Ball and Arnaz were remarkably savvy and even prophetic with regards to the television business. They bought the old RKO studio for their own productions, but started making money by leasing space to other productions. They also understood and secured re-run rights before anyone else, including the networks. When Ball and Arnaz divorced, he also divorced himself from the studio, so it was Ball herself who greenlit Star Trek.
Trek fans know it still almost didn’t happen. The network rejected the original pilot, but took the unusual step of ordering a second one, with an entirely new cast. The rejected pilot, “The Cage,” is now quite well-known, since it incorporated into the two-parter “The Menagerie” and has since been restored and released in its own right.
“Lucy Loves Trek” does a nice job of chronicling Trek’s development at Desilu, but it then mostly glosses over the entire run of the original series, focusing on the letter-writing campaign that saved the show at the end of its second season, the final cancelation, and its surprising success in rerun syndication. Subsequent episodes will focus on the animated show, films, and successive series, which must surely be leaving a lot original series lore and history on the table. Sadly, many original cast/crew members are no longer with us, but we do hear from Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and the late Leonard Nimoy (in archival video).
