The production designer Matt Jefferies created the visual aesthetic of the original *Star Trek* under severe budget constraints. The enterprise sets — the bridge, the corridors, the transporter room, the engineering section — were designed to be functional for production while suggesting a coherent technology. The access tubes between sections of the ship became known informally as “Jefferies tubes” — a nickname that has persisted in Star Trek lore as a tribute to the man who designed the visual world of the original series.
Robert Justman, the associate producer throughout the first two seasons, was the primary production executive responsible for making episodes on schedule and within budget. His relationship with Roddenberry was complicated by the same dynamics that characterized Roddenberry’s other professional relationships: Justman admired Roddenberry’s vision and found his working style exhausting. Justman’s later memoir, co-authored with Herb Solow, is one of the most detailed accounts of what production on *Star Trek* was actually like from day to day.
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## The Ratings Fight and the Fan Letters
*Star Trek’s* first-season ratings were acceptable — good enough for NBC to order a second season, not good enough to establish the show as a network priority. The show was popular with specific demographics, particularly younger viewers, but its appeal was not broad enough to generate the kind of across-the-board numbers that made a show safe from cancellation.
The second season maintained the pattern. The show attracted strong critical attention — television critics recognized it as doing something unusual — and a devoted audience, but its ratings remained below the threshold that would have made NBC enthusiastic rather than merely committed.