When did Trek "jump the shark?"

[M-Red]

I'd argue that TMP was a huge commerical success for Trek. When adjusted for inflation, only Star Trek XI has done better.

Yes, but is that box office sales or net profit? I said "semi-successful" earlier because TMP was an extremely expensive film to make, especially for its time.


Just going from what I've read -- when the big suits brought in Bennett, one of the only things they asked him was: "Can you make a Trek movie for less than 50 million $%&*@ dollars??"


I don't have the numbers in front of me...but TMP obviously wasn't lucrative enough to make TPTB want to stay the course.

 

[Deckerd]

It didn't.

 

[Cheapjack]

Voyager. It makes my toes curl. Only about three of them were any good and Neelix acted like a five year old.

 

[Admiral Shran]

I'd argue that TMP was a huge commerical success for Trek. When adjusted for inflation, only Star Trek XI has done better.

Yes, but is that box office sales or net profit? I said "semi-successful" earlier because TMP was an extremely expensive film to make, especially for its time.


Just going from what I've read -- when the big suits brought in Bennett, one of the only things they asked him was: "Can you make a Trek movie for less than 50 million $%&*@ dollars??"


I don't have the numbers in front of me...but TMP obviously wasn't lucrative enough to make TPTB want to stay the course.

You're right. Going my box office sales alone, it was massively successful. When you take net profits into account, it probably wasn't all that successful.

 

[C.E. Evans]

For me, it was VOY. I thought its premise was the least inspired and basically "Star Trek meets Lost In Space". I remember thinking even before it premiered that there were going to be a lot of bumpy head alien-of-the-week stories and many stories where they almost had a way back home, but it would fail at the last minute.

 

[Pauln6]

TNG Series 1 and 2 were entertaining but ropey, it improved and peaked at series 5 but although 6 & 7 dragged a bit the series never really declined that much.

Conversely, TOS peaked early on in my view. The first dozen or so episodes were great sci fi but many later episodes were quite cheesy and repetitive with a few truly awsome episodes. Certainly, I lamented the loss of Yeoman Rand.

DS9 and Voyager were patchy but the quality was still generally better than the early episodes of TNG. I'm not sure that I could point to a peak.

Enterprise started too lethargically with none of the energy we saw in TOS but I thought it hadn't peaked when it was cancelled, it was still improving.

NuTrek for all its faults is a fun ride. If they can maintain the energy but keep a better eye on the plot holes and stop advancing Trek tech beyond TNG era technology I'll be so much the happier. Oh and bring back Yeoman Rand!

 

[Warped9]

After the Cage.

Hey Warped, don't look at me like that.

You asked for it.

I apologize for misremembering the origins of the "jump the shark" episode. I had only seen it once thirty some years ago. Since then I've only heard it referred to by others.

 

[hohohopali]

For those young'uns who may not be familiar with this expression it refers to an episode of the '70s series Happy Days when The Fonz attempted to jump a tank of sharks with his motorcycle. It has come to mean when a series (or franchise) has peaked and starts to slide downhill.

He wasn't on his motorcycle; he was on waterskis. And it was actually a pretty dull scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDthMGtZKa4

Dull is in the eye of the beholder. I happen to enjoy watching a man in a leather jacket and tight short shorts water skiing.

When I think of a show 'jumping the shark' what comes to mind is when they add a 'surprise' new baby to a family sitcom or when Maddie and David made out on Moonlighting (then there was the bizarre episode where Bruce Willis played the part of their doomed unborn child having a dialogue in utero). There comes a point where a show has been going nowhere and there is nothing appearing from the writers to keep carrying it onward, so they throw a Hail Mary just for kicks I guess. Or maybe the actors get bored.

Star Trek never hit this point. It has its better episodes and its worse ones but it didn't jump the shark.

 

[King Bob!]

Star Trek: Generations

The franchise never felt the same to me once they killed Kirk and destroyed the Enterprise-D.

 

[OmahaStar]

It jumped the shark with "Meet Kirk's childhood hero."

 

[Brian]

Trek never jumped the shark. It did, unfortunately, jump a baby gazelle, however.

 

[Garm Bel Iblis]

I've got
I've got
I've got
I've got
I've got
I've got
I've got
I've got
faith of the heart

 

[JohnChod]

I think that the key here is a previously posted definition of "jumping the shark" as "the moment when a show has become SO bad that it has descended into self-parody."

Calling poor episodes of TOS, or TMP, or later seasons of TNG "jump the shark" moments does not fit the bill. There can be poor episodes and mis-steps without jumping the shark.

Now, I did not care for VOY, but even VOY did not signify jumping the shark. I felt that they missed many oppotunities in VOY by not developing their initial premise. They put out re-treads of too many similar Trek episodes, both within its own run (EMH and Seven constantly achieving enlightenment about their condition only to re-discover the same thing in other episodes again and again, Belanna dealing with her Klingon heritage, etc.) and by borrowing from previous series. Characterizations and writing were uneven and poor. Despite all that, they still retained the serious air about themselves and tried to remain true to the Trek formula.

The self parody began with ENT and that series, as a whole, was a descent to the shark tank. The producers said it themselves as they claimed, "This is not your father's Trek!" They tried to liven it up and sex it up in infantile ways. Parody? Phase pistols instead of phasers. Grappling hook instead of tractor beams. Polarized hull plating in place of shields. And my favorite, their portrayal of the characters lacking all common sense as a feeble attempt to show humans as being in awe of space and "learning" as they took their first steps out into the final frontier.

And most damning of all, the season four episodes where they felt they needed to explain Klingon head ridges and the like. Come on! It was lack of cash and poor 1960's TV special effects that limited what TOS could do. Just leave it at that. There's no need to go any further.

So, I would say ENT as a whole but if forced to select one episode (or set of episodes - it may have taken more than one?), I would go with the Klingon head ridge explanation.

 

[purplebic]

Voyager.
Basically any episode that started out with "we might go home" i would just switch it off because i knew they wouldn't.
The fact that they had an easier time forming alliances with what would likely be the federations' deadliest enemies (hirogen, borg, etc..)
The fact that the kaizon came closer to destroying voyager than many of the technologically advanced species of the delta quad.
The fact that they strictly adhered to starfleet principles and the prime directive whenever it involved a shortcut and/or technology, but ignored them when it came to personal vendettas and saving the borg.
The fact that they never once considered developing or obtaining a cloak, knowing that another starship (the defiant) legally used one when exploring another quadrant.

To name a few...

 

[Spork111]

I don't know what to make of ENT. There seems to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" attitude with it. People scream canon violation when they show the Ferengi and the Borg, but when they reverse course and go through the trouble to explain Klingon foreheads from TOS, suddenly it's a fanwank. I guess you could argue ENT jumped the shark with the whole Xindi storyline - it certainly fits the "Hail Mary" template that so many shark jumpings consist of. I rather liked most of it, but still... it was unabashedly an attempt to pull ratings out of the toilet.

 

[Santa Kang]

Parody? Phase pistols instead of phasers. Grappling hook instead of tractor beams. Polarized hull plating in place of shields.

I dont think that qualifies as "parody."

 

[Garm Bel Iblis]

yea, parody would be capguns, giant ACME magnets for tractor beams and giant rubber intertubes for defelctors.

 

[Peardancer]

I have yet to watch much of all the series (a little of Enterprise here, a little of Voyager there, some DS9 ... but I really like TNG). I am interested to see when it "jumped the shark". I had one person claim that Voyager broke a good record of decent spin-offs. Though I know the third season of the Original Trek was pretty mediocre, there was still so much depth and meaning that I couldn't say it was horrid. Besides ... it wasn't all that popular anyway until the seventies!

 

[Mary Ann]

While every incarnation has some cringeworthy episodes I don't think ST ever jumped the shark. In the case of TNG and DS9 I mostly prefer the later series to the earlier ones, probably because the characters are more well-developed in the later series (I know there are exceptions; I'm generalising here). By my understanding of jumping the shark it would reach the point where I didn't want to watch any more of that series or incarnation, and that's not happened (yet).

 

[Gaith]

When did Trek "jump the shark?"

Endgame. And how.