Does the new streaming concept ruin Star Trek?

[Headless_Hysteria]

There is a failure of imagination with the streaming format. They are way too attached to the mystery box season long format. When that's not the only way to tell stories, prestige or otherwise. A lot of the stories told under the mystery box format would have been better off with half the episodes.

Nothing should stop them from doing 3 seasons of 15 episodes each, and a tv movie, for episodic content.

Nothing should stop them from making miniseries that are 6 episodes in length. That 8 miniseries for the same budget of 5 seasons, especially if the sets are reused for each of them to tell stories in the same era.

And as for the 3-episode miniarcs, they just have not done it. TNG & DS9 pioneered the concept, but ENT perfected it and showed how well it could work with interconnected miniarcs. But streaming Trek has not taken advantage of it.

I don't need 20 episodes. I need them to step out of the box they've put themselves in.

 

[Fire(BOO!)]

We'll have to revisit this in 2036. (Disclaimer: I may well not be around by then.)

I’m an artist, a writer, and a musician. I make things with my own hands. My stance on AI slop isn’t going to change.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I’m an artist, a writer, and a musician. I make things with my own hands. My stance on AI slop isn’t going to change.

That's fine, but the nature of the game is changing before your eyes. Current models are allowing people to produce videos and SFX that would have cost them tens of thousands of dollars a decade ago, and the models are only going to get better. If you can write a solid story, in ten years you'll be able to make a feature-length movie out of it for peanuts. Hollywood is cooked.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I haven't bothered to get B5 on DVD (although I see that you can get the entire series, and the movies, and Crusade, for under $84), although I might someday do so. But I certainly enjoyed it, and it's arguably the ultimate example of long-form, closed-ended storytelling (i.e., a 5-year-long miniseries).

But B5 is not ST. JMS is not the Great Bird. And what worked for B5 doesn't work for ST.

 

[Starflight]

That's fine, but the nature of the game is changing before your eyes. Current models are allowing people to produce videos and SFX that would have cost them tens of thousands of dollars a decade ago, and the models are only going to get better. If you can write a solid story, in ten years you'll be able to make a feature-length movie out of it for peanuts. Hollywood is cooked.

I'm very excited about the potential but no video model right now that I know of really enables you to create something truly "yours". I've been playing around with Minimax H3 locally and trying to chain together clips to make a TV episode and while you can feasibly do it, you're still just not really in control of the final output, even with your own extensive hand-made keyframes, reference images, and audio files.

Where it definitely might take off is when we can do things like build our own sets IRL as little diorama models and have the model "understand" it as a life-size 3D space, so you can film yourself acting in your living room and the model will be able to transfer your performance to your own handmade set. At that point we're getting much closer to people really making things that are theirs, rather than half-theirs, half-generative AI doing w/e it feels like based on prompts.

 

[Fire(BOO!)]

Hollywood is cooked.

 

[Harper3.0]

That's fine, but the nature of the game is changing before your eyes. Current models are allowing people to produce videos and SFX that would have cost them tens of thousands of dollars a decade ago, and the models are only going to get better. If you can write a solid story, in ten years you'll be able to make a feature-length movie out of it for peanuts. Hollywood is cooked.

I have to agree. If the studios can get the same digital effects with only a few people overseeing it, that's what they're going to do.

I can't stand "AI." I don't like the idea of software taking people's job away, either.

However, I can't help but wonder how many matte painters, model makers, and practical effects artists lost their jobs to "progress" when digital became the cheaper option for studios.

 

[Frontis]

Just storytelling of its time.

This doesn't mean that it's good storytelling.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

This doesn't mean that it's good storytelling.

I’ve been entertained by Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds. Does that make the writing good or bad? Who knows?

Like most other things, ask ten different fans what good writing is and you’ll come away with twelve different answers.

 

[Frontis]

In DS9 they managed to produce 20 top episodes per season, now in SNW season 4 maybe 5 out of 10 are top.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

In DS9 they managed to produce 20 top episodes per season, now in SNW season 4 maybe 5 out of 10 are top.

A subjective analysis that is difficult to base an argument on. I would disagree with that assessment of SNW and there are heathens that would say DS9 was of low quality. Good or bad quality of an episode will always be in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

In DS9 they managed to produce 20 top episodes per season, now in SNW season 4 maybe 5 out of 10 are top.

Eh? I’ve been rewatching DS9 recently. There is some good stuff there but they were producing nowhere near 20 top episodes per year. I think roughly 8 to 10 per year were top shelf, with the rest being filler.

One of those things where it kinda all blends together and we’re remembering more high points than were actually there.

 

[Harper3.0]

In DS9 they managed to produce 20 top episodes per season, now in SNW season 4 maybe 5 out of 10 are top.

I'd probably be inclined to agree with you, but I love DS9. There are scores of people that would say we're insane. While there are those outliers where most people agree an episode is good or bad, so much of it is down to individual tastes.

 

[Starflight]

there are heathens that would say DS9 was of low quality

Hi!

 

[bdub76]

DS9 does looks dated today and needs the love that TNG received.

The reality is that we need some good Star Trek. I didn't realize how bad the new stuff is until I saw Voyage Home in the theatre last weekend with a TOS episode. It's definitely lost it way that changing up episode counts won't resolve on its own.

 

[fireproof78]

A subjective analysis that is difficult to base an argument on. I would disagree with that assessment of SNW and there are heathens that would say DS9 was of low quality. Good or bad quality of an episode will always be in the eye of the beholder.

And quantity doesn't mean more quality. Ds9 is certainly an enjoyable but it was not a hundred percent good and there was a lot towards the end I skipped.

 

[CovePhanTom]

Hollywood is cooked.

Not even remotely, no.

 

[Harper3.0]

DS9 does looked dated today and needs the love that TNG received.

The reality is that we need some good Star Trek. I didn't realize how bad the new stuff is until I saw Voyage Home in the theatre last weekend with a TOS episode. It's definitely lost it way that changing up episode counts won't resolve on its own.

I've never felt that any of the "TNG Era" shows looked dated, but I'm so biased that I can't have an objective opinion. That's my era. I feel at home in those shows, on those ships, with those characters. But It's been 25 years since Voyager ended. And 21 for Enterprise.

I remember getting the "Star Trek 30th Anniversary" magazine in 1996. I would have been 15 years old at the time, and 1966 seemed so far away. Well, here we are 30 years later, and somehow 1996 doesn't seem like that long ago. But to the kids that are 15 years old now? They're in the same boat I was back then.

Everything changes. I can't pretend I like it all. But some kid will discover Star Trek through Discovery, or Strange New Worlds, or Starfleet Academy, and they'll find the rest of it, too. And they'll be one of us. Maybe they'll even come to see the value in more structured, traditional forms of storytelling that most of us older folks love so much.

 

[bdub76]

Everything changes. I can't pretend I like it all. But some kid will discover Star Trek through Discovery, or Strange New Worlds, or Starfleet Academy, and they'll find the rest of it, too. And they'll be one of us. Maybe they'll even come to see the value in more structured, traditional forms of storytelling that most of us older folks love so much.

I've been reading a lot of older stuff, and I've started watching much older programming. The storytelling I find generally better despite the shoddy special effects and awful haircuts compared to what's coming out today.

Today, if I want to see any innovation, I have to watch horror. If Star Trek should borrow from anything, it's horror.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

Today, if I want to see any innovation, I have to watch horror. If Star Trek should borrow from anything, it's horror.

SNW did with “The Griffin Incident”. Banger of an episode.