*Star Trek*’s first season was more complicated. The show performed adequately in ratings but not spectacularly. It was not a hit on the scale of *Mission: Impossible*. Its audience was intense and devoted but not broad. The network executives at NBC who had championed the show were watching ratings that were acceptable without being triumphant.
The two shows running simultaneously at Desilu in the 1966–1967 season represent the full picture of what Ball’s studio was attempting: two ambitious, expensive, genre-defining series whose combined deficit cost was pushing the studio’s finances to their limit. The board’s concern, expressed in the 1966 vote to cancel *Star Trek*, was not irrational. The board was looking at a real financial constraint. Ball’s override of that concern was a commitment to the studio’s creative direction even at financial cost.
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## Lucille Ball as Executive: The Woman Behind the Decision
The specific nature of Ball’s executive role at Desilu requires careful handling, because the history of her involvement has been told in ways that range from hagiography to dismissal, and neither extreme captures what the evidence actually supports.
The hagiographic version credits Ball with personally funding the second Star Trek pilot out of her own pocket, personally championing the show against institutional resistance, and acting as a visionary patron of science fiction in the tradition of the great studio founders. This version is not supported by the documented record.
The dismissive version, found in some accounts drawing on Solow’s characterization, portrays Ball as essentially uninvolved — a figurehead who understood neither the content of *Star Trek* nor the significance of the decisions being made around it, and who simply signed off on whatever her executives recommended. This version is also not fully accurate.