After star trek ended,Nimoy moved on to mission impossible. Supposed a letter writing campaign moved producers to get a 4rth trek going with everyone but Nimoy.could they add Martin Landua and Lawrence Montaign and have him play xon ala phase 2? Write him off or just recast spock.landua and Montaign looked like Nimoy enough to play Spock.Landua mict ask for too much money and take more lines from shatner.Lawrence montaign.has a advantage over landua since he already appeared in star trek and may not ask for so much money.in this scenario they could just make a real life arex muppet.have walter Koeing voice it. Then get rid of Checkov and uhura or scotty could be first officer.
Leonard Nimoy gets replaced in hypothetical fourth season.
- Thread starter remember...
- Start date
5 points for creative spelling. Text to speech?
If Trek is renewed, Nimoy has no reason to go next door.
Now, if Nimoy died the summer of the third season, there's a fascinating (if utterly depressing) what if. I won't say that Spock was Star Trek, but he was one of its biggest draws.
Would they:
1) Go on without him?
2) Replace the actor?
3) Replace the character?
And I'm kind of afraid to watch this thread for fear of getting spoilers. I actually know nothing about Mission: Impossible past Season One and don't want to until I see it. So I think I will bow out.
I seriously doubt Martin Landau would join a struggling series, especially since he recently left a successful one (three seasons of Mission: Impossible). What would he get out of that? Joining a show--if it had a fourth season--would have died there, so again, what would he get out of joining Star Trek?
Arex? Well, in 1969, there was no animated series, thus no Arex in the hypothetical 1969-70 period. I also doubt the PTB would get rid of Uhura at that time in U.S. history in favor of an alien or any other character. As far as Scotty goes, he would not work as the first officer. That's not Scott's wheelhouse of training, and frankly, Doohan was not charismatic enough for that type of position in relation to the captain.
Commander Ko’enig, science officerIt might have looked something like this:
Not everyone on this board is an English as a first language speaker. And some people are dyslexic, etc.
Understood. I hope I didn't come off as mocking. I know the perils of text to speech (my hands don't work very well).
When Linda Hamilton left Beauty and the Beast, the show took a nosedive in quality. But that was largely due to a super-dark turn for her death and its aftermath, so it doesn't mean anything for Star Trek. Still, when David Duchovny stepped away from The X-Files, that show lost its groove too. It got boring. And Don Knotts left The Andy Griffith Show much reduced without him. Battlestar Galactica was roundly devastated when they replaced the leads with much cheaper actors, and retooled the premise horribly to explain the change.
OTOH, Three's Company and Charlie's Angels both weathered the loss of their "big draw" blondes just fine.
I think Monk got better when Traylor Howard was brought in to replace "Sharona." NYPD Blue did fantastic without David Caruso; they got Jimmy Smits. And then it did fantastic for a further year without Jimmy Smits, because they got Rick Schroder and he was so unexpectedly good (but promptly quit on them). So you can absolutely pull it off and keep a show going when a star leaves.
Star Trek could have survived just fine without Spock, on three conditions:
• If the show had much stronger ratings for the third season before Nimoy left.
• If they replaced him with a really good, charismatic actor, and not as a Vulcan, because that was Leonard's shtick and people had seen it already.
• If the writing was good overall.
OTOH, Three's Company and Charlie's Angels both weathered the loss of their "big draw" blondes just fine.
I think Monk got better when Traylor Howard was brought in to replace "Sharona." NYPD Blue did fantastic without David Caruso; they got Jimmy Smits. And then it did fantastic for a further year without Jimmy Smits, because they got Rick Schroder and he was so unexpectedly good (but promptly quit on them). So you can absolutely pull it off and keep a show going when a star leaves.
Star Trek could have survived just fine without Spock, on three conditions:
• If the show had much stronger ratings for the third season before Nimoy left.
• If they replaced him with a really good, charismatic actor, and not as a Vulcan, because that was Leonard's shtick and people had seen it already.
• If the writing was good overall.
It wasn't really that prompt. Schroder was on for almost three full seasons (6, 7, and 8). After he quit, though, they found Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who was fantastic, and remained on the series for four more years until it ended (which had nothing to do with Gosselaar). But your point stands as to NYPD Blue - they weathered four cast changes in the role of one of the two lead detectives and did very well regardless.
Different circumstances, but according to Justman and Solow in the book Inside Star Trek, a list of actors was prepared to replace Nimoy, who was seeking a salary raise and other demands around the time of the beginning of the second season. Its unclear if they were intended to play Spock or some other Vulcan or half Vulcan character. The list itself was more of a bargaining weapon than anything else (in the end Nimoy won out) but it does indicates what the producers might have done. Of course, Nimoy's status as Spock was much greater by the third season than it was earlier. And there was also the Lt. Xon character planned for Phase II in 1977, when Nimoy balked at that time.
Last edited:
That's not quite how it happened. BSG was cancelled and ABC, reacting to the fanbase feedback, asked Glen Larson to bring the series back but a lot cheaper and aimed at the younger audience. Galactica 1980 was gonna be what it was no matter who the leads were. They had no choice but to go to the present and using standing sets/stock footage. It was cheap, quick and dirty and had to have an educational message every 15 minutes because of the family hour timeslot. Larson tried to make it a time travel series but the network wasn't interested in that.
Looking back at it now, G80 was pretty bad, but as a kid, I enjoyed it.
I guess I was the target demographic. It wasn't much dumber than the original show, anyway...
Looking back at it now, G80 was pretty bad, but as a kid, I enjoyed it.
Any show with Vipers, those brown suede jackets, and tall biker boots— can only be just so bad. Of course I kept watching.
I'm reminded of Lost in Space. It got pretty bad at times, but it still had the Jupiter 2, the Robot, and tracked-in John Williams cues.
Galactica 1980 was an abomination. It was horrible.
Except for "THE RETURN OF STARBUCK".
Network TV shows would recast (Darrin on Bewitched, Marilyn on the Munsters) or, more frequently, change main characters (Jim Phillips for Dan Briggs on MI) a lot back in those days. If Nimoy had left, and the show’s ratings justified continuing the show, they wouldn’t have hesitated to bring in another Vulcan, probably with Montaigne playing him because no,way was Shatner agreeing to a more established star coming on board,
I also liked all the characters in Lost In Space. But Maureen and John they just didn't seem like a couple to me. And I liked the Chariot and the force field.
Also I wouldn't have watch a 4th season of TOS without Nimoy or a stupid series with XON.
Was that the one where Starbuck befriended a lost Cylon? That was fantastic. So was the ep with the Cylons occupying the castle, which I believe was from BSG rather than G80. But sue me - I found BSG 2.0 ponderous and boring.