Trimble: Saving Star Trek
2 min readIn a new interview, Bjo Trimble reveals who really was responsible for the “Save Star Trek” campaign.
A grassroots letter-writing campaign saved Star Trek after the show was due to be cancelled due to low ratings, and to those who knew Trimble, it should have been no surprise that she would fight for something important to her.
When Trimble first met her husband John, the pair discovered that they shared several things in common, including the desire to go after what they felt was important. “We knew right away that we both liked the same kind of science fiction, but discovered our willingness to fight for things as we went along,” she said. “At first it was little things: city block zoning that was unfair to less wealthy home-owners, schools that needed voter support, things like that. By the time we devised the Save Star Trek letter-writing campaign, we were both in sync about what we wanted to do.
“The whole Save Star Trek campaign was John’s fault,” she said. “We had visited the Trek set, about when word sifted down that the show would be canceled at the end of this, the second season. So we watched actors do their stuff beautifully in front of the camera, then slump off looking depressed.
“On our way home, John said, ‘There ought to be something we could do about this!’ Now, he’d been married to me long enough to know better. By the time we got back home, we’d mapped out a basic plan of action. So we called Gene Roddenberry to see if he was OK with this idea. Gene had just told his staff that it would be wonderful if there was just some way to reach to fans and get their support. So things began to happen.
“But all the news at that time was about Women’s Lib and ‘the little housewife speaking up,’ so the news media had little interest in a businessman. Reporters focused on me instead of John. To my sorrow, John has seldom gotten even the fan credit he so well deserves for his part in making the Star Trek we know now a reality for all of fandom.”
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A belated thank you for all you both did. I was in junior high school at the time and I remember I wrote letters to the NBC stuffed suits in protest. Seemed very natural, as protest was certainly in the air of those times. I believe that your actions were in fact the most crucial ST event, ever. If we as fans had not protested (which also made it clear there was a fiercely loyal fan base), and if Star Trek had gone after 2 seasons, that might have been it, the end of ST forever. No movies, no TNG, nothing. But the strong reaction to the still-incomprehensible cancellation, did demonstrate that there was something singular, truly exceptional, about Star Trek. It’s just a shame that the suits hobbled the 3rd season by a cut budget, with fewer effects, sets, and good writers.
I just wished the Bring Back Kirk campaign never fizzled out. There are still many opprotunities still to write to the powers that be about the importance of Shatner and Kirk in Star Trek but the person in charge of that has quit doing much of anything and many emails about another campaign go unanswered. About all there is, is a website but that is all. We need another Bring Back Kirk trailer about what a story line could be in the next Star Trek movie about him. Oh well.
Kirk lives on in the new movie(s) and his future history is changed. So the cause is blunted to a large degree, but it also provides new opportunities to make him live again. So many things are possible that I don’t know why it’s apparently so difficult for the writers to come up with something believable. I suspect they just don’t want to.
The Trimbles deserve our continued gratitude. Although the third season of Star Trek was hampered by less money in the budget and by a producer who failed to understand what made Star Trek special and greenlighted scripts that were–shall we say–less than stellar, without that third season Star Trek may well have died a permanent death. The third seaon added twenty-one extra episodes, which made it a viable syndication product. As we all know, syndication is where Star Trek became a cultural phenomenon. Thank you, Bjo and John Trimble.
I agree. If all they are concerned about is money then a believable way would bring in real $. Like Shatner said 2 years ago. Anything can happen, it is science fiction for goodness sakes. His book Star Trek The Return is very believable, the Borg and Romulans team up to defeat the federation and they re-animate Kirk to be their weapon and they use the borg nanonites, etc and his last memory patterns to reactivate his mind and memory.
Roddenberry was amazing for creating “Star Trek” and “The Next Generation”. Unfortunately, HE was the person allowing rumors like him starting the campaign to flourish. While the original show languished during its final season, he was trying to launch his new dismal projects and selling off Trek stock footage at conventions he’d raided from the active show’s studio.
Star Trek was invented by Gene, but past that…it survived in SPITE of him and his interference past the early part of the second season.
Good for Bjo for finally setting the record straight (“It was John’s fault”)!