The studio lots in Hollywood and Culver City where *Star Trek* was filmed are still there. The Desilu name is gone, absorbed first into Paramount and then into the ongoing restructurings of the entertainment industry. The shows that were made there — the episodes of *Mission: Impossible* and *Star Trek* and *I Love Lucy* and all the rest — exist as digital files now, available instantly anywhere. The physical evidence of how they were made has been largely erased by the subsequent decades of production and redevelopment.
What remains is the episodes themselves, and the history of how they came to exist, and the people who made them possible. Lucille Ball is among those people. So is Gene Roddenberry. So is Desi Arnaz, and Herbert Solow, and Oscar Katz, and Mort Werner, and Herb Schlosser, and Leonard Nimoy, and William Shatner, and Nichelle Nichols, and DeForest Kelley, and George Takei, and Walter Koenig, and James Doohan, and D.C. Fontana, and Robert Justman, and Matt Jefferies, and the writers and directors and actors and technicians who showed up every week to make it.
The ship they all built is still out there.
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**Slug:** lucille-ball-desilu-star-trek-nbc-second-pilot-1966-board-vote
**Meta description:** When NBC rejected Star Trek’s first pilot, Desilu’s board voted to cancel it. Lucille Ball overrode them. How a corporate nod from a comedian launched a 50-year franchise.
**Category:** Celebrity / Television History
**Thumbnail hook:** She owned the studio. She saved the show. Here’s what actually happened.
**Sources:**
– Wikipedia: Gene Roddenberry — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry
– Wikipedia: Desilu Productions — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desilu
– Memory Alpha: Lucille Ball — https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Lucille_Ball
– The New Republic: How Star Trek Almost Failed to Launch — https://newrepublic.com/article/136634/star-trek-almost-failed-launch
– Brewminate: How Star Trek Almost Failed to Launch — https://brewminate.com/how-star-trek-almost-failed-to-launch/
– Flapper Press: The Nod That Launched a Thousand Star Ships — https://www.flapperpress.com/post/the-nod-that-launched-a-thousand-star-ships-how-lucille-ball-saved-star-trek
– ThinkAdvisor: How the First Star Trek Got Off the Ground — https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2016/07/22/how-the-first-star-trek-got-off-the-ground/