Classic TV Rewind · Episode 1
Wagon Train to the Stars
Season 3, Star Trek. How it began: Gene Roddenberry's Wagon Train to the stars, Lucille Ball's Desilu taking the risk when her own executives warned it could sink the studio, the rejected first pilot, the rare second pilot with William Shatner, and opening night in 1966.
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Shannon Thursday night, September 8th, 1966. On NBC, a starship swoops across the screen, there's a strange, soaring melody, and a calm voice promises a voyage into the unknown.
Carol And for the next three years, a crew of explorers would visit a new world almost every week.
Shannon The show only ran for three seasons. It was cancelled. And it became one of the most famous television shows ever made.
Carol Welcome to Classic TV Rewind, where we go back to the shows we grew up with, and find out what made them work.
Shannon This season, we're leaving the suburbs behind. Way behind. This season, it's Star Trek.
Carol Episode one. Wagon Train to the Stars.
Carol So, where did Star Trek come from?
Shannon It starts with a man named Gene Roddenberry. And he'd had quite a life before television. He flew bombers in the Second World War, he flew for an airline after that, and then he became a Los Angeles police officer.
Carol And then he started writing.
Shannon He did. He wrote for television in the fifties, including westerns like Have Gun, Will Travel. And westerns were everywhere on TV back then.
Carol So how do you get from a western to a starship?
Shannon That's the clever part. When Roddenberry pitched his idea, he described it as Wagon Train to the stars. Wagon Train was a hugely popular western, about a wagon train heading west, meeting new people and new trouble every week.
Carol So, the same idea, but in space.
Shannon Exactly. A ship full of people, a long journey, and a new adventure every week. Network executives understood westerns. So he put it in words they already knew.
Carol But he needed a studio to make it.
Shannon He did. And here's where our story takes a surprising turn. The studio that took a chance on Star Trek was called Desilu.
Carol Desilu. As in Desi and Lucy?
Shannon That's right. Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. They founded it in the fifties, and it made I Love Lucy, and a lot of other shows besides.
Carol But by the sixties, they'd divorced.
Shannon They had. And in 1962, Lucille Ball bought out Desi's share. Which made her the head of the whole studio. She was the first woman to run a major television studio.
Carol Good for her.
Shannon And good for us. Because here's the thing. By the mid-sixties, Desilu needed new shows. And her team signed up two big, expensive ideas at about the same time. One was Mission: Impossible. The other was Star Trek.
Carol And they were expensive.
Shannon Very. Spaceships, alien planets, special effects, costumes. Some of the people running the business side of Desilu thought it was all too risky, and they wanted to drop them.
Carol And Lucy said no.
Shannon That's how the people who were there tell it. One of her own executives warned her that if she made both shows, she might have to sell the company, or go bankrupt. And she went ahead anyway. She owned most of the studio, so it was her call.
Carol So without Lucy, maybe no Star Trek.
Shannon Maybe no Star Trek. The redhead from I Love Lucy, keeping the Enterprise in business. I love that.
Carol Did she even know what it was about?
Shannon (laughs) There's a famous story about that, too. Herb Solow, who ran production at Desilu, said she first thought it was about a USO tour. Entertainers, stars, going out to perform for the troops.
Carol Oh, no.
Shannon It might just be a story. But it's a good one.
Carol So they made a pilot.
Shannon They did. In late 1964, Desilu filmed the first pilot, called The Cage. The captain wasn't Kirk. He was Captain Christopher Pike, played by Jeffrey Hunter, a movie star.
Carol So no Captain Kirk at all.
Shannon No Kirk, no McCoy, no Scotty. But there was one familiar face. An officer with pointed ears, played by Leonard Nimoy.
Carol Spock!
Shannon Right from the very start.
Carol And how did NBC like it?
Shannon They turned it down. One famous complaint was that it was too cerebral. Too thoughtful, too slow, not enough action for a weekly show.
Carol So that was the end of it?
Shannon Almost. But NBC did something almost unheard of. They liked the idea enough to pay for a second pilot.
Carol They paid for another one?
Shannon They did. That almost never happened in television. If a network didn't like your pilot, that was usually it. And this was an expensive pilot, too.
Carol So what changed the second time?
Shannon Almost everything. Jeffrey Hunter didn't come back. So they needed a new captain. And they found William Shatner, a Canadian actor with a lot of stage and TV experience.
Carol Captain James T. Kirk.
Shannon That's the one. More action, more energy, a little more swagger. And the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, had a story with plenty of tension. A crewman develops strange powers, and Kirk has to stop him before he becomes too dangerous.
Carol And Spock stayed.
Shannon Spock was the only main character who carried over from the first pilot. The network had worried about him. They thought the pointed ears and the eyebrows might look a bit devilish and scare people. But Roddenberry fought to keep him.
Carol Good thing he did.
Shannon Very good thing. Spock became the most popular character on the show.
Carol And this time, NBC said yes.
Shannon It did. Star Trek was on the fall schedule for 1966.
Carol So, back to that night in September.
Shannon Back to September 8th, 1966. The first episode NBC showed wasn't either of the pilots. It was an episode called The Man Trap, about a creature that can look like anyone it wants. Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy, all there, on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Carol And here's a fun one. Wasn't it on in Canada first?
Shannon It was. A Canadian network showed it a couple of days before NBC did. So Canada got to boldly go first.
Carol (laughs) And what about the music? That theme.
Shannon The theme was written by a composer named Alexander Courage. That rising, swooping melody. Most people can hum it, even if they've never seen an episode.
Carol And what about the first pilot? The Cage? Did anybody ever see it?
Shannon They did, in a way. Roddenberry didn't waste it. In the first season, he wrote a two-part story, called The Menagerie, and used much of the footage from The Cage inside it.
Carol So nothing went to waste.
Shannon Hardly a frame. Very thrifty, for a starship.
Carol So, what's your pick for this one?
Shannon Mine is the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before. It's Kirk's very first adventure. And you can see the show finding its feet, right there on the screen.
Carol And mine is The Menagerie. It's two episodes, and you get the story of Captain Pike, and the first pilot, and the regular cast all at once. It's like getting two shows in one.
Shannon And this season, we need a new rating. No twitches on the Enterprise. So we're going to rate out of five tribbles.
Carol Oh, we'll have to explain those later.
Shannon We will. Episode three, I promise. So, how many tribbles?
Carol For the beginnings of Star Trek? Five tribbles. A show that almost didn't happen, twice.
Shannon Five from me too. And one extra, for Lucille Ball.
Carol That's how Star Trek began. A writer with a western in his head, a studio run by the queen of comedy, two pilots, and a man with pointed ears.
Shannon Next time, we meet the crew of the Enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and the bridge crew who made television history.
Carol That's next time, on Classic TV Rewind.