Star Trek having a cheap / low budget a misnomer?

[KirkusOveractus]

If I may interject: Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Lost in Space, and I Love Lucy were all coming out on VHS in the 1980s to very early 90s. I had some of them.

Indeed. In fact, Paramount Home Video did a five volume set of TOS episodes (2 per cassette, with Volume 1 being both parts of "The Menagerie") in the late 1970's/early 1980's, a single cassette release of "Space Seed" in 1982, of course before the release of the entire series in the late 1980's.

I think I also have a few 1980's VHS issues of Twilight Zone as well.

 

[Noname Given]

Much in the same manner that Stargate's alien planets all manage to look like the forests around Vancouver, British Columbia.

Hey the 'evolved builders' of the StarGate network all wanted the SAME VIEW when they came through...

 

[rocketscientist]

Today I asked chatbot "During the 60s what were considered the most expensive TV shows to produce?

Star Trek came up first at 190K per episode.

I have seen Trek retrospectives where even the production people themselves lament about the " low budget " they had to work with. Obviously compared to motion pictures it had a low budget but not compared to other shows of the time apparently.

Is the whole TOS was done " on the cheap " a misnomer?

Primitive sets, effects and costumes compared to today for sure. But it was not "cheap" to produce at all.

I did read in an article that, adjusting for inflation that the sfx budget for TOS was the same as TNG.

They also said all sfx houses were working on TOS sfx at the time.

I don't know about the rest of the production, that is, comparing the average cost of a TOS episode to that of TNG, again adjusting for inflation.

Obviously, with the sfx technology available to TNG, I think they got more bang for their buck, that is, a lot more sfx for the same cost. That, I think, widened the types of stories they could tell. It certainly helped a lot for the storytelling. I mean, think about it. How many original spacecraft designs did TOS have compared to TNG? How many hand phaser blasts? And how about the makeup for other humanoids?

That doesn't mean that I think TOS is inferior. Quite the contrary. It is my favorite show ever. It had an energy that TNG didn't have. It had great stories and, imo, the best trinity of characters with Kirk, Spock, and Bones. And Scotty was awesome too. It's fun, it's entertaining, and its inspiring, and the limitations made the writers work harder on making the characters interesting.

TNG is awesome too and it had it's own energy, and great characters and way of telling stories.

I actually find both TOS and TNG complementary. I'm glad TNG wasn't a copy of TOS (except for its first season where it tried to emulate TOS and completely failed).

 

[rocketscientist]

TOS was extremely expensive, even if it looked cheap by the late-80s due to advancements in effects and production technologies.

In 1987 dough, it'd be $666,172.84 per episode. Each TNG episode had cost at least $1million per episode, after divvying up the whole season into individual episodes' needs and all the other budgeting fun stuff. So TNG got nearly double that of TOS and as season 1 of TOS had 29 episodes.

$190k to 2024 dough is $1,850,113.27...

And how the money put into "The Cage" could only be recovered if other shows used the same sets, etc, hence the clever ways of putting "The Cage" into "The Menagerie", airing WNMHGB despite it being a pilot (hence being aired nearly mid-season and with big changes that would have confused many on initial viewing) and so on.

Heck, a lot of 60s shows had sets for hotels, airports, etc, that clearly looked like a small studio space cutoff. This started to change in the 70s, of course, as location filming became cheaper to do. Side fun note, NBC's other show, "I Spy" (1965), helped pioneer a lot of efficiencies in location production - which was crucial as they flew around the world, but still had time for the occasional studio shoot where it's... still sometimes obvious that it's a studio set, but that's par for the course and a fair amount of it matched up considerably well for the time.

Thanks very much for that information! Great!

 

[Christopher]

They also said all sfx houses were working on TOS sfx at the time.

Allan Asherman's Star Trek Compendium listed the FX companies for most of the episodes. Howard A. Anderson Co. did the pilots and most of the early season 1 episodes, but the Westheimer Company and Film Effects of Hollywood did most of later season 1, with Cinema Research Corp. doing just "Miri." Season 2 was mostly Westheimer, Film Effects, and Vanderveer Photo Effects, but Modern Film Effects did "Who Mourns for Adonais," Cinema Research did "The Doomsday Machine" and "The Gamesters of Triskelion," and Anderson came back to do "The Ultimate Computer." Season 3 was Westheimer, Anderson, Vanderveer, and a few by Cinema Research. So that's six in all, but mainly just three at a time.

I mean, think about it. How many original spacecraft designs did TOS have compared to TNG?

Well, TNG ran more than twice as long, and was able to recycle existing designs from the movies, which it relied on heavily in the early seasons.

 

[Danja]

That doesn't mean that I think TOS is inferior. Quite the contrary. It is my favorite show ever. It had an energy that TNG didn't have. It had great stories and, imo, the best trinity of characters with Kirk, Spock, and Bones.

It had legends writing for it (Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, Robert Bloch).

 

[publiusr]

Like THE THING or MANHUNTER—sometimes things just fall into place.