The real heroine of Star Trek TOS was...Lucille Ball!?!
Owner of Desilu studios, Lucy believed in the show and backed it, to the degree of losing all of her money and having to sell her studio to Paramount Pictures. In an excerpt from the new book the Fifty Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years, written for the upcoming 50th Anniversary of STTOS in September, (excerpted in this month's Smithsonian magazine) one person interviewed notes that if she had been able to hold on another six months, the popularity of the show might have allowed her to triumph with it commercially.
Instead, as we know, the quality declined during its third season and the show was abandoned by the corporate suits. They went back on giving Roddenberry a prime time slot for his show as they had promised, and he walked away from it, along with some of his most creative behind the scenes talent.
PS: I Love Lucy and Star Trek were the perhaps most successful old TV shows in rerun syndication long ago, way before the "nostalgia" cable channels outlets of today were available.
Last edited by chas; May 5th, 2016 at 01:36 PM.
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