But Mercer and Calhoun aren't alike at all...
Finally Starting "New Frontier" - 10 years later!
- Thread starter Frontier
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I didn't say they were. What I meant was I got a similar vibe from The Orville as I got from (early, pre-Restoration) New Frontier -- crews with off-kilter characters and similar interpersonal dynamics, as well as storytelling with similar off-beat sensibilities though still in the late-90s Star Trek vein.
Yeah, I guess so but only on a very basic level. I still much, much prefer New Frontier over The Orville, even the rougher parts of New Frontier.
I'm on the Blind Man's bluff book. Its the only Star Trek series where all the OC are better than the canon characters of TNG. Calhoun makes Picard look boring, plus for once, human characters do not dominate the stories. I get the sense Peter David mocks some of the canon things that happened on TV via his NF universe.
If The Orville can match 20 years of New Frontier it's fans will be some of the luckiest ever.
I don't think I want The Orville to go on for twenty years. Simply a good show, with a decent run (3-4 seasons) is all I need.
After forty-five years, Star Trek (outside of the original and the Abrams films) all feels like it is running together.
M
marlboro
Guest
Hey, it worked for TOS.
Why does it need to be ambitious? Why can't it run for a period of time, tell the stories it wants to tell, be entertaining, then sail off into the sunset? Not everything needs to be a franchise, and not everything needs to be beaten to death until you can't stand it.
But... I really want to see the adventures of Chief Newton on Union Space Nine some day.
Yeah, I don't really see 3-4 seasons as a decent run, I'd see a decent run as 5. 4 is OK, but 3 is barely even successful to me.
The fact is, the majority of series get cancelled after 1-2 seasons, if not less. The longer-running series leave more of an impression in our memories, creating the illusion that they're the norm, but they're really the exception. A 3-season run is actually a moderate success, 4 seasons is quite good, and 5 or more is pretty uncommon.
Heck, when I was growing up, it was exceedingly rare for a science fiction or fantasy series to make it more than a season or two. A 3-year run like Star Trek or Lost in Space was impressive, and 5 years was exceptional. Heck, prior to Star Trek: The Next Generation, the only live-action American SF/fantasy shows I know of that lasted longer than 5 years were Adventures of Superman, Bewitched, and Dark Shadows. And there were only a few with 5-year runs, including The Twilight Zone, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Incredible Hulk. Genre fans today don't realize how lucky they are to have so many long-running shows.
Not even Dark Shadows, which premiered on June 26, 1966, and ended on April 2, 1971. So, just shy of 5 years. They did ~260 episodes a year, so they racked up 1225 episodes, but all done in under 5 years. (I recently finished watching everything from episode 200 (just before the introduction of Barnabas) to the end on Amazon Prime, so it’s very fresh in my mind.)
Hmm, Wikipedia says it ran for 6 seasons, but looking over the episode list, it seems that it ran pretty much straight through with few breaks, so I'm not sure how they're even defining "seasons."
Either way, though, that means only about a half-dozen pre-1987 genre shows I know of that lasted more than 4 seasons, and not many that even made it past 3.
Wow, that is crazy. I knew it was a daily soap and that was why it had so many episodes, but I didn't realize they were all done in such a short time.
Watching Dark Shadows is like watching a daily 20-minute improv theatre piece, five days a week, 52 weeks a year — especially fun when they started flitting through time and into parallel universes, with the same actors portraying different characters. It was often terrible, but there were enough brilliant moments to make it worthwhile.
Finished his Captain's Table story. Boy that was a good read. A way more interesting mutiny than Pike's in Burning Dreams. What happened to the captain was just brutal and I don't blame him at all for his actions.
The only thing that confused me was the term, "XO" referring to the late night captain. I always thought the XO and commander were the same things
The only thing that confused me was the term, "XO" referring to the late night captain. I always thought the XO and commander were the same things
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