Reality Check on future Trek

[BrownShatner]

Enormously successful?

In what alternate reality? it's had a consistently shrinking audience year after year with increasingly diminishing returns with each successive film.

That isn't success, it's called swirling the bowl.

Dude, I'm no huge fan of Berman Trek, but it swirled out profits for almost 15 years. If you don't see that as a success, please beam back to earth and join the rest of us.

I guess if you want to feel vindicated, the show didn't last quite as long as Gunsmoke.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'm very curious what they'll do with this new take on it though, too.

Yeah - it's a little spooky like. An all-action format is probably going to be as gruesome as the all-yammer version of recent years past. Tele-wise, even '24' is wearing out its welcome fast, and that's probably our best-possible expectation for a revival TV show at this point...

Still. There are always possibilities. I hope.

What does 24 have to do with anything? It's been on the air for a long as any Trek series (or it sure seems that way) despite having an incredibly limiting format that makes it much more difficult to extend year after year than Trek would be. Trek's premise is wide open, the polar opposite of 24. Frankly, I'm amazed 24 has lasted as long as it has. It should have been a three or four season series.

The biggest obstacle to Trek on TV is that CBS owns the TV rights but CBS is not the right place to air Trek, and I'm sure they know that. They could make the show and sell it to a better venue - NBC or FOX - but the trend in TV is for networks to air only what they own, for financial reasons. Trek on TV could most likely be profitable, but it will have to buck business trends to get there.

Dude, I'm no huge fan of Berman Trek, but it swirled out profits for almost 15 years. If you don't see that as a success, please beam back to earth and join the rest of us.

It was a success for a while but failed to keep up with the trends in the industry, which was splitting into mass-market muck vs. cultish, narrow-taste programming. Sci fi by definition cannot appeal to the mass market but Berman's approach to Trek was too broad and bland to satisfy the core cult audience. Visualize TV like this, everything falling into one of two buckets: it's either CSI: Miami or Dollhouse. That's the future. Trek must live in the Dollhouse bucket if it's going to live anywhere at all.

 

[john titor]

I welcome new trek but I have a few conditions, 1. it must not be dumbass (I'll let the film away with that because the characterization and execution were excellent but a series will really have to prove itself). 2. It must not have dumbass allusions to the Iraq war 3. Whatever it does it should be good, what that entails I don't know but my preferences would entail it being graceful, subtle, complex and original. Not rehashed on some premise and not a cynical cash in. Tall demands they are. Newness is always good, without it TNG would never have existed as it was.

 

[Captain_Rogers]

Dude, I'm no huge fan of Berman Trek, but it swirled out profits for almost 15 years. If you don't see that as a success, please beam back to earth and join the rest of us.

You can call it enormously successful all you want, (which I find hysterical) but it was FAILING. It made less and less money, market share eroded season after season of mindless crap and it's viewership shrank to almost nothing. And it graphed at a consistent DOWN angle, not up, not steady, DOWN.

Maybe on Bizarro World failing means enormously successful, but not here.

 

[MichaelDornFan]

Dude, I'm no huge fan of Berman Trek, but it swirled out profits for almost 15 years. If you don't see that as a success, please beam back to earth and join the rest of us.

You can call it enormously successful all you want, (which I find hysterical) but it was FAILING. It made less and less money, market share eroded season after season of mindless crap and it's viewership shrank to almost nothing. And it graphed at a consistent DOWN angle, not up, not steady, DOWN.

Maybe on Bizarro World failing means enormously successful, but not here.

That's normal for a lot of shows. Take Law & Order or the Simpsons, for example. Viewership (and quality, in my personal opinion) has steadily fallen, but I don't think I would call a show that's lasted at least 20 seasons a failure.

The Next Generation had steadily increasing viewership from what I remember, though I've seen two different sets of numbers, one of which has a small fall in the seventh/final season.

 

[BrownShatner]

You can call it enormously successful all you want, (which I find hysterical) but it was FAILING. It made less and less money, market share eroded season after season of mindless crap and it's viewership shrank to almost nothing. And it graphed at a consistent DOWN angle, not up, not steady, DOWN.

Maybe on Bizarro World failing means enormously successful, but not here.

You're right about the general trend, but running franchises into the ground is exactly how the entertainment industry makes money. If you believe that Trek was so unsuccessful, why didn't the studio replace Berman after DS9, or after Voyager, or after Insurrection? Why did it take two failed shows and two failed movies to get rid of the guy?

The answer is that Berman could provide a familiar product on the cheap. The studio felt they were more successful flogging Berman Trek, versus the much higher up front investment it would take to remake/reboot the franchise.

It was a success for a while but failed to keep up with the trends in the industry, which was splitting into mass-market muck vs. cultish, narrow-taste programming. Sci fi by definition cannot appeal to the mass market but Berman's approach to Trek was too broad and bland to satisfy the core cult audience. Visualize TV like this, everything falling into one of two buckets: it's either CSI: Miami or Dollhouse. That's the future. Trek must live in the Dollhouse bucket if it's going to live anywhere at all.

I would agree with this completely. Berman Trek was trying too many things to too many people, and that didn't play well with contemporary niche-market audiences. I also believe that creatively, they had recycled most TNG themes to death and the spin-off series were largely window-dressing on the same basic concepts.

However they ran it into the ground doesn't really matter though, nobody sane would look at the massive amount of Trek produced in the 90s and early 00s and declare it to be financially unsuccessful.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

That isn't success, it's called swirling the bowl.

Do you know how much money Paramount has made and continues to make from those productions and the merchandise derived from them?

Of course not.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I've finally come to the cold conclusion that I - and a lot of us - have to come to terms with the very real possibility that from here on out we will have to live with a redefined Trek. Not just in movies, but in TV as well.

Call it what you will - betrayal or the parade has passed us by - but this new, morphed form of Trek is undeniably now the most successful version of the franchise with buy-in from the general public and a large majority of old-school fans.

There's been a lot of talk and hope in here about some weird stuff; "Dominion Wars" series, etc. and so on - heck, I barely know Dominion War junk, and I'm pretty hard core from the TOS/Gen stuff - there's just no way that any of that arcane stuff is going to be played out for money in this new environment. TOS and TNG are probably wholly scotched as well.

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.

The thing is, a whole bunch of people here are holding onto that straw that somehow the old days are going to come back again, and it seems to me that viewpoint is just going to prolong the separation pain. Thus the poll - beyond your Wants, what are your Beliefs? And can you deal with the concept that Trek may now be, ongoing, a wholly different animal?

About the most logical post on this entire site in....years.

Rob

 

[Captain_Rogers]

That isn't success, it's called swirling the bowl.

Do you know how much money Paramount has made and continues to make from those productions and the merchandise derived from them?

Of course not.

Do you know how much money Paramount COULD have made had the franchise not been run by BS shoveling imbeciles?

I bet a whole lot more than they have.

 

[RobertScorpio]

That isn't success, it's called swirling the bowl.

Do you know how much money Paramount has made and continues to make from those productions and the merchandise derived from them?

Of course not.

Do you know how much money Paramount COULD have made had the franchise not been run by BS shoveling imbeciles?

I bet a whole lot more than they have.

I have often wondered about that, and it is a good question. DS9 is my favorite TREK, but it is undeniable that with two shows running at the same time as TNG-DS9-VOY did at times played a big part, I think, with creating this STAR TREK fatigue that also spins off into making it dorky...

Rob

 

[Captain_Rogers]

I have often wondered about that, and it is a good question.

There are a number of things regarding the old regime that have bothered me over the years. The biggest was that after the thrill of a New Trek wore off with TNG, things got boring, and continued to be largely boring.

I think what topped it off was reading interviews with B&B where they made remarks that I think many fans found disturbing such as not having any idea why Nemesis failed, or why Enterprise was failing, or changing the theme on Enterprise to a more country beat in a ditch effort to improve the show.
And then blaming it on "too many trips to the well" It's an easy excuse when you can't really come up with a logical answer.

We saw evidence that this simple answer itself was a lame attempt at covering their backsides.

Coto made a drastic improvement with Enterprise, but by then it was too little, too late to save. And of course the series finale got taken over by B&B and turned into a very large joke. When the new film was first announced, it was cried that it was too soon. Many procalimed quite authoriatively that it would fail.

And here we are, the biggest success in Star Trek History, as I type this barely under the 250 million mark. I guess B&B's remarks were accurate about too many trips to the well, it was jurt taken out of context. It wasn't TREK that had taken too many trips to the well it seems.

Of course this was pretty much confirmed when Braga was overheard on set stating that he could spew out any crap he wanted and Trek fans would just gobble it up anyway. When you have someone that disinterested in what he's doing, you can't really expect much in the way of quality.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I have often wondered about that, and it is a good question.

There are a number of things regarding the old regime that have bothered me over the years. The biggest was that after the thrill of a New Trek wore off with TNG, things got boring, and continued to be largely boring.

I think what topped it off was reading interviews with B&B where they made remarks that I think many fans found disturbing such as not having any idea why Nemesis failed, or why Enterprise was failing, or changing the theme on Enterprise to a more country beat in a ditch effort to improve the show.
And then blaming it on "too many trips to the well" It's an easy excuse when you can't really come up with a logical answer.

We saw evidence that this simple answer itself was a lame attempt at covering their backsides.

Coto made a drastic improvement with Enterprise, but by then it was too little, too late to save. And of course the series finale got taken over by B&B and turned into a very large joke. When the new film was first announced, it was cried that it was too soon. Many procalimed quite authoriatively that it would fail.

And here we are, the biggest success in Star Trek History, as I type this barely under the 250 million mark. I guess B&B's remarks were accurate about too many trips to the well, it was jurt taken out of context. It wasn't TREK that had taken too many trips to the well it seems.

Of course this was pretty much confirmed when Braga was overheard on set stating that he could spew out any crap he wanted and Trek fans would just gobble it up anyway. When you have someone that disinterested in what he's doing, you can't really expect much in the way of quality.

This was a well written summation of what I believe as well. Great post!

Rob

 

[Shazam!]

I totally enjoyed the hell out of the new Star Trek film but in the long run (ie. outside of feature films) I have no interest in following the antics of 'mirror' Kirk/Spock/McCoy etc...

It would be a shame if existing Star Trek ceased to exist but I think that's what's going to happen. With no new material to work from the existing Trek universe will fade away. There are only so many Picard stories to be told before his life becomes so jam-packed with adventures you'd wonder how he found the time to bone Doctor Crusher.

For future films to be successful all effort must be made to convince viewers that what we're watching is the 'real' Star Trek and not some crazy elseworlds adventure. Tie-in novels, video games, toys etc are all going to be geared towards the success of the new franchise.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I totally enjoyed the hell out of the new Star Trek film but in the long run (ie. outside of feature films) I have no interest in following the antics of 'mirror' Kirk/Spock/McCoy etc...

It would be a shame if existing Star Trek ceased to exist but I think that's what's going to happen. With no new material to work from the existing Trek universe will fade away. There are only so many Picard stories to be told before his life becomes so jam-packed with adventures you'd wonder how he found the time to bone Doctor Crusher.

For future films to be successful all effort must be made to convince viewers that what we're watching is the 'real' Star Trek and not some crazy elseworlds adventure. Tie-in novels, video games, toys etc are all going to be geared towards the success of the new franchise.

I'm not sure what you mean by "real" Star Trek. But I will tell what I mean by "real" Star Trek. Pocket Books, as we saw recently, is still churning out books that take place with Picard and company. So fans of Roddenberry-Berman era can go there and read those books..and all is good.

But JJ's Trek will emerge, if he does two more movies, as the dominant of the two versions of TREK. Here is the 50 million dollar question; if and when they do start putting out STAR TREK books that center around the JJ Abrams TREK universe, which books will sell more? the old timeline (Kirk-Picard) or the new timeline (JJ's new altered time line)

I am willing to bet that the books that center around JJ's TREK will sell more. And if they do, and if Pocket sees the writing on the wall, then Picard/Sisko and Janeway's days are numbered in the book world as well.

Time will tell
Time will tell

Rob
scorpio

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Do you know how much money Paramount COULD have made had ...

No, and neither do you. You have no idea whatever.

I bet a whole lot more than they have.

Go ahead - that's meaningless rhetoric, since there is no actual answer.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I totally enjoyed the hell out of the new Star Trek film but in the long run (ie. outside of feature films) I have no interest in following the antics of 'mirror' Kirk/Spock/McCoy etc...

It would be a shame if existing Star Trek ceased to exist but I think that's what's going to happen. With no new material to work from the existing Trek universe will fade away.

Yep.

I'm far more interested in the new Kirk/Spock/McCoy than I am in anything remaining to be exploited in the old continuity.

In fact, at this point the only parts of Star Trek that hold my interest at all are some - about 30 percent - of the original TV series and Abrams's movie.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I totally enjoyed the hell out of the new Star Trek film but in the long run (ie. outside of feature films) I have no interest in following the antics of 'mirror' Kirk/Spock/McCoy etc...

It would be a shame if existing Star Trek ceased to exist but I think that's what's going to happen. With no new material to work from the existing Trek universe will fade away.

Yep.

I'm far more interested in the new Kirk/Spock/McCoy than I am in anything remaining to be exploited in the old continuity.

In fact, at this point the only parts of Star Trek that hold my interest at all are some - about 30 percent - of the original TV series and Abrams's movie.

Umm...thats cutting it to the bone and I totally agree. This is exactly how I feel and I am a big DS9 fan. But with my children (6 year old and 15 year old) fueled by XI to watch TOS, thats all we do. My TNG-DS9-Voyager DVDS are all up in storage now..TOS is proudly displayed on my shelfs..

We will be watching AMOK TIME tonight.

Oh..we just watched WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF last night. I didn't think my kids would get into this very talky episode. BUT, they both were freaked out by ROK. My son actually hid his eyes when ROK was chasing Kirk through the caverns. (I whispered to my wife to look for Kirk's large dildo..she laughed when she saw what I meant)

So..great post..and right on target..

And I like your avatar. Her life, from the moment she and Lee Majors split, was never the same IMO. I think her time with Ryan Oneal was, well..I just never liked it.

Rob

 

[Shazam!]

I'm not sure what you mean by "real" Star Trek. But I will tell what I mean by "real" Star Trek. Pocket Books, as we saw recently, is still churning out books that take place with Picard and company

Yeah, that's kinda my point though. With no new television, movies or games in that universe we'll only get more Picard, more Sisko, more Janeway (well, maybe not more Janeway) until eventually their lives are so swollen with adventures that it'd be way too ridiculous.

I am willing to bet that the books that center around JJ's TREK will sell more

In the short term, I agree with you. It's kinda like the Ultimate Universe of Marvel.

 

[bigdaddy]

I hope old trek isn't dead, but I know that it is.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I'm not sure what you mean by "real" Star Trek. But I will tell what I mean by "real" Star Trek. Pocket Books, as we saw recently, is still churning out books that take place with Picard and company

Yeah, that's kinda my point though. With no new television, movies or games in that universe we'll only get more Picard, more Sisko, more Janeway (well, maybe not more Janeway) until eventually their lives are so swollen with adventures that it'd be way too ridiculous.

I am willing to bet that the books that center around JJ's TREK will sell more

In the short term, I agree with you. It's kinda like the Ultimate Universe of Marvel.

Well..sadly, i think TREK books have already reached that level. I mean, look at all the TOS books that take place in the five-year period. Most of these books, I have no doubt, are very good. But overload has always been my issue with the TREK books.

Another problem, and this is my opinion, that I have with the books is a lack of any continuity. I see there is another book coming out about the Mirror universe, and its even by one of my favorite TREK authors. But how many books now take place in that universe that have done their own spin of events after Kirk and company went there in MIRROR MIRROR.

This gets me in trouble on the TREK FORUM on this site, but I don't care. I'll say it again. They need to stop making TREK books with Picard/Sisko/Janway (whicn I know will anger you Billy Batson). And ONLY issue books with nuTREK plots. And, more importantly, only three of them a year (one every three months) that, get this novel idea, take place in the same continuity and refer to each other.

Rob