TOS was not about a perfect society, just a better one. There is a massive difference.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room, this series violates Roddenberry's vision big time
- Thread starter Sci-fi fan
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Trek always condemned "perfect" society in all incarnations, ranging from being stagnant, or worse, what the Borg represent as a more extreme take.
Correction: whatever Star Trek was is what people wantED. They do not want more of the same. Declining ratings on Voyager and Enterprise (shows that most would agree were more consistent with "Gene's VisionTM") prove that.
DSC doesn't need to fill a void. It just needs to be good TV, and it is.
Star Trek is so expansive, it means different things to different people. To some it's about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. To others it's about exploring space and sci-fi gadgetry. To others it's about a specific time period in the Trek chronology, specific alien races.
To me, it's not about any of that. It's about using these stories to explore the human condition and examine moral, ethical, and cultural issues. Whether it's in this timeline or that, whether it's bright and colorful or dark and moody; whether it's got Klingons with ridges, no ridges, hair or no hair; whether it's consistent with cardboard sets from the 60s or not; whether it's a war story or a story of scientific discovery is not important to me, and clearly, it's not important to many other Trek fans.
But at this point, "Gene's VisionTM" and "What Trek Really IsTM" is open to interpretation, so no one can definitely say Discovery isn't Trek, or isn't this or that.
If you don't like DSC, that's fine. Move along.
Yet more people were probably watching Voyager and Enterprise than will see Discovery.
With audiences fragmented to the degree they are now, it is hard to say that a Voyager or Enterprise-like show wouldn't be a success.
I don't see Trek as being about perfect or imperfect society. That's a very narrow minded outlook on hundreds of episodes.
Correction, people still watch StarTrek despite having already seen it before, that's just how good it is.
People watch STD because it has the StarTrek brand, without which it would have suffered a fate of an unknown run of the mill gritty sci fi show. The story is not very good and cool special effects wouldn't have carried the show the way they do now.
Only because of the way people consume media these days. More people watched voyager than many network shows that are considered hits today. Metrics and expectations have changed in the 16 years since it was on the air.
No argument there, but I also see no reason to believe it would do any better today. So you can't expect them to make another VOY/ENT-like show and expect it to be a hit when the past 2 weren't.
What's it called again when you keep trying the same thing and expecting different results?
If the same amount of people watched the shows today that did back then, both would have solid runs.
You're not listening: there's no reason to expect them to achieve the same audience today.
There is every reason, by contrast, to expect it would be smaller. Look at Law & Order SVU, one of the few shows that is still running from when Voyager was on the air.
In 1999 it was regularly garnering an audience of 12-13M viewers, and still didn't rank in the top 5 shows (in scripted TV, ER topped the charts at over 16M).
By 2005, when Enterprise was on it's last legs at around 2.5M viewers per episode, SVU was still pulling in 15M viewers.
But starting around season 10 (2008-2009) SVU saw a slow but precipitous decline in ratings and in 2017 has fallen to just 5.5M per episode. Audiences for shows change over time.
Likewise, in 2005, 14 scripted shows drew more than 10M viewers. In 2016, only 3 did.
You could easily apply this to every spin-off of getting a healthy boost of brand recognition. The real achievement is how many stick around for it. Either it will thrive like TNG or dwindle like Enterprise.
Or it sits somewhere in between. One thing people seem to forget is that of 6 Trek shows between 1966-2005, only TNG was a bonafide hit while it was on the air. Discovery could well become the second (assuming they ever release viewership numbers).
Several recent analytics would seem to suggest that DSC is seeing high levels of interest and demand. One report suggests it is the second most watched streaming show of 2017-- though it's hard to parse what these reports mean without actual hard numbers. But all signs point to "hit."
http://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/ne...fenders-full-house-house-of-cards-1201888675/
I've enjoyed 'Star Trek Continues' but that said - ONE of the weaknesses it has is that it writes Kirk more like a Picard clone in many respects than the character he actually was in TOS. That's further in evidence by the fact they brought the 'Ship's Counselor' character in (and I love the actress' performance and she's one of the stronger actual actors on the show - BUT, I don't care for her character as written most of the time. She basically takes the place of McCoy in a lot of scenes.)
Yes, but all the producers admit that the show was coasting on nostalgia for the first two years, and that it only took off when Piller started to shift the focus of stories.
TNG was a bonafide pop culture hit, while DS9 and VOY merely did well enough in spite of the obstacles they had to face competition wise. ENT had so many more chances than it's immediate two predecessors and yet lost viewers at a much faster rate. Those first two seasons were like one big free fall while the last two just floated off slowly but never rose again.
DS9, VOY, and ENT all had the exact same trajectory in ratings. Their all-time high was the pilot, after which they precipitously declined through the beginning of the first season. This then settled into a period of essentially steady decline which lasted over the entire run (although Voyager arguably stabilized in its last two seasons).
The main difference is each show in turn was starting from a lower base. VOY consistently underperformed DS9, and ENT consistently underperformed VOY.
DS9 and VOY were doing well enough to keep going. The trejectory is the same, but ENT fell below even DS9 and VOY as it went. It had chances to rise above the two but instead crashed.
@starmike -- Especially when the poster in question likes to post things simply to fish for those kind of negative reactions from people. You play right into his hands by getting so upset at what he posts.
Yes. It should first be entertaining.
That will vary from person to person. The hope of CBS is reach past the audiences represented on boards like these and in to a broader market.
Exactly my thoughts. I watched goofy kids shows, Farscape and attempted to get through BSG, all because of the setting.Space shows are cool. If I could sit through hours of Dark Matter, then I would most definitely watch STD even if it wasn't associated with the Star Trek brand.
Kor
DSC is more than just "Star Trek" to me. It's having adventures in a science fiction/space setting (yes I know there is a difference) and that would hook me, Trek name or not.
