• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Jonathan Frakes: "Star Trek won't be coming back to TV."

Exaclty as I was saying before. Frakes is just reiterating his stance regarding the pitch he made a decade ago. Every time I hear of a pitch, it sounds like it was a half-hearted scheme, and I have no knowledge of any recent pitches.
 
When I saw Nemesis for the first time in the cinema, I liked it. When it saw it again on TV I wasn´t that enthusiastic anymore. After several re-runs on TV I don´t even bother to watch it to "the bitter end".

Maybe it is better to leave it at that regarding to ST on TV.
 
When I saw Nemesis for the first time in the cinema, I liked it. When it saw it again on TV I wasn´t that enthusiastic anymore. After several re-runs on TV I don´t even bother to watch it to "the bitter end".

Maybe it is better to leave it at that regarding to ST on TV.

Same here. I was excited because it was the first Trek film I got to see on the big screen (my previous attempts over the years were always met with one setback or another).

The theater was practically bare. I think we could have ran up and down the aisles yelling and no one would have cared, but I wanted to see the film, and while I liked a decent percentage of it, I did have problems with a number of things that happened, but still, the overall sentiment was positive. Repeated viewings, however, changed that opinion.
 
Exactly - it wasn't that the producers made some eggregiously poor choice of premise for Enterprise that doomed it - it was that every series was too much like what had gone that caused most viewers who hung on at all after TNG to just lose interest.

Exactly. I think most people will agree that Breaking Bad is an awesome show, and that Better Call Saul is apparently getting good reviews (I'm yet to watch it though).

Imagine if they made another series based on it. And then another, further prequel series.

I would imagine that a good chunk of the original fans of Breaking Bad would have jumped ship by now or lost interest.

That's saturation.
 
Yeah - and imagine if each one of those shows was basically the same show with some tweaks, featuring new characters designed to be different from the old characters but to play out the same roles in the same kinds of plots as the previous characters on the earlier show.
 
"We'll call them Phase Pistols and Photonic Torpedoes, because longer names means it's further back in history! Quickly, Charles "Trip" Tucker III, engage the Accelomatrix!"
 
Yeah - and imagine if each one of those shows was basically the same show with some tweaks, featuring new characters designed to be different from the old characters but to play out the same roles in the same kinds of plots as the previous characters on the earlier show.

Yep. 90% of ENT's episodes could have been filmed on the U.S.S. Voyager with the crew of that ship, and it would have been exactly the same. Never mind that ENT was supposed to take place 200 years before VOY.
 
http://www.treknews.net/2015/04/28/jonathan-frakes-star-trek-not-coming-back-to-tv/

According to this news article; it is revealed that the network execs over at CBS/Paramount have as of current no interest or ideas of making a new TV Series and trying to focus on movies more feeling that it dilutes the franchise less and that it makes more money from what it seems.
Accepting that reason at face value for their lack of interest, it's pretty short sighted. The brand was diluted, but not by having a movie and TV franchise simultaneously. TNG and the TOS Movies really didn't hurt each other. The franchise ran into trouble when it tried to run 2 different series practically on top of each other during the runs of TNG, DS9, and VOY.
At that point the shows were competing with each other at a time when the TV viewing audience was naturally becoming more fragmented as more networks (UPN included) started popping up.

I think NCIS/CSI are headed in the same direction, and that bubble's going to burst in the not too distant future as well. I'll caveat this by saying I'm usually completely wrong about these things, but time will tell.
 
Yeah - and imagine if each one of those shows was basically the same show with some tweaks, featuring new characters designed to be different from the old characters but to play out the same roles in the same kinds of plots as the previous characters on the earlier show.

Yep. 90% of ENT's episodes could have been filmed on the U.S.S. Voyager with the crew of that ship, and it would have been exactly the same. Never mind that ENT was supposed to take place 200 years before VOY.

Just as 99% of TNG's story premises would have worked for TOS. This is why the "Trek should always move forward in time" assertion is bogus: it's untested. So far, Trek moves only sideways or in circles, simply pretending that some history separates the different versions.

From what we saw on "Voyager" of the Temporal Federation, Trek could have jumped forward five or six centuries under those writers and producers and the show would have been the same.

I recall that after Robert Duncan McNeill directed an Enterprise episode he said something in an interview to the effect that "they think their show's more different from ours than it really is."
 
I will agree that Nemesis is a better movie than Insurrection. But the proof is in the box office receipts. Not the quality.

Insurrection made $70.2 million.
Nemesis made $43.3.

That is a major drop off. Even if you adjust for inflation with Insurrection coming in at $119.4 million and Nemesis at $59.8), Nemesis is not only a failure, but a pretty dismal one.

Source: Box Office Mojo


Erm, I think you'll find

Insurrection made US$112.6m
Nemesis made US$67.3m

at the Worldwide Box Office, still dismal results however you measure it.
 
I will agree that Nemesis is a better movie than Insurrection. But the proof is in the box office receipts. Not the quality.

Insurrection made $70.2 million.
Nemesis made $43.3.

That is a major drop off. Even if you adjust for inflation with Insurrection coming in at $119.4 million and Nemesis at $59.8), Nemesis is not only a failure, but a pretty dismal one.

Source: Box Office Mojo


Erm, I think you'll find

Insurrection made US$112.6m
Nemesis made US$67.3m

at the Worldwide Box Office, still dismal results however you measure it.

I was adjusting for inflation (as I said). Admittedly I did not say I was speaking domestically. ;)

But yes, the unadjusted global numbers are pretty pathetic as well.
 
If the last two TNG movies stunk, what makes you think a Series V taking place post-VOY instead of being a prequel would be any different?

Because Rick Berman (hopefully) wouldn't be involved. Don't blame the time-period. Blame the creative leadership.
 
Right now, tv is so awful. Coarse, violent, etc. Let this era pass because "Trek" would not fit in this environment. "Trek" WILL return to tv one day.

'Coarse' and 'violent' only to people trapped in a bath of nostalgia cause by endlessly re-watching 50's 60's and 70's shows (but mostly just the first two mentioned decades.) Not to anybody else.

And if Star Trek is to return to TV, it may have to be somewhat like that.:vulcan:
 
Right now, tv is so awful. Coarse, violent, etc. Let this era pass because "Trek" would not fit in this environment. "Trek" WILL return to tv one day.

'Coarse' and 'violent' only to people trapped in a bath of nostalgia cause by endlessly re-watching 50's 60's and 70's shows (but mostly just the first two mentioned decades.) Not to anybody else.

And if Star Trek is to return to TV, it may have to be somewhat like that.:vulcan:

Anybody that thinks the way we tell stories is different needs to go look at their favorite works from the past and tell me they weren't as violent.
 
If the last two TNG movies stunk, what makes you think a Series V taking place post-VOY instead of being a prequel would be any different?

Because Rick Berman (hopefully) wouldn't be involved. Don't blame the time-period. Blame the creative leadership.

Ok, so you're the second person who misunderstood me, although that probably means that I wasn't being as clear as I could have been.

Series V = Enterprise. Oso Blanco made an assumption that ENT failed because it was a prequel. I countered that this wasn't the case, and that Series V could have taken place in the 24th century post VOY and it still would have failed.

Now, as far as blaming Rick Berman? Berman had very little to do with ENT failing. That was all on UPN's shoulders.
 
Most pitches we hear about weren't actually even followed through for the most part. Singer, Frakes, etc. didn't actually present anything. And of those pitches, most were actually made a decade ago. There are no recent ones, just people talking a lot of talk. Like Dorn, who doesn't really have much clout. If someone who did have more clout presented something, it may stand more of a chance.
If JJ said he wanted to produce a Trek TV series, people would listen.

(Won't get into whether that would be a good thing or not...)

When I saw Nemesis for the first time in the cinema, I liked it. When it saw it again on TV I wasn´t that enthusiastic anymore. After several re-runs on TV I don´t even bother to watch it to "the bitter end".

Others have had the opposite experience. :)
 
Why don't the ST powers that be want to saturate the market like Disney is going to do?

Because the whole franchise was almost destroyed by oversaturation in the 1990's/early 2000's. Trek simply doesn't have the same widespread appeal Star Wars does.

Well I don't think we want Star Trek to have the kind of saturation it did in the 90's, that was overkill. (3 Star Trek series', some of which ran simultaneously with one another for a little while, 3 movies, ect. ect.)

Maybe I am crazy, but I enjoyed the overkill! I would think one show is enough now though. With so many sci-fi and fantasy fiction shows on TV, a Trek show with a ready made fan base is a no brainer.
 
I certainly wish there was a 50th Anniversary TV Movie in the works. Doctor Who was given a boost halfway into its TV wilderness years, with such an attempt. It made a brief return, from lower depths of simply being kept alive by a couple million hardcore fans. Although failing to get picked up as a series in the 90s, it pretty much predicted what the show would eventually be like, in terms of style and format, on its return proper. From the perspective of a relaunch, Who's 1996 TVM was somewhat hampered by a handover from the actor who last played The Doctor and quite a lot of continuity links to the previous 26 years. On the other hand, transposed to Trek in a celebratory year that feels like a suitable approach. To me, there shouldn't be any reason why come September next year, Star Trek's big event can't also have something dedicated to it, for one night only on TV and bolstered by online rewatching in the days, weeks, months after. If they could co-ordinate so both the big screen and small screen adventures jam with a similar kind of theme... compliment each other without audiences needing to have seen either individually... that's a bit like Leonard Nimoy doing "Unification" on TNG and Michael Dorn appearing in The Undiscovered Country (to a lesser extent). Criss-crossing the publicity and exposure. The 25th Anniversary was celebrated brilliantly in late 1991 and that was before the overkill, the over milking it, which came after Generations.
 
Last edited:
Berman had very little to do with ENT failing. That was all on UPN's shoulders.

I am oversimplifying it, but the franchise was already in pretty poor shape by then due to Berman's stewardship. So he's really the one person probably most responsible for killing the franchise. I know people don't like to accept that because it's become somewhat cliche'. We'd like to find some new slant on it that upends prior assumptions, but it sure seems accurate to me.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top