Why is there such certainity that there will be another show?
- Thread starter ThePlumsofWrath
- Start date
I'd really prefer live action but if CGI is all we can get, I'd take that.
I agree with everything Temis has written in this thread.
Part of the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT legacy is that the Star Trek universe became a lot bigger, even as it was getting bogged down with formulaic stories, aliens of the week, and its established conventions.
As a Trek fan, part of the appeal of a new TV show would be to explore again a familiar but new universe, in which the producers are at liberty to follow their own creative vision, as long as it's profitable.
Star Trek's brand has improved considerably because of this new film. Since Trek is by nature a TV show first, I think that it will find a home on TV again, probably spun off from a future movie. It's possible that there could be a character or storyline in the next movie that could provide a launching point for a new series, much as DS9 spun off of BOBW, "Ensign Ro," "The Host," and "The Wounded."
Part of the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT legacy is that the Star Trek universe became a lot bigger, even as it was getting bogged down with formulaic stories, aliens of the week, and its established conventions.
As a Trek fan, part of the appeal of a new TV show would be to explore again a familiar but new universe, in which the producers are at liberty to follow their own creative vision, as long as it's profitable.
Star Trek's brand has improved considerably because of this new film. Since Trek is by nature a TV show first, I think that it will find a home on TV again, probably spun off from a future movie. It's possible that there could be a character or storyline in the next movie that could provide a launching point for a new series, much as DS9 spun off of BOBW, "Ensign Ro," "The Host," and "The Wounded."
Well, they won't be repeated by Berman...
Imagine if it were possible to create another character on par with Spock, or even within spitting distance, for the movies, and spin that character off into a TV series. Ro isn't nearly at the level I'm thinking of, but if we're optimistic that it could happen, that alone could launch a TV series successfully.
Fair enough point, since Berman's mistakes were the same mistakes that other shows make - lack of imagination, gutlessness, laziness, inattention to larger trends happening right under your nose that thwack you upside the head when you least expect it. Those mistakes are common to everything in human endeavor, forget TV!
Probably not, he's already said that if he had to choose between the two, he'd dump Heroes in a heartbeat.
I am positive we'll see another TV series, it's just a question of when, who's running it and the premise. It'd most likely be set in the new continuity, which furthers the problem as at the moment, anyone who makes the decision and writes out the check is going to want the people from the movies, and that's simply not going to happen. I'm not opposed to the era (or even the original TOS era, although some find that boring for various reasons), I just would like to see a different crew (perhaps even a different class of starship), that, IMO is what would 'expand' things.
As for ENT, the problem isn't necessarily when it was set, but that it was a prequel and until season four, the people in charge didn't want to do a prequel. "The Andorian Incident" and season four are examples of what ENT should have been from the get go.
They could use the next couple movies to introduce one or two "bridge" characters for the TV series. Trek really needs to have an overall game plan for all media, not just movies, but extending to TV. I'd also bring in books, video games, internet stuff, you name it. But definitely there needs to be a strategy for movies and TV as the mainstay of Trek.
Can't argue with that. I also liked the Vulcan stuff from S4. Even the Klingon, S31 and Augment plotlines were handled better than I'd hoped (feared).
I want a new series, and I want it to be one that pushes the franchise forward. Something new and innovative. No prequels or re-imaginings. Star Trek works best as a TV series. Movies are fun, but you just don't get the kind of character development that makes Trek great from a movie.
Being from the UK, I think the American series model is part of the problem as regards to a franchise becoming stale. Producing 24-26 episodes every year is of course going to lead to fatigue - both from the production team and from the audience.
Look at Doctor Who over here for a better model. 13 episode series and a Christmas Special, and usually even then there are 1 or 2 sub standard episodes. But overall the formula seems to work. This year where there has been a gap year with only 4 special has made each episode event television. Hugely hyped and massive ratings.
Now the obvious problem with having a smaller run is that costs for things like CGI, sets, etc on a per episode basis. Also of course Star Trek shows have traditionally had a bigger ensemble cast. So cast costs are higher.
All that being said however I think that quality should out weigh quantity where possible. A shorter run, smaller regular cast, sets reused from the movie guys if possible (maybe a different ship in the same era/universe) reuse of 3d models created for the movies etc.
It would substantially reduce cost to a point where a shorter, sharper run might work. Making it more of event television and less of a dirge.
Look at Doctor Who over here for a better model. 13 episode series and a Christmas Special, and usually even then there are 1 or 2 sub standard episodes. But overall the formula seems to work. This year where there has been a gap year with only 4 special has made each episode event television. Hugely hyped and massive ratings.
Now the obvious problem with having a smaller run is that costs for things like CGI, sets, etc on a per episode basis. Also of course Star Trek shows have traditionally had a bigger ensemble cast. So cast costs are higher.
All that being said however I think that quality should out weigh quantity where possible. A shorter run, smaller regular cast, sets reused from the movie guys if possible (maybe a different ship in the same era/universe) reuse of 3d models created for the movies etc.
It would substantially reduce cost to a point where a shorter, sharper run might work. Making it more of event television and less of a dirge.
I don't buy that in the least. If your writers are running out of ideas, hire more writers. Hire more people for the production team. More episodes means more money coming in means you can increase the payroll. What's the problem? Where I work, when we get more projects, we just hire more people (and we're happy to have the work!) "Ideas" are always the easy part - especially if you hire new people with new ideas.
As for the audience, they aren't "fatigued" at all by ten billion iterations of CSI ad nauseum. If you give people exactly what they want, they will gobble it up and want more.
Using a BBC show as an example is pointless, since the economic model has no parallel in America. There's no channel in America that is supported by involuntary taxes - PBS certainly doesn't count! Therefore, no channel in America would have the luxury of not caring about brutal economic realities that force them to maximize any successful show. Even if a network said, "okay let's have this show be 12 episodes," if it's a hit, it's damn well going to get more episodes, as many as will make money, because that one hit has got to pay for a whole string of failures. It's axiomatic that 2/3rds of all new shows fail, so the hits become vital just to keep the ssytem in business.
However, I've definitely noticed that some shows just don't have premises that allow them to go on for more than X amount of time. Flash Forward is a recent example - it's already running out of steam. But if it's going to run out of steam after 24 episodes, it doesn't matter if that's 24 episodes in the same year or 12 episodes each of two years. Either way, there still isn't a story to support more of the show. (There is an advantage to plunking all 24 episodes in the same season - it gives you more of a chance of having all 24 run, rather than airing 12 and letting everyone forget you exist before you come back.)
The solution there is to be more careful about your premise. If you want a shot at a 10-season show, you better come up with a 10-season premise. Or if the premise you like is 3 seasons tops, then just accept that and shoot to write for the correct number of episodes.
The real source of sci fi's trouble on TV - and the source of trouble beyond just sci fi - is that the audience is fragmenting wildly. Americans are actually watching more TV than ever, yet networks are "dying."
That's because cable is producing such a volume of good stuff that the audiences are gravitating to the shows that serve their narrow niche interests in how they define a "good show." So you can lock in an intensely loyal audience but the problem is, you're going to get 2-3M viewers. If you're on basic cable, the subscription fees will help support your show and you can survive. On premium cable, that number makes you a big hit. On network TV, it makes you cancelled.
There should be a place for Star Trek among the proliferation of shows across the total TV landscape, and for Star Trek to survive with a niche audience. But CBS owning the rights is a big problem because neither CBS nor Showtime are likely to be good homes for Star Trek. I'm increasingly thinking some basic cable outlet might work the best, but not necessarily Skiffy, which is so sucky they hardly deserve it. Maybe AMC or TNT. To put Star Trek where it can thrive would require that somebody at CBS make the effort to make the right kinds of business deals, but why should they do that when they can help their career more by making tons of cash off another iteration of CSI?
I agree with theARE in that 13 episodes should be adequate to be considered a season.
"Mad Men", "Sopranos", "Six Feet Under" all have done it and all were/are successful. That is about 9 1/2 hours of a serialized story. That would be like 4 feature films. I don't think Trek needs to be 22-26 episodes for a season. I would rather have 13 great stories than say 6 great stories, 10 good stories and 7 bad stories being canon.
"Mad Men" delivers consistently a great story with great production values. I've been a season behind though as I'm watching it on DVD.
Below has been discussed over on the What channel should a new Trek TV series be on? thread in some detail.
In keeping with this thread topic there is certainty as Trek on TV offers more character development for us and revenue streams for a ROI for CBS Television.
US 1st Broadcast sales, Foreign 1st broadcast sales, Blu-ray/DVD sales, Digital downloads (iTunes/Amazon.com/XBOX Live Marketplace, future Hulu & Youtube sales), US syndication sales, foreign syndication sales.
As far as where Trek will air on TV I'll leave that out of this thread.
I know it's a different situation in the US and the whole way television works is different I'm not disputing that. Just sometimes less is more - you can market a mini series as important event TV, in a way you cant with a weekly series.
I know I'm using an UK example again - but this year's Torchwood: Children of Earth mini series was aired over 5 consecutive nights on BBC One - to massive ratings. A lot more people watched the mini than had the previous 2 series of 13 episodes.
It was a great story that grabbed people, kept them watching and got people talking in a way that the show added to it's ratings as it built to it's conclusion at the end of the week. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Earth#Episodes
Now if you took that model and expanded it a bit for Star Trek and the US situation- what you could do is produce 3 mini series per year that ran over 5 nights again so a total of 15 episodes. Air one around Easter, one in early summer and one in the autumn.
Hype the hell out of them and make them great stories that hooked the viewers and get people talking about it in the office and on the streets.
In the same way that Trek XI was a must see movie event this summer, if Trek is to return to the small screen it would work best as event TV
theARE good idea. I think in the US that people view miniseries as not the TV events that they used to be thanks to fragmenting audience and also shows available on the Internet for streaming the same day or next day. There is no incentive to make it an event anymore since so many people Tivo and time-shift their viewing of television to make it "on-demand" in their own way.
Somehow I can't see CBS Television selling a series as a miniseries but instead as a TV series with a 5-year outlook that starts with some of the events in Star Trek XII or XIII.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
I totally agree with your logic. And, also, there is no demand for a new TREK tv, and at this time, it would be foolish to do one. The OPs best reason, to much product being one of the problems, hit it on the nail as well.
If 600+ hours of Trek isn't a hint that there is too much, then nothing I'm not sure what is.
Rob
If Star Trek ends up on basic cable, it will probably follow the basic cable format and not the network format. But why do you assume that 13 episodes will be 13 great episodes? It could just as easily be 13 wretched episodes or 6 good and 7 bad, or whatever. If there's a show I like, I'm happy to watch however many the producers think they can produce. If they need more help, they can hire more help. That's hardly my problem. A competent writing team can put out 24 good episodes. A shitty writing team can't put out one.
Bores the crap out of me, personally.
But that's a different topic.The mini-series format is dead in America, so you can't market it as anything. I dunno why it's dead, but the inability to take advantage of economies of scale probably have something to do with it. The last mini-series I can think of was the remake of The Prisoner, and that flopped horribly, which won't make anyone else any more eager to try that format.
What can work: the mini-series as a defacto series pilot, like BSG. But that hardly counts as a mini-series, since it isn't intended as anything but a full series.
Well if they have 30 story ideas and treatments and 24 get made all 24 still can't be great.
If they have 30 story ideas and do treatments for 18 and make 13 scripts that get rewritten it should be better stories as 'the cream of the crop' so to speak.
I disagree.
The idea of a pop music band writing 24 songs and in 1983 putting 8 or 10 songs on an album (LP, audiocassette & CD) and the rest are B-sides or unreleased versus the past 10 years where a audio CD is considered a CD album release with 13-18 songs on it. All are not going to be good. While it is off topic and beyond the scope of this discussion but should be mentioned why a record label requiring an album to be 13-18 songs is part of the reason the CD album is a dying format anyway for pop music.
Good writers can do 18 treatments and 13 scripts and fine tune and hone those scripts that should be better than 24 episode scripts.
I always interpereted the jump to help goose the "ooh-ahh" factor in introducting new tech. New Enterprise, holodeck, new phasers, ect ect ect.
Having only 13 episodes per season might be a good choice, but I'd hope they wouldn't follow HBO's example and make us wait for up to two and a half years between seasons.
Why in the world are you using music when the topic is writing? Those are two completely different industries and art forms.
Why can't 24 story treatments out of 30 be great? Why can't 24 out of 24 be great? If the producers know what they're doing, they can be. If they don't know what they're doing, none of them will be any good.
I'm not even sure what you mean by "if they have 30 story ideas and do treatments for 18 and make 13 scripts that get rewritten it should be better stories as 'the cream of the crop' so to speak." But if you mean you're depending on them to know which 13 of the 30 should make it into production, you're being overly optimistic. The way TV goes, they could choose the worst 13 of the bunch as easily as the best.
The big difference between TV shows is the caliber of the people behind them. A Dexter team can create all hits, and a Heroes team can create all misses.
HBO only does that because of the extraordinary caliber of a (very) few of their shows - which means they have no competition and can afford to be cavalier about their audience. Other than premium cable, nobody can afford that kind of arrogance and even on premium cable, shows usually come out on a regular schedule.
Why is there such certainty that there will be another show?
Because the last movie made a TRUCKLOAD of money...
Because the last movie made a TRUCKLOAD of money...
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