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Star Trek Had Some Weird Commercials
- Thread starter DrForester
- Start date
OP
OP
Holy crap, I hadn't seen that Voyager ad
I love how the dude just seems sort of... mildly annoyed when the ship flies over
I love how the dude just seems sort of... mildly annoyed when the ship flies over
I would too if the movie trailer narrator started talking to me about Voyager spam while I was trying to find the best search engine ever.
OP
OP
"Nightmaaaaaare"
"Alien killing machiiiiiines"
"On Staaaaaaar Trek: The Next Generation."
When Spike TV got the rights to DS9 and Voyager they literally aired them as their entire morning and afternoon block for one entire run of the series each. All seven seasons.
It's such a weird narrative for a commercial! Even for the late 90s!
Man, I remember this. Coming home from middle school every day and just binge-watching a bunch of Star Trek while devouring a frozen pizza. My grandmother would tape the episodes that I'd missed while at school, too; I wonder where those cassettes ended up.
I was working from home when DS9 happened and I watched maybe 95% of all episodes. Caught a ton of Voyager when that happened a bit later.
TV channels in the 1990s loved Star Trek because there were so many episodes that they could use it to pack their schedules.
For example, a random weeknight on Sky One (in the UK, and Ireland) in 1999:
That's two episodes of DS9, with the first episode (at 1700) being repeated at 2330. They did much the same thing with TNG and Voyager, and on weekends it was pretty common for them to just block out huge parts of their schedule with Star Trek.
(And yeah, that almost certainly contributed heavily to people getting bored with the franchise, and is one reason (of several) why Enterprise struggled - when it started filming, nobody really felt any lack of Star Trek to watch.
Even during its first run many stations started doing 5 nights of TNG around season 4 or so when they had a hundred episodes to air. In my area the station that would eventually become the WB aired TNG weeknights starting in 1991 or 1992 while the ABC affiliate showed the new episodes on Saturdays at 8pm. You can tell DS9 was less popular though because its similar reruns around here were at 11:00pm, again five nights a week (you better believe I fell asleep watching a bunch of DS9 in high school)
The glories of syndication reruns. Back when basic cable was on the rise and suddenly there were all these new channels that needed programming (plus random network affiliate stations all over the place), they would buy up rebroadcast rights to pretty much anything that wasn't terrible (and a lot of things that were) just so they could fill a full-day schedule. No one was airing Voyager first-run episodes five nights a week, that was still a one-per-week thing, but you bet tons of channels were eventually putting on an episode every day after the show finished its run. Probably right after the comedy block of old Simpsons, Seinfeld, Friends and Cheers or something like that.
UPN was launched with Voyager as it's flagship and you better believe they actually did air Voyager five nights a week as soon as they possibly could.
I worked at a UPN affiliate in the 90's. I probably made the most 90's Star Trek: Voyager commercial of all time:
https://youtu.be/2tDvIuA4skw
EDIT: I admire the script of that "we didn't start the series" spot. Cleverly written for local work!
I believe it was still 72 episodes you had to have in the can to start syndication. The reruns started at around season 3 or 4 of Voyager first-tun. UPN affiliates got priority but some markets didn't have one and so syndication would have been the series' debut in that market.
https://youtu.be/2tDvIuA4skw
EDIT: I admire the script of that "we didn't start the series" spot. Cleverly written for local work!
I believe it was still 72 episodes you had to have in the can to start syndication. The reruns started at around season 3 or 4 of Voyager first-tun. UPN affiliates got priority but some markets didn't have one and so syndication would have been the series' debut in that market.
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Yeah not only were all three current series still airing in syndication when Enterprise premiered, but Sci-Fi (as it used to be named before the dumbening) was airing special presentation of the original series. Plus movies were hitting (or not) at the time, too.
Most local TV stations pay a blanket BMI/ASCAP license to be able to use most commercially released music in the fashion you see here. I believe they actually have to have one to air, like, movies with music, etc. But it's been a while. 20 years ago IIRC it wa. About $30k per year for the license.
Speaking of the Sci-Fi Star Trek Special Presentation, I uploaded a spot for it (not mine, I just had it on tape) years ago. In the comments I heard from the actor in the spot, who apparently never had his own copy:
https://youtu.be/DJWTuxDS538
EDIT: Oops. Hurry up you folks I'm double posting over here!
OP
OP
Heroes & Icons Network currently runs all five Star Trek series, back-to-back, six nights a week (Sun-Fri) as a five-hour block. They were even running the TOS animated series for a while as well on Sundays, so six hours of their programming schedule that day was Star Trek.
H&I | All Star Trek
www.handitv.com
I will say that on nights there's nothing on PBS I'll usually tune in to H&I and have Star Trek running in the background while I do other things. "All Star Trek" has been on their network for years now, so I've watched every series multiple times.
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My local station in the mid 90s (possibly after the series had ended its first-run?) had an ad for the daily re-runs of TNG set to "Cannonball" by The Breeders. The high-pitched, tea kettle-esque squeal near the beginning of the song was synched with that scene of Picard and Riker firing their phasers at the dude who was made of roaches.
That VO guy's title read was so iconic. I should see if I can find out his name. He nailed it the same way all seven years, too, ever since he started, on the pilot:
https://youtu.be/MJ6NIuaTWjU
OP
OP
That reminds me of this Enterprise commercial.
This commercial also led to a still-persistent rumor that "Wherever You Will Go" was at one point going to be the show's theme song.
I wish I knew the real scoop on that. I read that the WB (now CW) used it real quick in one of their shows to deny it to UPN, so due to licensing they scrambled to replace it with Faith of the Heart bleh.
Seems plausible as people forget the two networks fighting over Joss Wheedon scraps, with UPN buying Roswell and the last one or two seasons of Buffy out from under WB.
Hey thanks. There was no glamour or pay in local TV, but I did get to make some cool spots that are now inescapably 90's as hell.
https://youtu.be/dLy8rmQodCQ
The station let me go 1 month after 9/11 and I never found my way back into the TV or entertainment industry. It was exciting to be there at the time; to be a part of the edit stations moving from online tape studios to offline digital Avid setups I helped evaluate. I learned the Adobe suite there and motion graphics and a bunch of stuff I would end up using in other ways in other industries.
https://youtu.be/pA7zmnuQ9uc
But I probably had the most professional fun in my life making commercials for Star Trek.
https://youtu.be/cB8Jvk_52UQ
https://youtu.be/T4TXtwByWLg
We came up with our own themes as we thought "Five flights a week" was pretty, well... weak!
This is like some live action Rick & Morty interdimensional cable. It's so fucking weird.
i remember that we didnt start the fire syndication commercial. of course, it was before i even liked star trek
TV channels in the 1990s loved Star Trek because there were so many episodes that they could use it to pack their schedules.
For example, a random weeknight on Sky One (in the UK, and Ireland) in 1999:
That's two episodes of DS9, with the first episode (at 1700) being repeated at 2330. They did much the same thing with TNG and Voyager, and on weekends it was pretty common for them to just block out huge parts of their schedule with Star Trek.
(And yeah, that almost certainly contributed heavily to people getting bored with the franchise, and is one reason (of several) why Enterprise struggled - when it started filming, nobody really felt any lack of Star Trek to watch.
The sci fi channel in canada currently airs 8 hours of trek every weeknight. TOS on monday, TNG tuesdays, Voyager wednesdays etc.
Man, I don't know if it was just the local South Florida FOX affiliate, but when I was a kid they had a Start Trek TNG commercial that played the fucking Highwaymen over TNG clips. Nothing made me want to watch the show more than that. Can't find anything on youtube or google though. I guess the odds of someone having a recording of that are pretty low even for a decently large market.
Wow. I guess it's probably an even cheaper way to fill the schedules now than it was twenty years ago, though there's now been enough other ways to watch Star Trek that I can't imagine many people would be viewing an uncurated stretch of episodes with ads.
That is soooo true. Like Klingon-universe advertising.
I remember the didn't start the fire commercial. Swear I saw that on my local network.
TV channels in the 1990s loved Star Trek because there were so many episodes that they could use it to pack their schedules.
For example, a random weeknight on Sky One (in the UK, and Ireland) in 1999:
That's two episodes of DS9, with the first episode (at 1700) being repeated at 2330. They did much the same thing with TNG and Voyager, and on weekends it was pretty common for them to just block out huge parts of their schedule with Star Trek.
(And yeah, that almost certainly contributed heavily to people getting bored with the franchise, and is one reason (of several) why Enterprise struggled - when it started filming, nobody really felt any lack of Star Trek to watch.
The alternate universe where they gave Star Trek a rest for even just two or three years before returning to television would have been so much more successful. The flaws of Enterprise aside, it was premiering on a channel that was already in the middle of targeting a completely different demographic than Trek, and the shift in the television landscape means they probably would have created something more "modern" and better-received.
Mark Daley always nailed it on Citytv, which dubbed itself "You Federation Station" in their ads for it.
God I remember this one so vividly; I can't hear "wherever you will go" without thinking about enterprise.
YES! I had forgotten about the federation station tag... ahhhh childhood memories.
as for my contribution to this thread:
I worked on the Star Trek game that came out on PS3/360 back in 2013, and this was one of the best things that came from it:
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Heeeey Star Trek: Legacy! The only game to have all the captains (to date)! Great big-ship, small-fleet game, I played it all the way through!
Kind of ballsy to tackle the Borg origins though, and the story told there didn't really inspire me so I prefer its non-canon ness. Still a great game.
I played it on 360 but I hear the PC version has a big mod scene...
Kind of ballsy to tackle the Borg origins though, and the story told there didn't really inspire me so I prefer its non-canon ness. Still a great game.
I played it on 360 but I hear the PC version has a big mod scene...
Ernie Anderson!
Star Trek The Motion Picture 1987 ABC Monday Night Movie Bumper
Commercial bumper for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" on the March 9, 1989 ABC Monday Night Movie
www.youtube.com
I would have liked to see the preview of "The Measure of a Man".
""Mad scientist wants to shut down Data!!!!!"
"A Picard speech that sets off explooosions !!!! (of eloquence)"
"Data's going to die? Actually, he's not alive, so he's already dead!!!!"
Omg I never realised this gif was from... some horrible, twisted game that Q obviously played on someone from the 20th Century. (Or perhaps Q-Riker himself did it, who can say.)
Sub Rosa
"Dr. Crusher gets baaaad news."
"A stranger tells Dr. Crusher secrets of her past."
"Then. They. Fuuuuuuuuuuck."
I'm almost disappointed, but the way this is presented makes this episode almost anecdotal.
Sub Rosa
"Dr. Crusher gets baaaad news."
"A stranger tells Dr. Crusher secrets of her past."
"Then. They. Fuuuuuuuuuuck."
Okay, I could also do this all day.
The Inner Light:
Picard meets a killer probe!!!
Trapped on a planet, Hardcore Picard will spend a lifetime playing the flute, it's crazy!!!
Who is this Batai, an alien, a random guy, or worse!!!