JJverse converts

I have heard of this happening, it's fairly common.

On a personal level, my stepdaughter's bf watched the two JJ movies as an introduction to Star Trek and now has been watching all ST series but TOS (apparently it's just too old) on Netflix for the very first time. Enterprise and STNG seem to be his favorites.

RAMA

 

I am a.. "convert" though I am uncertain why that would be the term for this particular thing.

I am an ACTUAL convert in the sense that before that movie I was an SG1 fan and I was a bit weird about it.. I couldn't like both ST and SG1 at the same time. Don't ask me where the logic is in that, because I honestly do not know. So the movie made me get over that silly weirdness and I bought TNG because that's what I watched as a kid. I then bought TOS because I needed more.. I now own all the series and yeah..

Short story: Yes.

 

"Star Trek" is the most-watched TV show on streaming sites, according to market research group GfK's 2013 report HuffPo.

So Im willing to bet the JJverse has something to do with this as well.

 

I'm only on page 2 of this, so I apologize if I'm repeating anyone.

One other aspect these quotes touch on revolves around 21st Century production values and storytelling methods. Most (if not all) TOS only has 1 story per episode. There are no A storylines and B storylines. Today it seems that most (if not all) television shows have multiple plot lines going on in every episode with only the occasional "big" episodes (like season finales) exclusively devoted to a single plot. You can call it the ADD mentality or whatever, but the thinking is that viewers are either not interested in just one plot or some producers may hope to keep viewers by giving them a choice as to which plot they may be more interested in.

Additionally we have multi episode story arcs in a lot of TV shows now that was unheard of in TOS.

Along with a difference in storytelling comes the way the episodes are shot and produced. Camera angles, etc... I watched or heard a commentary about television production for sporting events in the past vs. today that will illustrate my point. In the past sporting events were shot with one, two or relatively few cameras. Today sporting events use a wide variety of cameras, angles and positions to cover the action. Further, they try to avoid staying with one camera for more than 30 seconds before switching. The reason for this is to keep viewers. The thinking is if the camera isn't constantly switching to provide different angles of action, the viewer gets bored and changes the channel.

I've noticed this with some television episodes. They are switching angles, cameras, views all the time, even if the scene is just a conversation between two individuals. Or they try something new like shooting through the window or through the glass bottle or whatever is "in the way" to give a certain stylistic ambiance to the scene.

Today's viewers are used to all of these developments even if they're not consciously aware of it. As stated, it's great that TOS is in color or so many fewer people would be watching it than they do now. My step-son refuses to watch anything in B&W. Today's generation want quick slick looking scenes with lots of lights and explosions.

To gain the most viewers the product has to appeal to the largest audience.

Plus, the TOS stories are kinda dated. As pointed out by others, it's so much easier to point out the plot holes and inconsistencies now and 21st Century science fact has outpaced 1960s science fiction in a lot of areas. Audiences are a lot more cosmopolitan nowadays. What seemed like a cool idea in 1969 can seem quite hokey today.

 

AH! THEREIN LIES THE RUB!

When I was growing up (born in 1971), my dad would tell me stories about the shows he watched when HE was younger - Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Gallery, etc... With only 4 TV stations (3 networks and 1 independent) and no Nick at Night, it was years before I finally got a chance to watch some of these classic shows myself.

So, here I was a kid in the 70s eager to watch these old B&W shows that were not being broadcast anymore. Flash forward to the 2000s and kids don't want to watch this old stuff despite having 24/7 access to them through cable, Netflix, the Net, etc...

Why is it that my generation could enjoy movies and TV from my parents and grandparents generation, yet my kids (and future grandkids) turn their noses up and what I enjoyed and grew up with?

 

Born in '71 as well.

I just think it comes down to the fact that there is a ton more to do now. We watched alot of this stuff simply because there wasn't much of a choice entertainment wise.

I'm a huge TOS fan. But would I have been as big of fan if I had been four in 2005 as opposed to 1975? Where it would've been part of the 500-channel universe, competing with video games and the internet? I simply don't know...

 

I was born in '51, so I'm old enough to be your crazy uncle. My parents were born in '04 and '10, and they sometimes watched old movies on TV. I sort of got an appreciation for Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson that way. And John Wayne too perhaps, since my Mom liked Westerns. I was watching stuff like The Outer Limits, Combat!, Star Trek, and eagerly watched The Prisoner when it aired as a summer replacement for Jackie Gleason or something.

 

You're actually older than my Dad who was born in '53.

 

The year 2009 was the first time I was older than the President. It's a real strange feeling.

 

Me too.

Shakes fist at sky. "OBAMAAAAA!!!!!!"

 

There are a lot of kids and young people who love classics and TV series from long before they were born. I'm 25 and I love black and white movies, my fave being Sunset Boulevard. I think most kids would love Charlie Chaplin, and I think a lot of kids would enjoy the old Dr.Who series.

A lot of Americans wont watch foreign movies for some reason, I gues there's something of the same reason for it. Most kids don't understand the old movies, they don't get the humour or the cultural significance of what is actually happening in the movie. If you don't understand what is going on the movie seems silly or boring. It's quite interesting to read American reviews of Norwegian movies for example. There is a lot of misinterpretations and the result is that the reviewer thinks the movie is lame. I had a lot of fun reading about "Dead Snow" aka "Død snø". It's a comedy but a lot of Americans had thought it was meant to be a horror movie. Two of them mentioned a scene where a bunch of Zombies rush towards two of teh main characters and a song starts to play, they said the song didn't fit with what was happening. To Norwegians it's hilarious because this is a song everybody knows. We sing it when drunk in the summer and it goes "What a lovely day. Oh my god what a lovely day."

 

That's a great question. I wish I knew what the answer was.

Born in '82 here, so I fall right in the gray area of not quite a Gen X'er but also I'm very much not a "millennial". I think it helps that my father was born in '47 so he was a little bit older than many other friend's parents.

I know I've always been drawn to '60s shows (likely due to my love of TOS from a very young age), as soon as I could watch Nick at Nite shows like Dragnet and Get Smart I drank them in. I also love some '50s shows such as Leave it to Beaver and I Love Lucy, so color is not necessary for me either.

To this day I enjoy local digital broadcast retro channels like Antenna TV and MeTV.

Back on the initial topic of the thread, I keep hoping I can use the JJ'verse stuff to convert a few people, as yet it hasn't quite worked.

My young brother-in-law who's 10 years old (my wife's father remarried and started a second family), just called Insurrection "old Star Trek" when it came on cable the other week. It made my heart hurt a little bit, since it was made in 1998 and there had been 30+ years of Trek already at that point, so from that perspective Insurrection seems relatively new in my book.