Star Trek on the BBC (and ITV): Gene Roddenberry

It's been three years. So it's probably past time to blow some dust of this blog. Thank you to everyone who has commented, and apologies for the delay in making those comments live. It turns out Blogger doesn't tell me when a comment is waiting approval but it does diligently email me to let me know when I've approved a comment and it is live. That's really helpful Blogger (sarcasm). Anyway...

Just now, I was updating the page Star Trek on the BBC (and ITV): The Films, to add Jay's dates and times for showings of the films I was missing. He included details of a Saturday 13th May 1995 showing of The Voyage Home and, forgetting that was on ITV, I went to have a look on BBC Genome. By a happy coincidence, the same Saturday morning BBC1 was showing Gene Roddenberry's 1973 TV film Genesis II. It got me wondering about the broadcast dates for other Gene Roddenberry scripts and personal appearances, and well, here we are again. 

Have Gun Will Travel was not Gene Roddenberry's first television work but the 1959 showing of The Hanging Cross is literally the only pre-Star Trek writing of his that I've been able to track down, so far. I Led 3 Lives got a run on BBC1 in 1956 and Highway Patrol was shown on ATV in the same year, and Mr District Attorney cropped up on Associated-Rediffusion in 1958, but individual episodes and writers don't tend to be named, so it's very unlikely I'll be able to find the Roddenberry scripted episodes. 

Gene Roddenberry's post-Star Trek television series and pre-movies broadly breaks down into the following.

Pretty Maids All In A Row: A 1971 sex-comedy murder-mystery. ITV originally brought Pretty Maids All In A Row to show as part of a series of "sexy films for late-night viewers." This was according to the Daily Mirror who reported the news on 22nd June 1977 with a very sober and understated headline.

The Daily Mirror reported that: "The Independent Broadcasting Authority, watchdogs of the ITV network, have fully approved of the screening of the films. "But, a spokesman said, "we are watching for a reaction from viewers very carefully." 

The screening of the films was perhaps not as fully approved as the spokesman thought. Friday 24th June saw the Belfast Telegraph reporting the screening of Pretty Maids All In A Row had been prematurely ejected from the sexy season. The film was scheduled second in the series, on Monday 11th July, but it had been "viewed by a panel from the IBA and had been considered unsuitable for transmission." By December 1978 something had changed, and Pretty Maids All In A Row began to work its way round the different ITV regions.

Daily Mirror, 15/01/1973

Genesis II: (1973). A made for television science-fiction film. It was shown on CBS as a potential pilot, which didn't become a series.

Planet Earth: (1974). A reworking of Genesis II for ABC. It also didn't become a series and was shown as a made for TV movie. A third reworking of the concept, the exploitively titled Strange New World, was also shown on ABC in 1975. However, this version doesn't credit Gene Roddenberry so I'm not including it.

Cambridge Evening News, 28/07/1988

The Questor Tapes: (1974). A pilot for NBC. The series was commissioned for 13 episodes before the pilot was shown. Universal, who made the pilot, and NBC then wanted changes for the series, Roddenberry disagreed and dropped out and no episodes were made.

Spectre: (1977). Another proposed pilot which was rejected by the US networks. It was released as a film in the UK but never seems to have been shown on television.

Please note. I'm not including UK broadcast dates for Gene Roddenberry's posthumous series like Andromeda. Once again, I'm playing the life's-too-short card.

In the list below, the name in brackets is the ITV franchise. ITV has a surprisingly complicated history. The ITV network was originally set up as a collection of independent franchises covering different parts of the country. Associated-Rediffusion was the first franchise on air in 1955 and broadcast to London, Monday to Friday. ATV broadcast to London at the weekend. Both companies lost their franchise in 1968 and were replaced by Thames (London weekdays, Thames was part owned by Associated-Rediffusion) and LWT (weekends, but now the weekends were classed as beginning at 7pm on Friday evening). ITV franchises were put up for auction every 10 years and companies changed as franchises were lost, regions were merged or split, companies went bankrupt (Wales West and North Television), or sulked and stopped broadcasting early when their franchises was awarded to a different company (take a bow Television Wales and the West).  I did say it was complicated. 

The ITV network starts out fragmented with each region operating its own schedule but becoming more standardised over the decades. So although The Questor Tapes and Genesis II are purchased for ITV around 1974, their broadcast is fragmented across a four year period with some franchises showing the films in the morning, some in the afternoon, some in the evening, and some as a late night movie. By 1986 there is a lot less variation in the schedules, and The Questor Tapes is networked across multiple regions at the same time. ITV gradually amalgamated through the 1990s and since 2004 has been run as a single network* with no regional identity. It's a lot less interesting. I'm old enough to remember the weird exoticism of living in a house with two television aerials pointing in different directions, at different transmitters, and having access to two ITV schedules. Ah, the heady nostalgia of setting the TV to Anglia to watch Battlestar Galactica through a haze of static.

(*except for viewers in Scotland)

1959-09-23    21.30    ITV       Have Gun Will Travel: The Hanging Cross (Associated-Rediffusion) [1]

1974-10-01    18.40    ITV       The Questor Tapes (Granada)
1974-08-14    18.35    ITV       Genesis II  (Granada)
1974-12-23    15.30    ITV       Genesis II  (HTV West)

1975-01-03    15.00    ITV       Genesis II (Southern) [2]
1975-12-02    19.10    ITV       The Questor Tapes (Westward, Channel)

1976-02-10    19.15    ITV       The Questor Tapes (Anglia)    

1977-02-05    10.40    ITV       The Questor Tapes (Southern)
1977-03-20    21.55    ITV       The Questor Tapes (UTV)
1977-08-16    19.05    ITV       Genesis II (Thames)
1977-10-14    23.00    ITV       Genesis II (Yorkshire)
1977-11-11    23.05    ITV       The Questor Tapes (HTV)

1978-01-08    00.05    ITV       The Questor Tapes (Granada)        
1978-12-28    22.30    ITV       Pretty Maids All In A Row (HTV)

1979-03-16    23.00    ITV       Pretty Maids All In A Row (Tyne Tees, Ulster)
1979-04-23    22.50    ITV       Pretty Maids All In A Row (Thames)
1979-12-07    23.20    ITV       Pretty Maids All In A Row (Southern)

1980-04-11    22.35    ITV       Genesis II (UTV)
1980-05-01    19.00    ITV       Genesis II (Anglia)
1980-07-13    14.40    ITV       Genesis II (STV)
1980-07-28    23.05    ITV       Genesis II (Westward)
1980-08-05    19.05    ITV       Genesis II (Thames)

1983-10-24    22.30    ITV      Pretty Maids All In A Row (Thames)

1985-05-18    17.20    ITV      The Questor Tapes (Tyne Tees)    

1986-05-17    13.20    ITV      The Questor Tapes (Central, LWT, Granada, HTV)

1990-10-17    19.00    BBC1   Wogan with Sue Lawley [3]

1993-04-04    12.50    BBC2   Genesis II

1994-05-23     18.00     BBC2    Def II Spaced Out: Planet Earth [4]

1995-05-13     10.55     BBC1    Genesis II [5]
1995-06-07     21.00     TNT      Pretty Maids All In A Row 
1995-06-08     02.05     TNT      Pretty Maids All In A Row 
1995-11-01     18.45     BBC2    Genesis II [6]

1997-03-16     14.00     BBC2    Genesis II
1997-04-28     00.25     BBC1    Planet Earth [7]

1998-03-07     01.00     BBC1    Planet Earth
1998-07-05     00.40     BBC1    Genesis II
1998-08-02     00.35     BBC1    Genesis II [8] 

1999-05-19     01.05     BBC1     Planet Earth
1999-06-19     17.40     BBC2     Genesis II

[1] I'm grateful to Jay for introducing me to the fine website The Television and Radio Database which gives me access to ITV schedules. 

[2] The same day, BBC1 showed Holiday Star Trek: The Trouble With Tribbles from 11.45-12.30.

[3] Wogan was Terry Wogan's long-running, three nights a week BBC1 chat show. The slightly gnomic title is because Sue Lawley was standing in while Terry was off on his hols. According to the Radio Times, "Tonight's guests are the Von Trapp family and the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry."

[4] Another mysterious title which requires a little bit of explanation. Def II was a BBC2 slot aimed at teenagers. Spaced Out, appears to be a three week strand of science-fiction films, the other two were When Worlds Collide and Invaders from Mars, introduced by Craig Charles. Def II was well past its prime by 1995 and, according to Wikipedia, this showing of Planet Earth was the last time the branding was used.

[5] Don't forget to turn over and watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on ITV at 8pm.

[6] Two showings of the same programme so close together normally suggest the earlier one was cancelled. This doesn't seem to be the case here. Newspapers for Saturday 13th May 1995 list Genesis II so the broadcast was still planned when they were printed, and I can't think of any significant events which would have caused it to be replaced on the day. Maybe the BBC felt that shifting it from BBC1 to BBC2 was enough to stop people noticing the repeat within six months.

[7] Considering Genesis II and Planet Earth were reworked versions of the same concept, it's odd to see the BBC show both barely a month apart.

[8] Here, there is a reason for the close repeat. On Saturday 4th July, World Cup 98 coverage knocked Genesis II out of the schedule.