|
Post by Dianna on Feb 27, 2015 16:02:46 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by erik on Feb 27, 2015 17:25:24 GMT -5
Yes, a truly sad day for American culture in general, to lose one of the iconic TV and movie characters of all times.
After all this, what else is there to say but "Live long and prosper"?
|
|
|
Post by moe on Feb 27, 2015 18:31:58 GMT -5
Another icon gone-so sad- May he rest in peace.
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Feb 27, 2015 19:40:30 GMT -5
He's not really dead, as long as we remember him- Dr. McCoy (the late DeForest Kelley) to Admiral Kirk (Shatner) in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."
|
|
|
Post by erik on Feb 27, 2015 21:04:40 GMT -5
One thing that may amaze people is that Star Trek, when it originally ran on NBC-TV from 1966 to 1969, never did any better than No. 35 in the Nielsen ratings. It was actually considered a flop in its day. It was when it went into syndication during the early-to-mid 1970s that its popularity, and that of the entire cast, Nimoy included, really took off, leading eventually to the films, beginning in 1979 with STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, which, despite its extreme length and its very ponderous nature (closer in tone to 2001 than the original TV series itself), was a monstrous box office hit.
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Feb 28, 2015 16:11:20 GMT -5
One thing that may amaze people is that Star Trek, when it originally ran on NBC-TV from 1966 to 1969, never did any better than No. 35 in the Nielsen ratings. It was actually considered a flop in its day. It was when it went into syndication during the early-to-mid 1970s that its popularity, and that of the entire cast, Nimoy included, really took off, leading eventually to the films, beginning in 1979 with STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, which, despite its extreme length and its very ponderous nature (closer in tone to 2001 than the original TV series itself), was a monstrous box office hit. To this day, I don't know why the networks placed so much faith in the Neilsen ratings service, as that service did not sample a large number of homes to obtain their ratings. Also, you never knew how many people there were in each home and how many were watching. Once they obtained their reports, they would multiply/equate it to so many millions watching, but it never was and isn't a reliable method. The ratings never should've been used in determining whether a show was a hit or not. Neilsen could sample a million homes today and it still would not be accurate. The tv series "Smallville" ran for about ten years and had such incredibly, consistently, low Neilsen ratings that cancellation should've been a given. By comparison, if "Star Trek" had aired at the same time as "Smallville," the net work canceling the show because it got no better than 35 would've been deemed a crazy, stupid move. The misfortune of "Star Trek" (and other shows in the 60s and 70s) was that there were only three major networks plus PBS and a handful of syndicated shows that generally were never figured in the ratings as they aired at all hours. I liked "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," save for those hospital-like neutral-colored costumes the Enterprise cast wore, and the fact that original series costars - James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Majel Barrett (Roddenberry) and Grace Lee Whitney - had so very little to do in the movie. Especially Whitney, who only had a couple of minute scenes but was otherwise missing from the rest of the movie. Most critics and even a lot of the fans hated the first movie, feeling it wasn't "Star Trek." I think the fans hated the fact that too much time was focused on actor Stephen Collins and the late Persis Khambatta as opposed to the original cast. The rest of the "Star Trek" movies that followed had a stronger emphasis on the original cast - except for Whitney again, whose appearances in most were mostly just cameos, save for the last movie that featured the original cast. Critics harped about that last movie, saying the cast was getting too old but at least the story liners were still more interesting than the majority of "Next Generation" movies (most of which were downright bland and boring) and the two impossible to like reboots, which only prove how hard it is to get something right.
|
|
|
Post by erik on Feb 28, 2015 20:10:23 GMT -5
Quote by sliderocker:
All true. I would, however, add that two other "fantastic" TV series from the 1960s, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, didn't exactly last forever on network TV either, also because they didn't exactly light up the Nielsens; but, as with Star Trek, the syndication route made them popular favorites. And one must remember there were far fewer series on the air in the 1960s than there are, so #35 wouldn't be considered very high in those days.
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Mar 1, 2015 11:58:11 GMT -5
]All true. I would, however, add that two other "fantastic" TV series from the 1960s, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, didn't exactly last forever on network TV either, also because they didn't exactly light up the Nielsens; but, as with Star Trek, the syndication route made them popular favorites. And one must remember there were far fewer series on the air in the 1960s than there are, so #35 wouldn't be considered very high in those days. All too true but back in the day, the Neilsen rating service only sampled something like 3500 homes, if I'm remembering it right. And the population of the US was until 1967 less than 200 million with about 50-60 million homes, the majority of which had one or more televisions in the home. Extrapolating 3500 into the numbers representing the homes with a television and assuming the people were watching the same shows in the same percentages as those participating in the Neilsen (and Arbitron, Neilsen's competitor) just boggled the mind at the illogic of the exercise. Even Neilsen himself mourned the fact that some of the shows he liked had been victims of his ratings service. But, NBC knew that a lot of people were watching "Star Trek" as they received over a million letters of protest when they canceled the show during the sow's second season, I believe. That was enough to win the show a reprieve but NBC was also afraid that if they didn't renew the show, the letters would keep coming in and multiplying. NBC had also canceled the Monkees's tv series after the first season and they had received three million letters of protest over that cancellation, so the concern they might get more and more letters over ST being canceled was enough to scare them into backing off the cancellation. Still, other factors in the show's cancellation was the fact NBC didn't like the show, and the cost of producing a single episode was $191,000, which was the most expensive for its time. It also sometimes went over budget as being a science fiction show about visiting alien worlds, new sets had to be built representing those worlds. Once they were built, they could be reused and redressed in other episodes. NBC screamed about every dollar spent and because they didn't like the show and having to spend that much money, they might well have canceled the show even if it had been a hit.
|
|
|
Post by erik on Mar 1, 2015 14:51:33 GMT -5
Quote by sliderocker:
I would hope, then, that Nimoy was able to thank the many "Trekkies" that kept it from prematurely dying a network death. In all honesty, I think Star Trek was radically ahead of its time, like The Twilight Zone (which also routinely went over its meager budget); and it seemed that the explosion of interest in science fiction which resulted from the realities of flights to the Moon contributed to the show really attaining the status it eventually got. Gene Roddenberry, however, also credited the success of 2001, and the encouragement of Arthur C. Clarke, as another factor in his series' rise back from the TV graveyard to interstellar immortality.
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Mar 3, 2015 21:07:34 GMT -5
I would hope, then, that Nimoy was able to thank the many "Trekkies" that kept it from prematurely dying a network death. In all honesty, I think Star Trek was radically ahead of its time, like The Twilight Zone (which also routinely went over its meager budget); and it seemed that the explosion of interest in science fiction which resulted from the realities of flights to the Moon contributed to the show really attaining the status it eventually got. Gene Roddenberry, however, also credited the success of 2001, and the encouragement of Arthur C. Clarke, as another factor in his series' rise back from the TV graveyard to interstellar immortality. Nimoy, like Shatner, had a love-hate thing going on with "Star Trek," in that the show threatened to overshadow both of their careers but at the same time, the show made them household names. And I think that extended to Trekkies as well although both came to embrace the show's fans. A lot of that had to do with the fact they were able to do other things besides "Star Trek," breaking the curse of being typecast. Their costars were never able to break free of the typecasting but they embraced the show and their characters, although I don't think they got over being typecast. And I think a lot of the sour grapes some of the other costars had with Shatner was because he did break free, although here again, Shatner had a big ego and I don't think he gave them much thought in the way that Nimoy may have. Ironically, both Nimoy and Shatner were born in the same year, just four days apart (although I thought I had once read, they were just a day apart in age) and the two of them sometimes seemed close to each other, often more like brothers than just two different individuals. Shatner and the rest of the surviving cast are all in their 70s and 80s, and it's hard to believe those numbers will just keep dwindling. And seeing them grow older and dying is only a reminder it happens to us all and there's nothing we can do about that.
|
|