Did Star Trek Jump the Shark?

[hbquikcomjamesl]

TOS jumped with Spock's Brain.
Not sure about TNG,
DS9 jumped when the Dominion War arc supplanted the original "crossroads of the galaxy" premise.
Not sure about VOY.
ENT jumped when the Xindi arc lasted more than half a season.
The theatrical films jumped when Nero attacked the ship on which "Geordie" Kirk (to use Diane Carey's nickname for him) was serving.

 

[F. King Daniel]

If Star Trek "jumped the shark", there would no longer be a Star Trek. But we've got a big budget movie coming in a year or two, monthly novels and comics and even another videogame planned for next year.

Trek survived "Spock's Brain", "The Omega Glory", "The Magicks of Megas Tu", "Justice", "Sub Rosa", "Threshold", "The Fight", "A Night in Sickbay", "Fusion", "Bound"..... there is no level of stupidity, awfulness or no daft stunt Trek hasn't already survived. It is invincible.

 

[MacLeod]

^As I understand it the phrase "Jumping the Shark" marks the point in a show where an idea indroduced to in esseDSN's stronger episodes where during the Dominion war arc. So it didn't jump the shark

 

[bbailey861]

No, Star Trek has not 'jumped the shark". While there have been some pretty bad individual episodes in each of the Trek worlds, they did not remain 'bad' in perpetuity.

 

[Captrek]

I don’t like Voyager, Insurrection, or Nemesis. By the time VOY ended its run I was pretty down on the franchise. I still watched every first-run VOY episode, but it felt more like a religious duty than a pleasure. I went into ENT with negative expectations and lost interest after two episodes. I didn’t see NEM in the theater and didn’t see it at all until a few years ago. I saw the franchise as having jumped the shark after the conclusion of DS9.

A couple of years ago I gave ENT another chance and enjoyed it a lot. It may not be on the same level as TOS, TNG, and DS9, but I like it a lot more than VOY.

 

[RaymondJames]

How many sharks are we counting? All kidding aside, this question can't be answered briefly, it is a dang thesis paper. I love all my Star Trek babies even the one named Enterprise that I don't acknowledge. I think every series had its great episodes, its good episodes and its BLAH episodes, some had more in the positive spec than in the negative. I loved TNG, it might just be my favorite because it was fairly consistant in its 7 year run but the first 2 movies rocked, the later two did not. Nemesis especially was bad in my opinion, certain parts were amazing but those few parts couldn't save that movie.

 

[BrownShatner]

If you had to pick a single defining Jump the Shark moment, I would go with the "bridge on the Captain" Kirk death scene in Generations.

The nadir of modern Star Trek was right around 1994-96, after TNG went off the air. Plodding early seasons of DS9 and VOY (both got better later on), and ST:Generations, which was an awful movie.

Ironically, this was the point when Star Trek was at peak popularity. The producers did a terrible job exploiting the good will and popularity of TNG. They recovered with First Contact, but the TV series lost momentum and it was a long slide down in the ratings afterwards.

 

[plynch]

Compare early Happy Days to later SuperFonz eps.

Compare "Where No Man Has Gone Before" to "Spock's Brain."

That's an abberation, though. Much of S3 was good, imo. A step back towards S1, even, what with the elimination of the comedy vibe. Jump the shark is a point where you can clearly say a series is now way dif from what it was, or way worse.

Maybe ENT as a jump, for the franchise as a whole.

No, it wasn't, upon further review.

 

[Trek Survivor]

How many sharks are we counting? All kidding aside, this question can't be answered briefly, it is a dang thesis paper.

Yes it can. It's really simple - a "jump the shark" moment would be a moment of the franchise where IT NEVER RECOVERED from whatever particular element was considered the "shark" moment.

Did it recover from "Spock's Brain"?
Did it recover from whatever other individual episode/movie you don't like? If the answer is "yes", then it NEVER jumped the shark.

If you had to pick a single defining Jump the Shark moment, I would go with the "bridge on the Captain" Kirk death scene in Generations.

The nadir of modern Star Trek was right around 1994-96, after TNG went off the air. Plodding early seasons of DS9 and VOY (both got better later on)

If they got better later on, then it wasn't a true "jump the shark" moment.

Why do people find it so hard to understand what the phrase actually means!?!

What people here are discussing are simply the "low points" of the franchise's history (as they perceive them - there certainly isn't universal acceptance). That's a whole different question.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Why do people find it so hard to understand what the phrase actually means!?!

Because "Happy Days" recovered from its actual "jump the shark" moment.

 

[Forbin]

Maybe ENT as a jump, for the franchise as a whole.

Voyager was a jump, Ent paid for it.

I'd go with this. Voyager may have been the classic "going to the well once too often." Enterprise was the classic beating of a dead horse.

 

[spooky spice]

QR-

I remember watching the episode of Happy Days where Fonzie was going to ski jump over a shark - and yes I did change channels during the commercial break and didn't bother to check to see if he survived.

In that respect -for me anyways- Star Trek (of any variety) never jumped the shark, as I never stopped caring what happens next

 

[Therin of Andor]

Because "Happy Days" recovered from its actual "jump the shark" moment.

No, it didn't. Richie left, Fonzie had adopted the Cunningham family as his own, Joanie went off to a spin-off with Chachie, then Richie's wife turned up as a regular (can't even remember her name) - and the worst crime, as far as I was concerned: in the final episode, Mr C talked about how proud he was of his "two children".

So whatever happened to Chuck??????????

I know that Chuck was dropped from the cast very early on, and the fans often used to ask "Whatever happened to Chuck?", but what a missed opportunity that the writers just pretended he was never there in the first place. Did they not offer the actor enough money to make a cameo? Nah they just ignored him.

"My Three Sons" did this, too. The eldest son moved away from home, a new youngest son was adopted, everyone moved up in rank, the new eldest son and his wife had "my three grandchildren, all at once" - but even the final episode the family failed to mention the existence of the original eldest son.

These days, the sitcoms take the opportunity to kill off the character and have a bittersweet grieving episode, or recast as a different actor (the return of John-Boy in the last year of "The Waltons"), but to just ignore the missing character like they were never there is... insulting.

 

[Trek Survivor]

Why do people find it so hard to understand what the phrase actually means!?!

Because "Happy Days" recovered from its actual "jump the shark" moment.

No, it really, really didn't. See Therin's excelleet summation above as to why!

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Because "Happy Days" recovered from its actual "jump the shark" moment.

No, it didn't. Richie left, Fonzie had adopted the Cunningham family as his own, Joanie went off to a spin-off with Chachie, then Richie's wife turned up as a regular (can't even remember her name) - and the worst crime, as far as I was concerned: in the final episode, Mr C talked about how proud he was of his "two children".

Yes, but these things happened two years after the infamous "jump the shark" moment. Two years during which the show was still very popular and not at all creatively bankrupt. So yes, "Happy Days" did recover from its "jump the shark" moment: the show's decline happened much later and was unconnected to the incident.

And who cares about Chuck? The character was dropped because he didn't work.

 

[Redfern]

I suspect poor ol' Chuck cared. He just went upstairs one episode never to be seen or mentioned again. Doomed b@st@rd must have fallen into of Amy Pond's "cracks in time" and erased from the Happy Days space/time continuum.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, it was originally written for William Shatner.

No kidding?

Kidding. But any middle-aged man who can fight off a couple of attackers, then hoist a full-grown three-breasted cat-woman over his head and throw her across the room is clearly a force to be reckoned with.

 

[plynch]

Happy Days suffered from the hairdo thing, that has a name, used to be on the JTS website, may it rest in peace. It's when the actors stop looking like from their period, especially women's hair. Joanie and Mrs.C. (and Richie's wife). Loretta Swit on MASH. At least Mary Ellen on Waltons. I don't know if they get to be stars enough to have it in their contracts that they don't want to look dated.

Kind of sexist, now that I think of it. BJ's mustache was way out of period for 1951, as was Hawkeye's hair from the beginning. Hotlips is a noticable change compared to her original look, though. If anyone knows the name of this modern hairstyle "marker" of a show's decline, throw it in. I'd like to remember it.

 

[Cyke101]

Trek was up and down more than once - that shark jumped and then jumped back over and over. It's still doing it.

And the answer comes in the first response. Trek is so long-lived that it's bound to jump, jump away from, rejump, and unjump the shark, no matter the show and no matter how many movies they make. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRBNyrL1lH8

(above: a clip of DS9 jumping repeatedly over many, many sharks)

 

[Maurice]

As to what "Jump the Shark" means...

"It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it 'Jumping the Shark.' From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same."

Jon Hein, creator of the now defunct website 'jumptheshark.com'​

I heard Henry Winkler on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me tell the story of how it came to pass:

WINKLER: ...I knew how to [water ski]. And my very short German parents would write me letters, and they would say: Tell the producers you know how to water ski... You could tell them that you could do this. I finally showed the producers the letter as a joke.

SAGAL: Because, wait a minute, your parents were, like, worried. You were the star of the most successful sitcom on television, and they were like, but maybe you can get a little more money if they know you can... Maybe he can make a success of himself if he can just water ski.

WINKLER: If I water ski, I will have it made in the shade.

...

SAGAL: All right, so you show the producers. This is back in the '70s. You show the producers the letter from your parents. Hey, I can water ski, you point out to them.

WINKLER: Yes.

SAGAL: So they come up with a story in which Fonzie has to water ski over sharks, over a tank of sharks?

WINKLER: Yes, I did. Well, I jumped over a shark. About that time, a guy named Jon Hein, who now has a radio show.

SAGAL: Yeah.

WINKLER: He was sitting in his dorm room with his good friend, and they came up with the expression, jump the shark.

SAGAL: Right. Because they decided that "Happy Days" at that point started to be less good, shall we say, than it used to be, and they said the moment when "Happy Days" started to go downhill is when Arthur Fonzarelli jumped the shark. And so jumping the shark became this universal phrase for the moment when something starts to go bad.

WINKLER: Yes.

SAGAL: How does it feel then to be the person who enacted now the single most important cultural indicator of impending decline?

WINKLER: I would like to say proud.

Not My Job segment of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, Sept. 10, 2007​