Should they have cancelled TNG?

[BillJ]

The cost of TNG was going up because of the cast, simply bring new castmembers and that's not a problem.

But at some point it is no longer the TNG you loved. The problem with a TV series sticking around past its prime. Instead of having Voyager, the show would've likely evolved into it. With a female captain and a crew that doesn't get along. The finer details may have been different but it is the same creative minds.

Just go out on top.

 

[DWF]

The cost of TNG was going up because of the cast, simply bring new castmembers and that's not a problem.

But at some point it is no longer the TNG you loved. The problem with a TV series sticking around past its prime. Instead of having Voyager, the show would've likely evolved into it. With a female captain and a crew that doesn't get along. The finer details may have been different but it is the same creative minds.

Just go out on top.

Castmembers were changed on teh show as it was and the idea of TNG remained. In the end though it wasn't ratings that ended TNG, it as Star Trek V's box office that did it. According to Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories after TFF's box office failure it ws decided by Paramount to make one more TOR movie, TNG was to have seven seasons and go the movies and Berman was ordered to come up with a replacement series in syndication for TNG.

DS9, Voyager and Enterprise still maintained the same story structure and general cast roles as TNG, Rick Berman knew how to make a show based on the successful structure of TNG. But I don't think the cast was the main point of the show, after one season Dr. Crusher was replaced and even before the first season ended Tasha Yar was killed, niether events changed the point of the show.

With Paramount's plan the series went out on top but the TNG crew journey officiallly ended with Nemesis, so really they didn't quite go ot on top.

 

[RoJoHen]

Castmembers were changed on teh show as it was and the idea of TNG remained.

Eh, aside from some random characters that came and went (Wesley, Ensign Ro, Tasha Yar, Doctor Pulaski) the cast was pretty much exactly the same throughout the entire run.

 

[MacLeod]

You were already bored by S5? That's a little harsh.

I tend to prefer my series to be shorter in duration.

Oh, man. Avoid Dr. Who!!

I was thinking the exact the same thing.

 

[2takesfrakes]

TNG did seem to suffer, somewhat, from this sense of "entitlement" that it should, naturally, make the next step to the Big Screen. As long as Shatner puts his stamp of approval on it, then it's all but guaranteed to do well. Some fans even bitch about how boring TNG was and all that, but nevertheless, the series was successful - very much more so than the original series ever was, during its first run. The cast was still verile, for the most part, it almost didn't make sense to just "quit while they were on top." Especially, when there as all of that popcorn at stake.

Now, I love First Contact and Insurrection. And Generations flattered the cast - particularly Marina & Gates with its cinematography. But I've occassionally suspected that TNG would've been much better off following up its 7 year run with Made-for-TV Movies, instead. How this would've played out, I'm not sure, especially when Stewart certainly had more of a career to look forward to outside of STAR TREK. And Brent's disdain for wearing all of that grease paint is well-known. But the big, event motion pictures TNG turned out suffered from diminishing returns. Fortunately, J.J. Abrams understood how to make STAR TREK work in movies on the scale they needed to work on. Because this sort of "logical" progression from established television series to the big screen doesn't always follow for everything.

 

[suarezguy]

Agreed that it's better to go out on top, or at least close to the top, than have a lot of recasting. I think the characters were core elements of the series (most people thought Pulaski was a change for the worse) and it'd be better to just start a new series with a different cast and premise than gradually or suddenly lose a lot of the characters and the chemistry they had without changing enough of the basic plot and style.

 

[The Old Mixer]

They absolutely should have gone on to Season 14, by which point the name of the series would have been Mr. Data's Place and the first officer would have been played by Ted McGinley.

 

[Push The Button]

From a personal perspective, I'd rather a show I love run too short a time than stay around too long and ruin my appreciation of it. In my opinion, TNG had already stayed around too long.

Amen to that. Seinfeld, The X-Files and Lost were all shows that I loved but that should have ended earlier than they did.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Maybe they could have squeezed out a few more seasons of TNG but I'm glad they didn't take the Law and Order route. I loved CSI the first three seasons mostly because of the Grissom character and his nerdy introverted rationalism. As early as the 4th season they were trying to retool him as a badass and the show became more about character drama than writing interesting crimes. That started to happen in the later seasons of TNG, I'm glad it wasn't allowed to fully take over.

I think Seinfeld and Lost ended at just about the right time, just Lost should have had a better final season. And, maybe should have had fewer episodes per season.

 

[Ghrakh]

Getting rid of TNG was the death knell for Star Trek.

Yep.

 

[Lance]

It's very easy to say that in hindsight. But in 1994, I remember that it was generally seen that moving the then popular TNG cast to the big screen was considered to be not only an obvious decision, but also the rightful order of things. Nobody questioned it, because the sheer popularity of TNG made sure it was perfect business sense.

Of course, its easy to see in retrospect that it wasn't. But at the time... at the time, the decision was made. And it was the right decision, at the time. Given that the actors were costing so much more money, and would continue to now that their original six year contracts were over and even new year from then was renegotiated as a new 12 month contract, then there's a legitimate case to be made that it could never have survived much longer than a season more anyway, for purely dollars and cents reasons. Making a new show with a cheaper cast was the way to go at that point.

 

[DWF]

It's very easy to say that in hindsight. But in 1994, I remember that it was generally seen that moving the then popular TNG cast to the big screen was considered to be not only an obvious decision, but also the rightful order of things. Nobody questioned it, because the sheer popularity of TNG made sure it was perfect business sense.

Of course, its easy to see in retrospect that it wasn't. But at the time... at the time, the decision was made. And it was the right decision, at the time. Given that the actors were costing so much more money, and would continue to now that their original six year contracts were over and even new year from then was renegotiated as a new 12 month contract, then there's a legitimate case to be made that it could never have survived much longer than a season more anyway, for purely dollars and cents reasons. Making a new show with a cheaper cast was the way to go at that point.

From what I've understood from articles over the years neither DS9, Voyager nor Enterprise were cheaper to produce at least not until Enterprise's final season.

 

[Ghrakh]

It's very easy to say that in hindsight..

Well of course, but it wasn't a purely speculative comment. (unlike all this other stuff about how it would have sucked had it continued, with the show turning into Jersey Shore or whatever, or how it should have been cancelled earlier because I lost interest.) Anyway, as to the rest of your post, it's accurate as I understand it, if I don't fully agree. But TNG didn't end because they "ran out of steam" or had ratings nosedive.

 

[Lance]

From what I've understood from articles over the years neither DS9, Voyager nor Enterprise were cheaper to produce at least not until Enterprise's final season.

DS9 had a lot of expensive start-up costs, due to the nature of it having to build all those unique sets and costumes, but in theory Voyager was always conceived to be a cheapy, simply migrating assets over from TNG with only surface-level changes to the design and layout of them (the sets are, for example, mostly easily identenfiable as the same, except for the bridge itself which was a new-build), with a cast whose pay checks were considerably less than their TNG counterparts were getting after seven successful seasons of renewals. For various unforeseen reasons, though, there was a budget blow-out due to reshoots and things like that, and Voyager's budget ended up running into the red for the best part of the first couple of seasons as a consequence of the ball being dropped early on.

But on paper, the idea was that they could have their cake and eat it too (ie, make a 'successor series' to TNG, without it being as expensive as TNG was getting to be at that point).

 

[DWF]

From what I've understood from articles over the years neither DS9, Voyager nor Enterprise were cheaper to produce at least not until Enterprise's final season.

DS9 had a lot of expensive start-up costs, due to the nature of it having to build all those unique sets and costumes, but in theory Voyager was always conceived to be a cheapy, simply migrating assets over from TNG with only surface-level changes to the design and layout of them (the sets are, for example, mostly easily identenfiable as the same, except for the bridge itself which was a new-build), with a cast whose pay checks were considerably less than their TNG counterparts were getting after seven successful seasons of renewals. For various unforeseen reasons, though, there was a budget blow-out due to reshoots and things like that, and Voyager's budget ended up running into the red for the best part of the first couple of seasons as a consequence of the ball being dropped early on.

But on paper, the idea was that they could have their cake and eat it too (ie, make a 'successor series' to TNG, without it being as expensive as TNG was getting to be at that point).

The funny thing is that, if the planned destruction of the Enterprise had happened at the end of the sixth season the costs would've still gone up. But in reality creating two space based shows so closely together drove costs up. And really Enterprise would up costing far more than TNG ever cost and it wasn't bacause of the actor's salaries. Even worse is that the ratings continued to fall.

 

[Lance]

It's like I say, as far as the studio bean counters were concerned, they thought Berman, Piller and Taylor were going to deliver them a sort of "TNG Season 8", but with a cheaper cast of characters. Everything was supposed to keep rolling over from TNG in terms of the production schedule, but there were various unforeseen problems during filming on those early Voyager episodes which unfortunately put paid to that plan. Voyager S1 ended up running into the red in a pretty big way, and didn't really recover for a while.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

It would be nice if we could watch alternate realities where the roads not taken were actually taken. Kinda like what happens to worf in Parallels, except only visually.

 

[Lance]

Don't get me wrong, the idea was always to have a different ship and different crew. But in terms of production, it was meant to be an easy transition, because most of the Enterprise-D's sets were being adapted to the new show, which meant (in theory) it should have had less start-up costs than DS9 which by it's very nature needed everything to be built from scratch. Also, with the sets being updated visually but otherwise kept in essentially the same configurations as TNG, directors would be able to come in and block and frame their shots pretty much identically to how they were already used to doing it on TNG, which would itself save a lot of time and money...

Well, that was the theory.

In practice, they did in fact transition pretty well. But what really put Voyager into the red were unforeseen circumstances, firstly after Genevieve Bujold walked away from the role as Janeway, and then after several days shooting it was found that Kate Mulgrew's natural haircut wasn't photographing very well in the dailies, which meant reshoots were necessary on all her scenes as well (and given that Janeway was in virtually every scene of the pilot, that was tantamount to scrapping everything that had already been shot and starting again).

Basically, "Caretaker" put them in the red from the beginning, and they didn't recover for probably a good few seasons. It really was a case of the best laid plans not panning out how they hoped.

 

[Orphalesion]

^ Woah....they reshot pretty much the whole pilot (as you said Janeway is almost in every scene) because of a haircut?

I mean I understand that a "perfect" appearance is important in a visual medium like TV, but wouldn't it have been more sensible to change Janeway's hair starting with the first episode right after the pilot rather than to go into the red over that?
It's not that unusual for character's hair/clothing style or even for sets to look different in the pilot when compared to the show proper...

 

[Lance]

^ Woah....they reshot pretty much the whole pilot (as you said Janeway is almost in every scene) because of a haircut?

I mean I understand that a "perfect" appearance is important in a visual medium like TV, but wouldn't it have been more sensible to change Janeway's hair starting with the first episode right after the pilot rather than to go into the red over that?
It's not that unusual for character's hair/clothing style or even for sets to look different in the pilot when compared to the show proper...

I am unsure how many scenes had actually been shot before they abandoned it and decided to remount the show from scratch. But my understanding is that the original hair looked fine on the set, but when they watched the dailes they discovered that Mulgrew's hair photographed badly under the chosen lighting conditions, namely that her hair was too fine and often hard to see. Which is why they gave her the bun haircut instead as a kind of short-term solution.

From Memory Alpha:

Filming for the episode (and the series) began on 6 September 1994; the first scene to be shot was the "tomato soup" scene with Paris and Kim. Genevieve Bujold began filming on 8 September 1994, but departed two days later. Kate Mulgrew did not start filming until 19 September 1994. The first few days of filming saw Mulgrew with her natural hairstyle; however, when watching back the first edits, producers noticed that the stage lighting was making Mulgrew's fine hair-type appear thin and see-through. The more severe bun was then used, requiring reshoots on a number of scenes, including those at the Ocampa city (which required rebooking the venue). (Star Trek: Voyager - A Vision of the Future; Star Trek Magazine issue 152)

So, the biggest expense was actually having to go back out on location again to reshoot all those scenes. I presume the 'hair problem' must have been a big one, because they surely would never have bothered unless it was *really* hard to ignore.

Between Bujold walking from the show, and problems with Mulgrew's hair, they lost several weeks, maybe closer to months. And that had a serious knock-on effect for the rest of season one's shooting schedule (ISTR reading somewhere that they were still doing pickup shots for "Caretaker" during the filming of several other first season episodes).

Memory Alpha again:

The reshoots – a massive undertaking that involved the complete rebuilding of huge sets that had been filmed and deconstructed two months earlier – were at an inconvenient time for the production crew, as they were ongoing when Rick Berman announced (on 5 December 1994) that the structure of Voyager's regular episodes (including the first four after this pilot, which had already been shot in their entirety) would be changed from a teaser and five acts to a teaser and four acts. The difficulty of production at the time led to various jokes on the set, a favorite of which seemed to be, "I wonder if we'll get this pilot shot before the series is finished."

Needless to say, it was a *very* troubled start to production.