How much network influence do you think CBS has with "Discovery?"

[Jayson1]

I don't see why networks can't be more like HBO. From what I understand they hire people they really like and basically let them do whatever they want and even encourage them to push the envelope. I think their only flaw is they feel the need for nudity in everything. Nudity should be something a show can use but it doesn't need to be forced on them.

Jason

 

[Vger23]

I don't see why networks can't be more like HBO. From what I understand they hire people they really like and basically let them do whatever they want and even encourage them to push the envelope. I think their only flaw is they feel the need for nudity in everything. Nudity should be something a show can use but it doesn't need to be forced on them.

Jason

Nudity sells. You can't put a bum or a pair of boobs in a frigging movie anymore. So, it's a distinguished for HBO, no matter how weird that sounds.

Case-and-point: I had absolutely no desire to watch GoT. I could give a shit about swords and dragons typically. Then, everyone (males and females alike) were like "dude, the show has some great nudity and sex scenes" and I tuned in. I haven't missed an episode since. Not because of the nudity, but because it's a great show.

But in absolute honesty...I wouldn't have started watching if it wasn't because of the boobs and bums factor.

 

[fireproof78]

Nudity sells. You can't put a bum or a pair of boobs in a frigging movie anymore. So, it's a distinguished for HBO, no matter how weird that sounds.

Case-and-point: I had absolutely no desire to watch GoT. I could give a shit about swords and dragons typically. Then, everyone (males and females alike) were like "dude, the show has some great nudity and sex scenes" and I tuned in. I haven't missed an episode since. Not because of the nudity, but because it's a great show.

But in absolute honesty...I wouldn't have started watching if it wasn't because of the boobs and bums factor.

You are part of the problem...

 

[Vger23]

You are part of the problem...

Don't I know it!

 

[gblews]

This is just speculation, but yes, I think DSC is probably the least micromanaged Trek series of all of them. DSC is now a niche show, more or less, catering to the "hard core" Trek fan who loves the franchise enough to seek it out on the internet. Because it's not on the network, they aren't under the same ratings pressures or need to please advertisers. Doesn't mean CBS doesn't care about DSC, it just means that the corporate approach to the show is different.

Now, there is someone at CBS watching because there is money involved, but I think as long as DSC continues to be successful, I think CBS will continue to keep hands off.

 

[Jayson1]

This is just speculation, but I think DSC is probably the least micromanaged Trek series of all of them. DSC is now a niche show, more or less, catering to the "hard core" Trek fan who loves the franchise enough to seek it out on the internet. Because it's not on the network, they aren't under the same ratings pressures or need to please advertisers. Doesn't mean CBS doesn't care about DSC, it just means that the corporate approach to the show is different.

Now, there is someone at CBS watching because there is money involved, but I think as long as DSC continues to be successful, I think CBS will continue to keep hands off.

I don't know. I always get the impression from writer interviews that after a time nobody cared anymore what they were doing on "DS9." It's also possible they only want the show to look radically different on the outside with the visuals and diversity in the cast and toss in a few extra cuss words but when it comes to actuall stories they don't care much beyond maybe insisting they do some fan service to please the old school fans who might rebel because of the new look. I can see them though basically making choices by reading viewer responses and polls and trying to give fans what they think the fans want but ignoring the whole idea that fans will watch anything if the stories are good and people like the characters. I'm not sure if networks ever place value on the quality of a show but only the surface junk around it.

Jason

 

[gblews]

I don't know. I always get the impression from writer interviews that after a time nobody cared anymore what they were doing on "DS9."

I don't think it's unusual for the network suits to back off involvement with a show that is obviously in it's final season on the air. This same thing happened to TNG in it's final season, I'm sure probably in Voy's last season, and it happened to Ent in it's 3rd and 4th seasons (something that helped Ent immensely, IMO). But DSC isn't near it's final season so I can't see what this has to do with DSC.

It's also possible they only want the show to look radically different on the outside with the visuals and diversity in the cast and toss in a few extra cuss words but when it comes to actuall stories they don't care much beyond maybe insisting they do some fan service to please the old school fans who might rebel because of the new look. I can see them though basically making choices by reading viewer responses and polls and trying to give fans what they think the fans want but ignoring the whole idea that fans will watch anything if the stories are good and people like the characters. I'm not sure if networks ever place value on the quality of a show but only the surface junk around it.

I don't think any of what you describe here applies to DSC.

 

[Jayson1]

I don't think it's unusual for the network suits to back off involvement with a show that is obviously in it's final season on the air. This same thing happened to TNG in it's final season, I'm sure probably in Voy's last season, and it happened to Ent in it's 3rd and 4th seasons (something that helped Ent immensely, IMO). But DSC isn't near it's final season so I can't see what this has to do with DSC.

I don't think any of what you describe here applies to DSC.

I agree that interference is usually very common. I am guessing it's worst in some places than others and almost nonexistent at HBO. I think who is running a show also impacts how much they interfere. I think you got to have some clout t to be able to stand up to a network and win most arguments. Fuller must not have had that clout. Also it might even come down to how much they personally like a show. I heard "The Office" was very popular and was kept around and allowed to do it's thing simply because the NBC people liked the show. Also it feels like Seth McFarlande has lots of power and clout at Fox. I think the CW network might actually be working for Bertani or whatever his name is over their.

Jason

 

[Wowbagger]

The only Trek series to have a lot of studio(attempted) tinkering was Enterprise, and even then, it wasn't until the second or third season, and most of it was ignored. Of the 4 previous series, Berman was both overseer and protector.

The opposite, actually. The studio's biggest tinkering with ENT was in its first season. Berman & Braga wanted to do something really different from what they'd done on Voyager. They were talking seriously about making the entire first season about launching the NX-01, with the ship not leaving dock at all for at least several episodes. (Sort of like "First Flight," but a whole season.) The studio, though, was afraid of killing the Trek cash cow (the hour-long standalone space-adventure formula that had already been run into the ground on Voyager), and so Les Moonves (now head of CBS) and Company forced ENT to obey the formula.

The result was, IMO, the third-worst season of Trek ever made (after TNG S1 and DSC S1), put together by producers who seemed clearly disengaged from their own premise, their own universe, and their own characters. I don't know whether the alternative would have been better (heck, it sounds kinda bad to me), but it is sad to watch ENT S1 knowing that the producers had wanted to try something new and didn't get the chance.

It was only when Enterprise started to collapse that the network edicts loosened, and the show was finally allowed to do a season-long arc in Season 3, when the network was desperate to save the cash cow.

Ironically, something similar happened in Voyager Season 4. There was serious talk of doing an entire "Year of Hell" season, which is why "Before and After" plays out the way it does, but the suits shut it down and forced it to be a two-parter instead. DS9 was under constant pressure to conform to the hour-long standalone formula, but was allowed to get away with deviating in part because Voyager was covering for it. Robert Beltran had to suffer in order to let us have Andrew Robinson.

I've no idea whether the suits are micromanaging Discovery, but Les Moonves was in charge then and he's in charge now, so I would imagine the regime today is pretty similar to the one that governed VOY and ENT.

 

[Prax]

Year of Hell was never conceived of as a season long story, it was always a two-parter. It was going to be the season 3 finale/season 4 premiere, but pushed back for "Scorpion." The concept for the episode was that it take place over the course of a year(which it did). You can read more about it on Memory Alpha under background information.

When Enterprise was being planned, the studio wanted a post-Voyager series. Berman and Braga wanted to do something different, which is understandable, especially for Berman who had done 21 seasons in that world. They came up with Enterprise. The studio wasn't crazy about it, and so the story goes, Braga pitched them the "Temporal Cold War" as a compromise, which was a non trek "time cop" sort of series he had been working on, and meshed it into Enterprise.

Enterprise was more "serialized" than previous Trek series from the beginning. I've heard in interviews, and on the Blu-Rays, that about halfway through the series, there was a change in studio leadership, and the new bosses were not friendly to Star Trek like the previous landlords, and Braga started to get notes and suggestions every week from certain execs to do this or that, and other strange requests for the show.

The only series I've ever heard of the studio interfering or trying to micromanage is Enterprise, unless someone has any references to the other shows, they all seem to have enjoyed a great deal of freedom, including Voyager. You can read all the development info for each episode, and stories about the studio stepping in, allowing, disallowing, simply aren't there...or not that I've ever come across.

 

[Jayson1]

Was it studio interference on "Enterprise" that caused that weird policy in season 1 and 2 where nobody, not even extra's could die on the show? It got to the level of comic absurdity watching it happen. I'm not even sure what the logic could be. Trek has always had death on it. Heck the redshirt stuff is a iconic joke where even people who don't know much about Trek might be familiar with it.

Jason

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I'm sure there it was intentional that they wanted to avoid deaths because red shirts had become cliched. In fact, I think the lack of deaths in the first two seasons actually was for the better because when someone died in the third season it actually meant something to the crew in a way it wouldn't in the later centuries. This is an early iteration iteration of Starfleet. The kind of stuff Kirk and Picard faced was part of the job and expected, whereas Archer never dreamed he would get involved in the kind of interstellar conflict when he signed up.

 

[Dijeirusan]

I don't see CBS interfering any more or less than HBO or Netflix does with their biggest series - they'll have an executive on-set at all times, along with a Netflix one in this show's case, and every episode goes through around 40 to 60 people before its approved. There are like 12 executive producers, some of whom are CBS and Netflix execs/hires.

(Oh, and this idea that HBO doesn't interfere is bullshit by the way, as somebody that was once upon a time the London PA for HBO shoots.)

 

[gblews]

I agree that interference is usually very common.

This is not what I wrote, so I'm not sure of what, or who it is you're agreeing with.

I am guessing it's worst in some places than others and almost nonexistent at HBO. I think who is running a show also impacts how much they interfere. I think you got to have some clout t to be able to stand up to a network and win most arguments. Fuller must not have had that clout.
Jason

Re: the aforementioned speculation, please refer to the speculation in my original post in this thread.

 

[Ralphis]

With a budget of somewhere between $6-9 million per episode, I can't imagine that they're (Les Moonves and his people) are just going to let Kurtzman and co. have to the keys to the cashcow without any oversight. My completely unfounded speculation is that they were told to "make it cool" and attractable to new viewers (non-Trekkies), so they looked at shows like Game of Thrones and Westworld and thought about how close they could bring Star Trek to that style without imploding the fandom.

 

[lawman]

...This might go a long way in answering OP's question:
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-discovery-bryan-fuller-departure-explained/amp/

Huh. Interesting.

So "Fuller favored a slightly-upgraded version of the original series’ uniforms and set designs, while CBS wanted something more modern"? Seems somewhat at odds with the way he's been blamed for the radical Klingon redesign... but I can't deny I'd like to have seen that.

 

[cultcross]

Fuller is what you might describe as a paid up MegaFan, and really buys into the Gene's Vision™ stuff. I imagine from his public speeches what he wanted was something like TMP or early TNG in tone (someone here with a bit of inside knowledge suggested his pitch was very philosophical and talking heads heavy) with probably pretty faithful visuals. I'd certainly be interested in seeing more detail of his ideas that were causing such friction.

I think we're more likely to get an Ira Steven Behr since DSC is effectively the new DS9.

Behr always said he got away with a lot because ds9 was the red headed stepchild, neither the behemoth that was TNG or the hope of a new UPN network like Voyager. The studio paid much less tight attention to DS9 so it could kind of do its own thing to a certain extent.

 

[lawman]

Well, "philosophical and talking-heads heavy" needn't necessarily be as ponderous as TMP or early TNG. A lot of Fuller's past work suggests that he has a knack for scintillating dialogue. (Not at the level of Whedon or Sorkin or JMS, perhaps, but still, pretty entertaining.) That's something DSC could do with a good deal more of, I think. Its dialogue to date has leaned rather heavily toward the "expository" side.

 

[cultcross]

That's certainly true. Fuller is a competent writer and I think he would have been able to do interesting things with even a fairly talky show. Quite a few streaming hits have been 'talking heads', if one gets down to it, because of budget constraints or subject matter. However, I think the studio would have struggled with the idea of a sci-fi tentpole show which didn't have a lot of pew pew and conflict. Star Trek label or not, I don't think that's what they were after. I imagine Fuller's ideas that seemed to seep out in his convention speeches seemed more Measure of a Man and less Yesterday's Enterprise. I deliberately picked two well regarded episodes so as not to suggest a value judgment between the two - but they're different types of stories. I think in FullerTrek we would have got a lot more conferences and a lot more Kirk Speeches.

 

[lawman]

Which is why I was looking forward to DSC a lot more when Fuller was involved, and became much more cautious in my expectations after he exited stage left. There are plenty of properties that offer people "a lot of pew pew," but Trek has never needed to be one of them.

(Even "Yesterday's Enterprise," which is one of my favorite TNG episodes, stands out in my mind not as an "action" story but very much as a think piece, an exploration of paths not taken and of difficult choices. That's the kind of thing Trek has always done well.)