It wasn't oversaturation that "killed" Trek no matter what Paramount tries to say about that era. It was keeping two people in charge of the franchise (Rick Berman & Brannon Braga) to the point they got so burned out; they were recycling some of the the exact same stories from TNG to VOY and ENT. At the end berman had been in charge for 18 years and 25 TV seasons (the majority of which were 26 episodes when the majority Network TV hour long prime times series at the time were doing 22 episodes a season. As long as they don't repeat THAT mistake (IE Keep Kurtzman and Co. way past their burnout date) - Trek should be fine. TNG Season 2 was crap, plain and simple. TNG didn't start getting near watchable until well into Season 3.
It was indeed oversaturation that "killed" Trek. Story recycling was almost immediate, several TNG episodes stole from TOS. Some of the recycled Phase II stuff had nothing to do with that production team.
https://www.tor.com/2016/09/23/in-praise-of-star-trek-the-next-generations-infamous-reset-button/
This is a very interesting article. This is m y favorite part:
Voyaging home: One reason
TNG’s “anthology” approach to storytelling probably didn’t serve
Voyager well is that the two series’ fictional mandates were starkly different.
TNG’s mission was, famously, “to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.” We were explicitly told that in the opening narration.
Voyager didn’t have an opening narration, but if it
had, it might been something like “Fleeing from the perils of the Delta Quadrant, the U.S.S.
Voyager leads a ragtag crew, on a lonely quest—for a shining planet known as Earth.” While
TNG was conceived as an abstract exploration of endless possibilities,
Voyager had a concrete mission: to safely get back home. Serialization or heavy continuity would have been a better strategy to chronicle
Voyager’s epic journey, and I believe viewers were ultimately disappointed that the show didn’t take that approach. We’re back to function and form; these series had quite different functions, and yet were molded with the same form.
Ronald D. Moore has always been fond of continuity, but quickly learned that Paramount wasn’t a fan. He first found resistance to continuity while working on TNG. He recalls, for instance, that when he conceived the episode “Family,” Gene Rodenberry “didn’t like the continuity from “Best of Both Worlds” ” But in retrospect, as I’ve been saying, it may have been to TNG’s benefit that continuity was played down.
Moore later tried to readjust Voyager’s course, but ultimately—and for complex reasons—left the show after a brief stint. Here is Braga again, with some telling comments: “Ron came aboard as a writer and—God, I have a lot of regrets—he came aboard wanting the show to do all sorts of things. He wanted the show to have continuity. When the ship got fucked up, he wanted it to stay fucked up. For characters to have lasting consequences. He was really into that. He wanted to eradicate the so-called reset button, and that’s not something the studio was interested in, because this thing was a big seller in syndication.” In this instance, I think the studio made the wrong call.
So don't blame the production team for everything wrong. I think that production team did a fantastic job bringing Star Trek back to TV. I loved their version of the Star Trek universe, and really hoped to see more. It's "mine"... It's mostly true to Roddenberry's vision, and these reboots don't seem to be. Like every remake, think practically EVERY remake of classic TV.... something is
missing. They just don't get it right.
