2012 pilots

[Temis the Vorta]

I don't know anything about the game, but the setting of the book and show is definitely interesting - post-WWII, focused on the story of two buddies from the Marines, one of which (played by Jon Bernthal) becomes an LA cop and the other (played by Milo Ventimiglia) who becomes a lawyer/fixer for the local mob.

 

[BillJ]

Not a thing listed that I find even remotely interesting.

 

[Kronos]

What a bunch of dreck.

Oh well, with nothing new and Suburgatory getting deleted from my DVR, a lot of free time for old stuff on Netflix

 

[The Green Mushroom]

At the rate we are getting these [Generic Actor] Comedy Projects about living life in a [Generic Setting], I am now taking bets on how long we have to wait for someone to propose the Untitled Thomas Crapper Project, a heartwarming sit-com about a young executive at a toilet company who must deal with a boss who holds all meetings in the men's room and insists on holding office while never leaving the corner stall.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

[...] If JJ wants to do TV, he should talk to CBS about reviving Star Trek.

Apparently Bryan Fuller has talked to Bryan Singer and Abrams about launching a new Trek series after Abrams' second movie.

Sounds like the bad science websites need to be prepared for the deluge...

 

[lennier1]

Sounds like there are only three shows in there which sound even remotely interesting (Last Resort, Frontier, Rogue), and the third one heavily depends on it's executed.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

[...] If JJ wants to do TV, he should talk to CBS about reviving Star Trek.

Apparently Bryan Fuller has talked to Bryan Singer and Abrams about launching a new Trek series after Abrams' second movie.

Sounds like the bad science websites need to be prepared for the deluge...

That's just a bonus. I hope Fuller makes good on his promise to get Alfre Woodward as the new Starfleet captain.

 

[Photoman15]

Yes, because today's audiences are looking for that 60 year old Star Fleet Captain so they can project themselves into that character.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

You really think Star Trek fans are so narrow-minded? Maybe you are, but don't speak for the rest of us.

There's nothing wrong or unusual whatsoever with a 60 year old being an authority figure. Edward James Olmos was 62 when he began playing Bill Adama, and I don't recall any complaints that he was too old for the role.

 

[Photoman15]

I didn't say Star Trek fans, I said "today's audiences", which is what they have to aim the show at to be a success. They already proved that you can't sustain a show with just Trek fans (ENTERPRISE).

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The TV audience today is predominately female, so you do raise a good point: how is Star Trek going to interest the female audience, without which, it's not going to survive for long?

One strategy is to cast a female authority figure for captain and have a good-looking guy as second in command. Alfre Woodward fits in very nicely here. (And Bryan Fuller seems to be particularly adept at creating female-skewing shows like Pushing Daisies, but that may be simply because he generally goes for fantasy rather than sci fi.)

Another strategy is to make an attempt to attract the elusive male audience that has disproportionately abandoned TV altogether. The Walking Dead has done a great job of this, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's done so with video-game-style hyper-violence (video games being one of the main reasons TV has lost the male demographic).

The downside is that you have to keep the violence revved up, because when the characters get settled in one place and spend a lot of time talking, the audience gets restive. The first half of this past season took a lot of heat for that, and the ratings did dip some, and then surged for the insanely violent final run of episodes.

Or, to ensure maximum odds of success, combine both strategies. Cast Alfre Woodward as the starship captain with a hot guy as second in command and throw more graphically violent stuff at them than we've ever seen in Star Trek. Even broadcast is more violent nowadays, and the series would probably end up on cable anyway.

A "dark" show like that doesn't need to be dreary. The Starfleet people could be basically idealistic, a cohesive team built under fire. The female audience will like that. The male audience will like seeing the Borg chopping off arms and legs while their victims thrash around and scream. It's a win-win!

I'm actually quite serious about this - I think a show like that would get a lot of attention (wow, Star Trek isn't boring anymore!) while not going out of bounds of what the core values of the franchise.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

For that matter, the networks are having trouble holding onto any viewers.

It is the police procedural that has network executives scratching their heads this season: The Case of the Disappearing Viewers.

Across the television landscape, network and cable, public television and pay cable, English-language and Spanish, viewing for all sorts of prime-time programming is down this spring — chiefly among the most important audience for the business, younger adults.

In the four television weeks starting March 19, NBC lost an average of 59,000 viewers (about 3 percent) in that 18-to-49 age category compared with the same period last year, CBS lost 239,000 (8 percent), ABC lost 681,000 (21 percent) and Fox lost 709,000 (20 percent).

NBC did the "best" because they had the fewest to begin with. But it's easy to see why everyone is bailing - the shows suck! Good God! This past season has been the worst that I can remember. I watch three shows on broadcast now, and one of them I'm still watching mainly because I know it'll be cancelled soon, might as well watch it while I can. (I'm aware that makes no sense.) And I'm probably being more generous than most people in what I consider watchable.

Maybe broadcast does need Star Trek. Have CBS Studios make it for NBC (back to its old home turf). Broadcast needs to take some risks to turn this accelerating disaster around. Audiences are bailing because they are bored.

 

[Photoman15]

The TV audience today is predominately female, so you do raise a good point: how is Star Trek going to interest the female audience, without which, it's not going to survive for long?

One strategy is to cast a female authority figure for captain and have a good-looking guy as second in command. Alfre Woodward fits in very nicely here.

The TV audience is NOT predominately female. It's still a mix, and any Sci-Fi show is going to skew towards a male audience anyway. If you go by past performance (over a 7 year period), a (strong) female captain is NOT going to keep an audience (*cough* Kathryn Janeway *cough*). Any new Trek is going to have to be reminiscent of original Trek. This means a male lead part of a three part main character grouping, circled by good secondary characters.

I don't know why you are pushing Alfre W, but I hope she does find some weekly work so you can get your fix . But as a Trek captain, I'd vote, no.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Last Resort looks promising, but I'm wondering...

Spoiler: premise

If this submarine has gone rogue, why isn't a fleet sent to destroy it? Surely a ship can be tracked.

 

[Beagleman]

Last Resort looks promising, but I'm wondering...

Spoiler: premise

If this submarine has gone rogue, why isn't a fleet sent to destroy it? Surely a ship can be tracked.

Spoiler: premise

Probably because they have nukes and threaten to use them.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Those can be shot down, I would think. Assuming the location of origin isn't a secret (which I'm guessing it isn't).

 

[captcalhoun]

do you know how hard it is to hit a missile flying at several times the speed of sound with another missile flying at several times the speed of sound?

it's very. fucking. hard.

to put it in terms you'll easily grasp, imagine someone pitching from the mound and someone at third base throwing another ball and trying to hit the pitcher's ball.

now imagine that happening at mach 6.

yeah.

the way to kill an ballistic missile is early in the boost phase before it gets much speed going and to do that, you need to know where the damn thing's coming from. and to know that, you need to find the launch platform. and if we're talking an SSBN, good luck, the US Navy has them built quiet precisely to make it damned hard to find. they're so quiet they could (and probably have) sneak up on a pair of whales humping.

 

[lennier1]

Exactly! That's pretty much why stuff like the Phalanx system exists. Throw a shitload of metal in the direction of an oncoming target and hope that some of it will end up where it can do some damage. Once a semi-/supersonic target has reached its cruise velocity, the chances of taking it out will decrease drastically.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The TV audience is predominantly female because the US population is predominantly female (a tad above 50/50). Don't you think the TV audience reflects the larger society?

Even beyond that, the loss of the male demographic from TV has been reported for years now as a slow but definite process. Anybody who works in advertising can tell you that men are getting harder and harder to reach via non-sports TV.

From Nielsen:

females averaged close to nine minutes more per month on average than males in the 18-49 brackets, and about 18 minutes more in the 50-plus bracket

And this includes sports, which of course skews heavily male. That means if you delete sports viewing, the female skew for scripted drama is even heavier. And scripted drama is what we're talking about here.

You can also infer this skew from the broadcast shows that are surviving this season. Here's a list of the new 2011-12 dramas that are renewed or are likely to be: Revenge, Once Upon a Time, Smash, Grimm, Person of Interest, Touch, The Secret Circle. I've at least sampled all of those, and overall they strike me as calibrated to female tastes, some of them blatantly so. None of them seem particularly calibrated to male tastes (which doesn't mean that men can't watch them of course, well except for Smash. )

Of course the situation is different from one channel to the next, especially if you include cable. So I'll just reiterate what I've said many times before - there's no way to say what the next Star Trek series "should be" until we know where it's showing. What the CW demands is far different from what Showtime does. Alfre Woodward's employment as captain depends entirely on this factor, as does everything else about this theoretical series. If it's on Showtime, Alfre is good to go. If it's the CW, get her granddaughter's agent on the phone.

 

[Roger Wilco]

That's just a bonus. I hope Fuller makes good on his promise to get Alfre Woodward as the new Starfleet captain.

I didn't know who she is, before looking her up on wikipedia, but wow, has she got a shitload of Emmy nominations (and wins) for a shitload of different shows. If that's not a record it must be close.