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New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

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Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#81
post #35

It appears we will all need to pay CBS %5.99 a month to watch this.

Yes, CBS has this weird notion that you will pay $5.99 a month AND watch commercials that you can't skip. I get that they "think" its like this now, they get paid by the cable company for their channel (the $5.99) and they send them content with commercials (which they have sold), but the new world is NetFlix which charges monthly, but has now commercials.

The broadcast networks have been in the process of expanding that fee:

http://www.thestreet.com/story/13181362/1/cbss-tough-stance-...

Given the quality of digital broadcast and tendency for it to overlap cable service areas, it's pretty ridiculous that they manage to get anything. It wouldn't be so hard for a consumer friendly TV to transparently switch between sources (well, except for the cable companies making sure not to put consumer friendly features in their now required boxes).

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#82

Kinda worried that this will be a "web-only" series, Star Trek needs quite a good production to work well, The budget for a TNG episode was 2M$ which was pretty unheard off back then and is even considered expensive these days (GOT which is currently the most expensive running show has about 6M per episode and when you count the fact that TNG had 24-25 episodes per season the overall season budget was almost the same…

>" This new series will premiere to the national CBS audience , then boldly go where no first-run Star Trek series has gone before – directly to its millions of fans through CBS All Access,” said Marc DeBevoise [emphasis mine] Sounds like it is going to be on TV.

The premiere episode is going to be televised. After that all future episodes will be CBS All Access-only (at least in the US).

It's the old drug dealer sales approach: you always want to make the first hit free.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#83
post #46

Kinda worried that this will be a "web-only" series, Star Trek needs quite a good production to work well, The budget for a TNG episode was 2M$ which was pretty unheard off back then and is even considered expensive these days (GOT which is currently the most expensive running show has about 6M per episode and when you count the fact that TNG had 24-25 episodes per season the overall season budget was almost the same…

Sci Fi shows are expensive to make period - which is why there aren't usually a lot of them on TV. Just think about it: for a normal sitcom or drama, costumes can be bought off the rack and shots can be done on location or on a sound stage with easily-sourced furniture / decoration / etc. Everything on a Sci Fi (or fantasy) show has to be custom-made; from the costumes to the wall decorations to the light fixtures to…

>> for a normal sitcom or drama, costumes can be bought off the rack and shots can be done on location or on a sound stage with easily-sourced furniture / decoration / etc.

Worth noting: for sitcoms, staff costs are often as high/higher than the SF shows that make it to the screen. For example, actors on _The Big Bang Theory_ are rumored to earn $1m per episode each. Ditto other shows like _Modern Family_.

Likely there are relatively few Sci Fi shows because the Sci Fi writ large has yet to figure out how to connect with audience sizes beyond a niche. If they achieve mainstream reach, the cost of the sets will not matter as much.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#84
post #10

I have always been interested in watching Star Trek, having watched some of Deep Space Nine with my dad and thinking it was okay when I was really young in addition to enjoying the new movies. I figure now is a good time seeing as this is coming out in a little over a year. Any suggestions as to what order I should watch it in or if I should avoid any of the series?

I will attempt to analyze the multiple series from a hard/soft sci fi perspective.

Enterprise is probably the hardest. Very RPG-like how they operate to their self made rules in what compared to later series is extreme limitations. Life is a lot different when the fastest transport ship flys at warp 1 and everything isn't deus ex machina away with AI or technobabble. On the other hand they overdo the "wooden ships and iron men" thing a little and there is too much "pew pew" action.

Next up is DS9. Some technobabble for dramatic license but still reads like a paper and pencil RPG fiction (which is good). Some "crewman of the week" cheesy soft filler episodes but mostly hard science fiction story. Has a reasonably hard science overall story arc. Arguably the best overall series. Has the best "hard" written "soft" character in all of trek, the Cardassian "tailor". He's not really a tailor, hope this isn't too much of a spoiler. Best sci fi on TV, maybe.

TOS is all over the map. Sometimes they did a good job of both hard and soft sci fi at the same time. Then there's "space hippies" or "spocks brain" or "spock needs to get laid" which we'll pretend never happened. There is an unrealistic (by hard sci fi standards) fixation on alien planets being the wild west desert. You NEED to watch certain individual episodes, like the doomsday machine.

TNG is the softest series, its General Hospital soap opera, on a space ship. Toward the middle either its a short story arc, sometimes halfway decent, or "crewmember of the week special story". The Wesley character is kind of the series Jar-Jar and you'd do best to skip episodes where he is "crewman of the month". Also the romance episodes read like fanfic from /r9k/. The alien civilizations are bad caricatures.

Generally across all the series from a hard sci fi viewpoint if an episode involves space nazis, time travel, Ferengi, romance, or a holodeck accident, it can be ignored with little to no loss with very few exceptions.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#85
I, for one, am optimistic. Even though the JJ Abrams reboot movies sucked, he's not the only one who can do the work. There are hordes of people in Hollywood who grew up on Star Trek, love it properly, and want to bring back the spirit of exploration and optimism and the ensemble cast work that make the older series so compelling. I think the world needs a new Star Trek - one that isn't just shiny effects, but holds true to the sense of hope and courage that I loved and still love. And I know it can be done.

On the plus side, the quality of ensemble-cast science fiction tv writing has exploded over the past 15-20 years, starting with how Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer built season and multi-season story arcs that depended on character growth. I would love to see the sort of rich, passionate writing that made Firefly, Walking Dead, and other shows so effective applied to Star Trek!

And I'm a little biased toward the development of web-only series - some friends of mine are doing Cartoon Network's first web-only series, and I'm really hoping it succeeds spectacularly and points a new direction for CN. Fixed timeslots in general are a dated way of doing shows now. Timeshifting is the norm.

So yeah, hope for a bright future. And screw the Prime Directive.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#86

They'd better just blow out the stops, go like 4000 years in the future and start imagining some out there stuff. I don't need people in makeup and masks fondling iPads and acting all utopian cause Roddenberry said so.

4000 years into the future would take us to Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda :)

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#87
post #43

I was a big Trekkie when I was younger...but I'm surprised at how poorly the show has held up when rewatching on Netflix. I think what spoiled me was the revamped Battlestar Galactica. It's not the dated special effects that bother me, it's the way the utopia of Star Trek's future and technology began to provide way too many plot crutches. By the end of TNG, it seemed like every crisis resolution involved reversing t…

BSG is in many ways a response to the happiness and ease of Voyager, with pretty much everyone leading a good life with plentiful resources despite being marooned far from any help. Terribly lazy writing had the Voyager crew constantly destroy shuttlecraft and fire photon torpedoes they weren't supposed to be able to replace. The ship started out with 38 torpedoes and no way to replace them (stated explicitly in dialogue!) and by the end of the show they had used something like 85 of them.

Total internal consistency isn't necessary, and can actually be harmful to a show if you take it too far. Sometimes it's better to conveniently paper over an earlier mistake. But this is just plain laziness in writing, and it hurt the show by removing a lot of material for conflict and drama.

Ronald Moore was a big driving force behind the new BSG and previously did a lot of work on various Star Treks, including a brief stint with Voyager. In many ways, BSG is "how Voyager should have been."

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#88
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sci Fi shows are expensive to make period - which is why there aren't usually a lot of them on TV. Just think about it: for a normal sitcom or drama, costumes can be bought off the rack and shots can be done on location or on a sound stage with easily-sourced furniture / decoration / etc. Everything on a Sci Fi (or fantasy) show has to be custom-made; from the costumes to the wall decorations to the light fixtures to…

Shows are expensive to make period it just depends what is your "catch", drama's can be also very expensive to make especially historical ones Broadwalk empire has nearly the same budget as GOT, Rome (the HBO & BBC one) was the most expensive show ever made besides friends which had a budget of over 10M$ per episode because much of the cast was being paid over 1M per episode. It's not always the budget it's also the…

Yeah; any period dramas, fantasy or sci fi shows are just going to be ridiculously expensive. Sitcoms and ensemble dramas are a little cheaper; but eventually if the show gets popular, the cast will demand to be paid. But at least for the first couple seasons the show is cheap to produce, and if it builds an audience, it's easier to justify the increased cost.

Sci Fi shows are the most expensive in their first season, because you have to design the universe up-front. A network exec doesn't know if the show is going to pull an audience, but he does know he's got to drop a whole lot of money to even find out. Which makes other options a lot more attractive, and explains the lack of high-quality Sci Fi on TV right now.

And like it or not, the cinematic tie-ins and continuity within the universe are what make Marvel appealing as a brand. DC has done a terrible job at this; the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie has different actors and takes place in a different universe than the last (or really, any) Batman movie. Having multiple Batman characters confuses audiences, and Marvel has done a really good job keeping things consistent.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#89
post #43

I was a big Trekkie when I was younger...but I'm surprised at how poorly the show has held up when rewatching on Netflix. I think what spoiled me was the revamped Battlestar Galactica. It's not the dated special effects that bother me, it's the way the utopia of Star Trek's future and technology began to provide way too many plot crutches. By the end of TNG, it seemed like every crisis resolution involved reversing t…

Voyager is definitely the worst offender with "reverse the polarity" plot devices, but it also doesn't take itself so seriously. It was very much the polar opposite of BSG in that regard.

I didn't find DS9 picked up that problem in the later seasons though, so I've got to disagree with you there.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#90
post #85

I, for one, am optimistic. Even though the JJ Abrams reboot movies sucked, he's not the only one who can do the work. There are hordes of people in Hollywood who grew up on Star Trek, love it properly, and want to bring back the spirit of exploration and optimism and the ensemble cast work that make the older series so compelling. I think the world needs a new Star Trek - one that isn't just shiny effects, but holds…

What did you dislike about the reboot films? I really liked them, I thought they were cast well, and were over-all pretty good.

edit: others in the comments have noted that the reboots are basically just action sequences with none of the underlying social themes that made Star Trek significant in the first place.

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