Does Star Trek Need a Fresh Take to be Successful?

[Dukhat]

The big difference between TOS (or the TOS movies) and the TNG shows was that the TNG shows were just dull. Being boring is the cardinal sin of any show and they committed that sin way too often.

And yet TNG got the highest ratings of any Star Trek series. Which just goes to show that one individual's opinion about how boring a show is doesn't equate to the reality of television production.

 

[xortex]

Retro-50's is the way to go with Star Trek with togle switches and psychodelic minimalism. No rubber foreheads. A new premise would be nice and a threat to Earth - you know campy shit. WWIII set us way back.

 

[Trekkin]

TPTB should also be willing to drop ideas that just aren't working out, none of us enjoy admitting when we've made a mistake, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet.

I know that there are fans on this board who cry out "don't listen to your audience" but to a degree they should. If social media is absolutely screaming "get rid of this arc, or that character, TPTB should at least step back and consider that they might be going in the wrong direction.

No, you're not ever going to make everyone happy, but the bulk of your audience should be.

I agree with this...to a degree. Feedback and criticism should be listened to. But I don't think social media is a great way to gauge your audience.

Ryan Murphy and his friends at Glee (and AHS to a degree) have ended up writing their series that way. Fan hated characters get dropped, favourites get more focus etc. The problem is that caving like that:
a) derailed any planned storyline, resulting in slapdash plots.
b) The ratings declined anyway. A combination of said slapdash plots, and the loudest fans on social media not necessarily speaking for the majority of viewers.

It doesn't help that most fans aren't writers. They underestimate just what their 'advice' will look like if it's actually heeded. A person claiming 'we want more of x' one day, will be screeching 'there's too much of x! Remember when they used to pay attention to y?' the next.

Hell, Season 4 of Enterprise was entirely an attempt to appease fans demands. Whether you think it improved on the previous seasons or not, it still wasn't a great show. It just became so fanwanky that it only humoured hardcore Trekkies, and even parts of that little viewership were just watching to mock it or dropped off.

...and I'm saying that as somone who didn't mind Enterprise.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I have to agree, actually, with Rick Berman about the soundtrack not being the star in a series. A lot of times, you'll get this melodic soundtrack and it's like ... what the hell is it making such a fuss about? Tone that down a little bit, you're making the scene seem almost laughable, you're giving it so much import. I prefer the subtle, when it comes to musical cues. I understand this does not make for great listening when you're buying the soundtrack, later, but ... in the actual show, that balance is very hard to reach with a bombastic orchestra. TOS got away with it because it was so camp. It just married, really, with the rest of the overthetopness of it all.

 

[JTShanks]

6) Size(the numbers) doesn't matter. It's not the time period, the speed of the ships, number of casts, scale of conflicts, etc that get people. It's what you do with it. If you establish a coherent and dynamic vision of the future, it doesn't matter if your lead is a pizza delivery man in the year 2200-2400-3000.

Heh. The next series just wrote itself. Turn the Enterprise into a galactic pizza delivery ship who spends half it's time delivering pizzas, and the other half running around the Alpha Quadrant having their doctor treating all the aliens who get sick from eating a human food they didn't know they couldn't handle.

It could be a comedy.

Two Kirks, A Khan and a Pizza Place.

Starring Captain Kirk, Kirk Cameron and Khan Noonien Sighn.

A Rick Berman production.

 

[Mudd]

I think these new movies are just that... a fresh take on it.

Yep.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Star Trek is successful, and there have been five fresh takes on the original story (six if you count the first six films with the original cast).

I think things are moving along rather swimmingly.