Redshirts Always Die
Fansided

Bob Justman called Star Trek: TOS a failure

ByRachel Carrington|
Smithsonian Channel will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek with a two-hour special that will take a look at the lasting influence the original Star Trek series has had on the world. BUILDING STAR TREK will premiere Sunday, September 4 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel.BUILDING STAR TREK will follow the conservation team from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum as they attempt to restore and conserve the original 11-foot, 250-pound model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the original series. The special also will track the effort to rebuild a model of the original U.S.S. Enterprise bridge by using authentic set pieces and props, which recently went on display at Seattle’s EMP Museum. - Photo: Courtesy of Smithsonian Channel Copyright: 2016 - SmithsonianChannel_StarshipEnterprise
Smithsonian Channel will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek with a two-hour special that will take a look at the lasting influence the original Star Trek series has had on the world. BUILDING STAR TREK will premiere Sunday, September 4 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel.BUILDING STAR TREK will follow the conservation team from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum as they attempt to restore and conserve the original 11-foot, 250-pound model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the original series. The special also will track the effort to rebuild a model of the original U.S.S. Enterprise bridge by using authentic set pieces and props, which recently went on display at Seattle’s EMP Museum. - Photo: Courtesy of Smithsonian Channel Copyright: 2016 - SmithsonianChannel_StarshipEnterprise

Robert Justman wasn’t happy with Star Trek: TOS

Robert Justman was both an associate and supervising producer on Star Trek: The Original Series as well as being the assistant director of the first two Star Trek episodes: “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”  He then went on to be the co-producer of Star Trek at the beginning of the third season, but he resigned not long afterwards. Justman wasn’t happy with what he considered to be the decline in the quality of the series and thought Paramount was treating it poorly, especially with the severe reduction of the production budget.

Justman returned to work on Star Trek: The Next Generation

He returned to work on Star Trek: The Next Generation because he “wanted to prove to Trekkers that there’s a lot of room for disparity in the universe; there are a zillion ways of telling a tale, but this was the original show, only done much better.”  Though he said Star Trek: The Original Series was a “good show with great ideas, and it taught some serious lessons in human morality,” he also called it “a failure.”  (The Fifty-Year Mission, The Next 25 Years, From The Next Generation to J.J. Abrams p. 85-86)

Though many fans will agree that the third season of The Original Series wasn’t its best, not one of them would consider the series a failure. Justman went on to say that he wanted to prove that Star Trek could be successful from that start and that’s why he came back to The Next Generation.  TOS didn’t have the strongest ratings from the start, but that didn’t detract from its strengths in that it was a good, quality show with episodes that made a viewer think, episodes that were considered ground-breaking in their time such as The Enterprise Incident, Day of the Dove, The Empath, and All Our Yesterdays.

Though the series was cancelled after three seasons, and the third season floundered a bit, fans still watch the season because it’s part of the series, and we can find the good among the bad. And though Justman might have been referencing the financials of the series when it called it a failure, TOS more than made up for its original run with the success of the six movies that followed.

Home/Star Trek