So is the 15 episode season 1 run including the two hour pilot basically the two hour pilot and then thirteen more episodes or is it the two hour pilot and fourteen more episodes bringing it actually up to 16?
As far as I can tell, it's two pilots. In a sense. They've referred to the second episode as a second pilot - possibly as the first is about the Shenzhou and introducing the plot, whereas the second introduces Discovery.
Wait, this isn't a sarcastic comment? Online complaints will not "force" execs to do anything, as long as people are watching it. It's why we keep getting those awful Transformers films: no matter how many TF fans complain about them, they still made tons of money (until the most recent one). Really, only a boycott could ever be at all effective, but the truth is that the existing classic Trek fandom is just too small to make any kind of difference. All of that in mind, some constructive criticism... assuming the writers and producers are reading them... could be helpful in providing feedback that could lead to small positive changes.
I cringed at that scene in Naked Now... in fact the whole idea to re-do a TOS episode that early was a bad idea. Now encounter at farpoint I enjoyed. I thought Q and the concept of puttting humanity on trial was really good. ending was a bit weak though. Also early on we had the also cringe-worth "Justice" episode.
Voyager by its nature really needed to be more serialized where things done in one episode can affect the next since they are out on their own. You can get away with pure episodidic with TNG or TOS because you can always say they went to a starbase for repairs, etc. in between episodes. VOY didn't have that option so I think more connectivity between episodes instead of trying to stay episodic would have helped a lot.
Agreed on VOY. One of the best storylines they had early on (Season 2, maybe?) was the whole "Paris as a malcontent" plot that was a bit of a side story until an episode where he left the ship and joined the Kazon to expose a mole on Voyager. Not terribly well-executed, but showed how you could serialize a subplot and make things a bit more interesting.
Ironically the poorly-handled nature of that storyline was the reason they avoided doing more serialised plots. The edict was to make the Voyager crew "happier", more like TNG, and get away from the Kazon, which is what happened in season three. I wasn't sorry to see the back of the Kazon, but it was a shame they didn't have more recurring characters on the ship, like Seska, Carey, Jonas early on. It was strange that on such a small ship, no one ever seemed to really know each other, and the senior staff never seemed too bothered when the security officer of the week was brutally murdered by the alien of the week.
As for me - "Encounter At Farpoint" was very 'meh'. I was never a fan of TOS - "The Squire of Gothos" and for me that whole thing screamed - "oh look, Trelaine a bit more 'grown up' here..." YMMV. And while TNG - "Justice" was bad, TNG - "Heaven" was worse <--- That's the one with Deanna being engaged to be married and starts of with a talking silver headed Treasure Chest that's beamed up and spits gemstones...at that point I said: "What is this show morphing into "Lost In Space: The Next Generation"? Yeah, some TNG fans really forget how TRULY AWFUL it's start actually was.
I don't think it was handled THAT poorly, I think it was the handcuffs of bland-90s Trek that hurt it; I found it to be the most interesting part of Season 2. If I'd been a producer I'd have seen that as reason to UNSHACKLE their limitations rather than impose harsher ones. Real shame, there was a lot of potential there.
The sole purpose of that entire episode (and the reason it was shown so early) was to pay lip service to TOS directly, referencing "Kirk's ship" as having first encountered the virus. As if the appearance of an elderly Admiral McCoy in the pilot wasn't enough. The producers feared the TOS fans didn't feel TNG was "true Trek" and felt they had to remind us it was, but in a very sloppy and clunky way.
Because this a massive bugdet, prestige show that is meant to stand up with things like House of Cards, Stranger Things, and Man in The High Castle and there is now a show like that is going to use 50 year old designs. Sure the fans might get a kick out of it, but all of the people who don't know the history behind the designs are going to want to see something more modern. The designs make sense, to me. So far all of the Starfleet designs fit pretty well into what we've seen in the other shows.
History shows us it is. If there is a big enough fan backlash against something network execs will step in to change.
No it doesn't. It never has. Never in the history of shows or movies have fans made an influence, except maybe Serenity. That's it. Dude, you're living in a fantasy. How old are you?