Star Trek: Greatest Franchise Ever?

[Vader47000]

Is Star Trek the greatest franchise ever? There's a poll running at AgentDVD.com. Here's the link:

http://agentdvdonline.com/agentdvd/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=493846

 

[MattJC]

Star Wars is probably the greatest franchise of all time, but personally, the Trek franchise is my favorite.

 

[number6]

Several choices across several genres..

I could see Bond or Superman beating out other series, assuming the people voting are over 30.

I wouldn't consider Ghostbusters, Bourne, Pirates, M*A*S*H or Jaws franchises per se..

Not unless you're going to include Care Bears, My Little Pony, Jurassic Park and Police Academy. Those qualify as enduring franchises as much as some of the other choices on this poll.

 

[THE_FETT]

I voted Star Wars for sci-fi/fantasy, and Star Trek for TV, so I win both ways. Cool. So far, it's a good day.

 

[Bill Morris]

Well, I took that opportunity to vote for Star Trek.

 

[Starbreaker]

It's certainly made the most money.

 

[MattJC]

It's certainly made the most money.

Nope. Even with 700+ episodes and 10 movies, Trek is still second place to Star Wars.

 

[cultcross]

Depends on your definition of greatest, as indeed the quiz says. I find Star Wars boring, clunky, badly written, badly acted, and generally uninspiring, but in terms of financial and 'public eye' success, it beats out Star Trek. James Bond does too.
But that isn't to say Star Trek hasn't made its mark. Primarily the original series, even now, Trek references in unconnected mass media and pop culture usually limit themselves to TOS for material. By equal measure, thoguh, references to Star Wars have an equal preference for the original trilogy.

 

[Gepard]

"Star Trek: Great franchise, or greatest franchise?"

 

[Vader47000]

I think the general criteria for a franchise is at least three movies, or a long running TV show with a spinoff, or some combination thereof. So Ghostbusters is two movies plus an animated series, so it counts. MASH is a movie, show and a couple spinoffs, so it counts. Jaws is four movies ...

Also bear in mind that this is a semifinal round, so these are the choices that survived the earlier rounds to make it this far.

I'd imagine the winner of each of the categories advances to the final round.

Several choices across several genres..

I could see Bond or Superman beating out other series, assuming the people voting are over 30.

I wouldn't consider Ghostbusters, Bourne, Pirates, M*A*S*H or Jaws franchises per se..

Not unless you're going to include Care Bears, My Little Pony, Jurassic Park and Police Academy. Those qualify as enduring franchises as much as some of the other choices on this poll.

 

[Star Treks]

Since I think the two most important aspects are perceived effect on culture and number of episodes/movies, Trek wins on both those fronts.

Star Wars and James Bond are two respectful runners-up; and as film franchises James Bond is probably greater than Star Wars, since the last 3 SW movies were all utter garbage.

 

[Aragorn]

Quality and quantity are not the same thing. A while back on some random board, some Friday the 13th fan was boasting about how it was one of the greatest movie franchises simply because of the number of sequels it spawned... since, after all, you don't see a Godfather Part VIII.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It's definitely the greatest franchise ever. Nothing else compares with the vast universe it has created, spanning an entire galaxy (full of species so fascinating that the mere hew-mons are always the most boring people in the room) and centuries of time, yet still having a single cohesive theme (Federation values) to keep everything grounded.

In the right hands, Star Wars could rival Star Trek, but fortunately us Trekkies have George Lucas on our side! As long as he sabotages Star Wars' potential for greatness, Star Trek will continue unchallenged.

 

[ktanner3]

My criteria for choosing greatest franchise is how it holds up over time. My picks were Star Trek,The Simpsons,Living Dead series of George Romero,and Superman.

 

[Kegek]

Yes, it is the greatest franchise.

You could give convincing arguments against Star Trek's individual components - there are better movies, or better TV shows, better novels, videogames, T-shirts - but taken as a whole it's, by-and-large, a surprisingly consistent commodity with three great TV shows to the franchise label and three more that are hardly the worst things to be shown on the air, plus at least some of the movies are good. There really are few franchises of comparative size that contain comparative consistency.

 

[SFRabid]

You also have to look at licensing and marketing. In addition to spinoffs consider books, comics, toys, computer games, etc… Bond is my favorite but it has never done well outside of movies. Star Wars is probably the overall most successful both in money made and marketing of materials.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

I think Trek is the most important franchise because it has had the most significant, consistent, and long-lasting effect on popular culture - at least in the U.S.

I don't care how much money Star Wars made - during the gap between the first three films and the next batch there really wasn't that much going on with Star Wars, outside of the more diehard scifi fans. In fact, I really kinda think that because the two Star Wars Trilogies were spaced so far apart, they almost have different audiences if you don't count scifi fans who will watch anything. For example, Star Wars came out when I was a kid...but many of the non-scifi fans my age today haven't even seen the last three films...and if they did it was mainly because of their own children - not because of any great desire to get back into Star Wars on a zen level or anything. Because there was such a long gap between the Star Wars movies, I think people my age feel like they 'grew out of Star Wars'...whereas Trek has been there the entire time...adding to the pop culture yearly and growing with the culture, to an extent.

Most people my age in the U.S. grew up with Star Trek, pretty much every day after school. Back in the days when there were only three channels TOTAL, reruns of TOS were THE after-school thing to watch. Then we got the TOS movies which we saw in the theater a bunch of times...and then on HBO (which was a new concept at that time) for a year or so after each one came out.

Shoot, I had a boyfriend back then who could pretty much quote the entire script of TWOK, he'd watched it so many times on HBO. Remember, this was in the days before VCRs - you had to actually sit and watch this stuff - you couldn't record it for later or replay favorite scenes over and over.

And of course, in short order we got TNG...and from then until 2 years ago, we had new Star Trek on TV all the time....and reruns of all the other shows as well.

In the U.S., it has definitely been the most consistently visible and accessible franchise..and for that reason I think it has had more of an effect on people, regardless of the monetary issues.

 

[erastus25]

Hhhhmmm...the definition of franchise is interesting. I would almost include Rocky Horror Picture Show based on the vast cult following that one movie has created.

Anyway, I voted for quality being the determining factor of best franchise, followed by a vote for Star Trek as best Sci. Fi. and TV show. IMHO, no other series combines quality themes with good action/adventure, scriptwriting, etc... as well as Star Trek does at its best.

And what about Firefly for best franchise ever???