Isaac Asimov, one of the most famous science fiction writers in America by the late 1960s, wrote positively about *Star Trek* in columns and essays. His endorsement carried weight in the science fiction community and beyond. Roddenberry corresponded with Asimov about the show and valued the connection with a writer who had spent decades thinking about the fictional future.
The relationship between *Star Trek* and the science fiction literary community was not without friction. Some serious science fiction writers felt that television science fiction was inherently compromised — too visual, too action-oriented, too constrained by commercial pressures — to do what written science fiction could do. The debate about whether *Star Trek* was really science fiction, or was simply adventure television with a science fiction backdrop, is one that the fan community has never fully resolved and probably never will.
What is clear is that the organized science fiction community recognized something in *Star Trek* that was not purely commercial and that a significant portion of that community made the show part of their cultural identity in ways that created the demand for more.
—
## The Third Season and What Was Lost
The third season of *Star Trek* aired from September 1968 to June 1969 and is remembered primarily for being worse than what preceded it. The specific reasons for the quality decline involve the Friday 10 p.m. scheduling, Roddenberry’s withdrawal from day-to-day production after the scheduling decision, the resulting loss of his editorial oversight, and the production decisions made under his replacement, Fred Freiberger.