Kurtzman on Any New Series Reaching 100 Episodes

[Tosk]

Forced calls cost money. (Meaning an actor gets a mandatory twelve hours between finishing on one day and starting the next.) They tend not to do it except when necessary. There's no way that the actors' regular schedules gave them less than eight hours off-time.

I only wish that my job consisted of bursts of actual work interspersed with hours of sitting around while other people did stuff.

 

[Farscape One]

I was being sarcastic. Apologies if I didn't hit that button hard enough.

Ah, okay. No worries.

Television seems to be moving away from even that. Take the Walking Dead franchise for example, which had been doing sixteen episode seasons up until very recently, now six episodes a season is the norm, with a "deluxe season" consisting of twelve.

Okay, but look at the actual working days. A typical day filming a 90s Trek series went from 7am to 11pm. And they did that six days straight, took a day off, and then jumped into the next episode. Now imagine doing sixteen hours a day, six days a week for nine whole months. That is brutal. Plus it got even worse for the actors who played alien characters, they'd have to show up at 4am to start getting into makeup, and removal took at least two hours, which means they only really had time for three hours of sleep most of the time.

Yeah, there are reasons that shorter seasons are preferred these days.

Bolding the part of the quote that I am responding to.

They didn't work 6 days a week. An episode was typically filmed in 6 days, but that meant it was filmed Monday - Friday and the Monday of the next week, as an example.

As for the rest, I agree the hours are very rough. But is that really any worse than people who work 2 or three jobs year round to make ends meet? (Which is more common than you might think.)

My point still stands.

 

[Lord Garth]

Television seems to be moving away from even that. Take the Walking Dead franchise for example, which had been doing sixteen episode seasons up until very recently, now six episodes a season is the norm, with a "deluxe season" consisting of twelve.

That's bullshit. Not what you're saying, I believe you. I mean the concept of six-episode seasons in general.

 

[Jedman67]

Aside from the Pandemic and WGA strikes, a normal Trek season (ie DSC and SNW) should take about 5 months to film and another 4 months for post, with broadcast roughly a year after the end of filming.
If they accepted slightly shorter runtimes, and extended the filming block by another month, they could fit in another 2 episodes per season.
It seems that TPTB - I guess that would be P+ - want to cap it to 10.

For LD, I don't think it's being "cancelled" but Mike is smart enough to have realized the possibility of no season 6 and hopefully built that into the show as a "just in case."

 

[UssGlenn]

Bolding the part of the quote that I am responding to.

They didn't work 6 days a week. An episode was typically filmed in 6 days, but that meant it was filmed Monday - Friday and the Monday of the next week, as an example.

As for the rest, I agree the hours are very rough. But is that really any worse than people who work 2 or three jobs year round to make ends meet? (Which is more common than you might think.)

My point still stands.

In your estimation, given the long working days, how many weeks would an actor work to get to the approximately 2000 hours a normal 40 hour work week gets most people in a year?

 

[Lord Garth]

What perplexes me is anyone whose favorite Star Trek series is DS9 and thinks 10-episode seasons are better than 26.

I think DS9 would not be their favorite series with only 10 episodes per season and five seasons. 50 episodes versus 176. That's 72% of the series gone. I don't think everything they like about the series could be distilled and done justice in what's left.

Picard was lucky in that it was already following up on TNG and the TNG Era in general. So, it had a massive head-start. Discovery, OTOH, I'm going to be brutally honest: I don't feel like the 32nd Century will have been properly developed enough by the end of its run. There was just no time to do it. Starfleet Academy might fix this, but the point remains until then.

 

[fireproof78]

Not sure that's a fair comparison given that my life is far different attempting to keep up with 26 episode seasons and now. Cureent seasons are written with ten in mind and it's far more convenient to me.

Selfish? Probably but that's where I'm at.

 

[Lord Garth]

Fair enough, but if I'm a big enough fan of something, I'll make the time.

An hour per week isn't that huge of a commitment, IMO. If you're catching up with it after the fact, then I can see it. There's a backlog. But if you're watching as it's airing, you don't need to get caught up because you already are.

 

[fireproof78]

Fair enough, but if I'm a big enough fan of something, I'll make the time.

An hour per week isn't that huge of a commitment, IMO.

Entertainment is not a huge priority right now.

An hour a week is more than a huge commitment right now for me.

 

[Rahul]

I could live with 10 episodes a season - IF they actually stick to one season every year!

What gets me is loving a show (SNW), but then this show feeling already half a decade old, actors aging, ongoing plotlines not fitting with the time anymore - and I STILL don't know half the main characters!

Yeah, 26 episodes was a bit too much. And you get stuck with "tv actors". But still - it leads to the writers having to write for example a Geordi episode once in a while, because the main cast was filming two weeks back to back - and those add immensely to the worldbuilding, and the writers can often get more creative with the non-leads. Did we have an Ortegas episode already? One(!) Hemmer episode?

Fuck it. Make making series a commitment again. Either 20 episodes per season, or make a season every year and let the cast move on after 5 years.

But don't have a show grow old & tired without actually producing anything!

 

[Rahul]

(what Kurtzman describes fits imo only to more focused, "movie-like" tv shows - Game of Thrones or Stranger Things just wouldn't work with 20 episodes per season. The Mandalorian probably would, but not even Disney could shell that budget for so many episodes. But Trek - and a whole lot of more "episodic" shows (even if they have a main arc) just don't work that well in this format.)

 

[Firebird]

An article came out today in Harper's Magazine that lays out a pretty clear and dire picture of how Wall Street and venture capitalists have slowly taken the film industry to pieces in the never-ending pursuit of profit margins. What we called the "peak TV era" in the advent of streaming was a lucky byproduct of the dry rot.

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/05/the-life-and-death-of-hollywood-daniel-bessner/

This is the larger discussion that is really going to be the indicator of whether we'll be able to have any television be either interesting, meaningful, or worthwhile again, to say nothing of the episode count orders.

 

[Jedman67]

What perplexes me is anyone whose favorite Star Trek series is DS9 and thinks 10-episode seasons are better than 26.

I think DS9 would not be their favorite series with only 10 episodes per season and five seasons. 50 episodes versus 176. That's 72% of the series gone. I don't think everything they like about the series could be distilled and done justice in what's left.

A *lot* of DS9 was absolute filler. I could have done without the Gul Dukat/Kai Winn romance, for example.
Or Pah Wraith Keiko.
If DS9 had been, 15 episodes for example, a lot of what made things tedious in otherwise excellent seasons would have been rightfully (hopefully) cut.

Of course, the 48 minute run time format had it's pro's and it's cons - the root beer scene from Way of the Warrior absolutely elevated the entire episode and was only added because they were 2 minutes short. Yet, because it focuses on two recurring characters (who both had to endure something like 4 hours of makeup to film) it became instantly iconic.

I could live with 10 episodes a season - IF they actually stick to one season every year!

What gets me is loving a show (SNW), but then this show feeling already half a decade old, actors aging, ongoing plotlines not fitting with the time anymore - and I STILL don't know half the main characters!

S1 was 2022 and S2 was 2023, and we're skipping a year because of the writers strike. That's not too bad. With S4 being greenlit it's entirely possible it will film back to back, after a short hiatus when S3 wraps.

(what Kurtzman describes fits imo only to more focused, "movie-like" tv shows - Game of Thrones or Stranger Things just wouldn't work with 20 episodes per season. The Mandalorian probably would, but not even Disney could shell that budget for so many episodes. But Trek - and a whole lot of more "episodic" shows (even if they have a main arc) just don't work that well in this format.)

Streaming allows more long-form mini series shows to run. I think Mandalorian is good with 8 episodes, and I think the MCU shows would have dragged if they'd gone 8 or higher.
Then again, I tried watching AoS and it felt like a drag to me. It took 20+ episodes to hit the climax and frankly I don't have time or energy to spend on 20 episode shows anymore.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I like how people will say "I want shorter seasons, it would have gotten rid of filler episodes like X".
Not knowing if "X" would have been there regardless based on what the writer's intentions were or other behind the scenes occurances.

 

[Tosk]

The idea that episodes that were self-contained stories get lumped as "filler" is just such garbage anyway.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Not sure that's a fair comparison given that my life is far different attempting to keep up with 26 episode seasons and now. Cureent seasons are written with ten in mind and it's far more convenient to me.

Selfish? Probably but that's where I'm at.

An hour a week is more than a huge commitment right now for me.

I'm not in a dissimilar situation free-time-wise. But 1 hour per week for 10 weeks and 1 hour per week for 26 weeks is still only 1 hour per week. So I'm not sure how the shorter seasons actually help you?

 

[fireproof78]

I'm not in a dissimilar situation free-time-wise. But 1 hour per week for 10 weeks and 1 hour per week for 26 weeks is still only 1 hour per week. So I'm not sure how the shorter seasons actually help you?

Because I don't get so far behind.

Eventually, I just give up. Life is too unpredictable right now.

 

[Farscape One]

I like how people will say "I want shorter seasons, it would have gotten rid of filler episodes like X".
Not knowing if "X" would have been there regardless based on what the writer's intentions were or other behind the scenes occurances.

Exactly. Look at DISCO season 4. Take out 5 episodes from the middle, and "The Galactic Barrier", and it would still feel like the seaaon dragged on.

The problem is making a 10, 13, or whatever number episode season when there is really only enough story 4 or 5 episodes, tops.

Truthfully, the seasonal arc era and shows could have learned A LOT from ENT season 4. Have enough episodes to tell the story, and move on to another.

 

[Lord Garth]

If DS9 had been, 15 episodes for example, a lot of what made things tedious in otherwise excellent seasons would have been rightfully (hopefully) cut.

If I were inclined, I'd try to put together a list of five 15-episode seasons that would cover what DS9 actually covered over seven seasons. To see what that would look like.

But I feel like this is something that a Niner should do. I could try, but I think they could get it nailed down better than I could.

 

[Farscape One]

If I were inclined, I'd try to put together a list of five 15-episode seasons that would cover what DS9 actually covered over seven seasons. To see what that would look like.

But I feel like this is something that a Niner should do. I could try, but I think they could get it nailed down better than I could.

That's not easy, to be honest. Season 2 might get some spillover into season 1, and season 3 might get a couple into 2. Also hard to chip away because a lot of character episodes that were pretty essential might get lost if you do just the main DS9 arcs.

I might try to do that, but that will take time.