I’m sure it’s a question that is being explored in the conference rooms of Paramount/Skydance on the regular.
I’m sure it’s a question that is being explored in the conference rooms of Paramount/Skydance on the regular.
I think one of the things that make me question what is going on, is DS9. It gave us 178 episodes of one long overarching arc that managed to be interesting far more often than not in the 20-26 episode era where you didn't get two or three years to pump out a season. Now? It seems like in the 10-14 episode era, these writers have issues getting four or five decent episodes out of a story arc with the rest feeling like unrelated fluff.
Like I said with SFA. There are three really bangers in there, that if connected together would make a great movie. The rest? It is literally just fluff.
To quote Lunchlady Doris, "there's very little meat in these gym mats."
I think it’s so easy to blame the writers but could this be to put on the former heads at Paramount? I imagine they had edicts of expectations they wanted to see out of their investment in Star Trek, or it could be Kurtzman. Or the showrunners. Or the individual writers. It seems that everything is focus grouped to death now. Productions at big studios aren’t really allowed to just explore. DS9 largely went under the radar and was given a wide berth to be creative. Because there’s a lot more money involved in the production, there’s a lot more eyes on the show.
I'm not sure I ever bought into this. DS9 was probably one of Paramount's most expensive to produce shows, at the time. I know the Promenade was the most expensive Trek set built to that point in the franchise.
I think it is a convenient fiction that allows people who hate Rick Berman to like the show. I mean, Behr couldn't even promote Sisko without approval from Berman.
DS9 also had the advantage of being produced for syndication, which meant it didn't have to deal with the same type of studio notes that would increasingly dog Voyager and Enterprise over on UPN.
They still had to deal with Paramount Television which had to sell the show to individual stations.
Syndication requirements were looser than direct broadcast requirements, just as cable requirements were looser than that.
I'm still sure they got their fair share of notes from Paramount Television.
IIRC, Berman had enough cache at the studio - coming from the production side before moving onto TNG - to give the notes a cursory glance, but they weren't beholden to them. That all changed under the auspices of UPN.
DS9 certainly had its share of studio interference, which led to things like the bringing Worf onto the show, and Berman's influence was felt, resulting in things like Sisko not getting a promotion to Admiral and more infamously Terry Farrell's departure. But compared to how UPN through their weight around with Voyager and Enterprise, DS9 appears to have been virtually ignored by comparison.
