[Nepeta]

Star Trek had a big following. But in reality, it was a fairly low budget, TV show.

Just not true.

I refer you to Marc Cushman's TOS books, These Are the Voyages. TOS episodes were some of the most expensive television made at the time. Cushman has the numbers.

The other myth about TOS is that the ratings were poor. They were not, which Cushman goes into with the actual numbers for specific broadcasts. NBC became annoyed with Roddenberry, and did not want to be bothered with him.

Star Trek TOS was initially broadcast 8 Sep 1966, and it brought in a vast audience, especially women, who hadn't been fans before. Many of those episodes can be watched and discussed today. I first became aware of Star Wars when I went to Boskone in 1977, and by then, the audience for science fiction had already changed a great deal.

[yarddog]

I have no idea what the original “Star Trek’s” budget was but I saw about a fifteen minute interview with their prop man. He said their budget for props was small and they had to do a lot with a little.

They showed one scene where they had used paper coffee cup holders as a design on one wall. He said they had one big advantage in that no one knew what a star ship really looked like.

He also said their favorite source of props was the Paramount dumpster. They found all kinds of things they could use there.