Are you sure you aren't just naysaying for personal position? 'Cause that's a standard technique. I mean, I get it, we should check our sources. But it seems far more logical to me that the STUDIO OWNER would be involved in rescuing a shunned script considered too cerebral and too expensive than some underling without greenlight authority.
But if you need to get your jollies by casting intertube shadows, so be it. I mean, everybody's got to shine at the dance, right? And some people talk shit about the prom queen. It's so very primal.
Lots of sources on the tubes for this 'facile meme'.
memory-alpha.org
During the 2006 induction of William Shatner into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, Ball's daughter, Lucie Arnaz (wife of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier actor Laurence Luckinbill), told a story of her mother's involvement in Star Trek's earliest days. At one point, Ball's own studio chiefs said, "And the two most expensive shows are Mission: Impossible and Star Trek, [so] they have to go.' She used to always listen to everything the dyed-print suits said. But she said, 'No, I like 'em!' And they said, 'They cost too much!' And she said, 'But I like 'em!' So they left them!"[2]
blastr.com
It seems that if it weren't for the interest of a particularly powerful comedy legend, we might not have Star Trek today.
Back in 1964, creator Gene Roddenberry found a home for his still-developing sci-fi series at Desilu Productions, the studio founded in 1951 by the husband and wife team of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who became television superstars in the 1950s with their broundbreaking sitcom I Love Lucy. By 1964, the couple were divorced, and Ball was sole owner of the lucrative studio, making her a true Hollywood power player (a rarity for a woman in the '60s). Though some within her studio apparently weren't very excited by Roddenberry's ideas, Ball took a liking to the writer and the Star Trek concept, and it was her influence that would eventually keep the show alive when most other shows would have died.
In 1965, Roddenberry got a pilot order from NBC and produced the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage." It was rejected by the network, reportedly because it was "too cerebral," and for most shows that's where the story would have ended. Luckily for Roddenberry, he had Ball on his side. The story goes that she still thought the Star Trek idea had legs, and used her considerable influence in television to push for NBC to give Roddenberry a second chance. The network made the exceedingly rare move of ordering a second pilot from Roddenberry, who overhauled almost the entire cast of characters from "The Cage" and eventually produced "Where No Man Has Gone Before." That pilot was accepted, the show was given a series order, and the rest is history.
So if it weren't for the Hollywood clout (and eye for story) of an iconic redheaded comedienne-turned-mogul, we might not have Star Trek as we know it today.
neatorama
Lucy and Desi divorced in 1960, just two months after taping the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. While the couple remained friends all the way up until Desi’s death, Lucy had already started working on her next show, The Lucy Show, and since Arnaz wasn’t involved with the project, everyone agreed that he should sell his shares to his ex-wife. This left Lucy as the first woman to be the head of a television production company. And the company’s show lineup was often just as revolutionary. When you consider the fact that I Love Lucy always used more expensive film studio techniques that were completely unorthodox for TV shows to use, it’s not entirely surprising that the studio was also willing to take on a few shows that would require much higher budgets than other studios would be willing to deal with. That’s why the company’s list of productions included such high-value classics as The Untouchables, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. Their studios were so nice that many other notable shows, produced by other companies, were filmed there, including My Three Sons, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show. While the shows produced by the studio cost more to make, Lucy had an excellent eye for finding ideas that would have high syndication and re-run values, ensuring the company would always recover a profit on their high production costs.
TrekBBS quoting the book "These Are The Voyages"
"The Cage" was budgeted for $452,000, but went on to cost $616,000 for an overrage of $164,000 (the equivalent of over $1.2 million today)
The Mission: Impossible pilot episode was budgeted at $440,300 yet came in at $575,744 for an overage of $135,444 (the equivalent of nearly $1 million today)
These were both expensive pilots and yet considering the kind of show they were trying to do with Star Trek the costs really aren't that much different from the Mission: Impossible pilot which was (in some respects) a much more conventional type of program. Of course, it has to be said that Desilu wasn't happy with either situation. The studio suits pressured Lucille Ball to drop one of the shows, and since Mission: Impossible was considered more accessible as a concept they urged her to drop Star Trek.
= new reply since forum marked as read
She got a crew part in the first ST movie made.
