So what killed Star Trek?

[MacLeod]

Trek's broad, open-ended premise is its strength. It's about the folks who patrol and defend the frontiers of the Federation, take part of diplomacy and occasionally explore to suss out new potential member planets. There's no end to that job and no end to the complications and stories that the premise can generate (the limitation is on the writers' imaginations, not the premise).

Aliens are relatable, because they are simply humans in disguise. Human writers are incapable of writing alien characters who are not either humans in disguise or in some way related to humans, for instance by being a source of profit (tribbles) or a threat (space amoebas).

The relatability problem is more in the aesthetics. People flipping through channels and seeing blue people in a fake-looking desert is going to be less attractive than if you saw people in contemporary clothes in a contemporary setting. People like things that they recognize as safe and familiar.

This is an indictment of the imagination of modern audiences more than anything else. You'd have to sit still and watch for a while before you realized the blue people and the fake desert are metaphors for familiar things. You'd have to have a brain capable of grasping "metaphor." Sometimes I wonder if people can even do that anymore.

I personally fail to see little difference in seeing blue poeple on the big screen than that of seeing them on the small screen.

People will happily pay almost extorniate amounts to see a sci-fi flick at the cinema but shy away from it on the small screen.

But each to their own I guess

 

[xortex]

Two words - socially acceptable. Plus it's a big budget spectacle that is paid for or not giving the audience a modicum of control and say as to it's success or not although that is no indication at all of it's quality. I wonder sometimes if everybody is wrong, if then suddenly nobody is.

 

[T'Girl]

Santa, spelled slightly backwards -satan

"Santa" spelt backwards is "minutes." At least in Portuguese.

xortex, you're thinking in English again.

 

[Deckerd]

There wasn't much that was socially acceptable about Avatar. Just about every single thing the humans did was unacceptable legally, ethically and logically. The reason it made a good movie is because the oppressed majority were imaginary aliens.

 

[Captain Robert April]

And all the pretty CGI pictures and the 3D. Otherwise, it's FernGully with a monstrous budget.

 

[Gary7]

You should be able to get a read on Terra Nova's fate fairly quickly after it debuts (Sept 26). It's absurdly expensive, so FOX must be expecting stratospheric ratings. We'll probably know whether the experiment was a success by early November.

Terra Nova is going to fail. Just my prediction. The premise just seems so... "been there, done that."

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Again, trying to pigeonhole Star Trek into the space epic category is just another indicator of a lack of imagination.

It only needs to be a space epic in the movies, and that's because the movies demand a strong action focus of any summer blockbuster, not because Star Trek demands it. It's simply how the movie business has gone. No sense fighting it. The alternative is to make Star Trek as a little arthouse film, and nobody's interested in making that.

The broader canvas of stories needs to be told on TV (cable, not broadcast). Movies have become far less interesting than TV anyway.

You should be able to get a read on Terra Nova's fate fairly quickly after it debuts (Sept 26). It's absurdly expensive, so FOX must be expecting stratospheric ratings. We'll probably know whether the experiment was a success by early November.

Terra Nova is going to fail. Just my prediction. The premise just seems so... "been there, done that."

Hasn't been done on TV. What they're testing is the concept of whether applying a huge budget to bring movie-style eye candy to TV will attract a huge enough viewership to justify the budget. It's an attempt to see if broadcast TV can be saved as viewers flee to cable.

The alternate idea - drive the budget way down so that smaller audiences don't hurt you - has been tested by NBC by their Jay Leno 5x week experiment. That flopped, so maybe the opposite will work?

At the very least, it's good that someone is testing this idea. Broadcast needs to try all the avenues to see if their business model can even be salvaged. If Terra Nova flops, that may signal the end of free broadcast TV altogether. In the future, everything will be on smaller channels that get 5-10M viewers and you have to subscribe to get anything. Free TV may still exist but it will be all reality TV and infomercials.

Personally I think the experiment will fail and prove that free broadcast TV is doomed but we shall see.

I personally fail to see little difference in seeing blue poeple on the big screen than that of seeing them on the small screen.

The difference is in the business model. Getting millions of people worldwide to PAY to see blue people on a big screen works much better than getting a few million to watch it for free, and "pay" only as much as their eyeballs are worth to advertisers. TV simply makes far less money per audience member than movies, and therefore movies get far bigger budgets. It's an open question whether TV is capable of funding the budgets for blue people who don't look like crap or other eye candy elements.

One of the most brilliant aliens, and one of the most alien, is the Horta.

I would love to see a remake of The Devil in the Dark that had the resources to make the rock monster seem completely believable, and terrifying when it melts red shirts. And of course with the tweaks to address its shortcomings, like "you stand over here by yourself for a few hours and be sure not to fire at any monster approaching you".

I don't think that's out of the question at all. Falling Skies has a similar, very alien-looking type alien, in the skitters (used sparingly to save on budget). It got 6-7M on TNT, which made it the biggest scripted cable hit of the summer. That same number would be cancellation city on CBS, which is just more proof that we need to forget about Star Trek on broadcast. And we can forget about Nav'i on cable, because they're too pricey, but Hortas and skitters might be do-able.

People don't want to believe in anything unreal anymore,

Supernatural horror and fairy tales are doing great on TV - that is, on the CW and cable (broadcast is once again trotting out a new batch of fantasy shows but it remains to be see if they're any more successful than the last batch.

But here's the catch: supernatural horror and fairy tales appeal to the female audience that now dominates TV viewing. Males have fled to the internet and video games. So is there any point in making shows for them anymore? The advertisers might push you to try, but if they keep playing their video games, screw it, your ratings will be so low that you get cancelled. Why not just remake Beauty and the Beast for the female demo instead? Who needs all that aggravation?

 

[Gary7]

I was talking more about the story idea, not the production values. There has been serious money dumped into failures before.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I don't see the story or characters as being the point of Terra Nova. I think it's an experiment to see if just delivering walloping production values on TV will result in huge audiences - taking movie logic and applying it to TV. If it has to rely on its story for its appeal, it's doomed, because there's no reason to believe any time travel story by itself is going to appeal to huge audiences. It's all about the dinos.

But back to the topic. If I were doing a Star Trek series, I'd try to get it on FX even though it would be produced by CBS and FX is part of a different company. I'd set my sights on attracting a young male demo and justify the budget with the premium that advertisers will pay for airtime. I'd make sure the lead character is some big, buff, Captain Robau type (why not just hire Faran Tahir and have him play a Robau-like character, or even Robau from the Prime Universe, where he didn't die?) I'd amp the action, the military aspect and the space-cops-patrolling-the-frontiers-of-the-Federation aspect.

I'd look at FX's other hit series - Sons of Anarchy and Justified - for inspiration into character types. I could see a Gemma or a Boyd Crowder on the spaceship (pre-TOS, it was a wilder time) or as a recurring antagonist. Aren't the Romulans and the Klingons just metaphors for the biker gangs and psycho hillbillies that FX already makes money from?

 

[darkshadow0001]

I always thought it was this forum that killed off Star Trek.

 

[Winterwind]

Santa, spelled slightly backwards -satan...

Oh, just call it an anagram and be done with it.

I always thought it was this forum that killed off Star Trek.

And here I always thought it was my being one of the original six members of "The Sinister Six" on the ST.com boards and my posting all those pink elephants on the TrekUnited forums that killed Star Trek.

 

[SFRabid]

I always thought it was this forum that killed off Star Trek.

And here I always thought it was my being one of the original six members of "The Sinister Six" on the ST.com boards and my posting all those pink elephants on the TrekUnited forums that killed Star Trek.

That would be giving either forum too much credit. I doubt that Moonves even knew a forum existed. ... He might know how to read, but that has not yet been proven.

 

[darkshadow0001]

I always thought it was this forum that killed off Star Trek.

And here I always thought it was my being one of the original six members of "The Sinister Six" on the ST.com boards and my posting all those pink elephants on the TrekUnited forums that killed Star Trek.

That would be giving either forum too much credit. I doubt that Moonves even knew a forum existed. ... He might know how to read, but that has not yet been proven.

I think they did. Because it seemed kind of odd that in season four of Enterprise they seemed to touch up on every subject that was discussed here, I think they were trying to make the fans happy. There was never one day when Enterprise aired where I didn't come here and read some negative post about it. I'm not saying the forum was 100% the reason why the series got cancelled, but I think it was a large part of it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

No way did any forum anywhere have anything to do with Enterprise getting canceled, especially because of anything posted in the show's final season. The show's ratings went down steadily over its four season run, right from the beginning. After a steep drop-off in the first season, the downward slope is basically constant, with only small bumps here and there. (Here're those charts again.) So, no.

 

[Relayer1]

You should be able to get a read on Terra Nova's fate fairly quickly after it debuts (Sept 26). It's absurdly expensive, so FOX must be expecting stratospheric ratings. We'll probably know whether the experiment was a success by early November.

Terra Nova is going to fail. Just my prediction. The premise just seems so... "been there, done that."

Maybe so, but wasn't Falling Skies renewed for a 2nd season ? And that was been there lots and done that more times than I care to remember...

I wasn't impressed but someone must have been.

 

[SFRabid]

Even I stopped at one episode of Falling Skies. I forgot about it until I saw this post. How did it ever get picked up for another season.

And to be honest, I no longer trust network television when it comes to scifi. I watched "V" when it came out the first time and they dropped that with no ending at all. Then that show about the monsters in the water that were burrowing into the mantle and changing the landscape. (Cannot remember the name.) They ended that one on a cliffhanger. This time around I refused to watch "V" and I am not sure I will invest time and spirit in Terra Nova.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

You should be able to get a read on Terra Nova's fate fairly quickly after it debuts (Sept 26). It's absurdly expensive, so FOX must be expecting stratospheric ratings. We'll probably know whether the experiment was a success by early November.

Terra Nova is going to fail. Just my prediction. The premise just seems so... "been there, done that."

Maybe so, but wasn't Falling Skies renewed for a 2nd season ? And that was been there lots and done that more times than I care to remember...

I wasn't impressed but someone must have been.

Yes, it's been renewed.

But there's an easier way to demonstrate how little originality matters on TV: look at all the cop shows.

How did it ever get picked up for another season.

It got strong ratings, that's how. (How else do shows ever get renewed?) Best-rated new scripted show on cable this summer.

 

[Winterwind]

I always thought it was this forum that killed off Star Trek.

And here I always thought it was my being one of the original six members of "The Sinister Six" on the ST.com boards and my posting all those pink elephants on the TrekUnited forums that killed Star Trek.

That would be giving either forum too much credit. I doubt that Moonves even knew a forum existed. ... He might know how to read, but that has not yet been proven.

I'm pretty sure both statements were jokes. I know mine sure as hell was. Fans posting on forums are an incredibly small representation of the viewing audience.

 

[Captain Robert April]

^ But it also constitutes free audience research into the most dedicated viewers of a given show. Probably not a deciding factor, but not one to ignore, either.

 

[Winterwind]

Oh, I know. But it's a rare few that look. You're more likely to get actors or writers lurking about on forums than someone in marketing or upper management.