None of the modern shows are breakout hits, nor would they reasonably be expected to be. The question is whether they can draw in enough viewers, old and new, to be sustainable. Obviously they’ve been reasonably effective at that, or we wouldn’t have had anywhere near this much modern Trek.
That's the thing. The Powers That Be have ALWAYS had sky high expectations for Star Trek. It's generally done well... Enterprise was still getting solid ratings when it was canned, it just wasn't doing the astronomical ratings they wanted.
The modern Trek shows are all doing well. They all pretty consistently rank in the top streaming shows. I think they do need to have some realistic expectations, and I think overall modern TV is not kind to sci-fi... it's becoming harder to do alot of cost-cutting measures they could in the past. You can no longer paint a dust buster, glue some doodads on it and call it some future device. Everything has to be motion picture-quality, prestige format.
You can no longer throw some curtains up on the set of 10 Forward and be like "Totally the Federation President's Office now..."
Given the short seasons, it's hard to do things like cost-saving bottle episodes... there's not really time for them, and audiences want MOAR SFX! They don't want people sitting around talking about stuff anymore.
The only way Star Trek is going to survive in the long term is a combination of Paramount tempering their expectations, and finding a way to make the shows for less money. A couple of years ago I was hopeful that the answer would lie in AI, but that seems to be increasingly verboten in productions.
EDIT -
I had a thought here about the wider penetration of Star Trek and it is tough. Sci-fi isn't really super "in" right now aside from Star Wars, and that's kind of just its own thing. TV series have it harder than movies... movies can see success by creating a lot of buzz short term and making a splash. A TV show has to keep up an audience.
Again though, Star Trek has done... well in ratings. It's just that Paramount sees it as a golden goose and expects the moon out of it.
As much as i'm not sure I want to actually see this, something Discovery put only the tiniest bit of effort into, is to make something "edgy". One of the things I thought Discovery was originally going to try to do was to be something like a Space Game of Thrones... with everything that it entails. I was thinking something like the Federation getting caught in the middle of the Klingon Civil War, yadda yadda.
I feel like something along that vein COULD bring in new fans, but there's a fine line there as you might alienate the existing fanbase.
New Trek also, in my opinion, suffers from an intangible and abstract issue of "trying too hard". It's hard for me to explain exactly what that means, but it's VERY apparent in Discovery, but Picard also has a healthy dose. I'll try to articulate it the best that I can, there's a few facets. Both shows are intended to be prestige TV, and they very much feel like they are trying very hard to be so. That's not a good thing... they don't feel natural. They're overly melodramatic.
Moreso on the Discovery side, it doesn't do itself any favors by what some would call "pandering". It's another fine line between representation and all that good stuff and "pandering". For the small boost you may get with a small group of fans, you might push away the larger group. At the end of the day, any creator needs to sit down ask themselves "what am I making this for?"... if it's to make a political statement and send a message, then ok. Do that. If it's "make as much money and generate as much viewership as possible", great do that... but those two things aren't necessarily going to work together.
Something as seemingly benign and banal as having a quick Stacey Abrams cameo... I don't mind it, but i'm also on "that side". It sends a message out that may seem like a great idea to some, but you're actively alienating a huge swatch of potential viewers... and then probably calling them "toxic" for not liking it. On the flip, imagine if things were different and Discovery had a
different leaning and had like, Rudy Guilliani as President of Earth.
Part of it is a case of lazy writing. Have social commentary. It's part of what this is. But... be a bit more subtle with it? TNG did social commentary, and it never really felt like any sort of real-life, modern day politics were seeping into it.
Make a sci-fi show that everyone, or at least, the largest majority of people possible will like and not potentially be put off by. *OR* don't, make whatever the show the creators want to make with whatever message... but also factor that in when it comes to viewership.
