Excerpt from "The Filming of 'The Corbomite Maneuver' "
Outtake with Shatner and Clint Howard (Lincoln Enterprises film trim courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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NBC press release, issued October 18, 1966:
Accused of trespassing in a foreign galaxy, the USS Enterprise engages in an eerie mid-space confrontation with the flagship vessel of an alien civilization, in “The Corbomite Maneuver” on the NBC Television Network colorcast of Star Trek Thursday Nov. 10.... When it becomes obvious that the enemy vessel is vastly superior in size and weaponry, Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) vainly resorts to evasive tactics, only to have his craft rendered powerless by his adversary, Captain Balok (Clint Howard). A battle of wits ensues between the two spacecraft commanders when Kirk angrily defies a surrender ultimatum in a desperate ruse to gain time. Production Diary
Filmed May 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, June 1 & 2 (1/2 day), 1966 Planned as 6 day production; finishing 1/2 day behind; total cost: $190,430). |
Tuesday, May 24, 1966. The No. 1 song on U.S. radio was “Monday, Monday” by The Mamas and the Papas. CBS had the top rated TV program from the night before -- Desilu’s own The Lucy Show. The Broadway play Mame was opening for the first of 1508 performances at the Winter Garden Theater. And this was kickoff day for production on Star Trek, the original series.
Gene Roddenberry sent a memo to his production staff first thing in the morning, telling them:
On this first day of production, I think it wise we establish certain routines of value to us during the shooting year: 1. Assistant director should convey to my office, or in my absence to the office concerned, at noon and at late afternoon before our office closes, a simple verbal report of pages completed and any problems or information pertinent. 2. John D.F. Black should establish a routine of visiting the set once morning and afternoon, establishing that the tenor and mood of the scenes being photographed are generally in keeping with the script and our discussions with the director. If this is found not to be the case, he and I should confer on the subject immediately. 3. None of the above is meant to replace or supersede R. Justman’s normal production responsibilities and routines. 4. Cameramen and script supervisor have been alerted to flash this office should the director depart appreciably from dialogue, characterization, etc. In my absence or unavailability, John D.F. Black will handle the matter as appears best. 5. Notification from set of deviation from production planning and routine will be handled by R. Justman. 6. Where possible, in order to insulate us from actor problems and maintain our friendly relationship with cast, complaints from actors, unusual or special requests from them, etc., should be passed on to Morris Chapnick of Herb Solow’s office…. |
This was not Roddenberry’s first time around the block; not his first series; not, for that matter, his first war.
The first scene on schedule was Kirk’s physical in sickbay, accompanied by the verbal sparring with Dr. McCoy. It was also when Roddenberry’s meticulous plan went to hell.
DeForest Kelley recalled, “Gene Roddenberry came down to the set, called the crew to attention, gathered everybody around and made a speech on what we were embarking on, the dedication that had gone into the show, and that he wished it to continue with everyone who was involved -- himself, and everybody from the stars to the man who sweeps the floor.” (98-6)
After the pep talk, Kelley said Roddenberry took him aside and asked that he remove the ring he wore -- the ring that had belonged to his deceased mother. Kelley remembered, “Roddenberry said ‘no jewelry.’ I said, ‘No jewelry, no DeForest.’” (98-1)
Roddenberry, not always willing to bend, relented.
As for the first scene, Kelley said, “[Gene] had this thing all laid out in the medical lab, giving Bill a physical examination. I said something about, ‘I’m a doctor, not a moon shuttle conductor...’ and that was the first scene shot in the series.” (98-6)
For this, William Shatner agreed to allow his chest to be shaved. Shatner, with a moderate amount of hair on his body, did not fit into Roddenberry’s idea that men of the future would have little or no body hair.
The scenes in Kirk’s quarters came next, again with McCoy, and introducing Yeoman Janice Rand who, per McCoy’s instructions, brings Kirk his dietary salad. Of this, NBC’s John Kubichan had instructed:
The first scene on schedule was Kirk’s physical in sickbay, accompanied by the verbal sparring with Dr. McCoy. It was also when Roddenberry’s meticulous plan went to hell.
DeForest Kelley recalled, “Gene Roddenberry came down to the set, called the crew to attention, gathered everybody around and made a speech on what we were embarking on, the dedication that had gone into the show, and that he wished it to continue with everyone who was involved -- himself, and everybody from the stars to the man who sweeps the floor.” (98-6)
After the pep talk, Kelley said Roddenberry took him aside and asked that he remove the ring he wore -- the ring that had belonged to his deceased mother. Kelley remembered, “Roddenberry said ‘no jewelry.’ I said, ‘No jewelry, no DeForest.’” (98-1)
Roddenberry, not always willing to bend, relented.
As for the first scene, Kelley said, “[Gene] had this thing all laid out in the medical lab, giving Bill a physical examination. I said something about, ‘I’m a doctor, not a moon shuttle conductor...’ and that was the first scene shot in the series.” (98-6)
For this, William Shatner agreed to allow his chest to be shaved. Shatner, with a moderate amount of hair on his body, did not fit into Roddenberry’s idea that men of the future would have little or no body hair.
The scenes in Kirk’s quarters came next, again with McCoy, and introducing Yeoman Janice Rand who, per McCoy’s instructions, brings Kirk his dietary salad. Of this, NBC’s John Kubichan had instructed:
William Theiss was given full credit from Grace Lee Whitney for Rand’s hair … but Whitney came up with the mini
(Courtesy of Gerald Gurian) |
Kubichan, one of the network’s watchdogs for programming and censorship issues, knowing that Roddenberry was pushing for sexual tension between these two characters, felt it inappropriate for a ship’s captain to flirt with a subordinate. Roddenberry and Sargent went for the sexual tension anyway. With Rand’s miniskirt -- the shortest to be seen on TV -- it was hard to take it any other way.
William Theiss designed -- or rather built -- the wig Yeoman Rand wore. Grace Lee Whitney said, “They put a cone on my head, and put the blonde hair [from two separate wigs] on it, and tried to find different ways of weaving it. It was really her signature. Without that hair I am practically unrecognizable. That hair put me on the map…. But that was Bill Theiss all the way. A genius.” (183-3) |
Theiss had also rethought the look of the uniforms -- with that “mini” Grace Lee Whitney dared him and Roddenberry to allow her character to wear, and now with the addition of the third primary uniform color, joining the gold and the blue. While Uhura -- for this episode and the next -- was clad in gold, Rand, like Scotty,
got an upgrade to the more RCA color TV-friendly red. Bill Theiss said, “The colors were chosen purely for technical reasons. We tried to find three colors for the shirts that would be as different from each other as possible, in black-and-white as well as color.... I think the uniforms’ greatest asset is their simplicity.” (172-2)
And then the company moved to the spectacular -- for its time and medium -- bridge set. George Takei, for his book To the Stars, recalled:
got an upgrade to the more RCA color TV-friendly red. Bill Theiss said, “The colors were chosen purely for technical reasons. We tried to find three colors for the shirts that would be as different from each other as possible, in black-and-white as well as color.... I think the uniforms’ greatest asset is their simplicity.” (172-2)
And then the company moved to the spectacular -- for its time and medium -- bridge set. George Takei, for his book To the Stars, recalled:
What commanded all eyes and pulled them like some gravitational force to the blazingly lit center of the set was the single most compelling presence there, the unmistakable star of the production, William Shatner. Everything seemed to revolve around him. The camera crew, the light crew, the sound crew were all converged on him. And Shatner fully occupied the epicenter. He commanded the hub of all activity on the set. He radiated energy and a boundless joy in his position. He shouted his opinions out to the director; he sprang up, demonstrating his ideas; he laughed and joked and bounced his wit off the crew. He beamed out an infectious, expansively joyous life force.
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Camera tie-down set up for matte shot to include alien spacecraft, to be added during post (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Joseph Sargent took his last shot at 6:45 p.m., one half-hour into union overtime.
Day 2, Wednesday -- the first of four days on the bridge, with more of that “infectious, expansively joyous life force” of which George Takei spoke. Leonard Nimoy, however, was not projecting the same energy and sense of pleasure. He recalled that Joseph Sargent helped him to “break through” and “realize exactly who the Vulcan was.” Spock was supposed to stare at the giant alien space ship growing on the view screen. His spoken reaction was a single word, for the first time: “Fascinating.” Nimoy remembered, “I just didn’t have a handle on how to say it. I was still somewhat in ‘first officer’ mode, but it didn’t seem appropriate to shout such a word out. Everyone was reacting in character -- humanly, of course -- but I couldn’t figure out how the Vulcan would respond or how the word should come out.” (128-3) |
Sargent said, “Leonard came up to me and he was ready to quit. He said, ‘Joe, I can’t take this. I’m an actor and I don’t know how to play a character that has no emotion.’ As an actor, he was trained to work for an emotional element in his character, and he felt there wasn’t any. Having been trained myself as an actor, I knew exactly what was bothering him. Fortunately, I was able to make a virtue out of something that, for him, seemed awfully negative, and I convinced him that having so-called ‘no emotion’ was just an external aspect of the character’s element. It didn’t have anything to do with the richness of his intellectuality. He was merely able to conquer the emotional distortions that can interfere with reasoning.” (151) Nimoy remembered, “The director gave me a brilliant note which said: ‘Be different. Be the scientist. Be detached. See it as something that’s a curiosity rather than a threat.’ I said, ‘Fascinating.’ Well, a big chunk of the character was born right there.” (128-18) Nimoy was not the only one who very nearly quit. Sargent remembered how Jerry Finnerman still wanted to jump ship. Even with the production schedule this relaxed, spending more time on a single set than any other episode, Finnerman was overwhelmed by the pressure of running the camera and lighting units -- an immense responsibility for anyone, especially someone who had never done it before.
Finnerman later said, “The director of photography -- the cinematographer -- creates the look of the show. They create the dimension; they tell a story with their lights, hopefully not overpowering the story so much that you’re looking at the photography and not the story. I’ve always considered cinematographers like composers. You get a real good one on a real good story and you’re listening to Wagner, Tchaikovsky, or Beethoven. You know, people get that emotional feeling. It’s more than just putting the lighting on a face. Anybody can do that. But it takes a special breed to be a good director of photography.” (63-3)
Finnerman just wasn’t sure he was of that breed, and admitted, “I used to get very nervous. And Bob Justman would accompany me to the men’s bathroom when I regurgitated, and tell me how good I was. Really.... It’s terrible to talk about, but I was that nervous... being so young.” (63-3)
Justman stood by Finnerman as the green cinematographer lost his breakfast and lunch. And Sargent gave Finnerman pep talks as a counterpoint to Herb Solow’s threat that he might never work in Hollywood again. All could see the talent their novice cinematographer was bringing to the series, the textures and moods TV lighting rarely saw.
“I would describe it as classic black-and-white photography of the ’40s,” Finnerman said. “I never thought of it as television. I thought of it as theatrical. If I’d thought of it as television I would have just come in and taken a light and lit everything. That wasn’t what they wanted and it wasn’t what I wanted.... So, when you look at Star Trek, even today, you’re gonna say, ‘Hey, that looks like a feature.’ And it was lit that way.” (63-3)
Fortunately, Finnerman stayed. His work was brilliant, even though his nerves were frayed. He later said, “That continued through my lifespan, unfortunately. I used to get awfully nervous.... But I never regurgitated after that.” (63-3)
The second day’s production stopped at 6:50 p.m.
Day 3, Thursday, began with a bang … on the highway. Production notes reveal Nichelle Nichols had been involved in an “auto accident” on her way to the studio and was “sent to hospital for stitches in lip (inner), returned to work at 9:50 a.m.” Nichols’ call time for makeup had been 6:30 a.m.
Sargent started filming at 8 a.m., shooting around Nichols until she made it to the set at 9:50. He took his last shot at 7:15 (a full hour into overtime pay for the crew).
On The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite this night, America saw startling still images of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in front of the U.S. consulate earlier that day, in Hue, South Vietnam.
Day 4, Friday. Another full day on the bridge set, with filming stopping at 7:10 p.m. and the set wrapped by 7:30.
Finnerman later said, “The director of photography -- the cinematographer -- creates the look of the show. They create the dimension; they tell a story with their lights, hopefully not overpowering the story so much that you’re looking at the photography and not the story. I’ve always considered cinematographers like composers. You get a real good one on a real good story and you’re listening to Wagner, Tchaikovsky, or Beethoven. You know, people get that emotional feeling. It’s more than just putting the lighting on a face. Anybody can do that. But it takes a special breed to be a good director of photography.” (63-3)
Finnerman just wasn’t sure he was of that breed, and admitted, “I used to get very nervous. And Bob Justman would accompany me to the men’s bathroom when I regurgitated, and tell me how good I was. Really.... It’s terrible to talk about, but I was that nervous... being so young.” (63-3)
Justman stood by Finnerman as the green cinematographer lost his breakfast and lunch. And Sargent gave Finnerman pep talks as a counterpoint to Herb Solow’s threat that he might never work in Hollywood again. All could see the talent their novice cinematographer was bringing to the series, the textures and moods TV lighting rarely saw.
“I would describe it as classic black-and-white photography of the ’40s,” Finnerman said. “I never thought of it as television. I thought of it as theatrical. If I’d thought of it as television I would have just come in and taken a light and lit everything. That wasn’t what they wanted and it wasn’t what I wanted.... So, when you look at Star Trek, even today, you’re gonna say, ‘Hey, that looks like a feature.’ And it was lit that way.” (63-3)
Fortunately, Finnerman stayed. His work was brilliant, even though his nerves were frayed. He later said, “That continued through my lifespan, unfortunately. I used to get awfully nervous.... But I never regurgitated after that.” (63-3)
The second day’s production stopped at 6:50 p.m.
Day 3, Thursday, began with a bang … on the highway. Production notes reveal Nichelle Nichols had been involved in an “auto accident” on her way to the studio and was “sent to hospital for stitches in lip (inner), returned to work at 9:50 a.m.” Nichols’ call time for makeup had been 6:30 a.m.
Sargent started filming at 8 a.m., shooting around Nichols until she made it to the set at 9:50. He took his last shot at 7:15 (a full hour into overtime pay for the crew).
On The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite this night, America saw startling still images of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in front of the U.S. consulate earlier that day, in Hue, South Vietnam.
Day 4, Friday. Another full day on the bridge set, with filming stopping at 7:10 p.m. and the set wrapped by 7:30.
Nichelle Nichols (behind DeForest Kelley), staying in good spirits after a trip to the hospital (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Monday, May 30. While the stage was dark for Memorial Day, the U.S. launched Surveyor 1 to the moon, and 300 U.S. warplanes bombed North Vietnam.
Day 5, Tuesday. On the fifth day of production, as work continued on the bridge, seven-year old Clint Howard was brought in for makeup tests. He remembered, “They asked me -- or, actually, they asked my dad -- if I might be willing to shave my head bald. And I didn’t think that was a good idea at all. I didn’t want to go to school bald, didn’t want to be that kid with the shaved head; I didn’t want any part of that. Neither did my dad, because I was a working actor and that would take me out of the running for parts for a couple months. So we said ‘no’ on the shave. Then they said, ‘Okay, we can put a bald cap on him.’ And I remember really vividly going in and sitting in the makeup chair and the one fella, you know, the main guy, the old guy with white hair [Fred Phillips], fitted me for the bald cap. He was really nice. They were all nice. It took the whole afternoon, because they wanted to do a test, to make sure they could get it to look good. And it looked great.” (85) |
James Doohan said of Howard in his Balok makeup, “I had never seen anyone as strange as he.” (52-1)
Meanwhile, the grownups continued filming until 6:50 p.m., followed by the removal of makeup and wrapping the set.
Day 6, Wednesday. Work continued for the first half of the day on the bridge set, and then the company moved to the briefing room. Later, this set was redressed for the interior of Balok’s ship.
Clint Howard said, “I certainly appreciated the whole sort of spaceship fantasy thing of being on the Enterprise. I certainly thought it was cool. I had my dad take some snapshots of me sitting in the captain’s chair. But, even at that age, I understood I had a job to do. I knew I was playing a 400-year-old little alien who ran this giant spaceship all by himself. And I knew that I was curious and that I had the power over the Enterprise.
“They called me on the set and William Shatner seemed very professional -- everybody did. I liked the costume, I was having fun, and the people were all nice. Of course, they never told me right out of the box that they were going to replace my dialogue, and, in fact, what I remember them telling me is they were going to run my voice through this new-fangled gizmo called a synthesizer. They were going to synthesize my voice and then stretch it and bend it and make it like an alien.” (85)
Meanwhile, the grownups continued filming until 6:50 p.m., followed by the removal of makeup and wrapping the set.
Day 6, Wednesday. Work continued for the first half of the day on the bridge set, and then the company moved to the briefing room. Later, this set was redressed for the interior of Balok’s ship.
Clint Howard said, “I certainly appreciated the whole sort of spaceship fantasy thing of being on the Enterprise. I certainly thought it was cool. I had my dad take some snapshots of me sitting in the captain’s chair. But, even at that age, I understood I had a job to do. I knew I was playing a 400-year-old little alien who ran this giant spaceship all by himself. And I knew that I was curious and that I had the power over the Enterprise.
“They called me on the set and William Shatner seemed very professional -- everybody did. I liked the costume, I was having fun, and the people were all nice. Of course, they never told me right out of the box that they were going to replace my dialogue, and, in fact, what I remember them telling me is they were going to run my voice through this new-fangled gizmo called a synthesizer. They were going to synthesize my voice and then stretch it and bend it and make it like an alien.” (85)
“Clint was a darling kid,” Joseph Sargent said. “But he didn’t have quite the treble or the vocabulary at seven that took care of the kind of authoritarian cadence that was necessary.” (151)
Howard had no problem with his voice being replaced. It was something else that worried him. He said, “You know, I did have issues with the ‘tranya.’ Because, the prop man, when he wheeled his cart over and we were getting ready to shoot, showed me and my dad what ‘tranya’ was, and it was pink grapefruit juice. And I’ve never had a taste for pink grapefruit juice. Even today, I’d be choking it down. It just bothers me. But by God it was pink grapefruit juice. And I asked my dad, ‘Can’t they put some grape juice or apple juice in the canister? Does it have to be pink grapefruit juice?’ And I remember my dad looking at me and he said, ‘You’re gonna drink the grapefruit juice and you’re gonna like it.’ So, as you see in the scene, when I swallow it, I let out this overblown reaction, like a little kid drinking liquor. Because that’s what it tasted like to me.” (85) Howard took his last sip of tranya and filming stopped at 7:10 p.m. |
Day 6: Kelley and Shatner waiting “Action!” (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Day 7, Thursday, June 2, 1966. Even with all the action taking place on a single stage, Joseph Sargent had fallen behind, delaying the start of the next scheduled production (“Mudd’s Women”) by a half day. He took his last shots in the transporter room.
At 1 p.m. “The Corbomite Maneuver” wrapped. Robert Justman, keeping production notes at the time, wrote, “One-half day over -- shot extra camera but blew it on unnecessary setups.”
John D.F. Black recalled, “On that night of the first shoot, I was coming from the stage and I saw Shatner sitting on the rear fender of a car across from my office. And we talked a bit. He said, ‘What am I going to do, Johnny?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean, pal?” And he said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t work … It’s just so damned important to us.’ And I said, ‘No, no, it’s going to work. It’s going to be fine.’ And he said, ‘I hope so,’ and walked away.” (17) On that last night, DeForest Kelley said to Roddenberry, “This is going to be the biggest hit or the biggest miss God ever made.” (98-1) Then the editors and musicians, not God, took over. |
The other Balok takes a cigarette break. The brand, according to John D.F. Black: Pall Mall, unfiltered (Courtesy of Mary Black)
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Post-Production
June 3 through October 31, 1966. Music score recorded on September 20, 1966.
June 3 through October 31, 1966. Music score recorded on September 20, 1966.
Deleted scene from the Captain’s quarters (Color image available on startrekhistory.com and startrekpropauthority.com)
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Robert Swanson was chosen to head the first of three editing teams alternating Star Trek episodes. Prior to this he was busy on the Desilu lot, having served as the lead cutter of episodes for The Untouchables. Swanson was also a top editor on the prestigious Playhouse 90. Justman remembered Swanson “worked quickly with great confidence.”
NBC requested that Swanson remove a scene from the edited film. In Act 1, when Kirk tells Spock over the intercom that he’ll go to his quarters and change clothes before coming to the bridge, the Captain finds newly assigned Yeoman Rand waiting for him, with clean clothes laid out. Kirk is learning about the job specifications of a “Captain’s Yeoman.” Composer Fred Steiner was 43 and had already provided music for, among other series, The Wild, Wild West, Gunsmoke and The Twilight Zone. He was also the writer of the haunting theme to Perry Mason. He recorded the score for “The Corbomite Maneuver” more than three-and-a-half months after the episode was sent into editing. Even at this late date, Steiner was conducting his orchestra blind, still without optical effects to project on a screen to show him or anyone else what the alien spaceships might look like. |
“Fred Steiner was kind of like the John Williams of his time,” Robert Justman said. “Broad, sweeping themes, a very melodramatic style of music. My first choice, always, unless there was a particular reason, was Fred, who caught the inner being of Star Trek.” (94-9)
Steiner created several variations of a theme for the Enterprise, to be heard whenever we see the Enterprise in space; a signature, of a sort, representing the personality of the ship itself. He also created a theme for Captain Kirk. In an article Steiner wrote in 1982 for the Library of Congress concerning the music of Star Trek, he said, “It is played by French horns, an orchestral color which lends the theme a noble, almost Wagnerian quality, somewhat tinged with melancholy. It expressed what I saw as the mythic hero, dual personality of the Enterprise leader -- a strong, resourceful, dependable man who also has a softer, more vulnerable side and who is, at times, a solitary, lonely figure.” (168-1)
Because of the demands of editing a one-hour science fiction series, with post-visual and sound effects slowing the process to a crawl, three weeks were planned for each episode. This one, jam-packed with what a memo from Justman warned to be “staggering” optical effects, took much longer.
Steiner created several variations of a theme for the Enterprise, to be heard whenever we see the Enterprise in space; a signature, of a sort, representing the personality of the ship itself. He also created a theme for Captain Kirk. In an article Steiner wrote in 1982 for the Library of Congress concerning the music of Star Trek, he said, “It is played by French horns, an orchestral color which lends the theme a noble, almost Wagnerian quality, somewhat tinged with melancholy. It expressed what I saw as the mythic hero, dual personality of the Enterprise leader -- a strong, resourceful, dependable man who also has a softer, more vulnerable side and who is, at times, a solitary, lonely figure.” (168-1)
Because of the demands of editing a one-hour science fiction series, with post-visual and sound effects slowing the process to a crawl, three weeks were planned for each episode. This one, jam-packed with what a memo from Justman warned to be “staggering” optical effects, took much longer.
The Howard Anderson Company, with the work being handled by Howard Anderson, Jr. and his brother Darrell, had been given the challenge of figuring out how to have the mammoth Enterprise dwarfed by a spaceship a hundred times bigger, and to create a smaller ship to tow the Enterprise. And a space buoy to block its way. And to conjure up more starship flybys, and transporter effects, and phaser effects, and explosions in space. And the Andersons were running into immense problems (detailed later).
The total cost for the optical effects, once all the problems were resolved and all the delays had passed, topped off at $17,317. This was roughly 10% of the episode’s total budget and over $4,000 more than what Desilu had allocated for photographic effects on a per-episode basis. This time, Justman was able to rob Peter to pay Paul -- the extra money needed for the opticals came from the savings of making this a “bottle show.” |
The Howard Anderson Co. prepares to film “the cube,” 7/12/66 (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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John D.F. Black and his pal, Balok (Courtesy of Mary Black)
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“The Corbomite Maneuver” cost $190,430, which was $3,070 under Star Trek’s initial first season per-episode studio allowance of $193,500, creating a cash surplus to draw from on future episodes. It would be needed.
Despite Star Trek being one of the most expensive series on television in 1966, an inflation-adjusted budget of $1.35 million would not cover a show like this today. In 2013, a typical prime-time one-hour drama cost $3 to $3.5 million, with science fiction being on the higher end. |