page_title: Star Trek: The Original Series
section_title: Season 2 (1967–1968)
hierarchical_section_title: Star Trek: The Original Series / Production / Season 2 (1967–1968)
caption_attribution_description: Publicity photo of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner as Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk from the television program Star Trek.
context_page_description: Star Trek is an American science-fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise and its crew. It later acquired the retronym of Star Trek: The Original Series to distinguish the show within the media franchise that it began.
  The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, roughly during the 2260s. The ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk, First Officer and Science Officer Spock, and Chief Medical Officer Leonard 'Bones' McCoy. Shatner's voice-over introduction during each episode's opening credits stated the starship's purpose:
  Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
  The series was produced from September 1966 to December 1967 by Norway Productions and Desilu Productions, and by Paramount Television from January 1968 to June 1969. Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8, 1966, to June 3, 1969, and was actually seen first on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network.
context_section_description: Star Trek's ratings continued to decline during the second season. Although Shatner expected the show to end after two seasons and began to prepare for other projects, NBC nonetheless may have never seriously considered cancelling the show. As early as January 1968, the Associated Press reported that Star Trek's chances for renewal for a third season were "excellent". The show had better ratings for NBC than ABC's competing Hondo, and the competing CBS programs (number-three Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and the first half-hour of the number-12 CBS Friday Night Movie) were in the top 15 in the Nielsen ratings. Again, demographics helped Star Trek survive. Contrary to popular belief among its fans, the show did not have a larger audience of young viewers than its competition while on NBC. The network's research did indicate that Star Trek had a "quality audience" including "upper-income, better-educated males", however, and other NBC shows had lower overall ratings.
  The enthusiasm of Star Trek's viewers surprised NBC. The show was unusual in its serious discussion of contemporary societal issues in a futuristic context, unlike Lost in Space which was more campy in nature. The network had already received 29,000 fan letters for the show during its first season, more than for any other except The Monkees. When rumors spread in late 1967 that Star Trek was at risk of cancellation, Roddenberry secretly began and funded an effort by Bjo Trimble, her husband John, and other fans to persuade tens of thousands of viewers to write letters of support to save the program. Using the 4,000 names on a mailing list for a science-fiction convention, the Trimbles asked fans to write to NBC and ask 10 others to also do so. NBC received almost 116,000 letters for the show between December 1967 and March 1968, including more than 52,000 in February alone; according to an NBC executive, the network received more than one million pieces of mail but only disclosed the 116,000 figure. Newspaper columnists encouraged readers to write letters to help save what one called "the best science-fiction show on the air". More than 200 Caltech students marched to NBC's Burbank, California studio to support Star Trek in January 1968, carrying signs such as "Draft Spock" and "Vulcan Power". Berkeley and MIT students organized similar protests in San Francisco and New York City.
  The letters supporting Star Trek, whose authors included New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, were different in both quantity and quality from most mail that television networks receive:
  The show, according to the 6,000 letters it draws a week (more than any other in television), is watched by scientists, museum curators, psychiatrists, doctors, university professors, and other highbrows. The Smithsonian Institution asked for a print of the show for its archives, the only show so honored.
  In addition:
  Much of the mail came from doctors, scientists, teachers, and other professional people, and was for the most part literate–and written on good stationery. And if there is anything a network wants almost as much as a high Nielsen ratings, it is the prestige of a show that appeals to the upper middle class and high-brow audiences.
  NBC—which used such anecdotes in much of its publicity for the show—made the unusual decision to announce on television, after the episode "The Omega Glory" on March 1, 1968, that the series had been renewed. The announcement implied a request to stop writing—NBC's policy of replying to each viewer mail meant that the campaign cost the network millions of dollars—but instead caused fans to send letters of thanks in similar numbers.
caption: Spock, Kirk and the Enterprise, 1968.
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