The Longer Running Times

[Fateor]

Christina Chong's contract didn't allow her to do other TV. I can't find the YouTube video where she said that. I assume the other main actors had the same language in their contracts.

So short seasons, surprisingly low salaries compared to other TV shows, inconsistent schedules where you could go years between seasons, and limiting your work options.

Harsh but understandable given getting the actors schedules to line up again is a big part of why it's gotten to the point of multiple years between seasons.

 

[DarthPipes]

I don't think the longer run times are helpful for this show. Episode 2 felt overlong and needed tighter editing. They want to appeal to younger viewers but younger viewers have a shorter attention span. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is barely over 30 minutes but does its job much more effectively than Starfleet Academy. Episode 2 is 60 minutes and they only found time to focus on a single cadet.

 

[GothicPudding]

Thanks for your responses, guys! I appreciate it. I guess what I’m most interested in is to know why they decided for Starfleet Academy to finally be the show where episodes are allowed to run for 60+ minutes, when it appears as if they would have been able to do that since Discovery, which was almost ten years ago.

Is that just a personal preference of one of the new people on the production team? Did Alex Kurtzman change his mind? Is this something that was mandated by Paramount? Or is it basically accidental and just something that happened because they decided to never cut any fat from the episodes or scripts?

I guess none of that can really be answered right now in the absence of any official statement from the producers. Still interesting to think about the implications for how the show feels. So far it seems like they are using the longer runtime to have more or longer character moments. The show has a relatively large ensemble cast and the added time probably gives them more room per episode to flesh them out.

I assume that the per minute cost of the SFA is less than streaming Star Trek series. Episodes 2, 3 and 4 seemed to a lot less VFX than the first episode or the typical SNW episode. It's probably easy to film more pages each day if it's mostly dialogue on standing sets.