Star Trek: EVERY Season Ranked Worst To Best
3. The Original Series - Season 1
The first year of Star Trek faced a bit of an uphill climb in the beginning. Lucille Ball was instrumental in getting the franchise started. Roddenberry went with producer Herbert F. Solow, of Desilu Studios, to their idea to CBS, who turned them down as they already had the very similar Lost In Space.
They then went to NBC, who commissioned a pilot (The Cage), but didn't like it, saying it was 'too cerebral'. They did like the idea, and they recognised that they had selected the script, so they commissioned a second pilot - a feat that was almost unheard of.
In February of '66 though, the show was almost killed again, as Desilu were worried about the cost of both Star Trek and Mission Impossible. Solow managed to argue for its survival, and it was allowed to continue.
The rest is history. The series achieved high ratings and many of the episodes from the first season are regarded as classics of the genre. Balance of Terror, Space Seed and The City On The Edge Of Forever are all hugely popular entries to this day, with The Wrath Of Khan acting as a sequel to Space Seed.
The fact that Star Trek debuted mostly against reruns in its time slot also worked in its favour, allowing it to win much of the ratings for that week, Although the ratings would slide for the rest of the season, it was enough for the network to order a second season.
It may have had something of a rough take off, but 54 years later and it's flying higher than it ever has.