Spoilers First Reviews

[eschaton]

Two of the aforementioned series were very high budget streaming series that failed out of the gate. I never saw Ironheart, but The Acolyte only had 10% of its budget on screen, and suffered from nonsensical writing and editing. They might have succeeded with lower budgets and better writing.

I noped out of Disney Star Wars back in Book of Boba Fett. Just don't care about the franchise enough to bother.

Ironheart was mid, though I'm not sure I'd say the problems with the show were down to "bad writing" per se. The only huge mistake I think the show made was ending on a cliffhanger, as the showrunner should have understood by then that the vast majority of Disney+ MCU shows are one and done, and we weren't going to be finishing this story.

My biggest issue with Ironheart overall was the tonal whiplash. Like, Riri is from the South Side of Chicago, and this section of the show is really grounded in the experience - her neighborhood is poor, everyone is black, her best friend died from stray bullets when she was younger, etc. But the goofy MCU tone creeps in when it comes to say the gang of thieves she joins (which includes a drag queen hacker and a pair of Australian queer street fighters). The problem wasn't their sexuality, though - it's that they didn't feel rooted in the South Side Chicago story it supposedly wanted to tell Felt like it was designed by committee.

SFA makes sense abstractly on paper... at ~$3 million an episode. Had they repurposed other Toronto sets, hired promising upcoming unknowns, gone less "CW"... it might have easily broken even, served a niche, and brought some new people in.

A lot of the sunk cost was building sets even bigger than DS9, so the cost should be much lower for Season 2.

I meant the CW series, not the pulped film.

Has this really been covered by the chuds? I haven't seen them posting about this.

 

[James Cole]

It depends on what you mean by "failed". Triggered the trollish haters? Then yes.

Both were canceled on cliffhangers and became high profile failures.

Long story short, it's reasonable to compare SFA with other streaming shows in potentially similar situations...

I noped out of Disney Star Wars back in Book of Boba Fett. Just don't care about the franchise enough to bother.

Andor is worth it fwiw

 

[Fateor]

Batwoman never even came out, so we don't know if the writing is horrible.

Batwoman was a short lived CW show...

That said, there are plenty of shows with "bad writing" that didn't get the scorn of the chuds. Secret Invasion was the worst MCU show by far (certainly from a writing perspectiive), and they didn't give a fuck about it that. OTOH, She-Hulk was fine, and they attacked it based upon the opening trailer alone.

What the heck are you talking about? Secret Invasion was absolutely panned by everyone.

I was hitting more on easy targets for YouTube clickbait, but this probably does deserve some greater focus.

The CW model imploded when the Netflix output deal went away, and their series had to actually break even. Only one CW show is left -- and in its final season.

Two of the aforementioned series were very high budget streaming series that failed out of the gate. I never saw Ironheart, but The Acolyte only had 10% of its budget on screen, and suffered from nonsensical writing and editing. They might have succeeded with lower budgets and better writing.

SFA makes sense abstractly on paper... at ~$3 million an episode. Had they repurposed other Toronto sets, hired promising upcoming unknowns, gone less "CW"... it might have easily broken even, served a niche, and brought some new people in.

Instead it's throwing ~$10 million an episode at a format that has a history of repeated failure even at lower budget levels.

The ceiling on this thing starting out is likely 275 million watch minutes... and that's assuming peak DISCOVERY season 5 numbers and what SNW season 3 likely leveled off on.

If Kurtzman is especially lucky, it'll be a slow week for streaming, so they'll trend even with low numbers, a la S31.

Yup, at that per episode cost Academy needs both the "long time fans" and "new fans" to show up in numbers.

Except they set the show in the Discovery verse, which most "long time fans" are meh about.

 

[eschaton]

What the heck are you talking about? Secret Invasion was absolutely panned by everyone.

Yes, everyone, across the spectrum, agreed Secret Invasion sucked. But because everyone agreed, it dropped from discourse pretty much immediately.

My point is you mostly hear the "bad writing" complaint on the internet for a certain kind of show. There's a lot of absolute trashfires that vanish into the ether while leaving little mark.

Hell, we're seeing this in real time now with Stranger Things. Season 5's writing was yes, pretty bad in places (not Game of Thrones Season 8 bad, but still, a big move down). And a week or so out, it's still being talked about, but the consensus is already shifting to "Whatever, we still have the earlier seasons." There's no outrage, just disappointment (other than the insane Byler shippers/people who believe in the secret episode conspiracy).

 

[Tuskin38]

I noped out of Disney Star Wars back in Book of Boba Fett. Just don't care about the franchise enough to bother.

then you missed Andor, the best Star Wars series to ever exist

 

[Tuskin38]

I think it's kind of lame and uncreative, unless there's some within-universe explanation, like the Andorian named Jennifer that Mariner dated.

If a Klingon must be named Jay-Den, make it canonical his parents picked a human name for him, signifying the cultural shift by the 32nd century.

Did Kira’s name need an explanation? Or Jadzia? Those are real names.

Dax is as well. Though that’s more common as a first name, not surname

 

[Set Harth]

Both were canceled on cliffhangers and became high profile failures.

So by "failed out of the gate" you meant "not renewed on a cliffhanger"?

 

[James Cole]

So by "failed out of the gate" you meant "not renewed on a cliffhanger"?

Both describe the same situation?

Disney spent hundreds of millions of dollars on both. Both seemingly were intended to be ongoing series, yet were canceled. Failure is usually evident by an absence of success.

SFA is launched with a built in two season commitment. Short of post-production on season 2 being abandoned in progress, the show will get two seasons.

But to get a third season, it'll need to have some degree of success, no?

My point is you mostly hear the "bad writing" complaint on the internet for a certain kind of show. There's a lot of absolute trashfires that vanish into the ether while leaving little mark.

It's rare these days, but sometimes the reverse can happen. The first season of Apple's Foundation did suffer from bad writing(TM), but the second and third seasons managed to really turn things around and become compelling television.

 

[Set Harth]

Both describe the same situation?

Why would the gate be the same thing as things that happened after the season was finished?

 

[Lord Garth]

Hell, we're seeing this in real time now with Stranger Things. Season 5's writing was yes, pretty bad in places (not Game of Thrones Season 8 bad, but still, a big move down). And a week or so out, it's still being talked about, but the consensus is already shifting to "Whatever, we still have the earlier seasons." There's no outrage, just disappointment (other than the insane Byler shippers/people who believe in the secret episode conspiracy).

I consider myself warned about Stranger Things. I'm about go through the whole thing, now that it's finally done. I saved myself the trouble of having to wait three years between seasons.

It's rare these days, but sometimes the reverse can happen. The first season of Apple's Foundation did suffer from bad writing(TM), but the second and third seasons managed to really turn things around and become compelling television.

I'll keep that in mind too, with Foundation. The first episode didn't immediately grab me, so I stopped watching. Unlike For All Mankind, which grabbed me right from the first frame.

 

[James Cole]

Why would the gate be the same thing as things that happened after the season was finished?

The series launched with a poor foundational level of quality that it never recovered from?

In contrast to series that start great then fall apart, or series that start poorly then improve?

I'll keep that in mind too, with Foundation. The first episode didn't immediately grab me, so I stopped watching. Unlike For All Mankind, which grabbed me right from the first frame.

Foundation was a rare case of my having read the books ahead of time, so that (along with having spent six weeks in the Canary Islands where a lot of it was filmed on location) helped power through the underperforming elements.

They also took way too long establishing a few characters whose actors stick out like a sore thumb next to Lee Pace and Jared Harris. But in the second season they have more acting experience and much better writing to back them up.

There's just so much scale to the series... the weight of history, freedom to span hundreds of years, asking big questions around cloning and AI...

And they manage to do a shit ton on a budget of $5 million per episode when it looks like their budget is 2-3X that of your average live action Kurtzman-era Trek episode.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I'll keep that in mind too, with Foundation. The first episode didn't immediately grab me, so I stopped watching. Unlike For All Mankind, which grabbed me right from the first frame.

I think you will really like Foundation. The first season and part of the second are slow burns and have to do a lot of universe-establishing. But the performances, particularly of Terence Mann, Lee Pace, Cassian Bilton, Jared Harris and Laura Birn are phenomenal. Laura Birn's character Demerzel is genuinely one of the most compelling character ever put to screen. Once the show hits the mid way point of season 2, it sky-rockets. Season 3 is amazing and the finale of that season was the best hour of television i watched last year. So I recommend giving it a shot.

 

[James Cole]

Laura Birn's character Demerzel is genuinely one of the most compelling character ever put to screen

A peer to Spock and Data...

Season 3 is amazing and the finale of that season was the best hour of television i watched last year. So I recommend giving it a shot.

Figured I'd add another thing I grew to appreciate is that the writers knew a decent portion of their audience have read the books, so instead of insisting on holding multiple mystery boxes, they lean into them early and occasionally not just "subvert expectations" -- but stick the landings when they do.

 

[johnjm22]

It's hard for me to take any of these reviews seriously.

Picard S1 and S2 both have positive critics scores.

 

[Set Harth]

The series launched with a poor foundational level of quality

 

[Agony_Boothb]

It's hard for me to take any of these reviews seriously.

Picard S1 and S2 both have positive critics scores.

An yet you're still going to watch it and keep watching it even though you hate it, because you have nothing better to do.

 

[James Cole]

It's hard for me to take any of these reviews seriously.

Picard S1 and S2 both have positive critics scores.

To be fair, the strongest episodes of these respective seasons were found at the beginning, so the critics didn't get to view the big dips in advance.

SFA wise, it seems like the first three episodes are designed to appeal to the "general audience", then they get more into the weeds of Star Trek and Paul Giamatti's antagonist gains a degree of nuance. If this holds, this'll make SFA more like Prodigy and Lower Decks, were they hit their stride after the initial batch of episodes.

 

[johnjm22]

To be fair, the strongest episodes of these respective seasons were found at the beginning, so the critics didn't get to view the big dips in advance.

SFA wise, it seems like the first three episodes are designed to appeal to the "general audience", then they get more into the weeds of Star Trek and Paul Giamatti's antagonist gains a degree of nuance. If this holds, this'll make SFA more like Prodigy and Lower Decks, were they hit their stride after the initial batch of episodes.

Understood, but even Discovery—which was generally poor throughout—has positive scores for every season.

 

[Firebird]

I think it's kind of lame and uncreative, unless there's some within-universe explanation, like the Andorian named Jennifer that Mariner dated.

If a Klingon must be named Jay-Den, make it canonical his parents picked a human name for him, signifying the cultural shift by the 32nd century.

I’ve always loved the gag about how the word “Sean” in Bajoran means “swamp.”

Except they set the show in the Discovery verse, which most "long time fans" are meh about.

[sure-Jan_dot-gif]

 

[Fateor]

Understood, but even Discovery—which was generally poor throughout—has positive scores for every season.

It's the "drop off" problem.

People who don't like a show "drop off" from watching it, so all that's left each new season is people who liked the show.