No.
Adjusted for inflation, costs were a million per episode in today's dollars. More discussion here: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-having-a-cheap-low-budget-a-misnomer.318410/
Strange New Worlds' showrunners advise fans to write to Skydance and Paramount if they're interested in a "Year One" Kirk sequel series
Adjusted for inflation, costs were a million per episode in today's dollars. More discussion here: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-having-a-cheap-low-budget-a-misnomer.318410/
But that one the species race and their bigotry was dependent on the one hour story being told. We also had an episode warning us about over population. Those didnt linger on the characters all season long. Sometimes they just told a good sci fi adventure story. I just listed a hand full of great episodes of tos. Episodes that SFA or none of kurtzman trek could ever touch.in quality of story. Kurtzman trek keeps touching on the same identity politics, social justice messaging over and over again all season long across more than one show. Its like yeah we got it let's get a good story now. Maybe an exploration story in deep space. Finding new strange and powerful aliens. Even SNW hasn't done much of that lately.Because this was the height of subtlety:
Adjusted for inflation the highest would be 2.5 million. SFA is still 4 times that for their one hour episodes.
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It still wasn't cheap, and often relied upon techniques like set sharing that are now sneered at by audiences. So, yeah, that supposed golden age isn't returning because they did things that are considered negatives now like reusing sets, costumes, inconsistencies of plot, characters or the like.
TOS stands apart because people are willing to defend it's flaws now, and are removed from the era in which the preachiness would maybe be missed. But, all those elements are present.
It was the 60s. They were making 20.plus episodes a season. So yeah it has flaws. But its still the first and the best. The movies as well.
And context is key. But, all the flaws in the first are present in the rest.
That's not really a practical option in modern times. Network television is damn cheap, Star Trek as a space opera can not. One of the reasons why modern network television is practically dominated by cop and medical shows is because of how cheaply those shows can be pulled off. Product placement deals can be arranged to eat up some of the expenses. If a cop show is set in an actual police department or law enforcement agency you can further reduce that cost by getting support from the real life version of the organization who can then provide actual uniforms, equipment vehicles and personnel. Granted, this does have the trade-off being that in order to get that support, the organization in question gets final script approval to make sure the organization is being represented in a positive light. Medical shows can buy hospital scrubs and in both type of shows, when the characters are off the clock they wear ordinary clothes, rather than tailor made costumes. Product placement deals can be utilized to further decrease the cost by having them wear sponsored clothes.
None of this is possible with Star Trek. It takes place in the future, so everything the characters wear and use has to be custom made by the show's production team. There is no actual Starfleet to help them out with production costs by providing actual phasers, tricorders or uniforms. Trying to use product placement of modern stuff in a future setting could come off as clunky as it did in I Robot where Will Smith's character was into retro stuff from the year the movie was made. While having the characters wearing contemporary clothes is something that a very vocal element of fandom complains about the modern Trek shows doing as "lazy" and "unimaginative."
Even if CBS could get behind doing a Star Trek series on network television, it certainly wouldn't get twenty episodes out of it. At the risk of invoking coin jar tithes and fire hose memes, the closest thing to Star Trek that has aired on network television in the past decade is The Orville. And even with an executive producer who had pull with that particular network, it could only manage two seasons of a dozen episodes each, which aired two years apart. Star Trek would not do any better than that if it did air on network television these days.
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No.Dare I suggest that the levels of care and treatments seen on medical shows must seem like sci-fi to most Americans.
now that trumpers bought paramount
anything is possible for a strange new worlds sequel
anything is possible for a strange new worlds sequel
Because nothing says "political ideology has somehow tilted the scale in favor of investing dozens upon dozens of millions of dollars into a venture" quite like dismantling the sets you'd have used to cut costs therein?
Discovery's budget was in excess of $8m - $10m per episode iirc - they already decided to pump a lot of money into the franchise, I'd be surprised if that kind of budget wouldn't sustain a network series, especially if they settled for bottle episodes, reused sets/costumes/props, location filming, and less impressive CGI (all of which the streaming shows wound up with post-DSC anyway).
I wonder if there's an assumption they're working with that Star Trek/sci-fi in general must be seen to have highly expensive effects and ultra-polished production values, which is obviously a bonus but not something that's necessarily make-or-break for audiences - some network action-adventure shows like the Magnum PI/The Equalizer reboots can look amusingly cheap at times, but still seem to draw in far more viewers than streaming Trek.
What do you mean by "settling for location filming"? You do realize location filming costs more than studio filming does, right?
I literally explained all that in the post you quoted. which I'll repost:
I mean filming on location in space, obviously.
Nah, I mean walking out into the lot behind the set, sticking a styrofoam plant on it, and calling it an alien planet.
The BBC were masters of it, Doctor Who, Blake's 7, and Red Dwarf used to visit "planets" that were literally just whatever bit of woodland was ten minutes' walk from the studio, or the nearest disused power plant.
I'm not sure this works though, because again, they spent $8m - $10m per episode on DSC. For the money they were already willing to invest into the franchise, they could have covered costs for reusable costumes and props.
Someone else can come and do a comparison with how much TOS and TNG cost in their day, adjusted for inflation, but I'd be surprised if they hadn't spent more on Discovery's 13 episode seasons then they did on TNG's 26-episode seasons. Discovery was one of the most expensive TV series ever made at the time, apparently.
That's called backlot filming, not location.
That's still location filming, and as stated, it costs more. You have to get filming permits, arrange transportation and catering, deal with unpredictable weather that may delay filming and increase the cost, spend extra money looping the dialogue in post-production because it's hard to get clear audio on location, etc.
Clearly you've never been to Mississauga.
Having been to the doctor 5 times in the last year I can safely say no it doesn't.Dare I suggest that the levels of care and treatments seen on medical shows must seem like sci-fi to most Americans.
Yes.
It's why things like Asylum and such get poor responses because they shoot on the cheap.
The fact that they would be storing the sets (which still costs money) until an ACTUAL decision was made. By making the decision when they did, in effect they terminate existing contracts with cast/crew (which also sometimes saves money if they are paying any sort of 'retainer' fees) and free up the existing sets to be torn down/trashed quickly; OR auctioned off quickly.
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Well, there are costs associated with vacant soundstages and with storage of set pieces.
You know, they rebuilt the JJPrise bridge in Canada for ST:B because it was cheaper than transporting the existing stored sets from California?
To sign rental contracts for the use of those Star Trek stages and facilities, it helps if you're putting them out there as immediately available.
Honestly, yeah. That's a good point.
I hadn't realised that about Galactica 1980!
Yeah, it seems sets and big props are seen as pretty disposable really. I imagine they get too awkward to store. I was surprised to find out recently that set construction had already begun on the aborted 2001 Battlestar revival when the plug was pulled.
Personally, I imagine Star Trek will continue in some shape or form going forward as ever since TNG it has really. The big gap was between Enterprise and ST09 and that was 'only' four years.
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