Kurtzman on Any New Series Reaching 100 Episodes

Quality in terms of production values as well as Story quality.
And yes, I do. Overall, with 20 episodes aired, I think SNW has consistently better episodes overall than any 2 seasons of DS9.
And yes, I love DS9 which had some of the most magnificent stories ever produced in Trek

 

BTW, I do think 10 episode seasons are way too short for "family hour television." 12-15 is my personal preference.

 

15 sounds about right.

6 is a miniseries, while 26 encouraged filler episodes of varying quality.

 

Yup. I love mixing it up. Streaming is definitely mote enjoyable than scrambling to keep up, mocked by friends for not having seen it and hoping the recording worked.

 

A 15 episode season can give you the opportunity for (4) 3 episode mini-story arcs (in the style that ENT season 4 utilized), and then (3) standalone episodes to do character development and fun/experimental story things with. It’s the best way to blend the old TV format with the new and keep your audience invested in the concept and characters.

 

I'm pretty sure most of the SNW cast would want more episodes, short seasons are not a benefit for most actors and writers, on the contrary, it makes it very hard for them to make a living. That was a major reason for the strikes last year.
I specifically remember Michelle Hurd and Katee Sackhoff talking about this, actors and writers get paid per episode, if you only do 10 episodes per season instead of 20+ that's obviously significantly less money earned from the start and often you're not even doing one season per year, the breaks between seasons and hiatuses between shooting become extremely long and while actors can in theory do other work during the hiatus in practice most studios will not hire the actors at least not for major parts because while they are on hold for another show they can be called back to that show at any point making them unavailable for the other studio and forcing them to drop out.
So after a season wraps an actor might sit on their ass for sometimes 12 months, not knowing if they'll even be back for the show (because on hold just means the studio can call them back for another season not that they have to) and finding it very hard to get other jobs during that year, a bit part that's shot over a few day is possible but forget being the lead in a movie that shoots for 8 weeks, no production would take that risk.
So you earn less money upfront, you don't really have many opportunities to take other jobs during the hiatus and the residuals are also mostly non existent now. Will Wheaton said he was able to live off his TNG residuals for years while he wasn't working a lot, this is no longer happening with modern shows, for a streaming show you get paid a lump sum up front and that's pretty much it. One actress who was on dozens of episodes of Orange is the new Black, a major hit for Netflix and a long running show and she got about $100 in residuals, that's a joke.

Netflix and the unsustainable business model they introduced is literally destroying the industry, many actors and writers are no longer getting paid enough to make a living, the home video market has pretty much collapsed which is the reason why mid budget movies have disappeared from theaters because they relied on home video as a second revenue stream to make them profitable and all we're left with are blockbusters and franchise movies because those are the only ones people still get out of the house for, try to release a mid budget movie and most of the people will shrug and say "I wait until it's streaming". TV budgets for "prestige tv" have exploded but somehow large parts of the audience also want them for basically free, "Weekly release? Screw that, I'm not paying for three months just to watch a season of show x, I'll subscribe for a month after the finale and binge it!", a very expensive season but people are only willing to invest 5-10 bucks to watch it, they want premium entertainment at bargain prices.

15 episodes a season of DS9 would probably mean we'll never get Garak or Nog focused episodes, you don't waste time on recurring characters when you only have slightly more episodes than main cast members and a bigger story to tell, many recurring characters might not even exist. Rom and Nog might have been folded into the same character for example, a younger brother for Quark old enough to work at the bar and be an engineer but young enough to be friends with Jake (but forget going to the academy, there probably wouldn't be time to do that arc with the reduced number of episodes).
DS9 is often praised for its large recurring cast who were all well developed and got lots of character development but most of that was only possible because they did 26 episodes per season. If you remove 11 episodes per season the show wold change significantly and much of what makes DS9 excellent probably wouldn't-ät exist.

How do you define filler for a franchise like Star Trek? Most of the shows were episodic to begin with, what TOS or TNG episodes are filler? They had no major arcs. Even semi serialized shows like DS9 still relied on episodes not directly contributing to the bigger story. The Visitor and Far Beyond the Stars are by most people considered to be among the show's most significant episodes but they add NOTHING to the major arcs, are they filler? Should they be tossed aside?
And then there's Discovery which premiered with a completely serialized "filler free" first season and immediately the fandom complained that there are no standalone episodes. So apparently filler is bad until it's no longer there.

 

Im trying to imagine DS9 with SNW’s production values—that would have been phenomenal!! Not that they were bad in the first place. I really disagree about story quality. For me, SNW boasts a great and charismatic cast but the stories haven’t really been particularly strong; what we’ve had has been quite reductive. DS9 was utterly pioneering and boasts so many of the franchise’s greatest episodes, plus many of its strongest story and character arcs. It’s just in a whole other league. Seasons four and five were a probably Trek’s most consistently brilliant seasons outside of TOS season one.

IDIC though, I’m glad you are enjoying SNW so much. I’m away to salivate again at the thought of DS9 with a modern day budget.

 

Filler prevents Star Trek from being empty.

 

Would someone as a child, pre-teen, or young adult become a hard core Trekkie (or Trekker, if one prefers) had they first exposure to Trek been under this modern 10 episodes a season format?

I like SNW the best out of all the modern Trek but this is my major holdup. The season barely gets going and it's done. Based exclusively on SNW I do not feel the full depth and texture of the universe. Even after repeated viewings of a season, I still don't know if I would feel like SNW is in a real, tangible, functional universe that I could wake up in and immediately be comfortable.

In contrast I had only 3 seasons of TOS, but that was 79 episodes. That was enough to make the universe feel real, alive, and vibrant. Look at the fanzines and conventions TOS spawned. Look at all the tech manuals and ancillary products that immersed a fan in that universe. Would TOS spawn that level of fandom if it followed the SNW 10 episode season format?

Sure, SNW might attract new fans and encourage them to seek out the rest of the franchise, thus creating a feedback loop on their appreciation for SNW, but that's the benefit of 50+ years of legacy. Not every series has this option.

All things are cyclical. Years ago I worked for a newspaper that sold various properties because it was good for business. Then the business changed and the newspaper bought properties because it was good for business. Same thing with TV. Years ago a show was sponsored by a company, then the time came when advertising replaced a solitary or primary sponsor, and now we are back with streaming and seeing the commercial break format no longer works so we go back to either a primary sponsor or product placement. Similar might happen with season lengths. 10 episodes a season is good for business until it isn't, someone will reintroduce 13 episodes a season because that will be good for business, etc...

 

Agree.

I don't think we necessarily need 22-26 shows per season anymore. I love Blue Bloods but the ratio of good episodes to crap is getting egregiously small here in season, what? 14-15?

However, 10 episodes is not enough for the reasons Shawnster said. You feel like you're just getting warmed up, and the door slams shut on the season. Now it's an 18 month to 2-year wait for the next one, it seems like lately.

I think there is a happy medium there somewhere, and it lives somewhere around 14-16 eps per season.

 

Of course, the whole ten episodes or less a season model has worked for British television for years, decades even. American audiences are spoiled.

 

Yes.

Americans are spoiled and never satisfied. Constantly chasing after the next thing, demanding companies satisfy their every whim, and if not, the companies are out of touch, disrespectful, and evil.

I see it with way more than just Trek.

 

Now I see why we have such different world views, outside of Trek.

I don't think corporations are evil because they don't give us what we want. I think corporations are evil because they take advantage of us, take us for granted, and assume we're dependent on them.

But back to Trek. I prefer 13-episode seasons because they can go more in-depth with an arc than 10, if they put enough into them. And if someone doesn't like arcs, well, more stories in 13 episodes than 10.

Maybe 26 is too much, but Battlestar Galactica did pretty well with 20. It was also serialized, although it never went to the point of having 10-hour (or 20-hour) movies.

 

I mean, I think that is evil as well. I would prefer mutual cooperation and need not dependency and taking advantage.

But, back to Trek, I could live with 13 but 10 still is the sweet spot for me. Easier to keep up with.

 

My preference has been for 17x episode Seasons with the Year split into Tri-mesters.
I'd obviously want a 2-hr Season Opening / Ending ep for each season.

26x 45 Minute eps = 1,170 Minutes per Season <- Old TV Broadcast Trek
13x 60 Minute eps = __780 Minutes per Season <- New Streaming Trek

Normal 1-Hr episodes like what we have on occaision with current Streaming Hour Long Trek that is truly 1-Hr of "MAIN CONTENT" in nature, but make that "Standardized 1x Hour".
15x _60 Minute eps = 900
_2x 120 Minute eps = 240
900+240 = 1140 Minutes

Add in to each Episode (Last Time bit, Prologue bit, Opening Credits, <MAIN CONTENT>, Ending Credits, Epilogue bit, Next Time bit).
That should be enough to fill out a standard Broadcast TV time block of 1-hr 30 minutes with ~20 minutes for commercials split amongst the various parts of the Episode if you had to Broadcast it via regular TV time Blocks or Streaming.

With splitting Trek / TV into Trimesters, it allows you to get the best of the old TV format, along with a slightly shorter Episode Count per Yearly Season, with most of the content.

 

Even then, when BSG first switched to twenty episodes in their second season, Ron Moore felt it was difficult to maintain "quality control" leading to episode he has expressed disappointment in, such as the S2 episode Black Market. He apparently preferred doing thirteen like in the first season, though as I understand upping the count to twenty was mandated by SyFy, who wanted the show to be a companion to the Stargate shows, which were doing twenty episode seasons at the time.

In recent years, Ron Moore has said twenty episode seasons were BSG's weakness, feeling if he were doing the show today (and had full authority over the episode count) he'd try for 8-10 episodes.

 

I'm not retro-actively changing my opinion of the show (or any other show) to fit with which way the wind is blowing. I go by what I see, not what "everyone else!" says. I loved the mini-series, I liked the first three seasons, and I thought it went off the rails during the fourth. The fourth season going off the rails had nothing to do with episode-length.

Season 2's "Black Market" was weak by BSG's standards, but it wasn't terrible. Even a "weak" BSG episode was still good. The only real issue I had was that they killed off Fisk too fast. Something that wouldn't have changed with a shorter season. They also had Fisk making too much progress with the Black Market in too little time. Two episodes after "Pegasus"? No. Come on. Maybe if it was five episodes after "Pegasus", I could've bought it. The timeline of the first two seasons was very condensed. IIRC, only nine months (maybe less?) passed in the entire series, until they did the One Year Later time-jump on Baltar's desk.

I watched all the episode commentaries on the DVDs during the '00s, and I thought Ron Moore was being too hard on himself with "Black Market".

 

BSG was a heavily serialized show, though, and that does make a difference. Each season is essentially a ten-hour movie. and in that case, less really can be more. Like I said about this season of Discovery, I'm not interested in watching a ten-hour Indiana Jones movie.
But for a series like Strange New Worlds, where each episode is more or less a stand-alone, you can have 12, 15, even 20 episodes and people won't get too fatigued because the plot is new from week to week. Like, I know next week we'll be doing the Progenitor story on Disco. And the week after that. And after that as well. But for SNW, I have no clue what they will do after the completion of the Gorn cliffhanger. Maybe Sybok will show up with Captain Angel. Maybe the Tholians will show up. Maybe we'll visit a planet that ages in reverse, or some other high-concept sci-fi.
The point is, it will be different.
BSG benefitted from shorter seasons that led to tight, tense plotting. But a non-serialized show doesn't need to worry about that.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing him try. I agree that ten episodes I more palatable to me, regardless of structure.

 

That wasn't how it was with BSG. There was an overall arc, but they didn't do the "every season is its own movie!" thing. Most episodes had their own beginning, middle, and end.

And I'd break up the series more like this:
The Mini-Series: Cylons destroy the Colonies, survivors escape, and (at the end) head toward Earth.
Season 1 Episodes 1-11: Largely episodic. Galactica's being chased by the Cylons. They knew Cylons can look like Humans.
Season 1 Episode 12 through Season 2 Episode 7: A rift forms between everyone, putting everyone onto different sides.
Season 2 Episodes 8-9: A breather before the next arc.
Season 2 Episodes 10-12: Galactica vs. Pegasus
Season 2 Episodes 13-20: Integrating the Pegasus to work alongside Galactica, Baltar running for President, Gina (a.k.a. Pegasus Six) wants revenge.
Season 3 Episodes 1-4: Cylon Occupied New Caprica
Season 3 Episodes 5-6: Aftermath from the Occupation.
Season 3 Episodes 7-16: Episodic with loose serialization.
Season 3 Episode 17: Starbuck dies (or so they think).
Season 3 Episodes 18-20: The Trial of Baltar
Razor: Prequel to the Pegasus three-parter from Season 2.
Season 4 Episodes 1-10: More serialized again. Everything up until Galactica discovers Earth.
Season 4 Episodes 11-20: Everything slowly falls apart... until they find a new home to call "Earth".
The Plan: Looking back on the first two seasons, knowing what we know now.

The more episodic episodes all brought something unique to the table. I wouldn't want to lose "Scar" or "Dirty Hands".

In a super short season, things like "Unfinished Business" (the boxing episode) or "Epiphanies" (when Roslin first realizes Baltar was collaborating with the Cylons and Gina's delivered a bomb) would've been truncated. These were more arc-based, but not The Big Major Arc Episodes.