Yea, I've been to many a convention too. My favorite was something Nichell Nichols said. She said early on she walked into Gene Roddenberry's office and said "I know what your doing. You are writing morality plays." Gene said "SHHHH don't say that too loud, the networks haven't figured that out yet." Lol... no kidding.
@@malirabbit6228 Been a Trekkie since the early 70's. It's the only term I will go by, certainly will never call myself a Trekker, but to each their own.
Its amazing the happy accidents that allowed Star Trek to be picked up, and then live on. But the irony of the cancellation is that NBC only later found out they killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Back in the late 1960s they didn't really break down ratings by demo. It was only after Star Trek was cancelled for a couple years that NBC realized, after breaking down their old ratings from 1967-1969, that Star Trek was the #1 show on all of television amongst the incredibly coveted and valuable 18-34 year old demo. D'oh!
"D'oh!" is right! Back then, television wasn't much older than a decade, so... who'da thunk it in those days. It's all so amazing, the story of Star Trek.
If I remember right, the FANS wrote tons of letters after the 2nd season when they were going to cancel it then. Kinda forced the network to pick it up again. However, the whole crew seemed to know the end was near, season three kinda sucked. No one guessed that some 20 + years later movies would take off and the fans never gave up the loyalty.
The first episode was "The Man Trap" with the salt vampire with the suction cups and Captain Kirk screaming. IN COLOR. At five years old, my brother and I had never before seen a scarier monster! Mom wouldn't let us watch the next week's episode. But Dad did.
Promo: A man with no fear. First episode: That same man screaming. If somebody had told him that there would be salt vampires, he might have had a little fear.
Kinda interesting that “where no man has gone before” was intended as the first episode. It’s also known as “the second pilot” yet the network decided to air “The Man Trap” first. It’s very noticeable with the uniform changes.
@@stepchildofsoul That never made sense to me. I know Spock is supposed to have alien anatomy (despite being half-human), but, logically, the best place for such an organ is within the ribcage.
@@JanetStarChild Yeah, old sci-fi just bein' weird for its own sake. There really wasn't a sense of order for these things back then. Personally, it's gone a bit far for my tastes these days, but we gotta just roll with it and enjoy things, yeah?
"In Color" was the huge buzz phrase in the mid-60s, mainly because RCA had bought NBC. It was more to prod owners of Black & White sets to get color ones. It was essentially saying , "If you liked the appearance of this stranger with no heart, and this cool looking planet surface in this promo, think how much better they would look on one of our color sets."
They couldn't at least have said that Spock was "half-human" instead of ominously calling him "a stranger without a heart". If anyone was without a heart, it was the execs at NBC.
Now I understand why older generations always thought this show would go nowhere… this commercial really encapsulates the feeling of this era of broadcasting. It’s an interesting window into another time.
There was only 11 years between the cancellation of TOS until the first major motion picture and only another 8 before the megahit TNG first aired. It was all the same generation, little tadpole. 😁
@@sam21462 It was a legitimate comment. This ad has a late 1950s feel even tho it ran in 1966. Advertising and media evolved radically during the 1960s. By the time of TMP in 1979 we had home computers and pocket calculators and ads looked more like they did in the 80s. I say different generations involved in the creative.
@@Ootgreet1 - While I do agree that the evolution was phenomenal during this period it was still, in my opinion, an evolution of the same generation of humans. The easiest example, and a very large example, is the fact that TOS all the way through the original set of movies and on well into the TNG era was all helmed by Roddenberry. Yes there was great evolution but it wasn't really a new generation conceptually until we got DS9 and Voyager. This is when we saw the torch completely passed from Roddenberry and company. 🖖
This was an early promo video that probably aired in the summer of 1966 when the folks at the NBC marketing department didn't know what the hell they really had (and it looks like they only had "Where No Man Has Gone Before" to base the promo on). Back in the old network station affiliate station days, this video was also probably shown to interest NBC affiliate stations to pick up the show in their Fall schedule as well. Up until the late 1980s and early 90's a lot of stations where still capable of both producing original programming (apart from the major networks) and purchasing programs in syndication.
Most of the criticism I'm reading here is based on what the network perceived the show would be versus what it actually turned out to be. Not really a fair comparison as the promo department probably wasn't given that much to work with as by the time they were working on this the second pilot had just green-lit the series. And in fact, in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" the mission of the Enterprise was to explore "beyond the galaxy" (only to be waylaid by the SS Valiant). I can only imagine that the promo dept. was given select clips to use: the Enterprise flyby, the shot of Shatner, and the shot of Nimoy. Their job was to sell the "mystery and intrigue" of the show so viewers would tune in. A pretty good job I'd say.
Yes, this must have been produced _very_ early in the process: all the shots are from the pilot episode. I don't remember ever seeing this, either on TV (and I watched a lot of TV in those days, stupid kid) nor at early Star Trek conventions, which would often show this sort of thing. My guess is that it was made (by NBC? by Desilu-Paramount?) for and distributed to NBC network affiliates to give them an idea of what would be on the fall schedule, and was never intended for broadcast.
Age 63, grew up with the original series. Never saw this ad, though. It might have been only for viewing by the affiliates, to persuade them to pick it up for the fall premiers.
Yah... but it didn't go with the "Ben-Hur" lettering, at all. Looked like a billboard for a chariot race after Moses had come through the desert, or something like that. But, nothing 'spacey' about it at all, unless you're exploring the pyramids. And even then...
an Earth man with no fear. I beg to differ Jim Kirk had fear but like all great heroes and Captains he had the courage to overcome his fear. Spock being described as a stranger with no heart? Again I beg to differ. Just because Vulcans controlled their emotions and pushed the intelligence more. That doesn't mean they didn't have a heart
McCoy: "Suffer the death thy neighbor, now you wouldn't wish that upon us, would you?" Spock: "I've noticed that about your people, Doctor. You find it easier to understand the death of one than the death of a million. You speak about the objective hardness of the Vulcan heart, yet how little room there seems to be ... in yours."
That planet, the rock outcroppings and the sun are probably better done than anything the original series developed for their planet scenes. Whoever made the visuals for this commercial did a nice job.
Just a small sculpture on a table with a black background and a light shining in a dark room. Short of an establishing shot, there wouldn't be much they could do with it. They rarely had establishing shots on the show but on the few times they did, they opted for matte paintings.
I agree I think that it's amazing! And such a 60's scifi vibe! I would love to have that logo on a t-shirt or on a poster! But this time with the original Enterprise cruising over-head, pointed away from the viewer, like it's about to head out into deep space on it's next mission of exploration and discovery...
The anti-lion, and the anti-tinman. Who's the anti-scarecrow, McCoy? With Uhura as the anti-Dorothy and Chekhov's hair as the anti-Toto. Scotty as the anti-wicked wizard of the engine room! And Sulu as the anti-Glinda the Good.
Uhh this is a type of sarcasm? The original series did get many viewers. And "stranger with no heart" isn't quite the right description, but it does pique interest for those who don't know who he is.
I suppose that would have been the first time people had seen the enterprise... Probably the only thing in that promo that would have made me interested in watching the show.
I was born in 1965, but I recall watching the episodes in 1969. The language was too sophisticated for me, so I recall asking my mother if she could speak "space talk" too like they do on ST.
Just wow. I'm old. When I was a very young child, I remember my father with a TV Guide magazine telling me that a new TV show called "Star Trek" was to premier soon. That's my earliest Star Trek memory.
Good old Trek memories. Thanks for sharing! My earliest Trek memory was seeing the Gorn on my older brother's B&W TV and having the pants scared off me. I don't remember telling my parents what scared me, but my brother got in trouble for letting me watch that new "adult" sci-fi show called Star Trek. That was the first season run of Trek. By the second season, my older sister was into the show and for some reason, that made it alright with my parents to let me watch the show with her. I was already hooked and have been ever since.
Star Trek was NBC's answer to all the success ABC was having with Irwin Allen's scifi productions (i.e. Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, etc.). Nearly all those ABC shows ended around 1968.
It's quite interesting how they advertised it - fits a lot. I always felt a lot of episodes of first series of the original series were going for a Twilight zone kind of feeling.
Rather more like The Outer Limits than Twilight Zone, but all thre series employed some of the same writers. Many years later, Marc Scott Zicree wrote "Far Beyond the Stars," a DS9 episode that would have fit perfectly into The Twilight Zone.
When I was quite young and saw my first few episodes of star trek TNG I kept expecting there to be some sort of horror element or monster hiding just round the corner. Cos in stuff like that were you had a very clean high tech looking space environment scary stuff was usually just a scene or two away. Then I realised there was no scary monsters or not many anyway and started enjoying the show allot more.
No wonder the suits chose Orson Wells for the VO for the eventual Star Trek The Motion Picture trailer. They were in power when this was made. Watch this, then go watch the TMP trailer. Fascinating.
I've been watching since Sept. 8, 1966 (I was 7), and I remember seeing that promo once, maybe twice, 1966-ish, and I haven't thought of it since. Cool to see it again, good find.
Love it. I was a child in the 70's (born in 1965) so I missed the very first run, but in serial I enjoyed it. Mind you it was in blck and white when I first did see it at home - then one day at a neighbor's house it was in color and I was awestruck. Fun fact: Spock was originally conceived to be red, to resemble the Devil. Execs overruled and he took on the famous green tinge (and copper-based green blood).
@@ellemueller I may be wrong, but I think the reason red normally looks very dark on B&W TV is more to do with how the video was captured than how the image was displayed. The B&W film used wasn't very sensitive to red wavelengths, so when they shot something with red colour, the red would come out looking much darker than a comparably light green or blue (or other colour) object. However when converting colour film (Star Trek was all shot on film) to B&W video, they could avoid the reds being much darker than the other greens and blues.
In the original series it’s inferred that Spock’s internal organs are anatomically unrecognizable in comparison to humans and not in the same locations. In “The Omega Glory”, Yang Chief Cloud William can’t hear Spock’s “heart”, therefore infers he doesn’t have one. #dancetolivemusic #startrek #tos
My old man used to talk about how hyped he was to see the show as it aired (8 years old) but my grandma wouldn't let him stay up. He did the same to me for the second part of Who Shot Mr. Burns. Decades later, I'm complaining about it just like he.
"Wow!! That looks like it's going to be a great show, can't wait to see it!'" That is a direct quote from 6 year old me. NBC just happened to be the only station our TV could pick up where we lived in upstate NY. I was a science fiction fan from my first few breaths, my first book I ever read was a Star Trek novel Mission to Horatius by Mack Reynolds. I had just turned 6. I learned to read at 3 and this Star Trek book and one about the Civil War we're gifts from my mom when I turned 6, she would bring me home books all the time as she thought it was very important to help develop the mind. My Dad left us when I was 4. He was stationed in Japan a Chief master sergeant in the Air force. My mother who only made it through the 3rd grade(her mother died leaving seven brothers and one girl my mom was the oldest and had to stay home to take care of them and her alcoholic father. He wasn't a terrible man but it was the twenties (1925 to be exact) and the great depression hit a couple years later. Three of her brothers died from childhood diseases but she got the other three through it. She worked hard every day and luckily where we lived in the Catskills of NY and had a nice piece of land with 75 acres and she hunted and fished all year around we had a cold meat locker in back that always had three or four deer hanging in it. My sister and I ate deer all year long. She had a garden about four acres around which she did all the work herself. If you ever see a photo of Barbara Stanwyk or Betty Davis from the 30s dressed in a mink with a fancy hat that is how my mom looked when she was younger she really had some style. My sister and I both went to college and got our degrees and though she passed away from cancer back in 1984 it was because of her getting me started in reading that helped me get ahead. By the way she wasn't a super fan of star trek but since we only had the one channel she was stuck watching it like the rest of us she liked Leonard Nimoy and called him ears! That always made me laugh. This little clip brings back a lot of memories some good and some not so good but that's just how life goes, merry Christmas to all
Beautiful story. Sounds like you had a great family. I could picture your mom from the description, my mom had the same vibe. I think of her every time I see a 40's film. "Ears" is a great nickname btw.
Back when broadcast television was free, you endured the commercials we used for bathroom breaks and snacks. Heard the call. "Hurry, its back on!" Content creators, Hollywood, still managed to make the wonderful television and movie classics you see today and paid good money for their work.
Yes. And various shows, specials and movies were EVENTS. It was sometimes exciting. Spending a Sunday afternoon thumbing through the Sunday paper's weekly TV pages or the TV Guide to see what's going to be on.. Now, as they say, a thousand channels and nothing to watch. 🤥
ah, okay, so we're sure it's authentic. I find it hard to imagine stuff like this has been floating around but not made it to youtube or any documentary etc. I've ever seen.
I'm 49 YO and have been a Trekkie since my grandpa and I used to binge-watch reruns when I was a boy. I've never seen this before, which kinda blows my mind. Thanks!
@Fred Smithberg~ The (TOS) Sci-Fi series, "STAR TREK" was never strictly "Sci-Fi/"Science fact", ever!!, and regularly bent the emutable law of physics, and did so pretty much through out the entire series...It was a Sci-Fi / Fantasy series, aimed at the 18 -34 age range, and adults came to enjoy it later in reruns and syndication...
In the episode "By Any Other Name" the Kelvins take control of the Enterprise and are going to take it back to their galaxy, but going at a much higher speed.
Pretty sure the announcer here is William Woodson, who did the opening for "The Invaders", along with promos for other shows like, "Land of the Giants," and was also the narrator voice for the "Superfriends" cartoons.
I was barely old enough to remember Star Trek during its 3rd season, but vividly remember seeing it all when it finally hit syndication. Thank you, this has to be a VERY rare find. I know I've never seen it!
I saw the first commercial for Star Trek back in 1966. I instantly fell in love with it! I was a "Trekkie" before I even knew what a Trekkie was. I am still a Trekkie, especially of the original series. Over the years I had the pleasure to meet several of the main characters. They were always kind and very attentive to fans. People can say that Star Trek The Original Series was a cheesy TV Show, but they need to understand the impact it had on not only television, fans, and NASA. This year will mark ST:TOS 58th year since it first aired on television. They were disliked by most of the powers of NBC. Given very little budget for props and costumes. Yes, Lucille Ball helped to save Star Trek. This show has impacted so many lives since 1966, it will never...should never...be forgotten. My we all Live Long and Prosper. 🖖
That is so wild seeing an old commercial from the '60s like this, especially for Star Trek. I always get a kick at how the dialog for commercials for Sci-Fi shows don't fully grasp the understanding of their respective shows, or the basics of galaxies. TOS was never a Galaxy hoping series (except for the time the Kelvins hijacked the Enterprise to go to Andromeda). TNG pulled the Galaxy Hopping every once in a while.
Being 55yo, I remember TV commercials like that, that would indicate if color or B&W . Anyone here remember our parents owning "counsel TV" and we watched Saturday cartoons? Possibly dinner eating a Swanson TV dinner, with that yummy nasty fried chicken???
"...into Worlds Beyond Your Dreams!" Worlds such as.... the Planet That Looks Identical to Earth in Ancient Rome, the Planet That Looks Identical to Earth in the Old West, the Planet That Looks Identical to Earth in the 1930's, the Planet That Looks Identical to Earth in the 1940's, the Planet That Looks Identical to Earth in the 1960's, Planet Earth in the 1920's, Planet Earth in the 1960's, and all sorts of other Amazing ALIEN Worlds to Astound and Amaze!
To be fair, there is a planet which is actually a spaceship, another hollow planet with technologically regressed culture, Another another hollow planet which itself is artifical, Not to forget the planet that simply doesnt exist in a single universe but between universes. A huge mining planet that contains literal rock creatures who are sentient, And another planet that literally is eden with the ability to create anything you wish for. Plus the main pull of the show isnt planets, its Scotty and Mccoy's sheer presence.
That scene from 0:33 to 0:35 - I remember such a picture in an episode guide of this series in Starlog Magazine back circa August-September of 1991. Now I have some idea of where that picture came from. As Mr. Spock would say: "Fascinating."
Imagine a time when geeks didn't pick apart a show? I was thinking 'at the edge of the universe?' No. Also, Spock had a heart... it was just where your liver is.
I'm 37 and a lifelong Trekkie it must have been so exciting to see this commercial and watch the show premiere! I bought tickets to see The Wrath of Khan in Fort Wayne, Indiana in February. I paid a bit extra to meet William Shatner, I'm so excited and nervous! Lol
Wow! You met THE man, himself. 😃 And it WAS exciting to see the shows for the first airings. At first, my parents wouldn't allow me to watch the show. My older brother got in trouble for letting me watch an episode with him. But by the second and third season, it became an event to gather and watch it. Go figure, right? 😆
Nice! I've never seen that before. As a child, I only caught Star Trek in reruns. The ad is perfect for the time and the audience it was aimed at, odd though it seems now.
😂😂😂 it’s funny hearing the voice over guy because he said Spock has no heart , watching this commercial reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons waiting for Super Powers DCU yet this is 1962 😂😂😂😂😂
It's interesting that they refer to Spock as a "stranger" instead of an alien. At the time, a lot of people still would have understood alien to mean an immigrant rather than a spaceman.
Took me a while, but I finally became a Whovian (I've been a Trekker since forever), and it still cracks me up how Star Trek was always in color, but Doctor Who wasn't until the 70s, with the Third incarnation of the Doctor (Jon Pertwee). (DW premiered on 11/23/63, the day after JFK was assassinated.)
I remember as a wee lad, it was on Saturday nights, I think at 8:00 (est). That was bath night and us kids would get popcorn or a treat after baths and watch Star Trek.
