by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

In the middle of season two of Star Trek: The Original Series a rumor began to circulate among fans that the show was at risk of cancellation. And this was despite the very clear fanbase that existed for the show - with NBC receiving nearly 30,000 fan letters during its first season. (It was a record that put Star Trek only second only to The Monkees.) 

Worried that the show he’d put his career into would get unceremoniously booted off air, despite their quite large fanbase, Gene Roddenberry funded an effort by Big Name fan Bjo Trimble and her husband John. This would become one of the first modern examples of a “save our show” campaign. Quite popular now, even for series with smaller fandoms, these are concerted efforts by fans in order to show support, and to put pressure on networks through that support, in order to stave off the cancellation of a beloved show. In a modern context, these are mostly done on Twitter with hashtags (see something like #RenewOurFlagMeansDeath and other efforts to either confirm a new season, or to revive a series entirely).

However, before the internet these efforts were made through the good ol’ United States Postal Service. And for Star Trek that looked like the Trimbles using the 4,000 names on a sci-fi convention’s mailing list to ask fans to do a letter tree (so, that fan plus ten more people) in order to convince NBC to save the show. Between December of 1967 and March of 1968, literally the back half of season two, NBC received nearly 116,000 letters. Even newspaper columnists were encouraging their readers to help save “the best science-fiction show on the air.”

But writing letters wasn’t enough! In January of 1968, in the middle of the letter writing campaign, almost 200 Caltech students marched on NBC’s Burbank studio to support the show. They carried signs that said “Draft Spock” and “Vulcan Power,” which seems a bit not great, as far as slogans go for the time period - considering Vietnam and the civil rights movement. But hey, fandom’s always been historically beyond cringey - so that tracks. 

Among the letter writing fans of the series, though, were people like the Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller. A fact that NBC used, along with the show’s inclusion in the Smithsonian Institution’s archives and its apparent place among the upper middle class, to make its decision on the fate of the series. At least that first time. On March 1st, 1968, alongside the airing of the twenty third episode of season two, “The Omega Glory,” the network announced that Star Trek would be renewed for a third season. And, of course, the implication of the announcement before the season even ended, was the implied request to stop writing letters to NBC. Their policy, at the time at least, was to reply to each piece of viewer mail and it was costing the network millions of dollars.

When season three started, NBC originally intended for it to air on Monday nights in hopes of increasing its viewership. But that was before it was placed in the death slot of Friday night, upon actually airing in late 1968. (The politics of when a show airs, despite streaming existing, is still of great importance and it’s something I’m fascinated by generally.) The decision was seemingly made not by an executive, but actually demanded by George Schlatter, one of the producers behind Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. The executives at NBC caved to his anger about what Star Trek’s movement to Monday nights might mean for his sketch show. And that show was doing so well, comparatively, that his demands were met and ​​Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In would run until 1973 - to great success.

But Roddenberry, who'd been working in television for years and years by 1968, could read the writing on the wall. “If the network wants to kill us, it couldn't make a better move.” Friday remains a dreaded spot to put shows that you’ve agreed to make another season of, but want to kill off for various reasons. It’s easy to blame “low viewership” as the reason for cancellation when you’re the one who made it so. In fact, few shows survive Friday nights, even now. So, Roddenberry pulled himself back from daily production of the series. Between dropping the show from 29 of NBC’s 210 affiliates, and reducing the budget per episode down by, at least, $10,000 (or a little less than $83,000 per episode today), it was clear to everybody involved that Star Trek had only staved off cancellation by the skin of its teeth, and it probably wasn’t going to make to a season four. 

It could be argued, and often is, that because of the forward moving social and political nature of Star Trek: The Original Series the creative team viewed the inevitable death of the series as an opportunity. It was a chance to do weird stuff, yes, but it was also a chance to push the boundaries of what late 1960s America (read: white America) viewed as acceptable. Although, as discussed, the show continued to have absolutely batshit racism and sexism that simply wasn’t viewed as being incongruent to the time period, at least comparatively, to the team involved. A symptom of “we’re doing enough” that plagues many non-minority status people in power as they try to get involved in changing culture.

All of which is to give context to the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” which is where the famous Kirk and Uhura kiss originates. It is wildly, though quite inaccurately, known as one of the first interracial kisses in scripted American television - despite not even being the first interracial kiss on Star Trek. The network insisted on doing two versions of the scene, one with the kiss and one without, in order to have options and to mitigate any anger they thought might be tossed at them from Americans in the deep South.

But their fear was, kind of surprisingly for the time period, unwarranted. While it’s considered a watershed moment for television, according to Uhura actress, Nichelle Nichols, they actually received a lot of positive responses. They got one of the largest batches of fanmail after the episode aired in November of 1968, “many addressed to me [Nichols] from girls wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering the same thing about me. However, almost no one found the kiss offensive.” And perhaps it was that viewership was low, or maybe it was the kind of fans that Star Trek ultimately cultivated, but that account of fandom is something I’m very glad to hear from Nichols. 

However, the fandom couldn’t save Star Trek - not again. Another letter writing campaign was in full swing, but in early January of 1969 the series shot for its last day. By February, NBC announced it was officially canceled. The fans had fought the good fight, but there was nothing more to be done about the whole affair.  

Except that the series was able to go into syndication, the coveted ideal for any television show. Despite not hitting four seasons (the standard at the time for reaching the 80-100 episodes that most networks want for buying syndication rights in order to do daily stripping for the show), Kaiser Broadcasting bought the syndication rights for season one and began broadcasting it in major cities. They used it as counterprogramming against the 6pm news from NBC, ABC, and CBS and found unusual success in this. And it was through syndication that Star Trek: The Original Series found an even larger audience than it had ever had during its original three years on NBC. By 1970, Paramount (who were also syndicating it) claimed that the series had vastly improved their overall viewership. Even for syndication, Star Trek was doing incredibly. And it would continue to do extremely well, remaining a lucrative syndication investment for anyone who put money into buying the rights.  

The Associated Press called it “the show that won't die,” and in January of 1972 the first of many Star Trek specific fan conventions occurred in New York City, with over 3,000 people in attendance. And it was at fan conventions that Roddenberry aired his black-and-white work print copy of “The Cage,” the first pilot that hadn’t been seen by fans in its original format. And it is during this time that fans of the show began to refer to themselves, in great numbers, as trekkies (trekkers is also used, but… I like that so much less). Fanzines really started to pop off in the way we imagine them, because without new content fans needed to make their own.

It is during these wayward and desperate times, aided by the rise in viewership that syndication provided, that Star Trek achieved the cult status that would lead to ten other shows, set in the same universe, within 50 years. With notable fans getting inspired both creatively and technologically during the time between its cancellation and the second series in the franchise, Roddenberry truly made a show that wouldn’t die.