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Joe Adalian - Television Editor of Variety

Star Trek's beginning
  What was the network's attitude towards Star Trek at the beginning?

NBC execs were puzzled. They thought they'd give this new show a chance. It did a little bit better in the second season and in its third season it definitely started declining and NBC realised they did not have a long term hit and it was cancelled.

A wagon train to the stars, is how it was described at the time. It was about exploration, it was an adventure series. Gene Roddenberry's vision was one of a more perfect society. It wasn't about the standard villains and good guys.

It was very much an idealistic type of environment - with Vietnam going on and all sorts of other political turmoil around the world. It definitely strove to be something more than just a blast 'em up sci-fi show.. It aimed to be very serious and high minded and tackled all sorts of social issues at the time.

The first movie
  In 1979, what were we seeing in terms of other sci-fi movies?

It was around the same time as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien and there was an interest in the genre. And Star Trek the movie was a gamble for Paramount.

The series had not been a huge hit when it first aired, but Paramount executives thought they might have something because the re-runs had grown to be a powerful force on local stations across the country and even around the world. It did something which had never been done before, it developed a cult audience.

Star Trek helped popularise syndication and it showed that there was a devoted audience out there that was clamouring to see whatever happened to these people. And so Paramount took a risk and it paid off.

The first movie was not a huge critical success and, in fact, even let down some fans, but it did well enough in the box office to suggest that there definitely was an audience for the genre and for the franchise to continue.

The first movie: Camp attack!
  Did critical success matter?

Well early on no, it didn't. I mean the fan base was so loyal and there was a hipness factor of young people wanting to reconnect with what their parents might have been watching and you had these ageing baby boomers who were suddenly excited about going back to their days as kids

Alien was much more of a critical success but Star Trek had a real franchise appeal to it. One of the reasons it probably wasn't as good a movie as Alien is because of Roddenberry's insistence on maintaining the Utopian Society.

It exposed on the big screen what probably wasn't that apparent on the small screen – although most people probably knew, which was that several of the actors in the show were not the best actors. Captain Kirk on the big screen, suddenly his facial expressions and his mannerisms of William Shatner were a lot more noticeable. But, at the same time, they held a camp appeal as well.

There definitely was a camp appeal to seeing William Shatner attempt to act.. It becomes larger than life. It was one of the first successful TV to film adaptations. It spawned a whole unfortunate trend in Hollywood of taking old TV shows and turning them into films.

Franchise
  What has the studio's attitude been towards the film franchise?

They've been very deliberate. It is certainly a cash cow. Any time a studio finds a franchise it grabs hold of it and tries to milk it for all it's worth and I think Paramount wisely did that.

They spaced out the number of movies so that there was enough time in between films to build up an audience. They tried to bring in different guest villains to add new freshness to the franchise. And I think it's the the golden goose for them. It has certainly been enormously profitable film franchise for them.

The films ended with sometimes with a cliffhanger. I think they were all very well crafted so that they could become a continuing matinee franchise.

The cult audience of Star Trek, after a movie, would come out, would see it many times. That was one big advantage to the Star Trek series. Just as they would watch the repeats over and over and over again on television they would go and see the movies more than once in each release. So in the interim off years between films I think the audience would buzz and grow more excited about what's going to happen next?

Marketing the final frontier
  What did the franchise spawn in terms of associated product?

It's a complete marketing bonanza for Paramount. Everything from the conventions that have sprung up in association with it, to people buying paraphernalia, dolls for Star Trek, Star Trek uniforms, Star Trek mugs and T-shirts have become popular. It really came at an age where marketing and films went hand in hand. That wasn't always the case. I think Star Wars pioneered it and Star Trek capitalised on it. Film studios realised that there were all sorts of ancillary revenues that could be gained from doing big franchise films. The same cult audience that loved the films, when they were done watching the movie, wanted to go on.

They wanted to hold on to the feeling of the movie so buying everything related to it – it really has been a complete cash cow.

The Next Generation
  How did the Next Generation continue the franchise?

The Next Generation premiered in 1987 and within a year or two had really started to find its own way. It entered the market in a different way than Star Trek the original series. The original series was broadcast on a major broadcast network, NBC.

Next Generation debuted in syndication. Which was very wise because the Star Trek re-runs had performed very well on local stations and there was a lot more money to be made in syndication- instead of having to worry about licence fees, Paramount could charge local stations an arm and a leg for the show and stations were able to build around the Next Generation line-ups on Saturday nights.

In fact within a couple of years Next Generation became the most popular show in syndication with well over 10 million viewers. It upset some networks because suddenly they found themselves competing against syndicated programming which is something that had never happened before. It really ushered in a new era of original, syndicated programming.

In the past, syndication had been mostly repeats when it came to scripted programming. There were plenty of talk shows and game shows in syndication, but original series hadn't been done.

What about Deep Space Nine?
  What was Deep Space Nine competing with?

The one thing Deep Space Nine was competing with, to a degree, was Next Generation. Paramount deliberately overlapped the two series, setting up Deep Space Nine as the successor to the Next Generation. They wanted to use the Next Generation as a launching pad to promote Deep Space Nine.

So Deep Space Nine premiered about a year or two before Next Generation went off the air. At the same time, the sci-fi film market was saturated with movies like the Terminator franchise – very big budget adventures. With Deep Space Nine they tried to ratchett it up just a little bit in the special effects.

I think each of the Star Trek series has raised the bar in terms of special effects and what was logistically feasible for television. As technology evolved the Star Trek franchise has evolved with it.

So early on in Deep Space Nine's run, it was opposite the Next Generation or actually aired in conjunction with the Next Generation. And while that was good for a marketing point of view, to some degree it hurt because Deep Space Nine wasn't fully able to come into its own.

Fans almost universally felt that Next Generation, was far superior to Deep Space Nine. There were lots of comparisons. In 1994, Deep Space Nine became the sole heir to the Star Trek throne and over time Deep Space Nine developed its own loyal audience. It was also distributed in syndication like Next Generation and while it was never quite as popular as the Next Generation it did fairly well. It was a bona fide hit. And the stations that aired it were not unhappy.

Babylon Five
  Was Deep Space Nine competing with Babylon Five?

Sure. Babylon 5 was one show that launched in syndication and later on cable. Babylon 5 tried to develop its own, different vision of the universe, whereas Deep Space Nine still lived within the Roddenberry vision of a more perfect, utopian universe

Babylon 5 was able to be a little freer and more adventuresome. And that appealed to some fans who had grown tired of the same old ethos of Star Trek.

For the most part, though, sci-fi had not taken off in network prime time. There have been very few successful sci-fi shows in prime time in the '90s and today. It just isn't a genre that generally does well. Star Trek is in the exception.

Was Deep Space Nine a success?
  What do people generally think of Deep Space Nine?

One of the flaws in the series franchise, many felt, was the fact that it was a stationary show. It was set in a space station and so people had to come to the show rather than the show go out and explore new universes. And that was one of the original appeals of the first Star Trek, as well as the Next Generation. It was about exploration, the wild frontier. Some people felt that the show was eternally handicapped by that. In later seasons they tried to address it with different twists.

In the end Deep Space Nine did not live up to the Next Generation's success. It was never as highly rated. But it critically did pretty well and ratings-wise, it was a solid success. Compared to other syndicated programmes Deep Space Nine still did very well.

It lasted a good six years and Paramount shut it down simply because at some point it became not profitable to continue to produce the show.

It made more sense to simply end it because Paramount then had enough episodes to syndicate it even further. Once there were over a hundred and twenty episodes stations could air the show five nights a week, which is where the real money is in syndication.

Next Gen on films
  Star Trek Generations and First Contact, how were they critically received?

Films like First Contact and Generations had a somewhat better response from critics simply because the cast was different. Patrick Stewart is seen as a pretty good actor and the cast, instead of being ageing space heroes were young more vital and, therefore, led to a franchise that itself was younger and more vital.

There was a lot of scepticism as to whether or not the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation could carry on in the movie franchise, but they did so with a bang. You had not only the loyal audience who had been following the franchise since the early days of the TV show, but you had the whole new audience of people as well who had been watching the Next Generation. While Star Trek films have never in any incarnation been critical darlings the reviews got a little bit better.

The good news is that the cast of Star Trek: the Next Generation was a very popular cast. I think they've come onto their own and established themselves as their own stars within that franchise and I think by spacing out the movies, doing them every two or three or even four years, as opposed to one a year there certainly is enough appetite built up among fans that there's a guarantee that each film could do 50 to 60 million dollars rather easily. And as long as they can contain the costs I think Paramount will continue to keep the franchise alive.

Voyager
  How did the Voyager premise differ and how was it received?

Voyager was different in that it was almost Lost in Space, to some degree. You suddenly had this crew that didn't know where it was going. So you had a compelling storyline. You solved the problem that became apparent to Deep Space Nine; they were no longer stationary, they once again returned to the classic Star Trek formula of exploration.

The one problem is it was on a network now, instead of syndication. Paramount decided to use the Star Trek franchise to give birth to an entire new network: the United Paramount Network. At first it worked - the debut of Star Trek Voyager still ranks, I believe, as the most watched programme in the history of the entire UPN network.

The problem is quality – qualitatively, many fans felt the series just wasn't up to the first two. The storylines were not as intriguing, that the whole idea of being lost dominated the show. Instead of being about exploration it was about coming home. And some felt that that limited its appeal.

There is also a feeling that the Star Trek ethos, as dictated by Gene Roddenberry, has started to grow stale. Certain rules about Star Trek - the prime directive, et cetera limited what writers could do. The Star Trek captains had to be heroic - they sometimes couldn't be as human as producers and writers might want them to be. And that limited the storytelling appeal.

Nonetheless it remained consistently UPN's highest rated entertainment show and while it never reached anywhere near the audience of the syndicated shows, it did well enough that it lasted six years. The repeats have now been sold into syndication as well and I think Paramount will more than make its money back.

Seven of Nine
  Voyager started rather shakily and suddenly picked up. Why?

They added Geri Ryan. They added some sex appeal. Seven of Nine injected some new life into the show. suddenly there was a hot babe and the Star Trek audience remains, at its core, male, and young male.

Her presence, I believe, helped spice up the show and gave it a little more focus. I think as a result the ratings did pick up a little bit.

She wasn't a hot human, she was a hot alien and that certainly was a double dose of goodness for the Star Trek core audience. Not only did they get this very exotic, alien life form, they got one that they'd like to fantasise about and I think that was the daily double for Star Trek fans.

Versatile?
  How versatile has Star Trek been?

At its heart, Star Trek is about space. The final frontier and the key word being 'frontier'. Frontiers, by definition, are vast and space is a broad palette.

I think Star Trek has survived so long because people will always be interested in other worlds. A show set on Earth is, by definition, Earthbound. It can't really change that much. Shows that in space can be remodelled almost infinitely because the only limit is the imagination of the writers.

When you have a starship that can travel anywhere in a relatively short amount of time – thanks to warp speed – you – you create a lot of infinite possibilities. You create a lot of different universes and a lot of opportunities for people to become attached.

You also create a lot of marketing opportunities as well. The more aliens you create, the more alien dolls you can sell. The more alien make up and alien history books and alien languages that people might want to learn. It really is infinite.

The future
  Where is sci-fi television heading now?

Paramount isn't giving it up. They're launching a new Star Trek series, Enterprise, in the fall. To a degree they are moving backwards because this new series is going to be set in the past.

I think the fascination with sci-fi remains. In the US there's a cable network devoted to nothing but sci-fi. I think that sci-fi is not as dazzling as it once was in the '60s and '70s when the idea of man walking on the moon was still relatively new, or when Star Trek started, just a dream.

People are more sophisticated, audiences see what technology can do. The internet brings all sorts of different things right into people's living rooms. the whole idea has of space is not as scary as it once was.

People are still interested in other worlds. People still like continuing storylines, set in different worlds and with different characters. I still think there will always be an audience for it, as long as you've got geeky teenagers in high school who dream of being anywhere but high school. I think you'll always have an audience.