Star Trek 2009.
Spoilers Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x09 – “300th Night”
No. TOS when it got popular on the 70s and people realized what a great show it was. The TOS movie era. The Berman era. Peak trek. No dumb romances. No dumb kids. No burn that somehow destroyed all technology and people somehow starved. A starfleet that could find solutions to tech issues. No academy. Just exploration and mysteries.
Not popular enough to stay on the air. That's how the game works, right?
The era that saw another ratings decline?
TOS still flind its audience and became super popular. Do you think SFA is better?
They made about 26 episodes a season for 7 to 4 seasons. Way more than the kurtznan shows. After 18 years yeah they saw a decline but STE still lasted 4 seasons with over 100 episodes. SNW is going to finish with 45 and isn't viewed even as much as STE.
ENT had 98 episodes.
I like both for different reasons. There is no competition for me so it's a irrelevant question.
So quantity determines quality?
That's pretty much the same conclusion I came to. It seems ridiculous, but when you do the maths it actually works out.
i like all Trek . I don't differentiate between them.
Trek is like supporting your favourite football team. Or pizza. Even when it sucks, it's still pretty good, and better than most other things out there
(Apologies in advance for the lengthy text - ended up having more thoughts than I expected!)
There was a reason TOS was cancelled - in my opinion, season 3 was absolute dross with very little worth salvaging. TOS as a show is very uneven ("79 episodes, about 30 good ones" - Philip Fry, though I think 30 undersells it just a bit). That said, there was also a reason that TOS stuck around in the public consciousness, and slow burned its way to an animated show and several films before the franchise returned to live action TV. The core of the premise and its characters kept the franchise alive, and has done to this day.
However, the franchise has never been static. Each show has responded to the premise in its own way, and none ever did so flawlessly. Television and media has changed, and so I can't really compare apples to oranges - especially not when the current media landscape means we get fewer than half of the episodes than we did back then. I like bits of TOS. I like bits of the Berman era. I like bits of the Kurtzman era. All eras are valid, and all of them told stories in a way which aligned with the way TV stories were told at the time. I do not ever expect the franchise to truly return to the late 80s, early 90s or especially the 60s, and nor should it - those times are over, and the expectations of storytelling and character development have changed. Has the current era been fully able to take advantage of modern storytelling and worldbuilding? No, I don't think it has. For whatever reason, I don't think any new series has had the impact of Andor, for instance. The franchise exists in a niche of its own making, and has done ever since CBS All Access/Paramount+ became a thing. It has the potential to be more, for absolutely certain... but few agree exactly how.
Despite that, do I dislike the current era, or want to discard it in favour of some nostalgic retreat to 'when things were great'? Absolutely not. In my opinion, the current era (including SFA, to bring this back to the point), is worthy of the franchise and almost every show has had something good to contribute to the universe. Not every radical decision landed. But we can't let the past become our straitjacket. No matter how we want them to, our apples will never become oranges. The franchise has changed, and while we absolutely have the right to like and dislike whatever parts of it we want, there should be some degree of acknowledgment (not necessarily acceptance), that in today's media market, some things had to change.
This doesn't mean that every change was successful or targeted in the right places. There's still some give and take to be had - the current era, while not unsuccessful, has not conquered the media landscape. Again, 2026's media is not the media of the 1990s, but Star Trek should be more visible to the general public than it currently is. So I hope that whatever comes next, it's able to capture the imagination of the general public. As we've seen, we'll watch anything that comes out, even if we hate it. That is no way to sustain a franchise, and I think we vastly overestimate the numbers of former fans and viewers who'll come rushing back to the scent of memberberries or similar plot structures to those we enjoyed long ago.
There was a reason TOS was cancelled - in my opinion, season 3 was absolute dross with very little worth salvaging. TOS as a show is very uneven ("79 episodes, about 30 good ones" - Philip Fry, though I think 30 undersells it just a bit). That said, there was also a reason that TOS stuck around in the public consciousness, and slow burned its way to an animated show and several films before the franchise returned to live action TV. The core of the premise and its characters kept the franchise alive, and has done to this day.
However, the franchise has never been static. Each show has responded to the premise in its own way, and none ever did so flawlessly. Television and media has changed, and so I can't really compare apples to oranges - especially not when the current media landscape means we get fewer than half of the episodes than we did back then. I like bits of TOS. I like bits of the Berman era. I like bits of the Kurtzman era. All eras are valid, and all of them told stories in a way which aligned with the way TV stories were told at the time. I do not ever expect the franchise to truly return to the late 80s, early 90s or especially the 60s, and nor should it - those times are over, and the expectations of storytelling and character development have changed. Has the current era been fully able to take advantage of modern storytelling and worldbuilding? No, I don't think it has. For whatever reason, I don't think any new series has had the impact of Andor, for instance. The franchise exists in a niche of its own making, and has done ever since CBS All Access/Paramount+ became a thing. It has the potential to be more, for absolutely certain... but few agree exactly how.
Despite that, do I dislike the current era, or want to discard it in favour of some nostalgic retreat to 'when things were great'? Absolutely not. In my opinion, the current era (including SFA, to bring this back to the point), is worthy of the franchise and almost every show has had something good to contribute to the universe. Not every radical decision landed. But we can't let the past become our straitjacket. No matter how we want them to, our apples will never become oranges. The franchise has changed, and while we absolutely have the right to like and dislike whatever parts of it we want, there should be some degree of acknowledgment (not necessarily acceptance), that in today's media market, some things had to change.
This doesn't mean that every change was successful or targeted in the right places. There's still some give and take to be had - the current era, while not unsuccessful, has not conquered the media landscape. Again, 2026's media is not the media of the 1990s, but Star Trek should be more visible to the general public than it currently is. So I hope that whatever comes next, it's able to capture the imagination of the general public. As we've seen, we'll watch anything that comes out, even if we hate it. That is no way to sustain a franchise, and I think we vastly overestimate the numbers of former fans and viewers who'll come rushing back to the scent of memberberries or similar plot structures to those we enjoyed long ago.
Sorry - meant overdoes it. There's more than 30 good episodes in TOS!
Nah, I think the Fry ratio is generally correct.
Television seasons in general are shorter now. For example, take the renewal announcement for the Fox series Doc which makes the claim the new season will have "an XL episode count." The episode count? 22. Consider that. 22 episodes is now considered an Extra Large season by modern TV standards. Shorter seasons are just a modern television reality, which has nothing to do with Kurtzman or what he might or might not be doing to Star Trek or whatever.
The relaunch of Night Court had, I believe, a first season of 15 episodes and a second of 13. Pretty long by 2020s network sitcom standards.
Someone else on TV just Glitter Vomited again.
We have to stop this epidemic somehow, or every TV show will be wall to wall glitter vomit, and you know how I feel about Glitter.
We have to stop this epidemic somehow, or every TV show will be wall to wall glitter vomit, and you know how I feel about Glitter.
Episode Four of Malcolm in the Middle Life's Still Unfair.
Tradition!!!!!!
How else are we to know the situation is serious?
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