‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Renewed for Fifth and Final Season
- Thread starter Precious Tritium
- Start date
It made more sense when 5 Trek shows were being made concurrently. Very little breaks between shows. Now it's completely different.
The point is that we got forty-six hours of Star Trek out of it. I get what you mean, and I lament what once was, too. But Strange New Worlds was never going to get so many ten-episode seasons that it would surpass Enterprise, or even The Original Series, in total episode count. Let alone the TNG-era trio.
It was simply never in the cards.
it definitely seems to me CBS is trying to wash its hands of Star Trek .
They cancel a bunch of Trek shows, more than they greenlight anything.
All we have on the horizon is three more seasons of SNW (yay!) and Academy show (At least two seasons).
I don't know if Tawny's workplace sitcom on Risa is going to happen.
I guess i'm feeling pessimistic about the future of Trek. Again. A similar feeling as to what i had in 2005 when ENT was cancelled, and NEM was a bomb a few years earlier
They cancel a bunch of Trek shows, more than they greenlight anything.
All we have on the horizon is three more seasons of SNW (yay!) and Academy show (At least two seasons).
I don't know if Tawny's workplace sitcom on Risa is going to happen.
I guess i'm feeling pessimistic about the future of Trek. Again. A similar feeling as to what i had in 2005 when ENT was cancelled, and NEM was a bomb a few years earlier
This is still a better situation, at least for the moment, than 2005, though? Surely? You said “all we have”, and then you mentioned five television seasons’ worth of upcoming content, plus a maybe-maybe-not on another show entirely.
2005 was a bleak moment in the franchise’s history. And, while we may be en route to another 2005 in, like, 2027 or so, we’re not quite there yet. Which is good! No era of Trek will last forever.
It's not a better situation, if anything it's worse.
2005 was bleak but just months later we got news of the 2009 movie reboot.
We can't just point to the lowest of the low in the franchise history and be satisfied that "we aren't that low yet!"
Chasing that streaming idea was a mistake.
How is it worse? There are years of virtually guaranteed new Star Trek ahead of us. Yeah, we got wind of a movie in early stages months after Enterprise ended. How does that compare?
I don’t know. Feels better to me than being depressed about the state of the franchise, but maybe I’m just not bitter enough.
Star Trek is never airing on a network again. But even if it somehow did, it certainly wouldn't get a full length season, which by today's standards can be eighteen episodes. Space operas are too expensive for the networks to sink that much into one, and the kind of cost cutting measures that the cop or hospital shows which dominate the network lineup can enact wouldn't be applicable. IE, cop shows can get the support of the actual police department or law enforcement agency the show is based on, which can translate into the show saving money by obtaining authentic uniforms or equipment or even actual personnel appearing in the show. Or hospital shows can by tons of hospital scrubs in bulk to save on costume costs. A Star Trek show can't do that, there is no real Starfleet to lend its support and resources to the show and being in a different time period or even different planets all costumes will have to be made from scratch. There are no real world clothes they can use on the show. And if they did, fandom will cry they're being lazy and unimaginative. like they did with the first season of Picard or Ron Moore's BSG.
And of course, the only space opera show to air on an American network in the past decade was The Orville, and that only got the greenlight because its creator had pull with the network it aired on. And even then, it only managed two seasons of a dozen episodes each. Star Trek on a network can't be expected to do much more than that, even with Kirk and Spock and even if it did get good ratings.
Your history is inaccurate. News of Trek XI didn't start circulating until April 2006, nearly a year after Enterprise ended.
The only other alternative for Star Trek on television would be cable, and even modern cable is only doing ten episodes or less.
A season is what ever the folks in charge say it is.
That's what I was saying a few pages back. Otherwise the writers really have no need to stay on the USS Canon, do they?
Considering how the movies have been, I don't think we'll see a full length feature with the SNW cast, and if I'm wrong, it'll suck.
They can end with Kirk "getting the keys" but they don't need show the WNMHGB characters to do that. Heck, Dehner's new to the ship in WNMHGB, she should be the last of those characters that we see.
Fans need something to complain about.
But, yes, this is a far better state than the whimper of an end with the dismal series of Enterprise.
exactly. thats why i said end it with her. give us a few episodes of gary and lee under pike maybe, do a little time skip, let kirk take over for an adventure for episode 6, maybe not even show her, but show kirk going over the transfer logs for his new command. but definitely give us some gary and lee, dammit!
I agree, the entire "comicon" area of entertainment is struggling now, and indeed all professional entertainment. Doctor Who has just been shut down for at least 2 years
In the 90s we used to bemoan things like preempting (in the US), or getting episodes years behind (in the UK).
But things were built because we had strong viewing figures on television, and if you got a slot you had that golden ticket, just fill your 20-30 episodes a year on a budget and you're set. OK occasionally you'll get a bottle episode, or worse Shades of Grey (even Friends had regular flashback episodes), but you had the time for that.
Now there's so much choice and competition for viewing, viewing figures across the entire industry are down dramatically. Every minute of TV has to be a hit because it's so rare, and building that fan base is very difficult when you're generating 30 episodes in 3 and a half years, rather than 80+ episodes in that time.
Some of us were naive, and felt that if you could pay for the programs you wanted that would guarantee their future. Firefly was mentioned above, its demise was blamed on the schedulers, and they certainly didn't help, but it still pulled in over 4 million an episode in the US, and that wasn't worth it. Nowadays that would put it in the top 10 each week and ahead of the top-most scripted shows like Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage and NCIS. There's not much more scripted that gets to 2 million in the US. Its a long time since 2004
Turns out that very few people are willing to pay even the tiny amounts that streaming charge let alone the funding needed for a TV show. People aren't even willing to watch scripted broadcast TV shows now. Broadcast TV is just 21% of consumption - mostly news programs. streaming scripted is low too, netflix gets 7.5%, and I suspect from what it tells me is trending in the UK that's mainly people watch TV from the "golden age" of c. 1980 through 2010.
On top of that, the ad revenue that TV used to get was pretty much all the advertising revenue pie. That now mainly goes to webpages and youtube. That leaves subscription fees as the main income, and people whine about paying $10 a month for that
Scripted tv is pretty much hopeless unless it’s modern procedural shows with cheap/no set costs, with a changing cast if they get picky over their contracts. Viewing figures and advertising revenue that flops in the 00s were cancelled for would be top ratings today, but still make less money.
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Good. Anything more than 12 episodes is a slog to watch.
Plus some actors prefer it, they're not worked as hard. A happy actor is a better actor.
I disagree they're trying to get rid of Star Trek, they care more about saving money.
Broadcast and especially linear cable are in a catastrophic decline, with almost no one who isn't AARP-eligible watching anything now (other than sports). The highest-rated shows now pull less viewers than TNG at its height.
I think Paramount would have been better off going the Sony route and just being a content studio, but they had to offer Trek on streaming.
Great post, very insightful. Some figures here I wasn’t as deeply familiar with. Thank you!
This. The negative perception that Paramount hates Trek is fucking ridiculous.
Even 12 is pushing it.
Fun fact: there's no minimum age for joining AARP and you can be eligible before you hit 50.
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