Always fun when Trek gets the big guns Time etc treatment:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/arts/television/star-trek-picard.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/arts/television/star-trek-picard.html
fancy New York Times article on Treks future
- Thread starter Khan 2.0
- Start date
Strike while the iron is hot. Just like in the 1990s, no matter how diluted or worn out or regurgitated it gets.
I honestly find the idea of "franchise fatigue" being what killed Berman Trek to be kinda misleading. I mean, there were several other commonalities between the Treks of that time period. All of them were done by the same production team, meaning everything from props to music to VFX were more or less identical. Berman had his hand in all of them (though he had a bit of a lighter touch in DS9). Perhaps most importantly, from TNG straight to Voyager through the first two seasons of Enterprise - for 16 years straight - we had the exact same format - episodic adventures with little to no continuity featuring an ensemble cast who largely portray Starfleet officers. Add to this the "Roddenberry straitjacket" which meant that conflict was supposed to come from outside of the ship. As a result, Voyager felt like watered-down TNG, and ENT initially felt like watered-down VOY.
Kurtzman, whatever you think of him, is actually trying for a very different vibe with all of the different Trek shows in development. I'm pretty confident for that reason if a Pike show ever sees the light of day they'll actually make it a semi-episodic show (albeit with more continuity than classic Trek) because it's going to have to distinguish itself from the other, more heavily serialized, dramatic Trek offerings.
Kurtzman, whatever you think of him, is actually trying for a very different vibe with all of the different Trek shows in development. I'm pretty confident for that reason if a Pike show ever sees the light of day they'll actually make it a semi-episodic show (albeit with more continuity than classic Trek) because it's going to have to distinguish itself from the other, more heavily serialized, dramatic Trek offerings.
I agree that it was Berman fatigue to some extent. I like that he wanted to uphold Rodenberry's vision and keep Star Trek positive and non-serialized. Visually his control kept Star Trek stale. And don't get me started on the music. Star Trek needed some freshness in the late 90s and early 2000s. DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise had the same costume designer, composers, and producers who had been cranking out Star Trek for over a decade at that point. I think Berman should have sought out some fresh blood while he was still in control. DS9 was well written but some of the writers and producers wanted to shake things up visually but Berman had a tight grip on everything from the costumes to the music to the starship designs and he didn't want to change it or cede control.
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I will add that this is a very, very, very different media enviroment now then in the 1990s. Streaming, binge watching, and the main streaming of Sci Fi hadn't occurred yet in the 1990's. The revenue generated by one subscriber is greater then the ad revenue generated multiple viewers, by how much I'm not certain, but its enough to lead to much much larger budgets I think. Toronto is raking in hundreds of millions from Discovery alone from what CBSViacom is spending on the show.
I mean Enterprise would never have prematurely gone off the air if it had been as successful back then as it is now, its a gold mine now. T'Pol and Archer had the last laugh. And there would have been more Star Trek series right after it, the break from Star Trek would never have happened.
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