Star Trek on the BBC: The Unscheduled

Occasionally information drops into my lap in the most unexpected way. After a three year hiatus, here's another update.

During Star Trek's 38 year run on the BBC most episodes are scheduled (that is listed in newspapers,The Radio Times, or on BBC Genome) nine times but there are exceptions:

The Cage	4
The Man Trap	10
Where No Man Has Gone Before	10
Miri	5
The Galileo Seven	10
The Return Of The Archons	8
The Deadly Years	8
Obsession	8
A Private Little War	8
By Any Other Name	8
Day Of The Dove	8
For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky	8
Plato's Stepchildren	3
Wink Of An Eye	8
The Empath	4
Whom Gods Destroy	3
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield	8
The Mark Of Gideon	8
That Which Survives	8
The Lights of Zetar	8
Requiem for Methuselah	8
The Way to Eden	8
The Cloud Minders	8
The Savage Curtain	8
All Our Yesterdays	8
Turnabout Intruder	8

Most of these are easy to explain.

The Cage was first broadcast in 1992, and shown as part of every subsequent run of repeats.

Miri was shown on 2 December 1970. Following complaints it was pulled and went unbroadcast until 1992. After that it was part of every repeat run.

The Empath was scheduled for 16 December 1970 but dropped at very short notice following the complaints about Miri. The BBC did not show it until 1992, and all the repeat seasons that followed.

Plato's Stepchildren, and Whom Gods Destroy were also not shown until 1992, but unlike The Empath they only clock up three repeats because the 2002 run ends with The Tholian Web. This is also why all season three episodes made after The Tholian Web only have eight repeats.

The Man Trap, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and The Galileo Seven all buck the trend by clocking up an impressive ten repeats.

The Galileo Seven is repeated on 9 October 1984, and then again on 30 December 1986 as the last episode of the 1984-86 block of repeats. There is no indication that the 1984 broadcast did not take place, and there is no obvious reason for this second repeat.

The Man Trap is shown twice within a year. Once on 15 October 1995 to start a new repeat run, and then again on 20 August 1996 as part of a week of repeats which built up to Star Trek night on 26 August.

Where No Man Has Gone Before rather sweetly picks up an additional repeat on Saturday 15 January 2005, just before a BBC2 update about the Huygens probe landing on Titan.

That leaves the following episodes which were only scheduled eight times: The Return Of The Archons, The Deadly Years, Obsession, A Private Little War, and By Any Other Name. The BBC was always sensitive to accusations of wasting money, and it seems odd that it would pay for the rights to show Star Trek and then not get full value for money out of its repeat rights.

The missing repeats are accounted for in a fanzine article linked from an archive television forum called The Mausoleum Club. I found the link while giving myself an ego boost. I was looking at sites which have linked to this blog and reading the genuinely positive and kind things people have written about these articles.

A user on The Mausoleum Club forum called rosalyn posted a link to an archive of Star Trek fanzines called IDIC Newsletter. Issue 9 contains an article by Janet Quarton called History of Star Trek on the BBC. Again, it's very good for my ego to see the article confirms a lot of the speculation on my blog, but more than that it's a gold mine of information.

There's interesting information about the editing of Star Trek which suggests that between 1969 and 1986 the BBC reused the same prints (probably 35mm film) and kept editing them for content and timing; first to fit a 50 minute slot and then one of 45 minutes. There is also a note that the complaints about Miri came from “teachers and parents saying that children had been copying the bad behaviour of children in Miri.” This is the first time I've seen any substantial description of the nature of complaints about Miri.

The main point which caught my attention is about unscheduled Star Trek repeats. The problem with unscheduled repeats is that unless you have access to internal BBC documentation there is (obviously) no way to know they took place.

Starting in 1974 (when generally speaking all the episodes had been shown twice) the BBC began to use Star Trek to fill unexpected gaps in its schedule. Nationwide the BBC's early evening news programme was cancelled on 18 April 1974 and Star Trek filled the gap, and the episode shown was The Return Of The Archons.

The Return Of The Archons and Dagger Of The Mind should have been first repeated in 1971 or 1972 (see the 1971 article for speculation about why some series one episodes were held back and repeated late). I took this to mean that after the Miri complaints the BBC initially added The Return Of The Archons and Dagger Of The Mind to the unsuitable pile along with The Empath, Plato's Stepchildren, and Whom Gods Destroy.

Dagger Of The Mind was subsequently, and ironically, used to fill the gap in the schedule where Miri would have been repeated on 2 April 1973. This left only The Return Of The Archons as unrepeated since 1969. I've previously speculated that as the BBC's rights to show Star Trek ran down in 1976 a BBC bean-counter found The Return Of The Archons on a shelf and deemed the content more acceptable than it had been in 1971/72 (probably following some judicious editing), leading to a repeat on 19 July 1976. In actual fact if this content review took place it must have been earlier; possibly around the time Dagger Of The Mind was repeated. With the unscheduled repeat in 1974 The Return Of The Archons actually clocks up nine showings in 38 years. The same as the majority of Star Trek episodes.

This leaves The Deadly Years, Obsession, A Private Little War, and By Any Other Name as the only episodes scheduled eight times.

Janet Quarton's article states that By Any Other Name was repeated on Thursday 27 June at 3pm when coverage of  Wimbledon 1974 was blocked by a strike. A Private Little War got a repeat the following month when Star Trek again replaced Nationwide, 6pm Wednesday 2 July 1974. Obsession replaced Cricket: Second Test, England v Pakistan, which was abandoned due to rain on Tuesday 13 August, 3.30pm. In 1975 The Deadly Years replaced International Show Jumping on Sunday 30 March, 4.50pm. Taking them all up to the standard nine repeats, and being a rare of example of sport giving way to Star Trek for a change.

If this all seems like a long-winded way of saying that the BBC sneaked in five unscheduled repeats of Star Trek, that's because it is but I find it fascinating, to coin a phrase, that the BBC determinedly sticks to its own made up episode order even when putting episodes to one side to fill gaps in the schedule.

Until 1984 the BBC showed Star Trek using its own made up episode order (and even when they switched to either NBC broadcast order, or production order, they rarely got it right). Looking back to 1970, The Deadly Years, Obsession, A Private Little War, and By Any Other Name make up a block of four episodes shown after Journey To Babel. These four episodes are still grouped together when it's time for their first repeat at the end of 1972, slotted in between Journey To Babel and Return To Tomorrow. In 1979 when the BBC is on its fourth run of Star Trek, The Deadly Years, Obsession, A Private Little War, and By Any Other Name are once again slotted in between Journey To Babel and Return To Tomorrow.

The exception is 1975. On the second repeat cycle, Journey To Babel and Return To Tomorrow are back to back. The four episode run of The Deadly Years, Obsession, A Private Little War, and By Any Other Name has been neatly snipped out.

By Any Other Name got a repeat on 27 June 1974. The Star Trek repeats were on hold for Wimbledon, and the last episode shown before the break was Balance Of Terror. The next episode scheduled is The Squire Of Gothos, shown 10 July 1974. When Wimbledon is cancelled you'd expect the BBC to simply pull forward the next episode scheduled, but they don't. Instead they reach forwards to a story not due to be repeated until June 1975 (going by the BBC's episode order). The same thing happens when Nationwide is cancelled on 2 July 1974. Instead of showing The Squire Of Gothos (still next because Star Trek remains on it's two week Wimbledon break) they show A Private Little War. When the cricket is rained off on 13 August the BBC doesn't use the next scheduled episode (Errand Of Mercy) they go for Obsession. And finally The Deadly Years is used in 1975.

Why those four episodes? I don't know. Maybe in June 1974 the BBC was working on it's schedule for June 1975, and those four episodes hadn't yet been placed. I also don't know if there's any significance to the unscheduled repeats being run in reverse of their normal BBC order. It seems unlikely to have happened by chance.

What would have happened if those four episodes hadn't been used to plug gaps in the schedule? Presumably they would have been slotted in after Turnabout Intruder in 1976; as happened to And The Children Shall Lead (bumped from it's 19 April 1976 slot by Easter) and The Return Of The Archons (when someone noticed it was due a third repeat)

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