03):
cancel Star Trek three times over its original seventy eight
episode rutten from September of sixty six to June of
nineteen sixty nine, and each time it would have been
canceled had the fans not rose up and livid outrage. Uh.
And it was a critics darling for a while. It
(07:24):
was never Uh. I think the highest to gotten the
Nielsen ratings was the number fifty spot. It was way
behind other popular shows of the day like Mr. Terrific
and the Tammy Grimes Show, and uh where you've probably
never heard of either. I was gonna say the funny
thing about history, you know, when's the next Tammy Grimes
(07:46):
con or Mr. Terrific spin off? Uh? And like you said,
people didn't uh cotton to it with the same enthusiasm
in different regions of the US. And look, if you
are a big studio producer in the sixties, Star Trek
is a really wacky idea. Creator Gene Roddenberry pitched it
(08:09):
originally as a wagon train to the stars, and he
was doing that because when you talk to producers and
studio execs this is a true thing and podcast as well,
you want to try to tie the concept to something
that has already been proven to be successful. So he's like, uh, westerns,
you like westerns. They are like, yeah, Western's make a
(08:30):
lot of money for us, and he goes, well, this
is a Western, but it's in space, which is kind
of funny because we know what Star Trek became, wasn't that.
I mean, there were certainly some fights on like desert
planets and things like that, but this concept really is
not what took off ultimately, but it is kind of
what Star Wars is and became. The Star Wars really
(08:52):
and most of its incarnations is a space western, especially
with the Mandalorian, you know, and Star Wars starts in
the world of feature film. Star Trek starts as this
TV show from this guy who used to be a
pilot from pan Am. He used to work for the
l a p D as a press officer. Uh he was.
(09:14):
He was a huge nerd who wrote for shows like Dragnet,
Have Gun, Will Travel, which is I still think is
a great show. That's nostalgia there. I gotta say too.
When I found out that Gene Roddenbara used to be
worked for the l A p D. I just that's
just the most l A thing ever. Like he's working
at his like l a p D press desk post
(09:34):
and being like, you know, so one day I'm gonna
beco'mem gonna be a screenwriter too, you know, in between
writing press releases about you know whatever police press officers
right about he's working on is his pilot? Sorry, Jill Ce,
one day I'm gonna be a star. Yeah. And that's
you know kind of comment in Los Angeles. Uh he
he says, my series that I'm working on, he's writing
(09:56):
scripts from this back in the fifties. He says it's
gonna be mix of anthology sci fi stuff like Outer
Limits or Twilight Zone, but the characters are going to
stay the same throughout. So he describes it as a
Gulliver's travel of the future. These are all pulled from
things he was saying to Studio exacts. So this this
(10:18):
to take a quick aside the idea of anthology series
with the same characters. That's more like a Monster of
the Week kind of format, right like the X Files,
where you have your core cast, but they're you know,
traveling around and doing different adventures every episode, like Scooby
Doo or whatever. Right, Yeah, And one thing that really
sticks out about the anthology hybrid approach here is that
(10:41):
there's kind of a reset between episodes, so terrible, crazy,
sometimes hilarious Triple esque stuff will happen, but then when
you get to next week's show, things are back relatively
to normal. Right, No one's died unless they were wearing
a red shirt to establish the stakes of a and uh,
no one has serious scars that remain with them in
(11:05):
the early days, and they're kind of self contained. You
don't have to know what happened in episode eight to
dig what happened in episode nine, which is a huge
plus for for studio executives because it allows you to
kind of come in midway and not feel left behind
or feel like if you didn't start from the ground
floor that you're you know, going to be completely lost. Uh.
And we know that that model, you know, at least
(11:27):
outside of the like era of kind of prestige television
has has remained, you know, at least in in the
idea of sitcoms and more of these X files type shows.
You know, it's a little harder when you have like
a Lost where if you miss an episode you will
be titularly lost. Yeah. And also the Lost writers, we're
(11:52):
very building the plane yeah while they were flying, so okay,
truck yes, And then went on to mess of Star
Trek whether you want to say right for a mess
with that's a division amid the fandom. So our buddy Gene,
(12:14):
who is dreaming big but maybe doesn't know just how
big a stream will become. First he goes to the
suits at CBS, and the suits at CBS sit them
down for essentially a two hour long conversation about the
nuts and bolts of this Star Trek idea, and then
they say, okay, great meeting. Uh, someone will be in touch.
(12:38):
And someone was in touch, but not with him. They
bought Lost in Space instead. So he goes to NBC,
and NBC gives him a chance for a pilot episode.
We're getting a lot of this from Richard Zoglin over
at Time, who talks about Star Trek first made into
the into the screen. So this episode is called the Cage,
(13:02):
and this is the one that doesn't have Captain James T.
Kirk as a guy named Captain Pike played by a
star at the time, Jeffrey Hunter. And Pike is in
this pilot taking captive on a planet where the indigenous
inhabitants want to use him to quote breed a new race.
(13:24):
The network said, this show is too smart for our audience,
it's too cerebral. But we like where your head's at, Gene,
So why don't you take a swing at a second pilot?
And that's kind of rare, right isn't Is it rare
to pilots? Oh yeah, I mean even you know in
the in the much less expensive podcast world, you know,
(13:46):
we get a lot of pitches for shows, and if
a pilot is rejected, it almost never, you know, is
the case. It will be like, well, why don't you
give it another shot? And it costs like nothing to
make a podcast pilot, So this is there definitely only
was some faith in this fellow and and his ideas.
They just wanted to hone it in and probably broaden
it out a little bit, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
(14:10):
the same as it ever was, right, And this is
where we have to introduce the legendary Lucille Ball, who
has some stuff to say about Star Trek. Lucille Ball
was tough, we know, you know, again, like um in
Hollywood even to this day, like new ideas are hard
sell until they just blow up and then they become
(14:33):
the thing that everyone else wants to mimic, you know.
So Lucille Ball was a funny woman leading a show,
and that was not a thing. Women were usually kind
of supporting characters to funny men, and they were usually
just wives and we're kind of like the butt of
jokes often, but they weren't the ones making the jokes
and getting all the laugh lines. So Lucy was huge,
(14:55):
and she was so huge and became such a cultural
phenomenon with I love Lucy. I mean again, her husband,
who you know, their relationship is famously a little bit
rocky at times, but he was definitely kind of second
fiddle to her, at least in terms of the show.
He was kind of a straight man, even if he
had some funny bits here and there. Um often that
kind of capitalized on his nationality and to this day
(15:16):
kind of on age super well and come off as
a little bit racist and weird. But it was Lucy
who was the power behind the throne, and she and
Desi Arnaz her husband um were so successful that they
were able to buy a studio. They bought the former
Archao Studios was just like a legacy old school studio
that made I think like a lot of like like
(15:37):
Golden Air, a kind of monster movies and stuff. For like,
what did what did Arkao do? This is Alex Williams question.
I'm sure he's done episodes in ephemeral about r Kocho
did a lot of um. I mean, you're right, they
date back to the radio days. But they did stuff
like jazz singer. I want to say, a lot of
(15:58):
those buzz Berkeley type, you know, big musical kind of things.
I want to say, I think they were responsible for
Citizen Kane uh And they also birthed a lot of
huge um uh stars you know, King Kong is what
they did. Of course, so r KO was definitely more
than just a run of the mill kind of like
(16:18):
b Studio. They made massive, massive hit films and birth
stars like Katherine Hepburn, uh Fred Astaire Ginger, Rogers, Carry
Grant had you know, had um contracts with r KAO Pictures,
but then they went bust and we're you know, sitting
dormant for a while. Lucy and Desi bought the studio,
which was actually adjacent to the Paramount lot. And if
(16:42):
I'm not mistaken, Star Trek has been a Paramount property
since the since the word go ish right, No Max
has given us the hand kind of well, it's probably
one of those Spider Man versus the Marvel Universe kind
of I things. Star Trek has been in a situation ship,
(17:04):
an entanglement perhaps with Para. So so we're setting up
the story of Lucille Ball and taking over uh r
Kao's property to make their company, Desilu Productions. Get it,
Desi Lucille whether they think Lucy des didn't have the
same ring. And I think it's funny that the man
(17:24):
still gets to lead the little acorny in the little portmanteau.
Every relationship is a country all its own. So Lucille
Ball has an eye for talent. She can tell when
something might be a hit, so they produce in film
series like The Andy Griffith Show, which you will probably
(17:45):
remember more so than Mr Terrific, The Life and Legend
of wider and of course, the Dick Van Dyke Show.
After she and Desi break up, she eventually buys her
ex's share of the firm, making her not just a
powerful star, but the most powerful woman in television. And
she is in the catbird seat when NBC projects jeans
(18:09):
first pilot, the Cage. Uh Lucy Lucille Ball agrees to
finance the second project, even though everybody on her board
is say no, that's crazy. Can do you have any
idea how expensive it will be? And she says, uh yeah,
And I'm the most powerful woman in the television in
(18:30):
the game of television, so make it so. Make it so. Indeed,
Max was would um Lost in Space already have been
a minor hit at this point since it got picked
up in you know, in over Roddenberry's original pitch Um.
I'm guessing it's probably come an honor at the same time,
But but I don't think it was like sci fi
(18:50):
of this degree, wasn't like entrenched yet as some sort
of massive like cultural phenomenon. And in any way, it
was still kind of fringe e compared to the stuff
that the studios knew worked, like those westerns. Well, Outer
Limits was also very much sci fi, still lost in
spaces n So they did come out the year previous.
(19:12):
But there's a funny Lucia Ball story we should tell.
So while she's supporting making this thing, she originally thought
Star Trek was about traveling performers working for the U
s O. You know, the ones who like go out
during global conflicts and do a little vaudeville show. So
(19:32):
she was thinking of what would later be you know,
like Star Search or America's Got Talent. I do want
to say this on air because I know somebody, well,
we're not really sure about that. There are a couple accounts.
There's some people who say Lucile Ball was very involved
and like the day to day of Star Trek, and
there's some people who go all the way to the
other way and say, oh, she didn't know anything about
(19:53):
the show at all. I am going with this report
because this is from the guy who brought her Star
Trek M and was in there like on the day
to day, and this is what he said. She said,
So we're gonna go with that, all right, Guys, can
you imagine? I mean, you know, we know Lucy from
her persona as Lucay, you know, as Lucy on On
(20:14):
mc gilla cutty, you know on I love Lucy, but
I bet mean to be a woman of that stature
in such a boys club of Hollywood and this era,
she had to have been tough as nails and dan
suffer no fools. And when you look at pictures of
her like I R L you know, and also certain
dramatic kind of recreations of her this time, I would
(20:35):
be she she she comes off as a little bit scary.
Well you would, you would have to be. I mean,
there's probably so much there's so many traumatic experiences she
had to have that just haven't made it into history books.
But uh, but yeah, she persevered and weathered the storm,
and with a force like Lucille ball on your side,
(20:56):
making a second pilot seems a lot less crazy. They
recast almost everybody. Actually, the guy who would have played
the captain, the guy who played Captain Pike bows out
because he's worried the sci fi thing will be a
Fad Roddenberry cast this, uh, this guy from Canada who's
(21:16):
kind of an up and comer with a lot of
experience on on stage and screen. His name is William Shatner.
He becomes James T. Kirk and Roddenberry also makes it
very makes a priority to have this crew be international
in terms of their representation. You've got a chief engineer
(21:38):
who is cartoonishly from Scotland. You've got a helmsman who
is definitely from Japan, well famous George T. Cap. You've
got a you've got a communications chief who is African American.
This part, especially in the South, probably ruffled some feathers
because these people were working as equals. The old thing
(22:00):
that made them unequal was the hierarchy of a ship's crew.
I wouldn't be surprised to you. I mean if this
was a appealing part of the equation to Lucy as well,
who had been such a game changer in terms of
women's role in Hollywood, both behind and in front of
the camera, you know, I mean, I think this is
probably something that she maybe again, I mean, I'm just
(22:22):
conjecturing here. I'd love to read her her perspective on this.
I'm sure it exists, but it would appear that outside
as being a savvy business person who thought that they
could have a hit on their hands, that there's some
appeal here and like, let's let's let's push this further,
you know, let's um, let's have something that looks a
little different, people that look a little different, in a
show that also is a little different. But she kind
of saw the big picture and this was again crucial
(22:46):
to genius. He's casting up Deforce. Kelly plays the doctor.
He won't you constantly? Yeah, they do. He constantly. He's
the one who constantly establishes that he's a doctor and
not an expert in whatever thing is brought to him
at any given point. It's a trope, you know, Damnit, Jim,
(23:07):
I'm a doctor, not a horticulturist. Dammit, Jim, I'm a
you know even what he doesn't need to. It's just
a casual question. They're like, hey, are you going to uh?
Are you gonna make it to the cocktail party this
space afternoon. He's like, damnit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not
a calendar professor. You know. It's particularly myself here. Oh,
(23:30):
it's a great joke. It's I mean it's so much
that even when U D S nine did the Fans
Service Letter Trials and Tribulations episode, they have Dr. But
Schier say, I'm a doctor, not a historian. So okay,
now we get to one of my favorite characters, I
believe one of yours as well, Max, the half alien
(23:51):
member of the crew, Mr. Spock played by Leonard Nimoy Uh.
Spock is incredibly contra virtual to the studio. NBC really
wants to drop him because they say, look, this guy
looks kind of satanic. You know, he doesn't have a goatee,
but his eyebrows are doing a lot of work. He's
(24:14):
got pointy ears. And Roddenberry made this amazing rebuttal he
said quote, I felt like we couldn't do a space
show without at least one person on board who constantly
reminded you that you are out in space and in
a world of the future. It just occurred to me
that I think maybe his uh resemblance to founder of
(24:37):
the Church of Satan Anton LaVey might have had something
to do with this idea of him looking Satanic, because
LaVey was bald and also had mega pointy ears and um,
you know, kind of sharp pointy features and arched eyebrows,
you know. Uh, and I believe yeah it was it
was around the sixties or the late fifty is that
(25:00):
he would have been in the press as a figure
of some uh countercultural kind of controversy, along with folks
like Kenneth Anger ninety and not to mention Fritz Lieber
and so on. Nineteen sixty six, I think is around
the time that Levy starts doing lectures on the occult.
So this, yeah, there, there's definitely some stuff in the
(25:23):
zeitgeist here, uh NBC. Besides that, this is not the
hill they're gonna die on, so they let spak across
the past. But they said, but they literally say, you know,
kind of keep him in the background, like we will
let people be reminded there in space, but we don't
want to be in their face about it. Essentially. Yeah.
(25:43):
But but then once the spot character like just takes off,
they're like, spok it up, spark up front, give us
more spok let's lead into that Vulcan neck pinch or
whatever the hell it's called. Yeah, exactly. Also, just a
little bit of a silly trivia that we've talked about before.
There was a phenomenon cultural phenomenon. Uh that that is
(26:04):
relatively contemporary where people in Canada were drawing, um, exactly
what Max has on his head, this kind of like
you know, bang kind of straight cut bang thing and uh,
pointy ears and a little bit of a goatee thing
um and hand doing the fingers uh that live long
and prosper figures on their Canadian bank notes because the
(26:27):
former prime minister Wilfred Laurier looked a lot like spok
and they call it spaking um. And also the bank
apparently was against it. But because it's you know, technically
defacing money is like illegal, yes, yeah, and you can
see people doing that with doing similar things with Washington
on US currency. But this, yeah, this uh, this spot
(26:50):
guy is going to be a big deal. NBC is
wrong about it. And Max also you pointed out that
if you look at the first pile it which still
had Leonard Nimoy, and you look at the second pilot,
they definitely dialed back that quote unquote satanic look um.
And maybe they would have treated Nimoy better if they
(27:12):
had known that he was going to go on to
have an illustrious musical career. Thinking of the Ballad of
Bilbo Baggins, which have linked to the chat. It's uh,
I gave you the full album version, so maybe wait
till we're off the air. Also, you know, related to
the other show that Ben and I do together stuff
they don't want you to know. Leonard Nimoy became a
very famous kind of conspiracy unsolved mysteries type presenter with
(27:38):
in search of you know, starring Leonard Nimoy uh, famously
referenced in the Tenaceous Diesa referring to Leonard Nimoy kicking
out the jams and uh. That makes me think we
do a Nimoy episode in the future, or just Star
Trek music. I Actually it's weird because here's how much
of an effect this thing. As a slight sidebar doing
(28:00):
research for something else, I actually pinned Max looking for
scholarly papers uh from economists about the post scarcity economy
of Star Trek, and Maxwell follow up with you. I
gotta tell you this. It's a weird thing. But anyhow,
Star Trek we wouldn't be having any of these conversations
(28:21):
if everything hadn't worked out. Just so, the first episode
that ever hits the network is uh not the pilot
it's called the Man Trap. The crew encounters a vampire
(28:41):
esque alien, but instead of drinking blood, it drains bodies
of salt. Uh. This is a Thursday night, September eight,
and the other shows that are on at the time
are Bewitched, which is still, you know, kind of iconic
and My Three Sons. People didn't immediately like Star Trek,
(29:04):
at least the critics didn't. They said it was confusing,
it was too complex, it just didn't work, and uh,
ratings were good enough for the show to make it
to a second season, but just barely, you know what
I mean. It's almost like the first season was a
not good enough pilot in itself, so they said, we're
(29:25):
gonna keep trying. Yeah, there's a cool quote from Variety.
We're not being cool. It's just it's a very uh
summing up the perspective of the time quote from Variety saying,
Star Trek obviously solicits all out suspension of disbelief, but
it won't work, Um, because of the things that you
were saying. Even within the sci fi frame of reference,
it was an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities.
(29:49):
And that is a criticism that maybe some people who
today don't get Star Trek might still throw at it.
You know, it does have a certain vibe to it
that you're either on board with or you're not, because
it isn't like really any other show. It kind of
sets its own tone. And if it's not for you,
if the pacing isn't for you, and if kind of
you know, some of the political undertones aren't for you,
(30:11):
then it just might not be your bag. But it
is the bag of plenty oh folks, as we know
it would eventually become. So apparently this was This was
right around NBC's decision the first time to cancel the show,
and this was announced in the middle of its second season,
and a lot of people were upset due to some
(30:34):
pragmatic concerns. If a show only runs for two seasons,
then it's highly unlikely that the network will bother to
air reruns, and so Star Trek would have become an
historical footnote. However, fans like sci fi writer Betty Joe
Tremble also called b Joe Uh, they gather to the cause.
(30:57):
Tremble later says it really annoyed me talking about the cancelation.
I think we had a moral prerogative not just to
save the show, but to let these networks know the
public have an opinion. So she and her husband John
create a campaign called Save Star Trek. It's this huge
(31:18):
letter writing effort the fan base that already considers this
occult classic. They're getting all the addresses from fan mail.
Even Gene Roddenberry, through like a shell of plausible deniability,
is chipping in so fans can get free postage stamps.
And there's this chain letter that goes around for anybody
(31:41):
who is not old enough to have experienced these. In
the days before, your crazy uncle would send you emails
that said forward forward, forward forward. Obama says Earth is
flat or whatever. People would send these letters that would say,
send a copy of this letter to x amount of
people right or you know, it'll give you instructions. It's
(32:04):
meant to go viral, and it gave These letters gave
people a step by step guide for how to write
to the network and what to say. As a result
of this, NBC gets more than one dred and ten
thousand letters individual letters from fans across the United States,
and we still don't know how many letters they got.
(32:27):
They may have received many more at least that's what
some former NBC folks say, but officially it's unclear, is
that right, Max? Yeah, I mean there is some reporting
that say it's in the millions of letters they got,
but it's like also um from off the record former
NBC employees, So it's like who actually knows. And there's
(32:53):
a lot uh involving this about Gene Rodber maybe doctoring
some of this stuff too. So because Gean was a writer,
maybe he wrote the protest letter that he had other
people copy. Uh, that's a conspiracy, but but we know
the real thing, the letter writing conspiracy or movement if
you want to call it that. Regardless how many actual
(33:15):
letters arrived, it did shake NBC because no one had
ever tried this at such a large scale as a
fan community, and because of this, Tremble is often referred
to in the Trekky community. Treky's are the fans of
Star Trek. She's often referred to as the woman who
(33:35):
saved Star Trek, but she says at the time people
thought she was an idiot. There were other things happening
in the world. Of course. The women's liberation movement was
in the forefront of the news. There were women speaking up.
There were people saying this must change. And then concurrently,
(33:55):
you know, or simultaneously there's another group of people led
by a woman who are save this weird TV show.
So they were questioning priorities. But again to the conversation
about how how hard lucile Ball had to be to
succeed in a predatory environment and a misogynistic one. B
(34:17):
Joe is managing to do some unprecedented stuff as a
female sci fi fan. You know, she's rallying the little people,
and despite that initial media skepticism, it worked. In March,
NBC said, okay, we're no longer going to cancel Star Trek.
There will be a season three. Yeah you can't be
(34:38):
the change. Yeah you wish to see in the world.
It can be done, especially you know, in this time
where you know, we look at like you know, change
dot Org petitions. It's kind of uh um, spitting in
the wind or whatever. You know, if if you can
feel a little bit daunting to go up against the
powers that be, this is a as maybe lower stakes
or something like this might seem it is a an
(35:00):
example of somebody being able to singlehandedly rally, you know,
enough people to get the attention of a much larger
entity and and make a positive change. Because Star Trek
was an important cultural institution, It created a lot of
changes in the way people perceive characters on television. It
(35:21):
gave a lot of opportunities to because of that multinational
kind of angle that we talked about. We're gonna get
to some specifics, uh in part two about how this
was such an important cultural moment and some of the
things that were being tackled on Star Trek, whether thematically
in episodes or just between the cast, were important. It
was important for representation, you know, on television during a
(35:45):
time when like women's liberation, um, and kind of you know, uh,
let's say, civil rights were really starting to be very
very front and center and very important. You know, pop
culture can help those kinds of causes. And we have
b Joe too for that, we really do. But they're
not out of the space woods yet, fellow ridiculous historians.
(36:06):
Because the show's budget is dramatically cut in the third season,
NBC is practicing what I would call malicious compliance. Roddenberry
is no longer, at least at this period. He's not
hands on show runner. He's stepping away from the day
to day stuff, and as a result, a lot of
(36:28):
people will tell you the quality of the show declines
in the third season, and by the end of season three,
everybody thinks the show is going to be canceled. The
fans come back out. Let's get the band back together,
Let's reunite the army of the little folk fighting the
studio exects. They even march outside of NBC's Burbank studios.
(36:49):
It doesn't work. February nineteen sixty nine, the network says
we're going to cancel the series after that final episode
runs in June. The final episode, turn About Intruder is
uh according to Our Residents star Trek critic both very
horrible and disgusting. Max has given thumbs downs. It is
(37:11):
the episode that establishes that in the distant future, women
cannot become captains, which they spend many, many, many many
subsequent seasons and shows undoing, including Voyage. You're making sure
like the main character in the Captain was a woman.
It's like, oh, this woman just goes insane because she
could not become a captain. It's like what, but okay,
(37:34):
so this seems like an ignominious end, right, You remember
the iconic opening opening monologue from Captain Kirk. They talked
about a five year mission. Now it looks like they're
not going to make it to five years. But there
is a very important victory that b Joe and the
fans earned. Since Star Trek got a third season, it
(37:56):
had enough episodes to go into syndication, and as we'll
see you part two of this series. That is a
game changer. For now. I mean, the time is just
flown by here and old. For now, I think we're
going to pause. Uh, we're gonna go away too. Was
it ten forward and forward? We're gonna We're gonna adjourn
(38:16):
to ten forward. Chatted up with Guy Nan, who, according
to the lore of Star Trek, must have been alive
at the time of the original series. Uh, we'll get
into that. We'll not get into it at all. I mean,
I mean that might be shown in a Star Trek
movie or something I'm not quite possibly maybe, Uh, but
(38:37):
for now, I want to say thank you, of course
to our super producer, research associate and Residents Spot cosplayer
Mr Max Williams. Thanks of course to Lucille Ball. I
bet a lot of folks didn't see that coming, but
thank you for I Love Lucy and also star Trek Indeed,
and of course thanks again to you Max for doing
(38:58):
this incredible research for excited to get right into part
two post haste. Also thanks to Chris Frosciota is here
in spirit heaves, Jeff Coates, Jonathan's stricklin time is nige
if not past nine agreed, uh he is our resident Kardassian,
not Kardashian. Sorry, sorry, strict. I'd also like to thank
(39:20):
Alex Williams for making this slap in pop and uh nool.
Thank you. It looks like we're on our continuing mission
to uh to explore history in the most ridiculous way possible,
and they couldn't be more excited. Samy here, my friend.
We'll see you next time. Books. For more podcasts from
(39:44):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians on Earth and a
broad big shout out to our super producer, Mr Max Williams.
They called me Ben. We've got Mr Noel Brown on
the horn today as well. Uh uh okay, guys, let's
just I was thinking how to kick this off. This
(00:49):
is one we're very excited about. This is gonna be
a two parter on the cultural phenomenon Star Trek, which
has changed the world. Now. There are entire podcasts about
all sorts of specific things about Star Trek, but being
a history show, we love to talk origin stories and
I gotta ask you, guys, did you have a favorite
(01:13):
Star Trek character growing up or French? First of all,
have to say, I'm kind of bummed because I thought
we were doing the epic two part Mork and Mindy episode. Um,
but Stark Star Treks cool and honestly, there would be
no morkan Mindy if there were no Star Trek. I
would deposit I've never been a Trekky guy. I like it, um,
but I don't know that I'm familiar enough as a
(01:35):
fan to have a favorite character, you know, what now.
I always just like LaVar Burton as a as a
dude or Visa VI reading Rainbow. So and I liked
his little headgear. I thought it was a cool look.
So yeah, Jordie LaForge ft W. I do this all
the time when I'm recording by myself. I like to
pretend I'm either Cyclops or Jordie LaForge. Ben is placing
(01:56):
his his headphones uh down around his eyes like some
sort of Star Trek aviisor it looks great and thank you,
thank you for the visual note the So I would say,
of the three of us back, you were probably the
biggest Treky. You're also a research associate for this series personally. Uh.
Growing up, uh, Captain Kirk always reminded me of my
(02:19):
dad for several reasons. Uh. I always thought data was
super cool. And then when Next Generation came out, you know,
I remember freaking out because there was a Klangon on
the crew. You know. But as we'll see, that's almost
meta progressiveness in the world of Star Trek, which actually
had a lot of real life progressiveness. Here this shows
(02:40):
Star Trek not ridiculous history. Debuted on September eight, nineteen
sixty six, and uh, to your point, Noel, which which
I really enjoy, you can't look at the legacy it
left without acknowledging how many other things came into the
world because Star Trek paved the way. Stuff like Futurama,
(03:01):
of course, and then you know countless spinoffs of the
original series, but also stuff like U Mork and Mindy
and Star Trek Podcast and uh, some big wins for
civil rights which some people might not might not have
seen coming. But how would we loosely describe Star Trek
to someone who had never heard of it before? They
(03:21):
knew the word trek journey, they knew the words star right,
but they had no idea it was the TV show?
What what will we tell them? What would be our
log line for this show? Gentle soap opera in space Utopia?
I like it. I like it. It is about It
is about a semi utopian society, right, and the Federation,
(03:45):
which spans galaxies is not out to make a quick buck.
They're not out to do resource extraction. They're out to
learn more about the universe around them. Pretty cool stuff.
But as you know, they get they managed to get
too trouble every episode. Uh, and now as we're recording three.
There are twelve different series. They spanned over forty seasons.
(04:09):
We're talking eight hundred episodes. That's not even counting the
thirteen movies and a pop culture phenomenon. Right. There are
conferences for trek Ease. There are big and small get
togethers alike. We have several people listening in the crowd today,
ridiculous historians who might be in their Trek e costume. Actually,
(04:29):
since he said that, Um, I'm gonna get a little
more comfortable over here. Oh, here we go shows, there
we go. Okay, so yeah, Max has Donnes his spok
ears and a bit of a spock wig. Is that
sort of spock cut? Yeah, it's It's horribly uncomfortable, but
(04:53):
I'm going to stick through it the entire episode. It's
all one piece is it plastic? It looks a little
like this highly conditioned much like Star trek Uh like outfits,
makeup and everything. It is horribly uncomfortable, but I will
wear it. Well, can you give us a vulcan face?
I'm gonna take a screenshot. This is this is just
(05:14):
for me. Yeah, because they don't smile. Great, you know,
I can only do the Star Trek fingers with one
hand the other one. I can kind of do it,
but it's just a little more. It's hard. Yeah, you
guys are killing it. Well. This is actually from judaism.
Leonard Nimoi made this up. This is a blessing when
(05:35):
you do it with both hands for a specific type
of priest. But this is weird. We're running the weird
trivia out first. So okay, this is the thing you
might not recognize seeing this entertainment juggernaut. You might not
be aware of folks that Star Trek almost never existed.
(05:55):
And there's a great there's a great article that you
found Max from entertain Weekly ine titled how Star Trek
Almost Died, and it talks about how close the show
came to being canceled in the early years, like multiple times. Right, yeah,
I mean, you know, usually revolutionary ideas they don't come easy.
(06:18):
You know, people tend to fight them against the status
quo and things like the Grand Old Opry, which, don't
get me wrong, is a a cultural phenomenon in and
of itself, if not like the whitest kind of most
vanilla of cultural phenomenons that still exists to this day.
But it was a television show. You know, it's sort
of a variety show, and it was very, very very popular.
(06:39):
And in the South and Southwestern states, folks kind of
favored the Grand Old Opry. We're like, what's the Star
Trek business. So programmers, station managers, whoever was making these
decisions in local markets were very close to ditching Trek
entirely in favor of of this kind of you know,
scuting and Newton Country Western program Yeah. NBC tried to
(07:03):
cancel Star Trek three times over its original seventy eight
episode rutten from September of sixty six to June of
nineteen sixty nine, and each time it would have been
canceled had the fans not rose up and livid outrage. Uh.
And it was a critics darling for a while. It
(07:24):
was never Uh. I think the highest to gotten the
Nielsen ratings was the number fifty spot. It was way
behind other popular shows of the day like Mr. Terrific
and the Tammy Grimes Show, and uh where you've probably
never heard of either. I was gonna say the funny
thing about history, you know, when's the next Tammy Grimes
(07:46):
con or Mr. Terrific spin off? Uh? And like you said,
people didn't uh cotton to it with the same enthusiasm
in different regions of the US. And look, if you
are a big studio producer in the sixties, Star Trek
is a really wacky idea. Creator Gene Roddenberry pitched it
(08:09):
originally as a wagon train to the stars, and he
was doing that because when you talk to producers and
studio execs this is a true thing and podcast as well,
you want to try to tie the concept to something
that has already been proven to be successful. So he's like, uh, westerns,
you like westerns. They are like, yeah, Western's make a
(08:30):
lot of money for us, and he goes, well, this
is a Western, but it's in space, which is kind
of funny because we know what Star Trek became, wasn't that.
I mean, there were certainly some fights on like desert
planets and things like that, but this concept really is
not what took off ultimately, but it is kind of
what Star Wars is and became. The Star Wars really
(08:52):
and most of its incarnations is a space western, especially
with the Mandalorian, you know, and Star Wars starts in
the world of feature film. Star Trek starts as this
TV show from this guy who used to be a
pilot from pan Am. He used to work for the
l a p D as a press officer. Uh he was.
(09:14):
He was a huge nerd who wrote for shows like Dragnet,
Have Gun, Will Travel, which is I still think is
a great show. That's nostalgia there. I gotta say too.
When I found out that Gene Roddenbara used to be
worked for the l A p D. I just that's
just the most l A thing ever. Like he's working
at his like l a p D press desk post
(09:34):
and being like, you know, so one day I'm gonna
beco'mem gonna be a screenwriter too, you know, in between
writing press releases about you know whatever police press officers
right about he's working on is his pilot? Sorry, Jill Ce,
one day I'm gonna be a star. Yeah. And that's
you know kind of comment in Los Angeles. Uh he
he says, my series that I'm working on, he's writing
(09:56):
scripts from this back in the fifties. He says it's
gonna be mix of anthology sci fi stuff like Outer
Limits or Twilight Zone, but the characters are going to
stay the same throughout. So he describes it as a
Gulliver's travel of the future. These are all pulled from
things he was saying to Studio exacts. So this this
(10:18):
to take a quick aside the idea of anthology series
with the same characters. That's more like a Monster of
the Week kind of format, right like the X Files,
where you have your core cast, but they're you know,
traveling around and doing different adventures every episode, like Scooby
Doo or whatever. Right, Yeah, And one thing that really
sticks out about the anthology hybrid approach here is that
(10:41):
there's kind of a reset between episodes, so terrible, crazy,
sometimes hilarious Triple esque stuff will happen, but then when
you get to next week's show, things are back relatively
to normal. Right, No one's died unless they were wearing
a red shirt to establish the stakes of a and uh,
no one has serious scars that remain with them in
(11:05):
the early days, and they're kind of self contained. You
don't have to know what happened in episode eight to
dig what happened in episode nine, which is a huge
plus for for studio executives because it allows you to
kind of come in midway and not feel left behind
or feel like if you didn't start from the ground
floor that you're you know, going to be completely lost. Uh.
And we know that that model, you know, at least
(11:27):
outside of the like era of kind of prestige television
has has remained, you know, at least in in the
idea of sitcoms and more of these X files type shows.
You know, it's a little harder when you have like
a Lost where if you miss an episode you will
be titularly lost. Yeah. And also the Lost writers, we're
(11:52):
very building the plane yeah while they were flying, so okay,
truck yes, And then went on to mess of Star
Trek whether you want to say right for a mess
with that's a division amid the fandom. So our buddy Gene,
(12:14):
who is dreaming big but maybe doesn't know just how
big a stream will become. First he goes to the
suits at CBS, and the suits at CBS sit them
down for essentially a two hour long conversation about the
nuts and bolts of this Star Trek idea, and then
they say, okay, great meeting. Uh, someone will be in touch.
(12:38):
And someone was in touch, but not with him. They
bought Lost in Space instead. So he goes to NBC,
and NBC gives him a chance for a pilot episode.
We're getting a lot of this from Richard Zoglin over
at Time, who talks about Star Trek first made into
the into the screen. So this episode is called the Cage,
(13:02):
and this is the one that doesn't have Captain James T.
Kirk as a guy named Captain Pike played by a
star at the time, Jeffrey Hunter. And Pike is in
this pilot taking captive on a planet where the indigenous
inhabitants want to use him to quote breed a new race.
(13:24):
The network said, this show is too smart for our audience,
it's too cerebral. But we like where your head's at, Gene,
So why don't you take a swing at a second pilot?
And that's kind of rare, right isn't Is it rare
to pilots? Oh yeah, I mean even you know in
the in the much less expensive podcast world, you know,
(13:46):
we get a lot of pitches for shows, and if
a pilot is rejected, it almost never, you know, is
the case. It will be like, well, why don't you
give it another shot? And it costs like nothing to
make a podcast pilot, So this is there definitely only
was some faith in this fellow and and his ideas.
They just wanted to hone it in and probably broaden
it out a little bit, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
(14:10):
the same as it ever was, right, And this is
where we have to introduce the legendary Lucille Ball, who
has some stuff to say about Star Trek. Lucille Ball
was tough, we know, you know, again, like um in
Hollywood even to this day, like new ideas are hard
sell until they just blow up and then they become
(14:33):
the thing that everyone else wants to mimic, you know.
So Lucille Ball was a funny woman leading a show,
and that was not a thing. Women were usually kind
of supporting characters to funny men, and they were usually
just wives and we're kind of like the butt of
jokes often, but they weren't the ones making the jokes
and getting all the laugh lines. So Lucy was huge,
(14:55):
and she was so huge and became such a cultural
phenomenon with I love Lucy. I mean again, her husband,
who you know, their relationship is famously a little bit
rocky at times, but he was definitely kind of second
fiddle to her, at least in terms of the show.
He was kind of a straight man, even if he
had some funny bits here and there. Um often that
kind of capitalized on his nationality and to this day
(15:16):
kind of on age super well and come off as
a little bit racist and weird. But it was Lucy
who was the power behind the throne, and she and
Desi Arnaz her husband um were so successful that they
were able to buy a studio. They bought the former
Archao Studios was just like a legacy old school studio
that made I think like a lot of like like
(15:37):
Golden Air, a kind of monster movies and stuff. For like,
what did what did Arkao do? This is Alex Williams question.
I'm sure he's done episodes in ephemeral about r Kocho
did a lot of um. I mean, you're right, they
date back to the radio days. But they did stuff
like jazz singer. I want to say, a lot of
(15:58):
those buzz Berkeley type, you know, big musical kind of things.
I want to say, I think they were responsible for
Citizen Kane uh And they also birthed a lot of
huge um uh stars you know, King Kong is what
they did. Of course, so r KO was definitely more
than just a run of the mill kind of like
(16:18):
b Studio. They made massive, massive hit films and birth
stars like Katherine Hepburn, uh Fred Astaire Ginger, Rogers, Carry
Grant had you know, had um contracts with r KAO Pictures,
but then they went bust and we're you know, sitting
dormant for a while. Lucy and Desi bought the studio,
which was actually adjacent to the Paramount lot. And if
(16:42):
I'm not mistaken, Star Trek has been a Paramount property
since the since the word go ish right, No Max
has given us the hand kind of well, it's probably
one of those Spider Man versus the Marvel Universe kind
of I things. Star Trek has been in a situation ship,
(17:04):
an entanglement perhaps with Para. So so we're setting up
the story of Lucille Ball and taking over uh r
Kao's property to make their company, Desilu Productions. Get it,
Desi Lucille whether they think Lucy des didn't have the
same ring. And I think it's funny that the man
(17:24):
still gets to lead the little acorny in the little portmanteau.
Every relationship is a country all its own. So Lucille
Ball has an eye for talent. She can tell when
something might be a hit, so they produce in film
series like The Andy Griffith Show, which you will probably
(17:45):
remember more so than Mr Terrific, The Life and Legend
of wider and of course, the Dick Van Dyke Show.
After she and Desi break up, she eventually buys her
ex's share of the firm, making her not just a
powerful star, but the most powerful woman in television. And
she is in the catbird seat when NBC projects jeans
(18:09):
first pilot, the Cage. Uh Lucy Lucille Ball agrees to
finance the second project, even though everybody on her board
is say no, that's crazy. Can do you have any
idea how expensive it will be? And she says, uh yeah,
And I'm the most powerful woman in the television in
(18:30):
the game of television, so make it so. Make it so. Indeed,
Max was would um Lost in Space already have been
a minor hit at this point since it got picked
up in you know, in over Roddenberry's original pitch Um.
I'm guessing it's probably come an honor at the same time,
But but I don't think it was like sci fi
(18:50):
of this degree, wasn't like entrenched yet as some sort
of massive like cultural phenomenon. And in any way, it
was still kind of fringe e compared to the stuff
that the studios knew worked, like those westerns. Well, Outer
Limits was also very much sci fi, still lost in
spaces n So they did come out the year previous.
(19:12):
But there's a funny Lucia Ball story we should tell.
So while she's supporting making this thing, she originally thought
Star Trek was about traveling performers working for the U
s O. You know, the ones who like go out
during global conflicts and do a little vaudeville show. So
(19:32):
she was thinking of what would later be you know,
like Star Search or America's Got Talent. I do want
to say this on air because I know somebody, well,
we're not really sure about that. There are a couple accounts.
There's some people who say Lucile Ball was very involved
and like the day to day of Star Trek, and
there's some people who go all the way to the
other way and say, oh, she didn't know anything about
(19:53):
the show at all. I am going with this report
because this is from the guy who brought her Star
Trek M and was in there like on the day
to day, and this is what he said. She said,
So we're gonna go with that, all right, Guys, can
you imagine? I mean, you know, we know Lucy from
her persona as Lucay, you know, as Lucy on On
(20:14):
mc gilla cutty, you know on I love Lucy, but
I bet mean to be a woman of that stature
in such a boys club of Hollywood and this era,
she had to have been tough as nails and dan
suffer no fools. And when you look at pictures of
her like I R L you know, and also certain
dramatic kind of recreations of her this time, I would
(20:35):
be she she she comes off as a little bit scary.
Well you would, you would have to be. I mean,
there's probably so much there's so many traumatic experiences she
had to have that just haven't made it into history books.
But uh, but yeah, she persevered and weathered the storm,
and with a force like Lucille ball on your side,
(20:56):
making a second pilot seems a lot less crazy. They
recast almost everybody. Actually, the guy who would have played
the captain, the guy who played Captain Pike bows out
because he's worried the sci fi thing will be a
Fad Roddenberry cast this, uh, this guy from Canada who's
(21:16):
kind of an up and comer with a lot of
experience on on stage and screen. His name is William Shatner.
He becomes James T. Kirk and Roddenberry also makes it
very makes a priority to have this crew be international
in terms of their representation. You've got a chief engineer
(21:38):
who is cartoonishly from Scotland. You've got a helmsman who
is definitely from Japan, well famous George T. Cap. You've
got a you've got a communications chief who is African American.
This part, especially in the South, probably ruffled some feathers
because these people were working as equals. The old thing
(22:00):
that made them unequal was the hierarchy of a ship's crew.
I wouldn't be surprised to you. I mean if this
was a appealing part of the equation to Lucy as well,
who had been such a game changer in terms of
women's role in Hollywood, both behind and in front of
the camera, you know, I mean, I think this is
probably something that she maybe again, I mean, I'm just
(22:22):
conjecturing here. I'd love to read her her perspective on this.
I'm sure it exists, but it would appear that outside
as being a savvy business person who thought that they
could have a hit on their hands, that there's some
appeal here and like, let's let's let's push this further,
you know, let's um, let's have something that looks a
little different, people that look a little different, in a
show that also is a little different. But she kind
of saw the big picture and this was again crucial
(22:46):
to genius. He's casting up Deforce. Kelly plays the doctor.
He won't you constantly? Yeah, they do. He constantly. He's
the one who constantly establishes that he's a doctor and
not an expert in whatever thing is brought to him
at any given point. It's a trope, you know, Damnit, Jim,
(23:07):
I'm a doctor, not a horticulturist. Dammit, Jim, I'm a
you know even what he doesn't need to. It's just
a casual question. They're like, hey, are you going to uh?
Are you gonna make it to the cocktail party this
space afternoon. He's like, damnit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not
a calendar professor. You know. It's particularly myself here. Oh,
(23:30):
it's a great joke. It's I mean it's so much
that even when U D S nine did the Fans
Service Letter Trials and Tribulations episode, they have Dr. But
Schier say, I'm a doctor, not a historian. So okay,
now we get to one of my favorite characters, I
believe one of yours as well, Max, the half alien
(23:51):
member of the crew, Mr. Spock played by Leonard Nimoy Uh.
Spock is incredibly contra virtual to the studio. NBC really
wants to drop him because they say, look, this guy
looks kind of satanic. You know, he doesn't have a goatee,
but his eyebrows are doing a lot of work. He's
(24:14):
got pointy ears. And Roddenberry made this amazing rebuttal he
said quote, I felt like we couldn't do a space
show without at least one person on board who constantly
reminded you that you are out in space and in
a world of the future. It just occurred to me
that I think maybe his uh resemblance to founder of
(24:37):
the Church of Satan Anton LaVey might have had something
to do with this idea of him looking Satanic, because
LaVey was bald and also had mega pointy ears and um,
you know, kind of sharp pointy features and arched eyebrows,
you know. Uh, and I believe yeah it was it
was around the sixties or the late fifty is that
(25:00):
he would have been in the press as a figure
of some uh countercultural kind of controversy, along with folks
like Kenneth Anger ninety and not to mention Fritz Lieber
and so on. Nineteen sixty six, I think is around
the time that Levy starts doing lectures on the occult.
So this, yeah, there, there's definitely some stuff in the
(25:23):
zeitgeist here, uh NBC. Besides that, this is not the
hill they're gonna die on, so they let spak across
the past. But they said, but they literally say, you know,
kind of keep him in the background, like we will
let people be reminded there in space, but we don't
want to be in their face about it. Essentially. Yeah.
(25:43):
But but then once the spot character like just takes off,
they're like, spok it up, spark up front, give us
more spok let's lead into that Vulcan neck pinch or
whatever the hell it's called. Yeah, exactly. Also, just a
little bit of a silly trivia that we've talked about before.
There was a phenomenon cultural phenomenon. Uh that that is
(26:04):
relatively contemporary where people in Canada were drawing, um, exactly
what Max has on his head, this kind of like
you know, bang kind of straight cut bang thing and uh,
pointy ears and a little bit of a goatee thing
um and hand doing the fingers uh that live long
and prosper figures on their Canadian bank notes because the
(26:27):
former prime minister Wilfred Laurier looked a lot like spok
and they call it spaking um. And also the bank
apparently was against it. But because it's you know, technically
defacing money is like illegal, yes, yeah, and you can
see people doing that with doing similar things with Washington
on US currency. But this, yeah, this uh, this spot
(26:50):
guy is going to be a big deal. NBC is
wrong about it. And Max also you pointed out that
if you look at the first pile it which still
had Leonard Nimoy, and you look at the second pilot,
they definitely dialed back that quote unquote satanic look um.
And maybe they would have treated Nimoy better if they
(27:12):
had known that he was going to go on to
have an illustrious musical career. Thinking of the Ballad of
Bilbo Baggins, which have linked to the chat. It's uh,
I gave you the full album version, so maybe wait
till we're off the air. Also, you know, related to
the other show that Ben and I do together stuff
they don't want you to know. Leonard Nimoy became a
very famous kind of conspiracy unsolved mysteries type presenter with
(27:38):
in search of you know, starring Leonard Nimoy uh, famously
referenced in the Tenaceous Diesa referring to Leonard Nimoy kicking
out the jams and uh. That makes me think we
do a Nimoy episode in the future, or just Star
Trek music. I Actually it's weird because here's how much
of an effect this thing. As a slight sidebar doing
(28:00):
research for something else, I actually pinned Max looking for
scholarly papers uh from economists about the post scarcity economy
of Star Trek, and Maxwell follow up with you. I
gotta tell you this. It's a weird thing. But anyhow,
Star Trek we wouldn't be having any of these conversations
(28:21):
if everything hadn't worked out. Just so, the first episode
that ever hits the network is uh not the pilot
it's called the Man Trap. The crew encounters a vampire
(28:41):
esque alien, but instead of drinking blood, it drains bodies
of salt. Uh. This is a Thursday night, September eight,
and the other shows that are on at the time
are Bewitched, which is still, you know, kind of iconic
and My Three Sons. People didn't immediately like Star Trek,
(29:04):
at least the critics didn't. They said it was confusing,
it was too complex, it just didn't work, and uh,
ratings were good enough for the show to make it
to a second season, but just barely, you know what
I mean. It's almost like the first season was a
not good enough pilot in itself, so they said, we're
(29:25):
gonna keep trying. Yeah, there's a cool quote from Variety.
We're not being cool. It's just it's a very uh
summing up the perspective of the time quote from Variety saying,
Star Trek obviously solicits all out suspension of disbelief, but
it won't work, Um, because of the things that you
were saying. Even within the sci fi frame of reference,
it was an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities.
(29:49):
And that is a criticism that maybe some people who
today don't get Star Trek might still throw at it.
You know, it does have a certain vibe to it
that you're either on board with or you're not, because
it isn't like really any other show. It kind of
sets its own tone. And if it's not for you,
if the pacing isn't for you, and if kind of
you know, some of the political undertones aren't for you,
(30:11):
then it just might not be your bag. But it
is the bag of plenty oh folks, as we know
it would eventually become. So apparently this was This was
right around NBC's decision the first time to cancel the show,
and this was announced in the middle of its second season,
and a lot of people were upset due to some
(30:34):
pragmatic concerns. If a show only runs for two seasons,
then it's highly unlikely that the network will bother to
air reruns, and so Star Trek would have become an
historical footnote. However, fans like sci fi writer Betty Joe
Tremble also called b Joe Uh, they gather to the cause.
(30:57):
Tremble later says it really annoyed me talking about the cancelation.
I think we had a moral prerogative not just to
save the show, but to let these networks know the
public have an opinion. So she and her husband John
create a campaign called Save Star Trek. It's this huge
(31:18):
letter writing effort the fan base that already considers this
occult classic. They're getting all the addresses from fan mail.
Even Gene Roddenberry, through like a shell of plausible deniability,
is chipping in so fans can get free postage stamps.
And there's this chain letter that goes around for anybody
(31:41):
who is not old enough to have experienced these. In
the days before, your crazy uncle would send you emails
that said forward forward, forward forward. Obama says Earth is
flat or whatever. People would send these letters that would say,
send a copy of this letter to x amount of
people right or you know, it'll give you instructions. It's
(32:04):
meant to go viral, and it gave These letters gave
people a step by step guide for how to write
to the network and what to say. As a result
of this, NBC gets more than one dred and ten
thousand letters individual letters from fans across the United States,
and we still don't know how many letters they got.
(32:27):
They may have received many more at least that's what
some former NBC folks say, but officially it's unclear, is
that right, Max? Yeah, I mean there is some reporting
that say it's in the millions of letters they got,
but it's like also um from off the record former
NBC employees, So it's like who actually knows. And there's
(32:53):
a lot uh involving this about Gene Rodber maybe doctoring
some of this stuff too. So because Gean was a writer,
maybe he wrote the protest letter that he had other
people copy. Uh, that's a conspiracy, but but we know
the real thing, the letter writing conspiracy or movement if
you want to call it that. Regardless how many actual
(33:15):
letters arrived, it did shake NBC because no one had
ever tried this at such a large scale as a
fan community, and because of this, Tremble is often referred
to in the Trekky community. Treky's are the fans of
Star Trek. She's often referred to as the woman who
(33:35):
saved Star Trek, but she says at the time people
thought she was an idiot. There were other things happening
in the world. Of course. The women's liberation movement was
in the forefront of the news. There were women speaking up.
There were people saying this must change. And then concurrently,
(33:55):
you know, or simultaneously there's another group of people led
by a woman who are save this weird TV show.
So they were questioning priorities. But again to the conversation
about how how hard lucile Ball had to be to
succeed in a predatory environment and a misogynistic one. B
(34:17):
Joe is managing to do some unprecedented stuff as a
female sci fi fan. You know, she's rallying the little people,
and despite that initial media skepticism, it worked. In March,
NBC said, okay, we're no longer going to cancel Star Trek.
There will be a season three. Yeah you can't be
(34:38):
the change. Yeah you wish to see in the world.
It can be done, especially you know, in this time
where you know, we look at like you know, change
dot Org petitions. It's kind of uh um, spitting in
the wind or whatever. You know, if if you can
feel a little bit daunting to go up against the
powers that be, this is a as maybe lower stakes
or something like this might seem it is a an
(35:00):
example of somebody being able to singlehandedly rally, you know,
enough people to get the attention of a much larger
entity and and make a positive change. Because Star Trek
was an important cultural institution, It created a lot of
changes in the way people perceive characters on television. It
(35:21):
gave a lot of opportunities to because of that multinational
kind of angle that we talked about. We're gonna get
to some specifics, uh in part two about how this
was such an important cultural moment and some of the
things that were being tackled on Star Trek, whether thematically
in episodes or just between the cast, were important. It
was important for representation, you know, on television during a
(35:45):
time when like women's liberation, um, and kind of you know, uh,
let's say, civil rights were really starting to be very
very front and center and very important. You know, pop
culture can help those kinds of causes. And we have
b Joe too for that, we really do. But they're
not out of the space woods yet, fellow ridiculous historians.
(36:06):
Because the show's budget is dramatically cut in the third season,
NBC is practicing what I would call malicious compliance. Roddenberry
is no longer, at least at this period. He's not
hands on show runner. He's stepping away from the day
to day stuff, and as a result, a lot of
(36:28):
people will tell you the quality of the show declines
in the third season, and by the end of season three,
everybody thinks the show is going to be canceled. The
fans come back out. Let's get the band back together,
Let's reunite the army of the little folk fighting the
studio exects. They even march outside of NBC's Burbank studios.
(36:49):
It doesn't work. February nineteen sixty nine, the network says
we're going to cancel the series after that final episode
runs in June. The final episode, turn About Intruder is
uh according to Our Residents star Trek critic both very
horrible and disgusting. Max has given thumbs downs. It is
(37:11):
the episode that establishes that in the distant future, women
cannot become captains, which they spend many, many, many many
subsequent seasons and shows undoing, including Voyage. You're making sure
like the main character in the Captain was a woman.
It's like, oh, this woman just goes insane because she
could not become a captain. It's like what, but okay,
(37:34):
so this seems like an ignominious end, right, You remember
the iconic opening opening monologue from Captain Kirk. They talked
about a five year mission. Now it looks like they're
not going to make it to five years. But there
is a very important victory that b Joe and the
fans earned. Since Star Trek got a third season, it
(37:56):
had enough episodes to go into syndication, and as we'll
see you part two of this series. That is a
game changer. For now. I mean, the time is just
flown by here and old. For now, I think we're
going to pause. Uh, we're gonna go away too. Was
it ten forward and forward? We're gonna We're gonna adjourn
(38:16):
to ten forward. Chatted up with Guy Nan, who, according
to the lore of Star Trek, must have been alive
at the time of the original series. Uh, we'll get
into that. We'll not get into it at all. I mean,
I mean that might be shown in a Star Trek
movie or something I'm not quite possibly maybe, Uh, but
(38:37):
for now, I want to say thank you, of course
to our super producer, research associate and Residents Spot cosplayer
Mr Max Williams. Thanks of course to Lucille Ball. I
bet a lot of folks didn't see that coming, but
thank you for I Love Lucy and also star Trek Indeed,
and of course thanks again to you Max for doing
(38:58):
this incredible research for excited to get right into part
two post haste. Also thanks to Chris Frosciota is here
in spirit heaves, Jeff Coates, Jonathan's stricklin time is nige
if not past nine agreed, uh he is our resident Kardassian,
not Kardashian. Sorry, sorry, strict. I'd also like to thank
(39:20):
Alex Williams for making this slap in pop and uh nool.
Thank you. It looks like we're on our continuing mission
to uh to explore history in the most ridiculous way possible,
and they couldn't be more excited. Samy here, my friend.
We'll see you next time. Books. For more podcasts from
(39:44):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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