Avoiding Franchise Fatigue
- Thread starter The Overlord
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It's one of the great myths put about mostly by people eager to avoid taking any personal responsibility for their part in Star Trek's prior collapse, that the audience simply got bored with the concept of the franchise. I remember in the 90s being absolutely bowled over by the awesome casting of TNG's captain, and the touching meaningful stories that the show seemed to be able to make on a weekly basis. All rounded out by a warm welcoming vibe of watching a crew of friends who liked each other, and in turn the audience could also like. My memory is that when this was what represented Star Trek, it was flying high and adored by millions.
As I watched every single thing that came after TNG, I can see the clear fissures that were either deliberately and accidently inserted into the later series, and that strayed hugely from this popular formula. Had it been maintained though, I sincerely believe Trek could have quite easily enjoyed a continuous run from 1987 to the present day.
As I watched every single thing that came after TNG, I can see the clear fissures that were either deliberately and accidently inserted into the later series, and that strayed hugely from this popular formula. Had it been maintained though, I sincerely believe Trek could have quite easily enjoyed a continuous run from 1987 to the present day.
I highly doubt it. You don't get an unending streak of decades long popularity by only ever doing the exact same thing over and over again. New shows have to stray from the formula to keep things fresh.
(And in the rare cases where a formula does manage to keep you on the air for that long, you become widely known as pure televised junk food - see soap operas/the Simpsons).
Nothing wrong with formulas. Well executed and done to a high standard they can make for great TV. Far too many people on here take themselves and Star Trek way too seriously. It might sound like the arty or intellectual thing to say "oh yes, the just HAD to go dark with DS9" etc. Just look where this urge to move away from what worked led us though - one continuous line graph drop from 92 and DS9 onwards. The only other help Trek required to stay on top was writers and producers from non sci-fi backgrounds with an eye for human drama and character development, not cheap genre story devices ie Braga et al. That was the other major nail in the coffin.
They can, for a while. People get bored with them eventually. Everything changes with time, especially entertainment. Even the the procedurals and sitcoms had to change their formulas to stay relevant over the past two decades, and those are the literal epitome of formula tv.
And nobody says DS9 had to go dark, it just had to be its own thing. As Voyager and Enterprise unquestionably should have been as well (which I would argue is another major reason why Trek fell out - because those two shows spent a huge portion of their runtime trying to be TNG part 2/3 and totally failing to make it work). Otherwise you wind up in CSI/Law and Order territory, at which point, who cares if its still around when every new show just feels like a pale shadow of what you've already seen? And then it still runs its course, anyway, because even those shows don't last decades.
He has a point. The problem before was that every show was exactly the same except DS9. I could barely make it through Voyager because it felt like a sleezy crappy version of TNG. Same with the first season of ENT. Make the shows different and you have something good and people won't feel they already seen this.
I've been reading variations on a lot of what you are saying for 20 years on this site. There was no evidence in my mind though that it had reached the point of becoming tiresome to the public. Season 6 of TNG was a real creative zenith for the franchise. What followed in season 7 and the spin offs was often inferior casting, setting or writing. That's what truly killed Trek.
Dr. Who has been a remarkably versatile show. What lessons can be learned from it?
Trek didn't die. It took a few years break while new ideas got pitched. A break of 3 or 4 years is not a bad thing. ENT died early because the mistakes made earlier in its run had been corrected too late. By season 4 nothing would have saved it, save maybe Jeri Ryan in body paint.
ENT could have been the new idea that would have revived the franchise for the next couple of decades, but the powers that B could not get out of their umwelt. The job fell to Abrams instead. The show has to be reinvented every so often while still remaining true to the basic framework. And a few years break is good for that. The same will happen with CBS's plans, eventually.
Take a long break now and then, change out the creative team and show runners periodically. change out the actors often.
Not counting the soaps, the German crime show Tatori has been running continuously since 1970. They've managed to do that in part by having different parts of the show handled by different cities, etc which keeps things from being too stale. Trek has this huge panoply of time that they can simularly work with.
Accusing DS9 of inferior casting or writing is really kind of hilarious. Just because it wasn't what you wanted doesn't mean it was bad. It was actually rather ahead of its time in a number of ways, and it had head for head the best cast Trek has ever seen.
As for the creative zenith, sure, whatever, if you liked it the best. Maybe it was even the popularity high point (though I wonder at the accuracy of that). But TNG was winding down, either way. Actors don't stick around forever. It had to be replaced with something, and trying to replace it with the exact same thing only with new actors is not a recipe for long-term success. In fact, much (most?) of the bad writing I saw on Voy and ENT came directly from their attempts to ape TNG. Those shows were always at their best when they were actually doing something different (like ENT's Andorian/Vulcan arc).
DS9 had one of the best supporting casts I've ever seen, anywhere, in any genre. It lent a certain richness to Trek none of the other classic series had. That's something pretty much impossible to implement consistently using a purist TNG model.
That seems like rather self-promoting implicit praise of DS9 but not really accurate; pretty-different-from-TNG DS9 decreased viewers at the same rate as pretty-similar Voyager did. General audiences either don't think pretty-different is necessarily that much new & fresher or didn't like the new direction/style.
His other idea that bringing in new people makes things fresher also seems exaggerated; ST09 actually, tonally and stylistically (and storywise) wasn't that different from Enterprise and Nemesis but in part just from having new people make it the film may have felt like it was-and regardless, general audiences got pretty tired and unimpressed with that style and storyline pretty quickly.
Yes the market overall seems more accepting of niche products and thus not having a huge amount of viewers isn't so damaging. But Paramount/CBS still seems to have pretty high expectations and/or greed with regard to ST, what with, as with Voyager on UPN, expecting Discovery to anchor its own streaming service rather than be one show on an existing streaming service (be it netflix, hulu or amazon).
Second this. Marc Alaimo (Dukat), Andrew Robinson (Garak), Jeffrey Coombs (Weyoun), J.G. Mertzer (Martok) - just to name a few gave excellent performances on DS9. I agree their characters are able to shine and become memorable because of DS9's serialized model.
Doctor Who is funded with tax money
The Next Generation proved that they could do a Doctor Who, and replace the main cast, give the sets a new design, and tell new stories you couldn't have done before.
When Discovery outlives its fan interest, they can tell a new story, on a new ship, with a new crew. They also have the option to move to a different era. If they are sensible, the world-building being done for the Picard show, can establish itself and win over fans, so what comes after Discovery, could be great.
I thought they'd already been doing that all along throughout classic DW.
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