Trek's future according to Paramount's new owners...

[Nerys Myk]

I found out recently that Donald Rumsfeld and Dan Rather co-owned a ranch in New Mexico together for 25 years until 2008. No conflict of interest there.

Real estate makes odd bedfellows.

 

[camdudetenger2018]

No more outdoor UFC matches:

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/mma/article/dana-white-swears-off-outdoor-events-forever-after-ufc-freedom-250-weather-drama-at-white-house-083737341.html

the dark side of having sports events outdoors

 

[Paul Weaver]

Star Trek morphing into a manosphere wet dream because the Ellisons cozied up to Trump to get what they wanted always struck me as hysterical, reactionary nonsense. Trump will be gone shortly and likely be a lame duck for the last stretch of his term; he'll be in the rearview mirror before any new Trek show hits the airwaves.

Trump is a symptom of the illness that America is unable to defend against (and to be fair the rest of the western world is struggling)

Another 20 years and things will have changed again and we may see a revival of weekly trek, although Data did state TV will be gone by 2040, and Trek is gone from TV now anyway (TV being were people sat down at 8pm to watch "something", rather than choosing to watch "specific thing")

Much of TV today is more like an old "miniseries" rather than a "weekly adventures" format. Short seasons mean people don't get into a habit of watching. A 12, 18, even 24 month gap between a dump of less than a dozen episodes is very different to a 3 month gap and then an episode every week for the next 9 months.

Hopefully things will have changed next time Trek comes back to weekly output. I had no expectations of a trek revival 10 years ago with Discovery, and we've had some great years despite the nonsense of prodigy's availability.

I found out recently that Donald Rumsfeld and Dan Rather co-owned a ranch in New Mexico together for 25 years until 2008. No conflict of interest there.

Yes, there was a film about it

 

[Danja]

A 12, 18, even 24 month gap between a dump of less than a dozen episodes is very different to a 3 month gap and then an episode every week for the next 9 months.

Two years between seasons was normal for The Sopranos.

 

[Paul Weaver]

13 episode "prestige television". That's not going to get casual viewers. At it didn't. The absolute peak was Fall 2002 with Season 4 and about 11m viewers.

The West Wing was getting 15 million at the same time. ER over 20 million.

And it was never 2 years. The longest gap was 22 months, and the average 14 months.

 

[eschaton]

I think it's important to note that "Peak TV" was built with relatively low-budget prestige dramas. Production of things like The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc. didn't require VFX or huge production lead times.

Game of Thrones kind of broke TV though - at least the first four seasons with high-quality writing. Because everyone was convinced you could do high-quality, high-budget speculative fiction on TV and get a wide audience.

 

[Paul Weaver]

at least the first four seasons with high-quality writing

Those are the ones based on the books right?

 

[eschaton]

Those are the ones based on the books right?

Correct, sort of. They actually took some liberties here and there, but most of the changes made actually improved the story.

That said, they didn't really run out of books at the end of Season 4. They still hadn't adapted at that point either A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons. Season 5 adapts some of this, but in some cases poorly (the Dorne plot in particular), and really truncates other areas (like what happened in the Iron Islands). They didn't include Lady Stoneheart, and perhaps most importantly, left out Young Griff.

Those two books were overlong and meandering, but there was enough quality there they could've filled out Seasons 5 and 6 with just content from those two books. Instead they did a speedrun, resulting in being out of content by Season 6 (which was mostly okay), and the rushed, sloppy ending in the final two seasons.