New Series-Fewer Regulars
- Thread starter Knight Templar
- Start date
Paramount owns Movie Rights, they have no rights or say over Television
Nah, it's not the name, it's the medium.
Nope, it's the other way around. CBS owns the rights to the Star Trek name and pretty much everything Trek.
http://www.cbsconsumerproducts.com/startrek/star_trek_new_movie.html
The only thing Paramount owns is the right to make Star Trek movies.
Knight Templar
Commodore
The fact that a new series would have to come from CBS or with their approval is a major problem.
They're the number one network in ratings and have been for several years. They've been getting rich off an endless parade of police procedurals and have a couple more coming out next year.
Networks that are number one don't take risks on new multi million dollar series with very high capital investment required (like Star Trek).
Chances are, CBS would roll out two more NCIS spinoffs and wring every last bit out of them before they even considered a Star Trek series.
They're the number one network in ratings and have been for several years. They've been getting rich off an endless parade of police procedurals and have a couple more coming out next year.
Networks that are number one don't take risks on new multi million dollar series with very high capital investment required (like Star Trek).
Chances are, CBS would roll out two more NCIS spinoffs and wring every last bit out of them before they even considered a Star Trek series.
I guess that's the downside of the development of the TV series market. Getting a new Star Trek show would be much more likely if the rights were owned by a more niche cable channel I guess.
CBS needs to appeal to the masses so they just keep pushing out police procedurals. The last time Star Trek appealed to the masses was when TNG was on the air. The later Trek shows appealed to a much more niche audience. Although you could probably make the case that JJ's Trek movie appealed to people beyond the traditional Trekkie fan base.
Anyway, back on topic: I think it is ultimately only about the quality of writing. You can make a good show with a large ensemble cast and you can make a good show with a small core of regulars.
The problem is you can't make a good show if you waste screen time and resources on characters like Harry Kim. Voyager would've been a better show if they had gotten rid of half the cast and focused on the character development of the others. And on the plot obviously.
Science Fiction shows have traditionally been more plot-driven and less character-driven. Having a small number of regulars helped focusing on a good plot without getting distracted by having to include some character development for every single member of the cast.
With the rise of big story arcs this problem has been alleviated a bit. You don't have to squeeze the plot of an episode into 40 minutes anymore which means the canvas is getting bigger. There's more room for character development even of a larger cast (see DS9) but there's also the risk of completely ignoring the advancement of the plot because you get "lost" (see what I did there? Lost!) on the way.
Whether a new Trek series features a huge cast or just some regulars doesn't really matter to me as long as we don't have a lot of dead weight in the cast.
CBS needs to appeal to the masses so they just keep pushing out police procedurals. The last time Star Trek appealed to the masses was when TNG was on the air. The later Trek shows appealed to a much more niche audience. Although you could probably make the case that JJ's Trek movie appealed to people beyond the traditional Trekkie fan base.
Anyway, back on topic: I think it is ultimately only about the quality of writing. You can make a good show with a large ensemble cast and you can make a good show with a small core of regulars.
The problem is you can't make a good show if you waste screen time and resources on characters like Harry Kim. Voyager would've been a better show if they had gotten rid of half the cast and focused on the character development of the others. And on the plot obviously.
Science Fiction shows have traditionally been more plot-driven and less character-driven. Having a small number of regulars helped focusing on a good plot without getting distracted by having to include some character development for every single member of the cast.
With the rise of big story arcs this problem has been alleviated a bit. You don't have to squeeze the plot of an episode into 40 minutes anymore which means the canvas is getting bigger. There's more room for character development even of a larger cast (see DS9) but there's also the risk of completely ignoring the advancement of the plot because you get "lost" (see what I did there? Lost!) on the way.
Whether a new Trek series features a huge cast or just some regulars doesn't really matter to me as long as we don't have a lot of dead weight in the cast.
But for a character like Harry Kim who's fault is it? The actor or the production team?
Lets see the shows creator's flesh out the initial characters.
The shows writers , write the lines for the actor.
The shows writers , are mostly responsible for developing the character.
True an actor with his performance can make the writers want to write for the character, but who hires the actors, the production team.
So it's upto the production team to get it right.
Lets see the shows creator's flesh out the initial characters.
The shows writers , write the lines for the actor.
The shows writers , are mostly responsible for developing the character.
True an actor with his performance can make the writers want to write for the character, but who hires the actors, the production team.
So it's upto the production team to get it right.
Knight Templar
Commodore
The only near certain way of getting a new Star Trek series back on the air is for another major network (not CBS) to role out some kind of space opera and have it really kick ass in the ratings.
So if you see another space opera, watch it and talk it up big time. Because networks are classic follow the leaders.
If Terra Nova had been a huge success, we'd probably have another couple of "time travel/dinosaurs" series coming out next year.
So if you see another space opera, watch it and talk it up big time. Because networks are classic follow the leaders.
If Terra Nova had been a huge success, we'd probably have another couple of "time travel/dinosaurs" series coming out next year.
I really think that this problem would be solved simply by getting a fantastic writing staff. Lost had a huge main cast each season and they were still able to focus on strong storylines involving several cast members.
Other shows like Alias who have an obvious main character focus on one and have the others off to the side in each episode...which I suppose you could argue that TOS would fall into that catgegory as well.
Other shows like Alias who have an obvious main character focus on one and have the others off to the side in each episode...which I suppose you could argue that TOS would fall into that catgegory as well.
TOS also had the benefit of having science fiction authors on its writing staff like Jerome Bixby, David Gerrold, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison (just to name a few).
The last three Trek shows also had the disadvantage of being in a crowded market place. When TNG first aired how many other Sci-Fi based shows were in production?
When it was a success everyone played follw the leader, in the early 90's we had sci-fi show after sci-fi show of varying quality.
When it was a success everyone played follw the leader, in the early 90's we had sci-fi show after sci-fi show of varying quality.
No you really don't. If the Star Trek name can't reel in viewers then time has come to retire the brand. Hell, we didn't even know De Kelley was going to be in TNG until the show actually premiered.
Real sci-fi writers would go a long way towards restoring Trek's credibility after what we've gotten over the last decade.
I've actually been thinking this for a little while. Having a smaller group of main characters with a broad range of secondary actors can have a lot of benefits. We can all think of characters who never clicked through most of their time on their shows (I don't want to mention any names in particular so as not to be rude, but I'm sure everyone can think of a few). I think this can happen for a variety of reasons, but usually its a combination of an actor not being all that great with writers who struggle to define the character.
To a certain extent there is a symbiotic relationship between writers, actors and characters. When actors exceed their expectations, they're given more opportunities to star in their roles and writers want to spend more time writing them. When actors fumble their role or are just bland, writer's are less enthusiastic in giving them much role in their scripts, and if a writer has a great script idea that he's really proud of, he's more likely to give one of the actors he feels will make his script shine in the lead rather then one who has under-performed. As an example some writers have noted that during TNG they liked to give really technically difficult lines to Levar Burton because they knew that, no matter what it was, he would make it sound convincing and real. That increased his exposure and meant he was often involved in plots with complex scientific plotlines that weren't necessarily engineering related.
On the other hand sometimes writer's just can't figure out how to make the character work despite the actor being solid. And there have occasionally been characters who were not nearly as strong early on because of that. Sisko is a good example of that, I think. In the first few seasons several of the writers admitted having a hard time with the character, until they latched on to the idea that he was at his heart a builder and that his strengths were a bit different from the Captains who came before. Until that point Sisko wasn't really the focus of the show, with a lot of the other characters having much more to do. Once they found that Sisko's role became much more central and there were more episodes focusing on him.
Either way, I think honestly being an actor on Star Trek is a much harder task then being an actor on almost any other show. Most actors know what a detective or a Doctor acts like. Before they ever appear on the show they've probably seen the role played thousands of times. Not many would come in prepared to be a Warp Core Specialist born in the 24th Century. I think that's why actors with a lot of stage experience are so successful on Star Trek, especially those who have done a lot of Shakespeare. What could be better training for Star Trek then learning to act using highly stylized language in a world and a role that is quite foreign to anything you're familiar with?
Which is why I think concentrating on getting a really solid smaller cast (five sounds good to me, but more or less would work) and a large supporting class would be the way to go. You might pick up a good actor who simply can't handle the stylized Star Trek dialogue and sound natural, but if he's a secondary character, who cares? You can try someone else out the next time. DS9 is actually a good example of this. There were two Vorta shown on DS9 that preceded Weyoun; Eris and Borath. But once the writers saw Jeffrey Comb's impressive performance on "To the Death" they brought him back quite literally from the dead, coming up with the idea that the Vorta were all clones so they could keep him on as a secondary character. Obviously there were other Vorta after him, but he became the face of the Vorta appearing in 24 episodes and having six different iterations.
That's the kind of luxury you have with secondary characters that you don't really have with primary characters who have signed long contracts. You can find actors and characters that really mesh and add a whole layer of complexity to your universe as you go along rather then committing to a character for the next seven years and hoping everything works out for the best without seeing them appear in a single episode as that character. Because once you have a primary character, you have to find something for them to do in just about every episode just to justify their paycheck.
The risk of course is that you find a great secondary character and that actor then gets a better job because of the performance on your show, but I think it would be worth the risk.
To a certain extent there is a symbiotic relationship between writers, actors and characters. When actors exceed their expectations, they're given more opportunities to star in their roles and writers want to spend more time writing them. When actors fumble their role or are just bland, writer's are less enthusiastic in giving them much role in their scripts, and if a writer has a great script idea that he's really proud of, he's more likely to give one of the actors he feels will make his script shine in the lead rather then one who has under-performed. As an example some writers have noted that during TNG they liked to give really technically difficult lines to Levar Burton because they knew that, no matter what it was, he would make it sound convincing and real. That increased his exposure and meant he was often involved in plots with complex scientific plotlines that weren't necessarily engineering related.
On the other hand sometimes writer's just can't figure out how to make the character work despite the actor being solid. And there have occasionally been characters who were not nearly as strong early on because of that. Sisko is a good example of that, I think. In the first few seasons several of the writers admitted having a hard time with the character, until they latched on to the idea that he was at his heart a builder and that his strengths were a bit different from the Captains who came before. Until that point Sisko wasn't really the focus of the show, with a lot of the other characters having much more to do. Once they found that Sisko's role became much more central and there were more episodes focusing on him.
Either way, I think honestly being an actor on Star Trek is a much harder task then being an actor on almost any other show. Most actors know what a detective or a Doctor acts like. Before they ever appear on the show they've probably seen the role played thousands of times. Not many would come in prepared to be a Warp Core Specialist born in the 24th Century. I think that's why actors with a lot of stage experience are so successful on Star Trek, especially those who have done a lot of Shakespeare. What could be better training for Star Trek then learning to act using highly stylized language in a world and a role that is quite foreign to anything you're familiar with?
Which is why I think concentrating on getting a really solid smaller cast (five sounds good to me, but more or less would work) and a large supporting class would be the way to go. You might pick up a good actor who simply can't handle the stylized Star Trek dialogue and sound natural, but if he's a secondary character, who cares? You can try someone else out the next time. DS9 is actually a good example of this. There were two Vorta shown on DS9 that preceded Weyoun; Eris and Borath. But once the writers saw Jeffrey Comb's impressive performance on "To the Death" they brought him back quite literally from the dead, coming up with the idea that the Vorta were all clones so they could keep him on as a secondary character. Obviously there were other Vorta after him, but he became the face of the Vorta appearing in 24 episodes and having six different iterations.
That's the kind of luxury you have with secondary characters that you don't really have with primary characters who have signed long contracts. You can find actors and characters that really mesh and add a whole layer of complexity to your universe as you go along rather then committing to a character for the next seven years and hoping everything works out for the best without seeing them appear in a single episode as that character. Because once you have a primary character, you have to find something for them to do in just about every episode just to justify their paycheck.
The risk of course is that you find a great secondary character and that actor then gets a better job because of the performance on your show, but I think it would be worth the risk.
Knight Templar
Commodore
^Very good analysis. I think too often in the past, Star Trek series have been stuck with actors/actresses that "looked good on paper" for various reasons but that they had made a long term committment in terms of contract and screen time to.
To me the classic example is Scott Bakula. Lots of people figured that he would be near perfect as the lead in Star Trek. He was a good (though underrated) actor with plenty of previous time as a science fiction series lead (Quantum Leap). But of course Quantum Leap while it was nominally science fiction, wasn't space opera and though Bakula portrayed a wide variety of characters in Quantum Leap, quite ironically the role did not require much at all in terms of range of ability.
To me the classic example is Scott Bakula. Lots of people figured that he would be near perfect as the lead in Star Trek. He was a good (though underrated) actor with plenty of previous time as a science fiction series lead (Quantum Leap). But of course Quantum Leap while it was nominally science fiction, wasn't space opera and though Bakula portrayed a wide variety of characters in Quantum Leap, quite ironically the role did not require much at all in terms of range of ability.
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