If they make a new Star Trek show, should it be live action or animated? Both approaches have their pros and cons, what would you prefer?
Should a new Star Trek show be live action or animated?
- Thread starter The Overlord
- Start date
Prefer: Live-action
Likely to be: Animated
Likely to be: Animated
Yep.
To be honest I'd be happy with either, I just want new Trek on TV.
Animated would allow for some pretty cool new aliens.
Animated would allow for some pretty cool new aliens.
Live action.
There's nothing about animation that immediately makes it better than live action. A good cartoon will take just as long and cost just as much to produce as a decent live action show. Even the notion that you'll get cooler aliens with a cartoon is not automatically true, thanks to CGI and other fx methods that have developed over the years.
There's nothing about animation that immediately makes it better than live action. A good cartoon will take just as long and cost just as much to produce as a decent live action show. Even the notion that you'll get cooler aliens with a cartoon is not automatically true, thanks to CGI and other fx methods that have developed over the years.
I've seen numbers that peg The Clone Wars at $1.2 million dollars an episode, which would total $2.4 million an hour. I seriously doubt live-action Trek could be done for that little.
Not even remotely.
"A good cartoon" can have a budget anywhere between $100,000 to $500,000 dollars an episode based on the level of animation, post-production, and the salaries of any special voice actors. That's considerably cheaper than a live-action show, especially a Star Trek series, which these days probably starts at $2,000,000 an episode.
Some animated shows with extremely high (i.e., movie-quality) production values can be in excess of $750,000 dollars an episode, but such shows usually have fairly short runs of only 6-12 episodes total.
As far as the time it takes to produce an animated series, it depends on the animation studio involved, but quite a few studios can produce 18-22 episodes of a show per year.
Yep. And The Clone Wars has a larger budget than most animated shows.
Well, hell! Obviously a cartoon's a brilliant choice! Brilliant, I say! Why don't we make it super brilliant and make it a Starfleet Academy Animated Series!
Then I can just shoot myself and get it over with.
What does it really matter as long as the stories are engaging?
Animated
I want it to be live action but will settle for animation, which may be more fiscally realistic.
The Clone Wars is pretty good after all. Star Trek would need to be more character and politics, and less action focused, but that's an easy enough adjustment.
The Clone Wars is pretty good after all. Star Trek would need to be more character and politics, and less action focused, but that's an easy enough adjustment.
Well let's look at the pro and cons of an animated series vs. a live action series.
An animated series would have a smaller budget and could create more fantastic alien designs.
The biggest problem with an animated series is the Animation Age Ghetto. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnimationAgeGhetto
Now Star Trek is not some super dark series and I do think most of the Star Trek episodes are fit for whole family, not being said I would hope some greedy exec wouldn't try to use a Star Trek cartoon to talk down to kids and try to sell them toys. I will say I think TV animation has improve a lot over the last 20 years, starting with the introduction of BTAS.
I think an animated show would have a faster pace then a then a live action, but if handled well perhaps it blend high paced action with heavier concepts, similar to what BTAS, Gargoyles and Avatar did.
An animated series would have a smaller budget and could create more fantastic alien designs.
The biggest problem with an animated series is the Animation Age Ghetto. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnimationAgeGhetto
Now Star Trek is not some super dark series and I do think most of the Star Trek episodes are fit for whole family, not being said I would hope some greedy exec wouldn't try to use a Star Trek cartoon to talk down to kids and try to sell them toys. I will say I think TV animation has improve a lot over the last 20 years, starting with the introduction of BTAS.
I think an animated show would have a faster pace then a then a live action, but if handled well perhaps it blend high paced action with heavier concepts, similar to what BTAS, Gargoyles and Avatar did.
I think a Trek cartoon aimed at kids should indeed sell toys and a whole slew of related merchandise. Why should it be limited only to (mostly adult) collectors?
As far as talking down to kids, there are very few cartoons that do that anymore (and frankly, I can't think of any currently on the air really). Most shows are either target age-appropriate or tend to appeal to both kids and adults in some fashion. I'm still amazed at how many adults tune in to watch My Little Pony.
If its animated, it'll go on The Cartoon Network. FOX also does animation, but I can't see it fitting in with Family Guy. The Cartoon Network largely programs for kids, but they do have AdultSwim, aimed at young adults, so Star Trek could fit there, in an adjacent timeslot, and not be aimed primarily at kids.
Huh, Star Trek on Adult Swim. Now there's something I never considered.
It would have to be a lead in because adultswim airs so late, but 10 or 10:30 seems right. In that case, it's past the kids bedtime anyway.
I would say the new Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon really talks down to kids, especially when the previous Spectacular Spider-Man did excellent job of telling the story of Spider-Man, while making the show still accessible to kids. There are still cartoon shows that talk down to kids.
I don't mind selling merchandise related to the show to kids, I just wouldn't story lines to determined solely by merchandising concerns. In the 80s there were tons of cartoons, where irrelevant characters were on the show just to sell extra toys, where characters would get new powers and new costumes just to sell toys. In those shows selling toys was more important then stories. That's what I want to avoid.
Except Adult Swim doesn't make original content action cartoons. Any action show on Adult Swim is an anime series dubbed into English, Adult swim themselves only makes comedy cartoons. There is not enough of a market for non comedic cartoons aimed at adults.
I think an Animated Trek could fit on Nickelodeon as well.
I don't mean Star Trek should be on AdultSwim, only that it's timeslot should be right before it, so that it can share that audience and therefore not be like The Clone Wars, made primarily to appeal to kids.
There probably isn't much of a market for a non comedic cartoon aimed at adults, but unless an animated Star Trek is going to be made for kids, they need to build that audience, and piggybacking on the AdultSwim audience is one way to do that.
There probably isn't much of a market for a non comedic cartoon aimed at adults, but unless an animated Star Trek is going to be made for kids, they need to build that audience, and piggybacking on the AdultSwim audience is one way to do that.
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