You just made my exact point. Thanks.
Some people think 'free speech' is a license to insult. At least, attempt to.
Trek XI And Internet Criticism: Makes You Wish It Was 1982...
- Thread starter Roald
- Start date
You just made my exact point. Thanks.
Some people think 'free speech' is a license to insult. At least, attempt to.
I think internet criticism was to blame for the demise of Enterprise but most people seem to love this new movie.
I have yet to see the new movie, but most of my friends whom I trust have told me that it is not really a Star Trek movie, but rather a summer comic book movie/action thriller and not really Star Wars. If that is the main criticism then I don't think there is anything wrong with that and it obviously isn't hurting the movie.
I have yet to see the new movie, but most of my friends whom I trust have told me that it is not really a Star Trek movie, but rather a summer comic book movie/action thriller and not really Star Wars. If that is the main criticism then I don't think there is anything wrong with that and it obviously isn't hurting the movie.
In which case there is no difference at all.
Look, the thing about television is that, for most of us, whether we watch a show or not, or what we think or say about it, it doesn't matter. The only people the networks track are the folks with the neilsen boxes. And even then, they're not actually the audience; advertisers are the audience. If a show can't be advertised on, either because not enough people watch it or the subject matter is such that the advertisers don't want to be associated with the program, it's not going to get network support. The reason ENT was cancelled was because the show wasn't able to bring in enough ad revenue to justify showing it to the small number of neilsen box-having people who were watching it. Whatever was or wasn't being said online didn't have any effect on it.
I mean, look at Firefly. The internet collectively loves that property like it made them breakfast in bed, and it got a scrambled run of ten episodes and a single movie.
Yeah, I think I don't agree with this; because the way I remember it, ENT's ratings were not worse than, for example, BSG -- which was down to a million and change or so per episode at that point. The studio was fed up with the bad buzz, I think.
But even if ENT and BSG were running neck and neck in the ratings, that's a failure for ENT. BSG was a show put on by the SciFi channel, and run well up in the 'specialty channels', based off a property from twenty years ago that had virtually no value in the modern market. ENT, in contrast, was a Star Trek production, based off a brand that had been in continuous production for twenty years, produced by Paramount, and aired on major network channels. BSG cost less to produce, had lower expectations and, for the stations running it, represented something of a ratings success, while ENT was more expensive, had great expectations and, for the stations running it, represented something of a ratings failure.
I don't think they were running neck and neck; I think BSG had 1.5 or so million viewers when ENT was getting 2-3. ENT was still getting advertisers, and they could have gone on that way probably; but I remember hearing that the studio was fed up with the griping and just threw in the towel.
Both shows were canceled after 4 seasons. Which is respectable run for both of them. Stargate Atlantis lasted 5 seasons. Which is equally good. Albeit not as good as SG1, Voyager or DS9 which lasted 10 and 7 seasons respectively. Only crime drama fare better on TV lately (which I'm a big fan of).
I was surprised by the above Firefly post. That show received so much love in the internet. Ive watched the show one time and didn't like it at all, but many people on the internet seem to love it. So much that I was under the impression this show was canceled after 3 years or something. Not only dropped after only 15 episodes! As everything, it was probably canceled for rating/ad/budget/revenue reasons, not internet hype or lack of it.
If you don't like the movie say you so! Online?!? How awful.
Why it's like letting down the side saying you don't like how the movie was half brained, and didn't resemble in any way the star trek that you know and love, while it had a shitty veneer of somehow being star trek 'improved', with new characters, a new timeline, even a new sense of morality. Spock marooned Kirk, a Federation officer. Scotty had an Ewok as a sidekick and he was seriously irritating. Engineering looked like a waste treatment facility!
F- all of the people who love the movie! I'm a star trek fan. I love TOS, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. I like TMP. I enjoy some of the movies. (Not the next generation ones first contact excepted).
I'm Irish. As such I'm not adverse to a split of opinion.
On behalf of the whole spirit of the internet, people who don't like the movie, people who have been fans for a very long time, and the entire idea behind the Federation, and Star Trek generally, I would say; a little dissent is a good thing.
So suck on it. And TNG WAS all kinds of horseshit. As was the movie.
Why it's like letting down the side saying you don't like how the movie was half brained, and didn't resemble in any way the star trek that you know and love, while it had a shitty veneer of somehow being star trek 'improved', with new characters, a new timeline, even a new sense of morality. Spock marooned Kirk, a Federation officer. Scotty had an Ewok as a sidekick and he was seriously irritating. Engineering looked like a waste treatment facility!
F- all of the people who love the movie! I'm a star trek fan. I love TOS, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. I like TMP. I enjoy some of the movies. (Not the next generation ones first contact excepted).
I'm Irish. As such I'm not adverse to a split of opinion.
On behalf of the whole spirit of the internet, people who don't like the movie, people who have been fans for a very long time, and the entire idea behind the Federation, and Star Trek generally, I would say; a little dissent is a good thing.
So suck on it. And TNG WAS all kinds of horseshit. As was the movie.
The outcry would have been far worse in 1979. Some people had waited a decade to see Captain Kirk blast some Klingons while seducing alien women. And instead they got The Motionless Picture. At least everyone agrees that TWOK was recognizably Star Trek.
I would go so far to say that the Internet and instant viewer feedback would make a high-minded reimaging like TMP impossible in this day and age. When they only had the traditional MSM critics to deal with, they weren't at risk of being criticized for being overly-intellectual. The opening weekend audience would have crapped all over TMP and that would have been the end of it.
I would go so far to say that the Internet and instant viewer feedback would make a high-minded reimaging like TMP impossible in this day and age. When they only had the traditional MSM critics to deal with, they weren't at risk of being criticized for being overly-intellectual. The opening weekend audience would have crapped all over TMP and that would have been the end of it.
While I agree with the thrust of the OP's statement, someone a while back did post some newsgroup postings from the 1980s, probably from the days of Apranet or whatever it is. I remember that one of the terrific predictions was that TNG would only last 1 season.... 
Nonsense. If the show was actually popular, if it was meeting the expectations of the network and the studio, if it was bringing in solid numbers and good ad revenue, it wouldn't matter how many people on the internet hated it. For gods sake, man, Paris Hilton has a television show, and she's a walking punchline on the internet. And not just on TrekBBS; on the entire internet!
No studio would cancel a show just because a few hundred, or even a few thousand, anonymous posters on the internet didn't like it. And really, that's all we're talking about; even if the entire population of TrekBBS had turned against the show and stopped watching, which they had not, we'd have been a rounding error, not a major groundswell.
And Cdr MacDuff makes a good point; ENT ran for four years. Do you know how long most scifi shows manage, on network television? Less than a season. Rather than harming ENT, the Star Trek pedigree, and it's attendant reassurance of solid ratings and a good market for the dvds arguably kept it alive long after an identical but non-Trek show would have been pulled from the air and left to languish, half its episodes relegated to the eventual, bare bones dvd pressing.
Hollywood types don't always make decisions based on money. I used to think so, too; but then I became acquainted with someone who was raised in the business, and he said they do things to mainly to impress each other.
And ENT was apparently not impressing them, with the bad rep it had. This is what I heard at the time it was cancelled.
With the bad reputation? Or the bad results?
Look, Paris Hilton has a television show. Paris. Hilton. The woman is a joke on the entire internet, and she has a television show.
Also, ENT ended when people were actually starting to come around on the series, praising at least its attempts to try and tell deeper, better, more compelling stories. If they were really going to cancel it for its lousy reputation, they'd have dropped it in its aimless, meandering second season.
Look, Paris Hilton has a television show. Paris. Hilton. The woman is a joke on the entire internet, and she has a television show.
Also, ENT ended when people were actually starting to come around on the series, praising at least its attempts to try and tell deeper, better, more compelling stories. If they were really going to cancel it for its lousy reputation, they'd have dropped it in its aimless, meandering second season.
