Bryan Fuller showrunner for new trek...consequences?

[Greg Cox]

I suggest not rebooting keeps a larger share of the fanbase on board, not that fits my bias. This is not an ego eccentric statement, it's just one that seems logical looking at fans and their reactions. .

But the "fanbase" is not not monolithic and, more importantly, are not the movers and shakers we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. No STAR TREK series or movie can survive by catering to just the hardcore fans who are deeply invested in the "canon" or whatever; it's the casual fans and general audience that will ultimately determine whether the new show succeeds or not, so that's who the show runners need to be targeting, first and foremost, by making a show that appeals to everyone, not just us old-timers.

Whether the show restores "the Prime Timeline" or not doesn't really matter. IMHO.

 

[jaime]

Jaime, you didn't respond to my question earlier. Could you spell out how the fact that Trek had a reboot recently proves that it doesn't need to have a reboot? I still don't follow that.

Sorry, must have missed it. Will try to be brief because I see to be typing novels here and am doing other things too lol.

Trek had a reboot. A decent sized chunk of fans didn't take to that reboot. That cuts into its audience, because even if it picks up new fans, a better solution would always be to keep what you have and add to it. It's a similar problem to that which affected enterprise, itself almost being a reboot, but certainly alienating a group of fans, no matter how small, who were invested in seeing an ongoing trek into the future, not jumping back. It also alienated an even smaller group of fans for who 90s trek was their thing, and here we are going back to something advertised as a return to TOS almost, which again did not appeal. (then it tried even harder to pick up new audiences and alienated people with its branding and theme song.but...God I digress a lot)

So, reboot happens, does well, but alienates fans. Did it do well because it's a reboot?
Jurassic World and Star Wars come along (and I will wait to see, more pertinently, how the new x files does....column inches suggest well.) and do extremely well, without being reboots. jurassic is something akin to tng, a continuation of world and themes with almost no returning characters.
Star wars, coming off the back of divisive prequels (a prequel is almost a reboot, certainly of done by someone other than original creators and rewrites established history) is decidedly not a reboot. It pushes forward and brings back most if not all of the things a pre existing fanbase likes. Does extremely well.
(I have not seen it and don't feel the urge to oddly. But that's unimportant here.)
Now, it seems doing something fresh, but maintaining a decent continuity works best, even if it seems like having your cake and eating it.
Doctor Who only increased in popularity as it affirmed it's status as a continuation rather than a reboot, which probably surprised a bunch of people. (there's still a divide in fandom, and the term Nuwho will probably always persist, but no where near what it was when it was assumed to be avoiding it's past.)

My logic then is simple....don't alienate any chunks of your fanbase. Take the tried and true route of Tng and now Doctor Who, jurassic Park and star wars. It seems to have a better historical success rate than writing chunks of stuff out of an even loose canon, with successful reboots being very very rare in the realm of long running franchises with large fanbases.
It's really not that hard. Tng did it.

 

[jaime]

But the "fanbase" is not not monolithic and, more importantly, are not the movers and shakers we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. No STAR TREK series or movie can survive by catering to just the hardcore fans who are deeply invested in the "canon" or whatever; it's the casual fans and general audience that will ultimately determine whether the new show succeeds or not, so that's who the show runners need to be targeting, first and foremost, by making a show that appeals to everyone, not just us old-timers.

Whether the show restores "the Prime Timeline" or not doesn't really matter. IMHO.

Yes.
On the other hand, if it's familiar characters with a new cast etc...a reboot
..it will alienate some potential viewers. If it's totally new, it doesn't even have to say which universe it is in or acknowledge much of its own past to be accepted and not fought against. It seems sensible to me anyway. Go for a new audience, try not to alienate the fanbase who will be there day one for you before you get that new audience.

 

[Christopher]

Because, for myself and for many other fans, we want to see what's going to happen next. We don't want novel lines to end without a sense of closure, we want to know what's going to happen to the new DS9 or the Full Circle project or the Typhon Pact or Bashir with Section 31.

As I said before, maybe with sufficient notice we could bring some closure to those storylines.

And even if the new show were in Prime, it might not immediately contradict the books, depending on where and when it's set. I doubt there'd be a peremptory "None of the books count anymore" announcement like Disney/Lucasfilm did for Star Wars, because they never have really "counted" in that sense to begin with. So we might just be able to keep going and try to roll with any inconsistencies that crop up, maybe even find ways to rationalize them or just gloss over them. That's kind of what we did in the novel continuity while Enterprise was on. There were things there that conflicted somewhat with the novels -- Andorians being portrayed as seemingly having two sexes rather than four, Orion women revealed to be the ones in charge, Tholians having a different appearance than the scorpionlike form described in The Sundered -- and we just kept going and worked around those issues.

Of course, if the new show were set in 2385 and opened with a Borg attack on the original DS9 station, then that would pretty much wipe out the post-Nemesis continuity; but according to Variety, "The creative plan is for the series to introduce new characters and civilizations, existing outside of the mythology charted by previous series and the current movie franchise." Which means the novels could still have breathing room even if it is set in Prime. (That statement could suggest it's a new reality altogether, but that description sounds pretty much like what TNG initially tried to do -- a nominal continuation, but exploring very different aspects of the universe.)

 

[Kemaiku]

The Trek fandom doesn't even make up a small portion of the TV audience out there, they were nowhere near enough to keep what Trek there was on the air, and the primeverse was putting off the majority of people from watching it.

The reboot has been accepted by the majority of the fandom and a large chunk of the movie going public. A far largr amount of people than were watching the last 10 years of the prime universe.

The only people this reboot "alienated" are a tiny vocal minority of people who seem to object to reboots and their own entitled interpretations of Trek being tampered with.

So, yeah the reboot universe is a much better template to work with for a successful show of any kind.

 

[jaime]

As I said before, maybe with sufficient notice we could bring some closure to those storylines.

And even if the new show were in Prime, it might not immediately contradict the books, depending on where and when it's set. I doubt there'd be a peremptory "None of the books count anymore" announcement like Disney/Lucasfilm did for Star Wars, because they never have really "counted" in that sense to begin with. So we might just be able to keep going and try to roll with any inconsistencies that crop up, maybe even find ways to rationalize them or just gloss over them. That's kind of what we did in the novel continuity while Enterprise was on. There were things there that conflicted somewhat with the novels -- Andorians being portrayed as seemingly having two sexes rather than four, Orion women revealed to be the ones in charge, Tholians having a different appearance than the scorpionlike form described in The Sundered -- and we just kept going and worked around those issues.

Of course, if the new show were set in 2385 and opened with a Borg attack on the original DS9 station, then that would pretty much wipe out the post-Nemesis continuity; but according to Variety, "The creative plan is for the series to introduce new characters and civilizations, existing outside of the mythology charted by previous series and the current movie franchise." Which means the novels could still have breathing room even if it is set in Prime. (That statement could suggest it's a new reality altogether, but that description sounds pretty much like what TNG initially tried to do -- a nominal continuation, but exploring very different aspects of the universe.)

Which sounds exactly like what I personally would like, and as I follow the books as well, I hope the books find a way to at least temporal incursion themselves into continuing along happily.

 

[jaime]

The Trek fandom doesn't even make up a small portion of the TV audience out there, they were nowhere near enough to keep what Trek there was on the air, and the primeverse was putting off the majority of people from watching it.

The reboot has been accepted by the majority of the fandom and a large chunk of the movie going public. A far largr amount of people than were watching the last 10 years of the prime universe.

The only people this reboot "alienated" are a tiny vocal minority of people who seem to object to reboots and their own entitled interpretations of Trek being tampered with.

So, yeah the reboot universe is a much better template to work with for a successful show of any kind.

All those prime universe fans keep spending enough on prime universe merchandise to justify not cancelling the range in favour of the reboot.

The reboot seems to largely exist because of paramount needing to keep its part of the rights when viacom split.

There's really no way of knowing if more people watched the reboot than the TV series, box office doesn't show that sort of detail, nor do the old methods of getting viewing figures, and judging size or preference of fandom is nigh impossible. The money made on prime merchandise dwarfs that for the reboot, but then that's not a fair judge, because the reboot has almost nothing available, and the prime universe has been around for longer. Surveys done at conventions stirred up controversy, and I have certainly heard as many fans not liking the reboot as liking it, but it's all anecdotal.

My logic is simple....reboots definitely do alien some, a continuation does not alienate those people, and either continuation or reboot may pick up new audiences. Only a continuation has the relative protection of at least trying to not lop off any fan support.
You also need only look at fantastic four or spiderman to see how rebooting sonething every time the wind changes can be bad for a brand.

 

[Greg Cox]

Any time you reboot some beloved old property, you risk "alienating" folks who grew up on an earlier version. I'm already seeing folks angrily denouncing the new WONDER WOMAN movie, sight unseen, just because it has the nerve to not be the old Lynda Carter series.

You can't worry about that. If I was an studio executive or show runner, I would just assume that a certain degree of "nerd rage" comes with the territory, treat it as white noise, and move on . . ..

If you make a good movie or TV show, the eyeballs will come regardless. And if you make a sucky product, you're not going to be cut any slack just because you were faithful to the old continuity.

 

[jaime]

Any time you reboot some beloved old property, you risk "alienating" folks who grew up on an earlier version. I'm already seeing folks angrily denouncing the new WONDER WOMAN movie, sight unseen, just because it has the nerve to not be the old Lynda Carter series.

You can't worry about that. If I was an studio executive or show runner, I would just assume that a certain degree of "nerd rage" comes with the territory, treat it as white noise, and move on . . ..

If you make a good movie or TV show, the eyeballs will come regardless. And if you make a sucky product, you're not going to be cut any slack just because you were faithful to the old continuity.

I think trek is a very different beast, it simply has too many hours to do that to, with too many fan units of currency invested and still being invested. The tng/who drip feed of links to the past while pushing forward avoids or at least takes the edge of nerd rage, whereas a reboot is always excising something that means something to someone, someone who helped make a property be worth something in the first place. Even if a fan decides they don't like the new captain, they don't feel like the captain they did like has been in any way removed or diminished. Picard vs Kirk is lot less divisive than Shatner vs Pine.
Plus there's casual viewer confusion:
I'm watching Star Trek.
Oh which one?
The one with Kirk and Spock?
Which one?

It's stupid but true. My four year old loves trek, and has literally asked me why there are so many captain kirk's (from his perspective, shatner 60s, Cartoon shatner, I think film shatner is a sort of half different half still 60s kirk to him, and then Pine who he has a figure of and enterprises from even if he can't see those films yet.)
The question came up while he watched the captains documentary with me (well...it was on. I doubt he watched much once the clips ran out.) and watched shatner arm wrestle pine.
Ironic, as time travel duplicates don't phase him much, though usually one version is the goody one and the baddy one.
I wonder if Pine Kirk is the goody or baddy?

 

[Greg Cox]

Plus there's casual viewer confusion:
I'm watching Star Trek.
Oh which one?
The one with Kirk and Spock?
Which one?

I don't know. I think we underestimate the audience sometimes. Even as a kid, back in the sixties, I understood that the old black-and-white TARZAN movies, the new color movies at the drive-in, the Ron Ely TV show, the Saturday morning cartoon show, the Gold Key comics, and the original novels were all different versions of the same character and were not all set in the same seamless continuity. Ditto for Zorro, Dracula, Batman, Sinbad, King Kong, etc.

If my little ten-year-old brain could cope with multiple versions of the Mummy without getting confused, I suspect modern audiences can cope with two or more different versions of Captain Kirk without their heads exploding.

 

[jaime]

I don't know. I think we underestimate the audience sometimes. Even as a kid, back in the sixties, I understood that the old black-and-white TARZAN movies, the new color movies, the Ron Ely TV show, the Saturday morning cartoon show, the Gold Key comics, and the original novels were all different versions of the same character and were not all set in the same seamless continuity. Ditto for Zorro, Dracula, Batman, the Mummy, etc.

If my little ten-year-old brain could cope with multiple versions of the Mummy without getting confused, I suspect modern audiences can cope with two or more different versions of Captain Kirk.

I think cope with, yes, but from a marketing and even conversational point of view its off putting
How many times did we hear 'i don't like the new one' and then have to probe to ascertain if they mean tng, or ds9, or Voy.....right up to now and star trek (2009). It's a conversation killer, and I am sure studios want their shows talked about. (I know there's a decent argument for the reverse, 'which king Kong did you like?'... Which makes me remember one other remake which works, but isn't a reboot, invasion of the body snatchers.)

With CBS wanting to stream all versions of Trek on all access, I cam see even more reason why staying in Prime makes the best sense for them. (this week in Star Trek:The New One, the federations past catches up with it......now watch as Captain Janeway meets The Voth for the first time!)

We will see, but from a logic perspective, it's the best sense, and in my opinion, from a creative one too, especially with 20 and 30 somethings being the new audience targets these days, and with people like Bryan Fuller on board.

 

[jaime]

I don't know. I think we underestimate the audience sometimes. Even as a kid, back in the sixties, I understood that the old black-and-white TARZAN movies, the new color movies at the drive-in, the Ron Ely TV show, the Saturday morning cartoon show, the Gold Key comics, and the original novels were all different versions of the same character and were not all set in the same seamless continuity. Ditto for Zorro, Dracula, Batman, the Mummy, etc.

If my little ten-year-old brain could cope with multiple versions of the Mummy without getting confused, I suspect modern audiences can cope with two or more different versions of Captain Kirk without their heads exploding.

I'd also say my little one isn't confused as such, but also go back to there being so much of existing trek to ignore (he likes to go through the encyclopedia and whatnot too.)

 

[Christopher]

If my little ten-year-old brain could cope with multiple versions of the Mummy without getting confused, I suspect modern audiences can cope with two or more different versions of Captain Kirk.

Absolutely. As a kid, I was never confused by the fact that CBS had a cartoon Batman and Robin who sounded like Adam West and Burt Ward and fought crime in Gotham City, while ABC had a cartoon Batman and Robin who sounded like Olan Soule and Casey Kasem and who worked with the Justice League and occasionally teamed up with Scooby-Doo.

There are tons of fandoms out there -- Batman fandom, Marvel fandom, Sherlock Holmes fandom, Godzilla fandom, Transformers fandom, Ninja Turtles fandom, etc. -- who have decades of experience with juggling multiple incompatible continuities and interpretations of the characters they love. So it's quite ludicrous to suggest that Star Trek fans -- the fanbase for one of the smartest, most thoughtful genre properties out there -- are somehow too simple-minded to comprehend something that other fandoms cope with routinely.

 

[Idran]

Star wars, coming off the back of divisive prequels (a prequel is almost a reboot, certainly of done by someone other than original creators and rewrites established history) is decidedly not a reboot. It pushes forward and brings back most if not all of the things a pre existing fanbase likes. Does extremely well.
(I have not seen it and don't feel the urge to oddly. But that's unimportant here.)

You might want to see it, then, because TFA is sort of both a sequel and a reboot, in the sense that it's in a lot of ways a "mirror" of ANH while setting a new direction for the franchise moving forward.

If nothing else, it's certainly not decidedly not a reboot, because there is an argument to be made. I think even someone that doesn't consider it a reboot couldn't say it was decidedly not one.

Though I don't consider "rewriting history" to be a factor in whether or not something's a reboot, so maybe it's an issue of definition.

 

[Greg Cox]

I'd also say my little one isn't confused as such, but also go back to there being so much of existing trek to ignore (he likes to go through the encyclopedia and whatnot too.)

But STAR TREK is more than just an encyclopedia of fictional facts and trivia. It's the concept that really matters, not the details of one particular version or another. I mean, sure, reboots makes TREK trivia contests trickier, but I'm not sure that should be our main concern.

And, for better or for worse, all that vast continuity was perceived as an impediment by portions of the general audience,who had the idea, rightly or wrongly, that you had to be a hardcore Trekkie with a degree in Klingon politics to jump aboard . . . an impression that we the fans may have inadvertently fostered by enthusiastically obsessing over every last bit of minutiae.

There are trade-offs, of course, but sometimes there is something to be said for wiping the slate clean and starting over fresh. Especially if you want to attract a new generation of fans.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The tl;dr! It burns!

 

[Idran]

"Tl;dr" is just an excuse for laziness anyway.

 

[jaime]

Absolutely. As a kid, I was never confused by the fact that CBS had a cartoon Batman and Robin who sounded like Adam West and Burt Ward and fought crime in Gotham City, while ABC had a cartoon Batman and Robin who sounded like Olan Soule and Casey Kasem and who worked with the Justice League and occasionally teamed up with Scooby-Doo.

There are tons of fandoms out there -- Batman fandom, Marvel fandom, Sherlock Holmes fandom, Godzilla fandom, Transformers fandom, Ninja Turtles fandom, etc. -- who have decades of experience with juggling multiple incompatible continuities and interpretations of the characters they love. So it's quite ludicrous to suggest that Star Trek fans -- the fanbase for one of the smartest, most thoughtful genre properties out there -- are somehow too simple-minded to comprehend something that other fandoms cope with routinely.

I don't think it's a case of 'too simple minded' in the fandom.
I think it's case of general viewership not giving a monkeys, leading to dull conversation shut down between fan and not fan.
Mainly I think it's about stripping away one of Treks great strengths as well, which is it's great sense of continuity, allowing for the occasional bump. That is something that is lost in the reboot. My star trek was tied to my father's star trek, he built an enterprise, he built me an enterprise, we built the enterprise d together, I am building my son a voyager, one day he will build the ship from his star trek probably, and we will talk about the guest star in his trek is from my Trek, the same way kor kang and koloth became that conversation for me and my father.
I am not even American and have that personal connection with trek because of its history. All a reboot leads to is 'it was/is better in my day' and takes something away almost totally unique to trek.

And yeah...comics..
I don't think anyone would the various crisis on infinite profit margins up as a way to keep fans happy, and have no idea what Marvel was thinking doing the same thing. Convoluted and full of hand waving a universe may be, but sometimes continuity has its own rewards, and brings it's own unique value.

And to Idran, yeah, I do have rewriting history (not a little retconned but a lot, usually with recast characters) to be a prequisite for a reboot, other things may be a chnge in direction for something, but aren't really a reboot (early pertwee who for instance, is in a lot of ways indistinguishable from a total reboot, as was the modern series...but they aren't. Of course trek is hugely different to who.)

 

[jaime]

But STAR TREK is more than just an encyclopedia of fictional facts and trivia. It's the concept that really matters, not the details of one particular version or another. I mean, sure, reboots makes TREK trivia contests trickier, but I'm not sure that should be our main concern.

And, for better or for worse, all that vast continuity was perceived as an impediment by portions of the general audience,who had the idea, rightly or wrongly, that you had to be a hardcore Trekkie with a degree in Klingon politics to jump aboard . . . an impression that we the fans may have inadvertently fostered by enthusiastically obsessing over every last bit of minutiae.

There are trade-offs, of course, but sometimes there is something to be said for wiping the slate clean and starting over fresh. Especially if you want to attract a new generation of fans.

That's one of Treks unique points though, and what puts it in almost a different category to other TV and film fandoms. That you can do that, and have it really work. It even helps production teams because they can go check this or that and end up using that history to add to the production.
The reputation is pretty much no longer a thing when you look how fandoms in general are part of culture these days.

And in 1987, and again with every new show after that, no on needed to wipe a slate to bring in a ton of new fans. We went back of we chose or when the show made us think to, but tons of fans came up on new shows in am existing continuity without needing it wiped. It's not like you have to study family trees to jump on after all.
Ironically it's fans of that era whose primary entry point into fandom is the one usually 'at risk', and sometimes it seems the biggest pro reboot arguments, are an echo from the days of anything post Tos just not counting. That's just based on my experience though, limited as it may be.

 

[Greg Cox]

But I think you can have that same sort of cross-generational connection without having to literally adhere to the continuity of days gone by. It was my dad who introduced me to Tarzan, Godzilla, and the old Universal monster movies, but we enjoyed any number of the various remakes and reboots together, including, say, the various Hammer Film reboots of the classic monsters.

In other words, my Dad grew up on Bela Lugosi, but that didn't stop him from enjoying Christopher Lee or Frank Langella with me. And, if I can get personal for a moment, he was thrilled whenever I wrote Superman or The Green Hornet or Godzilla or whomever, even if they weren't necessarily in the same continuity as the movies or radio shows of his generation.

You can get the same experience without clinging religiously to the "canon" of previous eras.