Looking at this site, they also have such credible sounding articles as "Worf Replacing Data In Star Trek: Picard?", "Chris Evans May Boldly Join Star Trek" and of course "Star Wars Is Ripping Off Star Trek’s Short Treks With Visions". As if Star Trek invented the idea of shorts.
Report: Discovery moving to Netflix
- Thread starter Romulan_spy
- Start date
Lots of people like episodic.
Lots don't
Fortunately, the Star Trek team knows that you can't please everyone, and they'll have show formats to suit different tastes.
No that's not exactly how the networks operate. They are not going to put out a show for a fraction of an audience. I honestly don't know how the new shows are doing atm, but being episodic has proven to work. When Enterprise switched to the full time story arc, it got canceled. I mean we have Star Trek, Stargate, X-Files, all episodic with overlying story arcs.
Now maybe these new shows are making a quick buck. Flipping short seasons may be profitable, but I don't think they are creating shows for the reasons you state.
Meh, a majority of those new aliens were just humans with bumpy foreheads, and all the different aliens each week just wore the same costumes, use the same props, flew in the same ships and the cities on their planets were all the same matte painting.
Star Trek was largely episodic for its first forty years. Episodic Trek is played out. Episodic television is played out. There's a reason the majority of the TV industry has moved beyond episodic. Trek was making itself look like a dinosaur sticking with episodic for as long as it did.
That is an oversimplification of what was an ongoing downward trend in Star Trek's overall ratings, including Voyager and DS9. Correlation doesn't equal causation here, as DS9 also suffered from a ratings drop, despite the Dominion War being regarded positively as an arc within the show.
Indeed, yes. I get that episodic was a huge part of Trek's past but it has worn out its welcome, at least for my money.
And here I was trying to stay awake.
The outstanding news is that these new shows are not on a network, they are on a streaming service, so the model is totally different.
Yet that is precisely what they have done thus far, and seems to be precisely the model they are going for with future productions.
Sure. But being serialized has also proven to work. Just look at some little shows like Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Lost, and Breaking Bad. And frankly, the shows you mention are all from an older era of television storytelling, when audience tastes and sophistication were different.
Well I agree certain types of shows work well in that format, I don't agree the audience tastes have changed. The Mandalorian is episodic with an overlying story arc as I mentioned, and I think it's far more popular than the Trek shows.
But yes, I actually prefer serialized for shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos etc. Just don't prefer that for TV Sci-fi.
But of course, you are certainly entitled to your opinion.
Yes, but Star Wars is a vastly more popular franchise than Star Trek, and it’s always been that way. It’s probably not a fair comparison.
Ok I will give you that. But , they still decided to go that route with the show. And I think other franchises may be watching. Yes, no doubt people get bored with one way of doing things. Maybe we are heading back to the older ways now though. Everything repeats.
I know this is a boring answer that keeps this argument from going on but: let Discovery be Discovery and let Strange New Worlds (when it comes out) be Strange New Worlds.
Absolutely but we are in a new era of streaming and all the network models are not going match this same model. Shows are far more niche, and more targeted for different audiences. So, applying that network syndication model to streaming platforms is inaccurate, to say the least.
The Mandalorian is not as brave as some of the Trek shows either. It is hitting its niche market to be exactly what they expect it to be. Discovery was less so.
Exactly. Targeted shows may actually benefit the franchise in this case.
It would have been cancelled if it was.
And yet, plenty of all-arc shows have worked too.
Indeed, yes.
Failing shows struggling don't keep being made. Companies are funny like that.
Enterprise would have been cancelled at the end of season 2. The Xindi arc convinced the network to give it another chance. Serialization may have not have reversed the series' fortunes, but it did stanch the loss of audience.
The only metric that matters with the current Star Trek shows is this one: are they making more of them or less of them? The answer is more. They wouldn't have greenlit Picard, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, or Section 31 if Discovery was doing poorly.
Yup.
In a way, it might've reversed the series' fortunes a little bit, if not its longevity. I doubt ENT would be airing on H&I right now if it ended after only two seasons. So there's that at least.
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