Alex Kurtzman Gets New Deal With CBS, Will Expand 'Star Trek' TV
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The thread title.
No, that's ridiculous. Star Trek isn't that important, if Discovery was a failure they wouldn't develop four or five other projects just to have something on the air, especially not with Kurtzman.
The Starfleet Academy series will detail the Academy's origins as Trump's Space Force
Me too, actually, another series about young people, from the producers of Runaways no less. I am however kinda afraid of disappointment.
Kurtzman to fandom:
Interesting news indeed!
Personally-speaking, I'd love to see one of the iterations being a Kelvinverse series of some description!
Personally-speaking, I'd love to see one of the iterations being a Kelvinverse series of some description!
Yeah, actually, they would. It's completely plausible. And sorry if I upset you - I can't think of any other reasons why you've devolved into calling my views "ridiculous"!
There are, however, many reasons for CBS to extend and expand their relationship with Kurtzman.
^^^Kurtzman to fandom:
Wait, going by that pic there is another Noonien Singh android, and let me guess, this one is called Bfore Lore......eh.....you get it, right?............BFore Lore.........as in Original series Star Trek lor........oh never mind, i'l get me coat.
Phaser- love you to death...but think about the implausibly from this perspective:
CBS BOARDROOM:
"Ladies and gentlemen, we've all seen the data and we've discussed how much of a morbid failure Star Trek Discovery was this past season on Our All Access streaming service. Well, as you all have been expecting, now it is time to take action."
"As we continue to film our second season of this crash-and-burn waste of $100M per season, we will offer Alex Kurtzman, one of the creators of this dumpster fire, a massive multi-year contract and put him in charge not only of showrunning this atrocity, but he will shepherd in an entire new era of Star Trek for CBS."
"In parallel to continued development of the aforementioned plague ship that is DSC, we will be developing 4-5 other Star Trek concepts. As you all know, our typical battle plan is to take anything super-expensive that fails horrifically and looses millions of dollars, and then go and duplicate that in other forms, because that is an enormously risk-free and obvious solution."
"So, let's get to work. We need to draw up a multimillion dollar contract for that a-hole Kurtzman who developed this whole mess with Fuller, then we need to start pumping money into the initial development of these other ideas that are all from the same franchise that just burned us so terribly in the form of DSC. Because once again, spending time and money on the prolification of business ventures that have been proven to lose massive amounts of money is what we here at CBS are all about, and is the cornerstone of our strategic growth plan for CBSAA"
It's nonsense.
DSC might be a disappointment to some, and it had story issues (despite the fact that I still found it wildly entertaining), but it was critically successful, generated good buzz, and I think there's no way within reason we can deny that CBS has viewed it as anything other than a success from the perspective that it accomplished whatever it is that they had defined as success for it.
So, while I agree that "quality" and "business success" are two different things, there's no way we can view the series of events that have taken place since Oct 2017 as any indication other than CBS considers DSC a good success.
Waaaaaaaaay too many assumptions, Vger. As Spock said in COTEOF, "We're not that sure of our facts."
It is generally accepted at this point that DISC has not been a creative success. There are some people who liked it - and I'm happy for them - but it had a huge amount of problems. Some argue that it was a financial success, while strangely failing to make room for the possibility that people watched the whole season, like me, hoping it would get better, and also failing to account for the fact that CBS is almost certainly basing any appraisal of DISC's financial success on the number of All-Access subscriptions ("AAS") it enlisted. CBS has no way of knowing, however, how many people signed up for an AAS, but thought DISC was a trainwreck. Like me.
The clearest evidence that DISC is not a success is that it has been the subject of more BTS drama than most series get in their lifetimes. That cannot indicate that all is well and that everything is going swimmingly, although people here confusingly continue to argue just that. Moreover, your premise assumes that Kurtzman was intimately involved in the "dumpster fire," when in fact all evidence is to the contrary. Every piece of data we have suggests that OTHER people came in to run with whatever broad ideas Kurtzman had - that was his brief with regard to DISC - and those people are now gone. So CBS has turned back to Kurtzman, probably because he came up with what CBS views as a good proposal for rescuing Discovery, and because CBS thinks of him as a stabilizing figure and doesn't want to start all over. Instead, they're going to make sure that Kurtzman is the one in charge, for better or worse, and fire all of the Harberts and Bergs that have botched things so far.
You may disagree with this interpretation of facts, but there's absolutely nothing implausible about it. Your version, respectfully, acts like Discovery is a big success because Kurtzman is still around, ignoring the likelihood that Kurtzman didn't have anything to do with Discovery and all of its problems. Your version also ignores the strong possibility that if Discovery were really that great or really doing that well, CBS would play it out and let it have the spotlight instead of announcing something like five other series right after sacking Discovery's EPs.
Your interpretation of the facts makes many assumptions in and of itself - many of them ignoring how the business side of the industry works.
Do you work in the industry? If you don't, then you really have no grounds for your comment. But regardless, I'm just going to agree to disagree with you from here on out and probably stop responding to you, with sincere thanks for your posts responding to mine and the greatest of respect for your views. We're just not really getting anywhere.
Indeed. Few series escape BTS drama, even if it isn't to the extent of Discovery. Corporations, especially CBS, are generally reluctant to throw good money after bad, especially with someone who is supposedly responsible for a failed product.
Discovery as a "failure" doesn't bear out under scrutiny from a business point of view.
I'd prefer to go with the "simplest explanation is usually correct" mode of thinking.
What makes more sense...this deftly intricate rationalization (above) or the simple idea that companies don't continue to invest in things and leaders that have recently proven to be monumental failures?
Again, it's kind of sad because these debates become less and less valuable as soon as you start to identify how binary everyone's mindset is based on their opinions of the series. It reminds me of 2009 when every measurable industry fact had JJ Abram's "Star Trek" movie as a critical and box office success, yet the people who didn't like it simply could not swallow that pill. The rationalizing was similar to this (albeit far worse).
It's happened here repeatedly:
"oh no, the positive critical reviewers are all paid off"
"Nope- the awards it's been nominated for or recognitions it's received are all bogus"
"No way...the studio isn't REALLY happy with the show, they're just saying that"
"Nah, the numbers are way lower than the estimates we've been hearing about"
"Nay nay! Those demand expression numbers don't mean anything!"
"Nope, the fact that every forum poll here conducted episode-by-episode was overhwhelmingly positive is skewed and meaningless...people don't like this show, and it's just easy to please fanboys with multiple accounts!!"
Enough already with the obsessive rationalizing. It's maddening the lengths some people will go through to avoid having egg on their face (expecially when nobody gives a shit anyway).
It's one thing to not like something. Peace, we all have our tastes. It's another to deny reality so that the lens you view things through happens to match/validate those opinions. I can't frigging stand superhero movies, but I don't spend a lot of time rationalizing that they aren't successful just to make my opinion appear more validated. Not only would that be a complete denial of reality, but the fact is that I don't care if I'm in a minority or if they make 100 more superhero movies between now and 2020. I simply don't go see them because I don't like them. There's no further need for engagement or discussion on any front.
But I sure as hell don't try to bend reality to validate my opinions. I don't care and don't need to.
But it's this kind of stuff that makes these discussion boards so useless sometimes. Nobody's here to have their thinking challenged or to simply acknowledge that they might be "wrong" after a good discussion. Everyone MUST be "right"...and there's no grey areas.
Frustrating as all hell...
Another hardcore TOSer here. I used to moderate the TOS Forum. You know the TOS FAQ at the top? I'm the one who wrote it. So, with my street cred out of the way...
General Acceptance would be most of us agree, with one or two dissenters popping up saying "Nuh-uh!" I'm not seeing that here or overall. I'd say general consensus about the creative end of DSC is mixed. People either love it, hate it, or think "this is what you could do to make it better". Text book definition of Mixed.
Without numbers, we have nothing concrete to argue. The best I can say is: a lot of people -- such as myself -- subscribed to CBSAA to watch DSC. Otherwise, no way would I have it. I kept the subscription and am watching some older shows on there like Family Ties (great show, by the way!) while having the option to watch DSC whenever I feel like. Yet other people cancelled their subscriptions when the season ended.
I've argued on here that CBSAA should have multiple Star Trek series -- or series like Star Trek if not Star Trek -- to pad out throughout the year to keep people subscribed. Based on them wanting to put out more Star Trek series now, this seems to be exactly what they decided to do. Whether or not I myself will happen to like all of those series remains to be seen. But it's a sound strategy to keep their subscriptions up in general.
As long as the scripts are good and the production values are up-to-snuff then the behind-the-scenes drama doesn't matter. To the viewer, all that matters is the finished product, not the crap that happened to get to it. You want to look at something that had production problems? Look at The Wizard of Oz. But it's a classic. Everything they had to go through to get to the finished film was worth it.
General Acceptance would be most of us agree, with one or two dissenters popping up saying "Nuh-uh!" I'm not seeing that here or overall. I'd say general consensus about the creative end of DSC is mixed. People either love it, hate it, or think "this is what you could do to make it better". Text book definition of Mixed.
Without numbers, we have nothing concrete to argue. The best I can say is: a lot of people -- such as myself -- subscribed to CBSAA to watch DSC. Otherwise, no way would I have it. I kept the subscription and am watching some older shows on there like Family Ties (great show, by the way!) while having the option to watch DSC whenever I feel like. Yet other people cancelled their subscriptions when the season ended.
I've argued on here that CBSAA should have multiple Star Trek series -- or series like Star Trek if not Star Trek -- to pad out throughout the year to keep people subscribed. Based on them wanting to put out more Star Trek series now, this seems to be exactly what they decided to do. Whether or not I myself will happen to like all of those series remains to be seen. But it's a sound strategy to keep their subscriptions up in general.
As long as the scripts are good and the production values are up-to-snuff then the behind-the-scenes drama doesn't matter. To the viewer, all that matters is the finished product, not the crap that happened to get to it. You want to look at something that had production problems? Look at The Wizard of Oz. But it's a classic. Everything they had to go through to get to the finished film was worth it.
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I think that the Starfleet Academy idea could be a great way to grow the franchise and bring in a younger audience. In the article they mention that they intend to put at least one show on broadcast tv. I think the Starfleet Academy series would be the perfect candidate. The cost to do it would likely be much cheaper because there wouldn’t be nearly as much vfx cost since it’s set on earth and everything. And a show centralized on teens would obviously be targeted towards teens and they would probably have easy access to it since it would be on broadcast. And it could even make sense for them to put it on Netflix in the US also since teens watch most of their shows on Netflix (from personal experience of being a 20 year old)
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