This is important. I think that's why I appear more indifferent to Trek or other franchises than perhaps one would expect. Because the real world matters for me to give my attention to. Star Trek is like a nice vacation but isn't where I want to live.
No I mean Unification. The one with the four-armed alien musician who licks salt sticks. Exactly it's a nice vacation, or a temporary getaway. Obsessing over a TV show or a book for a weekend or a couple hours every other day, can reduce stress in my experience.Which is of particular use right now.
Every tyrant & genocidal maniac throughout history thought that they were saving the world. Imagine if Hitler had focused his energies on nitpicking Flash Gordon continuity instead of ranting about the Jews. Never underestimate the value of keeping bad people distracted by trivial things.
But the bad people do obsesses, just not over media, except to control it. It is sad to say but if not Hitler, someone else. The circumstances were ripe for it. If the good people pay attention to local issues and politics we are far less likely to end up with Hitlers. Remember kids. "All Politics is Local" -- Tip O'Neil.
This reply doesn't have much to do with the actual topic but with something this thread mentioned earlier. There's some discussion here about Star Trek and Star Wars, which is better? Star Trek wins, easily. No matter what Trek or Wars are doing right now doesn't matter because what Trek has already done, it's so awesome, how can that even be beaten? Only thing that comes close is season 1 of 24, but perhaps that's just me. There's one thing in Star Wars that is almost too cool to beat, lightsabres. However, if you take lightsabres away from Star Wars, is it even that "cool" anymore? One trick pony? =)
Space Opera, without singing. Well until it started to do weekly series Star Wars was all epic. Weekly has a hard time with epic. Or epic has a hard time with weekly. I see the difference as Trek stories are about people, not the fate of the galaxy. From a setting prescriptive Trek is Space Operetta, Space Musical maybe. The point being that neither precludes the other being "Good".
I think this is my biggest source of frustration. I mean, I guess I can sort of understand brand loyalty to a degree or when there were only 3 networks and no home media so watching something was more of a process. But, now? I can watch an episode of the Mandalorian and then roll right in to Discovery, or vice versa. Or ignore all the new stuff and focus on the old.
You can't like both, you have to pick one. And you can't like all of one, you have to choose between the old stuff or the modern stuff. The penalty for not complying is death.
Because the mass audience has to be manufactured for each and every mass audience “event.” This is an expensive and time-consuming process, so allowing your mass audience to forget about you by going too long before manufacturing the next event is simply bad business.