To answer the first, no, not every fan wants the franchise to continue. I have seen a number of fans who would rather keep what they have, and not ahd more on to it if it isn't like what has come before. This is why series like "Star Trek Continues" and the like keep moving forward. It isn't just nostalgia, but often times a personal level of comfort and familiarity that comes with it. Which leads me to your second point... "The devil you know is better than the one you don't." Challenging preconceptions is fine and all, but this isn't a moral or ethical crisis-it's entertainment, and something that is often taken very personally, because personal attachment to it is part of the entertainment. It's our involvement with the world building that makes it so unique for each of us. So, if that is changed, or doesn't fit the preconception of what's comfortable, then there will be resistance. That's very human.
^^^ Been watching Star Trek since 1969 (Age 6). No Star Trek isn't "at a crossroads" anymore today that it was in: - 1973-1975: The Star Trek Animated Series - 1979: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which cost $40 million as was the MOST EXPENSIVE film ever made to that date.) ^^^ This WAS the only real 'crossroads' era for the franchise as while the film did okay, it took years to turn a profit, and they really weren't going to do another. BUT, NBC approached Paramount to do four Star trek TV films and signed a deal - but when they saw the script and how well production was going (it started production under the TV division) and that they could turn out a Star Trek film for a reasonable price, Paramount took a gambles and promoted 'Star Trek II: TWoK' up to feature film status, and the rest is history. STII, III, and especially IV (1982-1986) did very well at the Box Office - which lead to: - 1987: Star Trek: TNG - 1993: Star Trek: DS9 -1995: Star Trek: Voyager and last two TOS era films (1989 and 1991) the TNG era films from 1994 - 2002) -2001: Enterprise ^^^ Yeah, this ended the Berman & Braga era, but not before Manny Coto and others really did a good job on ENT seasons 3 and 4. (For myself ENT Season 4 was probably the best Season in the now Star Trek franchise since TOS Season 1.) TPTB claim ENT was cancelled due to 'Franchise Fatigue' - but in reality it was more that: - It was an expensive show (which still had on average the highest ratings of any of the UPN offerings at the time.) - Star Trek (as a franchise) had been on TV in some form for 18 years straight (and had 28 TV seasons of produced material overall.) - It was skewing to an older audience and they wanted UPM to cater to a much younger (on average) demographic ^^^ That plan ultimately failed as CBS made a deal with WB and the two networks became the CW. I also say that because when ENT went off the air in 2005 everyone was predicting another 10 year gap before they'd do another Star Trek revival attempt - yet in 2007, (two years later) Paramount made a deal with JJ Abrams and Bad Robot that lead to: -2009: STAR TREK ^^^ and two subsequent films in 2013 and 2016. And after 'Star Trek Beyond' was released: -2017: Star Trek: Discovery. So yeah, sorry, but to suddenly say Star Trek is now at some sort of "crossroads" when in fact, from 1979 on there's never been more than 4 years between some major Star trek project; and if there isn't one, many Hollywood mainstream producers and directors keep going to CBS or Paramount to pitch a new series or film - I just don't see it.
These simply aren't preconceptions based on no data. We are making judgments based on what they are giving us. Can our preconceptions be wrong? Of course they can be. But right now? We are going on the information they are giving us. Not only trailers, but in interviews. Test driving a car isn't going to tell you if you're going to be happy with it 10,000 or 50,000 miles in. Though it will give you a good idea if you're happy with its comfort and how it drives. Right now, based on the "test drive", I'm not real happy. The show feels very "small universe" with no sense of joy or wonder to it. That is based on the information the producers have offered and the trailers. CBS is approving what trailers are going out, so I have to believe they are somewhat indicative of the show.
Star Trek is simply one more big-money franchise owned by a corporation.They hire and fire people to manage it.
What we've seen has no context applied. I don't see viewing the trailers as the test drive. That's just walking by the lot and seeing the car at a distance. The test drive is watching the first few episodes. Maybe even the entire first season. I don't know how many times I've watched a trailer for a movie, saw the movie and realized the trailer made it look like something was true about this movie that turned out not to be. Until we have this stuff in context, we simply don't know. And we can't pretend we do.
If it takes the entire first season to sell me on it, then its a failure. They should be able to reel me in on promise in the very first episode. Heck, the trailers are supposed to make me want to watch the show. They haven't succeeded thus far. When the trailers are consistently dour without a sense of wonder, I think you can make a generalized guess that those things aren't in abundance. When the people talking about it never bring up that these characters are facing things with a sense of wonder and fun, I think you can make a generalized guess that those things aren't in abundance.
Then TNG was a massive failure. Its first season sucked. But, of course, that isn't what I said. I'm saying that, as a Trek fan, you probably should give this several episodes up to and including the first season to really form an opinion on the series as a whole. There isn't a single Trek series since the first one that had a solid first season. There's reason to believe this one might have the most solid one yet. But what if there's one or two things you have an issue with and you decide to quit watching sfter the first two episodes? Will you really wver know what the series was like? No. The question is, will you let them or will you spend most of the episodes looking for little nitpicky flaws? This is a subjective thing. The trailers have me drooling. As for you, haven't you mainly talked about the tone, tech level and visuals? The tone I can understand, but trailers can have a tone alien from the show itself. I've seen a recut of a trailer for The Shining that made it look like a heart-warming tear-jerker. I know plenty of people who thought The Lord of the Rings was an action movie akin to Conan or a kids movie akin to Chronicles of Narnia because all they saw was the trailer. The trailer wasn't put together by the producers. It was put together by CBS's marketing dept to make it look like a slam-bang action piece. The shorter trailers released since then have mostly felt calmer and more introspective. From what I can tell, the first two trailers have a more dour look than the show itself will, if more recent trailers are anything to go by. But even those trailers had a sense of wonder as far as I was concerned. Again, different people get different feels out of the same thing. I've been accused of "speaking for the whole fandom", but from you I've consistently seen an attitude of "my impression is the only one that counts". I couldn't have had a more different reaction than you did to these trailers, so clearly a lot of the things you're saying about them are just your opinion, but you're behaving as if it's just true and I should accept that.
Um... to me, only my impression counts, and I can't speak for others. I'm the one paying for the All-Access subscription. I'm not telling you to dislike it, I'm not telling you that you should love it based on my opinion. My opinion is my opinion and only binding on me.
I guess I'm weird but trailers never "make me want to watch" a show. It informs there is product, and then I decide if I want to watch it or not. Regardless, I've given up on trailers being anything but marketing ploys and ridiculous ones at that. They are bereft of context and the music or tone that the production team plans on using. The show itself is the only thing that can speak for itself.
When you have people that complains about it not looking like a show from 50 years ago.... You know it is a rare disease that affects logic and reasoning....Vulcan neck pinch is recommended!
Okay but can you not understand that your initial opinion may be wrong? Are you going to watch the pilot ignoring the story and scanning for flaws, no matter how minor, or are you going to give yourself and the series time to get to know each other, so to speak? I gotta agree with Fireproof on this one, trailers are just marketing ploys. They let me know something exists but they've never informed my opinion on whether or not I'll like the finished product. The Star Wars prequels had some of the best trailers ever. Nemesis had the best trailer of any TNG film. That right there tells you how much stock to put in trailers.
Of course I can. I absolutely want to love it. Can you though? Like it or not, you like what you are seeing/hearing based on nothing more than the same information I am seeing/hearing, are you going to be able to be objective and call it bad if it ends up being bad?
I've had to call things that are "bad" bad before, especially for properties I enjoy. So, yeah, I'll be objective. But, I can still enjoy it.
If this series sucks, it will lose me. Being Trek, I'm sure I will watch more than one season, but it's hard to say how many after that, unless I'm really enjoying it. I gave Voyager five seasons before giving up. I really wanted to like it but I just didn't. Enterprise got two seasons but I did go back and watch the rest and I can tell you that the third season is much better than the first two, and the fourth season was awesome. Zero regrets there. I have high hopes for Discovery but I know it could be terrible. It's just that my excitement for new Trek is more important to me than having all my concerns addressed before the show even airs.
Not sure how that tracks from what I said, but that's your right, absolutely, and I wish you no ill for it.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that he's hoped to enjoy things before but had to admit they were bad. Once I admit that, I stop watching (ei: Voyager). But I give things time. If I see potential, I wait to see if said potential will ever be realized. To me this series has potential, and I won't declare it bad until I've spent enough time with it to get a feel of what it is and where it's going.
I've had time to cool, so I'll respond to your post point by point. Which is not at all what I'm doing. Yeah? So, here, you are saying that TNG had an interesting, diverse cast and that this is one of the things missing from DSC. So, you did say it. You're saying that now. You didn't say it then. You said that TNG had a diverse crew and a bursting of creative ideas. I took the listing of imaginative plots, strange aliens and exploratory, wide-eyed tone to be your list of creative ideas you believe DSC doesn't have, with the diverse cast being the other, because if that list was the "two" things DSC doesn't have, it's more than two things. Of course, I disagree with you that it doesn't seem to have any of those things, but then, diff'rent strokes. None of these were in any of the trailers. You had to watch the show to know about them. I won't claim to have seen every trailer, but even if the "jellyfish" did show up in one of them, I doubt they were given any context so I would likely have gotten the same impression from them as I do the "object of unknown origin" in DSC's trailers. Also, while I'll grant you the Bynars as being new and interesting, the Traveler was just another alien with a lumpy forehead. Sure, the implications of what he was capable of were interesting to think about, but even if there had been a couple of scenes of him in the trailers (and he wasn't), he just would have looked like another rubber-forehead alien to me. Snoooooze. You haven't seen the pilot. You've seen trailers, most of them under 30 seconds in length and quite a few stressing the idea of exploring the unknown as well as being at war. Trailers are put together by the marketing department, not the producers, and these trailers would hardly be the first that gave us an impression that wasn't 100% accurate. Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, a trailer, to me, is basically to let me know the product exists, let me see a bit of what it looks like, see and hear the characters talking to each other, etc. I never take it as "well, now I've seen the trailer, so I know how the whole first season's gonna play out". Also...you seem averse to there even being one or two starship battles at all, when even TNG had them (though I'll admit, not for a while). I'm not. I've always accepted starship battles as part of Trek. All of the producers and cast have talked about how this series takes place during a war but isn't about the war. I'm not the only one to point this out, but you seem to be ignoring this, or deciding that can't be true. It hasn't been the entire marketing campaign. The first two trailers hyped the battles, sure, and a few have since then, but you seem to be focusing only on that part of the campaign, and not on the parts where characters talk to each other, saying some pretty profound things. I don't see this as backtracking. There's several aspects to this show and they've never, ever pretended that war wasn't part of it, but also from the beginning they've talked about how its focus is on self-discovery, learning to understand things you're not used to, stuff that Trek has always been about. Your words in that quote say one thing. Your every other post has said another. You do not seem to have even the slightest desire to give this show a chance. That's not meant as a personal attack, it's just an observation. You're convinced this series is going to be war-kill-death-murder from start to finish when even the trailers have not been that. I don't see you going into this with an open mind. I see you going into it looking for ways to prove yourself right so you can write the series off.
I'm a little beside myself at how this is being viewed as anything less than "somewhat positive" at this point. What I get out of DSC is pretty much the same vibe, albeit updated for modern audiences, that DS9 portrayed. Yes, it's a little grittier than your usual Trek. Yes, it has a "war" as a background. Yes, it has a different aesthetic. It's a serialized story...it's (supposedly) more character focused, with the mission and ethics of Starfleet somewhat in question. But it's also apparent based on the little snippets we've seen thus far that there has been an effort made to reflect that core Trek "stuff" we all love. Given that DS9 is, particularly in retrospect, held in such high regard...I'm really positive about this series from that perspective. I suppose if DS9 was not in your wheelhouse, I could see how this could turn you off. But otherwise, it appears to have a quality cast, unbelievable production values, and a good background for drama and character development. Again, aside from Trek fans being the equivalent of Red Sox fans prior to 2004, with the mindset of "the lower and more negative my expectations are, the less chance I have for potential heartbreak," I'm not sure I see what everyone is dreading. I dunno...maybe I'm just not as big a "fan" as I thought I was.