Did NBC go black and white for a few minutes last night after midnight? (ST-TOS)

Cafe Society
1

This past weekend I was the on call dude for several systems that I support, and we had major problems with one of them, so I was up monitoring its progress, and watching a little late-night TV at the same time. And I was pleasantly surprised to se Star Trek, the original series, on NBC at midnight. It was Space Seed, the episode that was continued in The Wrath Of Khan. Star Trek TOS back on NBC of all places; it made me happy.

Unfortunately, the picture just went black and white for about a half-hour, about 15 minutes into the show. The picture flashed rapidly between color and b&w, and then was just b&w. None of the other channels seemed to be affected.

It was a shame, because one of the things I always liked about the original series was the garish color that seemed to be typical of of TV shows at that time. It’s as if they wanted you to especially enjoy the fact that you were fortunate enough to have a color TV, which was a pretty big deal in those days.

Did anyone else happen to be watching and notice the same thing? We have Time Warner Cable if that makes a difference.

2

I think it may have been time warner rather than the station. Same thing happened on comedy central for a bit.

3

I get that with Comcast sometimes. If you change the channel and then change it back, that seems to reset the color.

4

Star Trek wasn’t on NBC. The enhanced versions (including “Space Seed”, which ran this weekend) are syndicated on a station-by-station basis. The NBC affiliate in your area no doubt has rights to run the episodes, but it’s not a network offering. In my area, “Space Seed” ran on the local My NTV station. The cable network Nick at Night also has been running a TOS marathon (also coincidentally running "Space Seed), so ST has been all over the tube as of late.

5

P.S. I know TOS was on NBC for it’s original 1966-1969 run. I’m referring to the enhanced for HDTV episodes that have been running since September as being syndicated.