"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before!" With these words, television history was made. But what if time travelers from the future went back and financed the series at $5,000,000.00 budgets per episode (in 1966 money) for a full agreed-upon five years/seasons of 26 hourlong adventures over a great mission?
With the $5 Million per episode spent on a large ensemble cast and pushing the boundaries of the then-new fields of visual/photographic effects, another $5 Million per episode would be used for insurance and convincing NBC affiliates to air the programs as is from fall 1966 to spring 1972 to document a sex/race/species-positive future vision of the crew of the starship Enterprise. If the merchandising and other problems were tackled out of the gate, what would happen to the show?
