Well, I think most people would disagree with you: James actually has gotten better over the years. (It's also important to remember that James has very limited opportunity to play Kirk; he does the character for a week or two just once a year pretty much. Not much opportunity to gather a lot of experience with the character.)
Phase II is in an interesting position right now. We are trying to convince various parties exactly how much interest there is in our episodes. Specifically, we're trying to provide an accurate estimation of how many eyes we get on each episode. When people "download it and pass it around," we don't really have any proof of what our actual viewing numbers are. Our viewership numbers look crappier than they might actually be. So we try different delivery methods to provide better accounting. The good news is that demand for "Blood and Fire" has been high and the support, enthusiasm, and viewership of this latest episode has far surpassed all our other episodes.
So, for the time being, accurate viewership numbers are more important to us than high viewership numbers. Please bear with the inconvenient (but more auditable) delivery method for the time being.
