Blue Dogs from Venus: Production Still
Greg Herringer
The Production
In February, 1976, the crew of the Starship Enterprise took command of a newly refitted city in space to start a second five year mission to explore and boldly go throughout the cosmos. "It's like we never stopped production, except the sets are sturdier" quipped William Shatner as he prepared for his first scenes as Captain James T. Kirk. Owing to the 90 minute length of the pilot and the complexity of directing several group songs with choreographed dancers, the fifteen day shooting schedule was long by Star Trek standards. "We put in some eighteen hour days near the end of shooting" remarked Leonard Nimoy, "but we all felt it was worth it if we could get Star Trek back on air again". Six days of studio sessions followed in which the solo artists dubbed in their songs and the orchestra recorded the score, including a slightly revised version of the Alexander Courage's theme (thankfully, Roddenberry resisted de Zippa's recommendation to add a disco beat to the famous opening fanfare!). Of the singing experience, James Doohan observed "In all my acting career I never thought I would be asked to sing about pub crawling while whirling around a bowling alley in the heart of a huge spaceship, only to have to sing the same song again while trapped in a little foam padded room with a grumpy, hairy technician frantically flicking levers and buttons to make me sound my best. Now where's my single malt...?"
As Star Trek's musical episode went to post production, the deals and commitments that had allowed the Enterprise to journey once more into space hit a cosmic sour note. The Paramount deal with NBC, the network that had originally aired and then cancelled Star Trek, was in jeopardy due to an executive shakeup. Roddenberry worked with Paramount to salvage the deal, even offering to accept a commitment to just airing the pilot, but it was too late. In June, 1976, NBC announced it would not include a Star Trek revival in its fall lineup. Desperate attempts made to broker a deal with the other two networks also failed. Paramount was anxious to recoup its investment anyway it could, going to such lengths as to stage a letter writing campaign similar to that which saved Star Trek from an even earlier demise back in the 1960s. As the fall, 1976 television season started, it seemed the viewing audience would have a bionic woman, a bionic man, but no singing starship captain. Without any commitment to air the pilot, Paramount terminated the contracts with the actors and production team and shelved the project.
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