Serialisation shouldn't be held as an issue, serilaisation isn't exactly uncommon when it comes to shows. If anything it it was the lacklustre quality of the early episodes. SUre on balance S1 of DSN was better than S1 of TNG but some in the audiance aren't willing to give shows a chance to find themselves which can take a season or two in some cases. Instead they might watch a few episodes before giving up on it. Which has now become a double edged sword as some are now unwilling to invest in a show esp. the more serialised shows in case it's cancelled after a season. So it ends up being cancelled after a season.
Why Didn't DS9 Have as Many Viewers as TNG?
- Thread starter VulcanMindBlown
- Start date
Serialisation shouldn't be held as an issue, serilaisation isn't exactly uncommon when it comes to shows. If anything it it was the lacklustre quality of the early episodes. SUre on balance S1 of DSN was better than S1 of TNG but some in the audiance aren't willing to give shows a chance to find themselves which can take a season or two in some cases. Instead they might watch a few episodes before giving up on it. Which has now become a double edged sword as some are now unwilling to invest in a show esp. the more serialised shows in case it's cancelled after a season. So it ends up being cancelled after a season.
I think on the whole DS9 was more thinky than TNG and that always costs some of the audience. Someone once told Hawking that each time he puts an equation in his book, he loses half of his readers. So he decided to never put any.
Too little salt and food is bland; too much and it's poison. TNG's heyday was the in-between seasons after full Roddenberry and before full Berman. Disregard Roddenberry altogether at your own peril. But he put great teams of casts and crews, and ideas, together during TOS and TNG and they were Trek's most successful series.
I am not big on meeting celebrities and I don't visit their sites and heap praise upon any of them, it's just not my thing. But I have the greatest admiration for Gene Roddenberry AND Rick Berman. If I could just have a one-on-one interview with Berman, I know I would find his insights to be most illuminating. And whilst his treatment of the franchise does differ from Roddenberry's, the fact is that TNG was Gene's creation. Yes, he drew upon suggestions and comments around him, but finally ... it was Gene's call.
And Berman has placed emphasis on the fact, again and again, how much he learned from Roddenberry and how deeply he admired him. The long made short, here ... what I'm trying to get at is ... Once Gene had set up the universe, Rick Berman was free to play in it, as he saw fit, from Season 3. And every spin-off he came up with was a riff off Gene Roddenberry's own very successful template.
It's almost impossible to eat food that's too salty (to the point of becoming toxic), after a while it makes you vomit. So it wouldn't be the most efficient way to poison someone.
Just looking at my own reaction, so by no means representative of how everyone sees it:
I was a bit fatigued by TNG, but I'd got used to its slow, thoughtful pace, spelt out decision making, and happy endings. From watching TNG, DS9 wasn't what I was expecting, so I don't know if I was welcoming to it, or if the younger me was ready for the way the depth is a bit more hidden by the goings on and number if characters in it.
Getting a bit political, there's a bit of a theme of Kira being a freedom fighter as a terrorist. In the US at the time, terrorists could be accepted more as freedom fighters, whereas in England, in light of what was going off in Northern Ireland, that was a bit harder to accept, so I found it hard the accept the bajorans. Again, probably my failing to get into the show at the time, but that's how it happened for me.
I dont know if I was mentally too young for it, or it was 10 years ahead of its time, but that's why I didn't gel with the show then. Totally love it now though!
I was a bit fatigued by TNG, but I'd got used to its slow, thoughtful pace, spelt out decision making, and happy endings. From watching TNG, DS9 wasn't what I was expecting, so I don't know if I was welcoming to it, or if the younger me was ready for the way the depth is a bit more hidden by the goings on and number if characters in it.
Getting a bit political, there's a bit of a theme of Kira being a freedom fighter as a terrorist. In the US at the time, terrorists could be accepted more as freedom fighters, whereas in England, in light of what was going off in Northern Ireland, that was a bit harder to accept, so I found it hard the accept the bajorans. Again, probably my failing to get into the show at the time, but that's how it happened for me.
I dont know if I was mentally too young for it, or it was 10 years ahead of its time, but that's why I didn't gel with the show then. Totally love it now though!
I don't get why the first season stunk so much. It's like they needed to do things badly, before doing them in an acceptable manner. Plus they should have lost Terry Farrell long before they did. She never brought much to the show.
Duet more than makes up for the weakness of season 1.
Well Duet is good but I am not sure it compensates for all the clunkers.
Yet we don't see Berman (or Roddenberry) making that many creative decisions from that point. Key developments came from Piller and an imaginative young writing staff as well as aggressive purchasings of outside scripts. Moreover, the exploration of the characters' emotional lives was something that Roddenberry opposed, but something that Berman apparently supported. More problematically, the high points of the series tended to include aspects that Roddenberry initially rejected or, after his passing, led to some debate between Berman and Piller's staff over going against Roddenberry's vision, a conversation that more often than not went the writers' way.
Um... TNG did really good numbers right from the get-go.
An Executive Producer is to a series, what the Director is to a motion picture. If Gene, or Rick, didn't like anything that crossed their desk, they were certainly in a position to do something about it. Even when ENT came out and Manny Coto took over as the show's forerunner, for the most part, Rick oversaw everything. In fact, when that series wrapped up, he capped it off with an episode of his own devising. And that was at the end of his run. When DS9 came forward, Rick was not alone in the cockpit, but he was certainly the Captain, as it were, and that never changed, until ENTERPRISE concluded.
TNG stories got better after GR was no longer in charge....
DS9 didn't get its act together, according to most Niners, until the 3rd season. And, just like in TNG, GR wasn't around, or involved, so ... I'm not sure how much stock I put into the "GR made TNG suck" argument so many Trekkies like to make. It's a lot of hot air ...
As 'hot' as the 'GR made TNG so wonderful for all seven seasons and had this wonderful, perfect vision which no man or woman should change' school of thought?
Hell ... have you ever looked at the Mona Lisa, painted by The Master Leonardo da Vinci? It's ugly! Whomever she was, she's a pooch AND in a very static pose, to boot. And YET ... it's a Masterpiece, beloved the world over. You're ALWAYS going to be able to take issue with someone's creativity, however self-important ... always. I wouldn't worry myself about that.
Gene Roddenberry, even with TNG, took the attitude that Mankind got its shit together on its own, after WW3 and took to the cosmos of its own volition. Rick Berman, on the other hand, went with this "Aliens Built the Ancient Pyramids" approach to STAR TREK's backstory. I feel that was an atrocious viewpoint and it's canon, now, despite the fact that it basically undermines the hopeful spirit that STAR TREK's tried to suggest for Mankind's future. Nick Meyer and Harve Bennett introduced a lot of their own spins on STAR TREK that have since taken hold, for generations that are pretty questionable, some of them.
Gene Roddenberry, even with TNG, took the attitude that Mankind got its shit together on its own, after WW3 and took to the cosmos of its own volition. Rick Berman, on the other hand, went with this "Aliens Built the Ancient Pyramids" approach to STAR TREK's backstory. I feel that was an atrocious viewpoint and it's canon, now, despite the fact that it basically undermines the hopeful spirit that STAR TREK's tried to suggest for Mankind's future. Nick Meyer and Harve Bennett introduced a lot of their own spins on STAR TREK that have since taken hold, for generations that are pretty questionable, some of them.
Some say it was during a "what would I look like as a woman" moment that he got the idea.
You mean GR took the western 'Manifest Destiny' approach to the 'Final frontier' ( a loaded concept with poor historical connotations) and RB took the Stargate route.
I don't believe that I said otherwise. TNG went from something prized by genre fans to something broadly popular among TV audiences.
No, the person who tends to wield the greatest creative control is the person who runs the writing staff. Roddenberry, and later Berman, was more or less a gatekeeper, albeit to varying degrees depending on context.
All I'm saying is that STAR TREK in the 23rd AND 24th Centuries were initially created by Gene Roddenberry. He set the table for ALL of those hours of entertainment throughout the franchise. No, he's not George Lucas, with this incredibly tight creative control over the whole thing. Others contributed and we know who those people are.
There's a lot of knocking GR for smoking his own publicity and exaggerating his own importance in the World, and even the STAR TREK franchise, frankly. But the framework he created allowed for spin-off shows like DS9 to enjoy the kind of ratings that keep a show on for 7 years. Part of DS9's success rests on the very fact that it's under STAR TREK's umbrella. Though his involvement was nil in the series, Gene's name definitely appears in the credits, a couple of times. So, let's not pretend like DS9 was untied and unbound from this franchise, or that it transcended GR's legacy, because it leaned on them both.
There's a lot of knocking GR for smoking his own publicity and exaggerating his own importance in the World, and even the STAR TREK franchise, frankly. But the framework he created allowed for spin-off shows like DS9 to enjoy the kind of ratings that keep a show on for 7 years. Part of DS9's success rests on the very fact that it's under STAR TREK's umbrella. Though his involvement was nil in the series, Gene's name definitely appears in the credits, a couple of times. So, let's not pretend like DS9 was untied and unbound from this franchise, or that it transcended GR's legacy, because it leaned on them both.
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