Bottle shows, yeah, those can have merit, but having to so twenty-six episodes a year actually hurt Star Trek more than it helped. And let's be honest, half the time there were probably only ten good episodes a season anyway. And given how often Berman era Trek recycled storylines, it seems they were having trouble filling twenty-six episodes every year. And hell, by the mid 90s the Star Treks were the only shows still doing twenty-six episode seasons, everyone else were doing twenty-two to twenty-four. Star Trek really would have benefitted from cutting their seasons down by at least two episodes.
In modern times, you can forget about twenty episode seasons or longer. Only the networks do seasons like that, and even that's not even a guarantee anymore. And Star Trek or any sci-fi show couldn't last on a network anymore. Just look at The Orville.
This is why I think the US TV Seasonal Structure needs a over-haul to a Trimester System.
Japan bases their TV seasons on a "Quarter Cycle", but in my opinion, they've mastered that style and it works for them.
In the US, we haven't, and many shows that do go for the 2x Calender Seasons per year end up with too many episodes to make.
Doesn't matter if it's 22-26 eps per year, that's ALOT of eps.
That is true, but on balance, I think Trek -- and entertainment in general -- was better when it had more limitations. There are very few people who would argue the premise that Wrath of Khan is not only one Trek's best efforts ever, but one of the best sci-fi films of all time. Yet it was made on an $11 million budget stretched so thin that the Enterprise and the Reliant were the same set.
Nicholas Meyer likes to say "art thrives on restrictions" and I think that's true. These seemingly unlimited production budgets coupled with the technology available today have led to, IMHO, less creativity across the board. No, I'm not saying all modern productions are bad. But I think the limitations that used to be placed on entertainment by budget and technology actually resulted in some of the best movies and episodes.
I concur, limitations are important, especially episode $/time budgets & episode quantity limitations, but I think 9-11 episodes a year is too few.
Imagine if a TV show Production had "More Time" to make each episode, instead of 1 week, per episode, they get 2 weeks per episode.
Imagine what that could do for the quality of each episode!?!?!
So Imagine what a Full TV production crew can do with 2 weeks to shoot 60 minutes of content + Episode Prologue & Epilogue
instead of
1 week to shoot 40-45 minutes of content + Episode Prologue & Epilogue
This is why a Trimester Calender System where it's 3x Trimesters & 17 weeks/episodes per Trimester with 1 week set-aside for New Years programming that isn't attached to normal TV seasons.
That gives you that new "Goldi-Locks" zone IMO and it allows for deeper/longer shows w/o going too hard on the production crew like a 22-26 ep 1-hr show (40-45 minutes of content) would induce.
“Main Content” = 17x episodes of mostly 60 min Shows for “Main Content” = 1140 mins of main content
= 2x 120-min episodes reserved for the Season Premier & Finale episodes.
= 15x 60-min episodes for the standard episode length throughout the year.
26x 45-min episodess = 1170 mins
You can get a similar amount of "Actual Content" length while producing quality content, with fewer total episode counts while giving more room for the story to flow instead of that tight 40-45 minute budget per episde.
I REALLY love the new 1-hour or 60-min of actual content the streaming era allows.
I just wish it was consistent & that we got a bit more episodes.
That's why I'm such a big advocate of the Trimester Schedule.
It'll work for TV shows, it'll work for Academic Education, it'll work for ALOT of things IMO.
Splitting the Year into 4x Quarters = Too fast
Splitting the Year into 2x Semesters = Too slow
Splitting the Year into 3x Trimesters = "Just Right!" IMO.
)
