Classic Star Trek Producer Says Shorter, Modern Shows Are 'Tinder Relationships,' Calls for 'Longer, More Sustained' Seasons
Classic Star Trek Producer Says Shorter, Modern Shows Are 'Tinder Relationships,' Calls for 'Longer, More Sustained' Seasons - IGN
Maybe they could get back to writing more stories about an object oriented universe instead of only writing about the ego oriented universe. Every single star trek franchise since enterprise is a space soap opera.
Every single star trek franchise since enterprise is a space soap opera.
That's always been Star Trek. Don't make me go through the TNG back catalogue.
The interpersonal dramas are what separate the Trekkies from the SW nerds. You don't need a planet killing superweapon to tell a story. It's enough to have two people trapped on a deserted planet who don't speak the same language, but need one another to survive.
I never said trek didn't have any drama, only that modern star trek is nothing but egocentric soap opera, and pays lip service to the science and engineering part of the science fiction.
Previous trek iterations included both object science stories and subjective egoism in a very different ratio. How TNG, tos, voyager or Enterprise dealt with technology and exploration challenges is worlds apart from discovery, or even strange new worlds. The amount of screen time each show devotes to character development and the amount it focuses on the objective challenges of the world is very different. There is a clear direction to make politics, personal drama and interpersonal conflict both more dramatic and the center of the storylines in the modern star trek catalogue. These shows no longer being mostly episodic stories but season long, prolonged character development vehicles, is also part of the subjective egoism that now dominates the franchise. It's almost all about character journeys, relationship conflicts and political posturing. The object oriented stories of science, engineering, exploration, discovery, philosophy or even technologies as a setting for character stories is largely absent now. It's more reality tv show drama and less exploration and adventure, and even when they do have those object focused stories, they have little meaningful impact on the story or the audience.
Awesome!
Can we now also get rid of the lens flares the dumb pew pew, most of the CGI and action and just get back to well written show episodes where CGI is a lick of paint to make it pretty, not the soup you're eating?
I want TNG style trek, DS9, I want the Orville for star trek!
The damage JJ Abrams caused is immense, and having one of his disciples on the helm doesn't help things.
Eight episodes every two years, I don't think so. That's not going to be something you necessarily pass on to your kids. And I think that's a loss.
That's pretty profound.
Sounds a bit like a hack revealing himself. If they’re great, eight episodes every 2 years can absolutely have longevity.
I miss the more 'monster of the week' type storytelling weaved through with season long (or longer) arcs that spanned 20-ish episode seasons. I liked the kind of storytelling where episodes stood on their own but had hints in them that formed a big picture. And every now and then there was an episode that was wholly dedicated to the overarching plot.
This kind of storytelling leaves a lot of room for characterisation episodes or exploration of an intriguing concept. And don't you dare calling this filler. Filler is meaningless. Exploring concepts and characters is not meaningless.
I want more filler episodes the same way Magic The Gathering wants bad cards:
The solution to the aforementioned problem leads to the second reason “bad” cards exist. Different cards have different functions and appeal to different players.
We make some cards for the multi-player crowd. We make cards for the flavor crowd. We make cards for the silly crowd. We make the big creatures and spells for "Timmy." We make the combo cards for "Johnny." We take each different group of Magic players and throw some cards their way.
The problem is players tend to define “bad cards” as cards that they personally see no reason to play. But certain cards aren’t meant for them in the first place.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28
Somewhere out there, there's a single lonely soul who really, really gets Threshold.
arnt people having problems with MTG right now, using Marvel and other IP, they dont like how its not original anymore.
Bad or just plain meh eps stand out a lot further on shorter seasons though. I mean if i had the choice of watching s3 of SNW again or any given voyager season - even the first three- i'd choose the latter.
unless its like something like supernatural, every season after 5 was just filler aside from some ok seasons, they stretched out that show for way too long , and it shouldve died like 10years before it was cancelled.
Agree. You have to know when a story is told and needs to be allowed to end, even if it's wildly popular.
But the early seasons of Supernatural are actually one of the best examples for what I mean.
I don't know. I think there are good shows and bad shows and it doesn't matter how many episodes per season they have. It doesn't matter how much they split it up, if they just keep on making up stuff just for the sake of going on instead of working towards a planned goal. With the shorter shows I get the feeling that they knew where they were going when filming started more than with the older 24 episode shows. But as I said, you get good and bad examples for both long and short seasons.
I have been watching more older shows over the years and noticed they had more filler episodes. I do not miss that.
Big fat nope. Disagree. The British had it right before. Quality over quantity.
So when do we get the quality?
That's the neat part!
I think what gave earlier Trek so much soul was the non-human characters that allowed you to explore humanity through them. Spock, Data, Odo all lived in and around humans, and explored what that meant.
I agree. It's what makes sci-fi good, in my opinion. It's a useful tool to look at the failings of humanity, but in a way that subverts people's self-defence mechanisms. For example, racist might agree treating intelligent aliens as animals is bad without thinking about themselves at first. With a tiny amount of reflection, they will realize it also applies to their beliefs. This can work for so many other topics, like DS9 covers the use of terrorism against Fascists using aliens as stand ins for actual groups that have and do exist in our world.
It gets tired though. And it inevitably puts humans on a pedestal as the thing the robot aspires to be, the thing the Vulcan needs to learn to embrace, the thing 7of9 needs to get back to…
Everyone’s in here arguing and dissecting filler episodes and serialized seasons and I see a lot of good arguments on both sides. But, no one is mentioning a modern Trek series that did a mix of filler episodes and episodic ones, developed characters, and had full season arcs: Lower Decks
Granted, it’s a cartoon so it’s much easier for a deus ex machina or goofy cop-out ending but for 10ish 30 minutes episodes a season, they did a great job of telling modern stories while feeling like Trek ClassicTM
while feeling like Trek ClassicTM
Because there was so, so much memberberries.
I found it mostly somewhar funny, but I don't know if I got half the jokes if I hadn't watched Old Trek so much.
I would argue that it was a good show even without all of that but the nostalgia made it more fun for sure. LD had great writers who told interesting stories. And, it could go from strange and campy to highbrow and serious from one scene to the next but they were also telling stories with through lines and arcs and still providing the filler.
To be fair, I haven’t watched Discovery or much Strange New Worlds yet, so I could be off base. But, it seems like Strange New Worlds is trying to thread that needle.
I wouldn't say got all the jokes, but His Lordship enjoyed the fuck outta LD and he barely remembers any trek outside of some next gen and only knows DS9 through forced repeated exposure.
Different levels, but we had the same fun. We both absolutely lost it at the resolution in Strange Energies, some things are just universal
As an old trekkie I'd be somewhat inclined to agree with you. But then I remember when I tried to get my ex into Star Trek and, while she enjoyed it, Lower Decks is the only one she actually loved and she was really sad when it ended. By the time we broke up she had just started her second run of LD.
But, no one is mentioning a modern Trek series that did a mix of filler episodes and episodic ones, developed characters, and had full season arcs: Lower Decks
lower decks is 10 episodes per season, what exactly is "full season" in this context?
lower decks/prodigy was so much better than the 3 "live" series.
I'm not expecting a return to the old 26 episode seasons, but damn, 15 would be a nice middle ground that would give the season's story arc time to develop and breathe (if it even has one, which I don't think is always necessary, tbh).
10 feels too short.
Besides, it just makes sense, given their goal is to keep people subscribed year-round. If new episodes are only coming out for 2 months of the year, that makes their service a harder sell.
I mean, I'd take only that one show (on a ship)(or space station) and just that show for 20 episodes .
And the things I would do for a directly post DS9 show are.... unspeakable.
Agreed, this season of SNW felt like they were missing at least 5 episodes of interactions with the baddy. Like it was here is this season's baddy and then 2 episodes and he's dead. I remember when they would meet up with the baddy every few episodes and reveal more of their backstory before killing them.
For real though. 8 or 10 episodes is nothing, especially when they're spread out intentionally to just keep people subscribed to a monthly streaming service.
TV shows of yesterday still matter largely because there is so. much. content. This shit was available for free with a basic ass television and some strips of metal wired into it. And you got 24 episodes a season. And sometimes there was more than one season in a year.
Artificial scarcity is obvious when things get that different.
sg1 split thier season 10 in the spring, 10 in the fall, it works. but current streams only doing 6-8episodes, 10 if your lucky. every 1-2years. even people are getting tired of shows like invincible, with such a LONG hiatus,not to mention the degrading animations.
To be fair, whilst modern TV shows are shorter - there's more of them compared to shows in the 90s and 00s.
Remember when shows filmed basically year round? Seasons had like 30+ episodes?
If you look at TNG, DS9 and VOY, they had 26 episodes for most of their seasons, even TOS only had at most 29 episodes in one season. Cut out the filler and you end up with 15-20 episodes and that would be way better then the current 10 episodes that SNW gets.
Thatd be horrible. 4k DV Atmos episodes are 4-10GB. I can’t afford the hard drives to store all that if we switch to 30+ episodes per season. Plus I have to imagine the writing and pace would be just god awful.
Didn’t see this was Star Trek specific. I thought it was about the state of tv in general
I agree. We only had 2 episodes to see Spock and La'an get together, it felt like whiplash when we just saw him pining over Chapel. Looking back at shows like DS9 a season of romantic build up meant 23-24 45-minute long episodes with random encounters, drama, things left unsaid - which made the finales that much more enjoyable.
Not to compare too much, but look at Jim and Pam's romance in the Office. Seasons 2 and 3 were long. It was meant to have us wanting the romance, to see every twist and turn. We had an entire episode for booze cruise, where we finally heard Jim admit it while seeing that they were obviously with the wrong people. We had entire episodes where there was reflection on just one moment of their relationship. You just can't get that in a half-"season" 4 episode arc.
I think my favorite example is Brooklyn 99, and the Jake/Amy relationship.
First season introduces the idea (but really later on in the season that its apparent it could be more), season 2 is will they won't they until a kiss at the end, season 3 they start a relationship, season 4 finishes with them moving in together, season 5 gets a proposal and the wedding, etc.
They take time developing the relationship as an idea, but they don't do the silly "Oh no, misunderstandings made us break up again!" crap, just a progressing relationship over the course of the series.
I agree, that was a great one that I was happy to see took years to make
oh yea, like worfs/jadzia too like many seasons to fully develop, roms, obriens,,,etc.
That’s a dumb comparison but I’m all for longer seasons. TNG had like 20 something episodes per. I’m even okay if they aren’t all JJ Abrahms cinematic quality. Bring back cheap TV!
Thats the problem with modern trek, that need to be "cinematic". Star Trek doesnt need it, it never did. Some of the best episodes were done on a shoe string budget. Like The Drumhead and Its only a paper moon for example. Its only a paper moon didnt even feature any of the main cast. Thats how good DS9s writing was. Even the side characters got the love from the writers.
Exactly. A lot of those episodes were like little stage plays. Imagine entertaining your audience with just a good story! Those were the days.
24 episodes was standard for Prime Time television unless you were a weird mini series of some sort or absurdly expensive
It used to be 26, so you could plan shows covering half a calendar year, then over the years it got cut down more and more. And it was probably not a bad thing because you typically had the same budget but meant you didn't have to do a cheap clip show to pad out the numbers.
That's also why you see a lot of shows with 13 episodes, that seemingly arbitrary number is "half" a traditional season. Even Netflix, despite not traditionally caring too much about seasonal stuff or drip feeding week to week, has a lot of 13 episode seasons.
I guess at some point people wanted even numbers (10) as 13 does feel a bit arbitrary even if there's a reason for it.
Personally for me I'd rather have 10 great quality episodes than 26 episodes where maybe 8 of them are great, 10 are okay and the rest are utter dogshit. The problem is that even (what I consider) great shows like Strange New Worlds, despite only having those 10 episodes per season, still has the odd naff episode.
Lots of talk of filler in this thread, and it certainly can be a problem, but there are reasons to watch things other then a serialized plot, and if it's good, it's not filler. Exploring themes and context and setting and characters are perfectly valid, and longer seasons let a show do that. I very much like having at least a few serialized threads running through a show, and characters that never, ever change can be a bit boring, but IMHO the term "filler" gets tossed around much too loosely in a lot of online discourse around genre TV.
good filler episodes let you advance backstory of all the characters, which is something you may not have space for in the episodes advancing the main plot, so you do actually care about them.
not like strange new worlds (which i do like), where there is this asian woman pilot on the bridge and after 3 seasons i don't even remember her name. i mean wtf is with that?
they did that with STD too, just marginalized all the pocs/and some of the actors that were very prominent in the 1st season into the background with no real arcs, and tried to push the unlikable ones to the forefront of the show.
One big thing is there are so many more things to watch now that I don’t want to commit to a huge season. I guess I like being a tinder tv slut
There's no commit though; don't like it, you can bail and forget about it.
Idk, that might cost money.
Are we sure Network TV still remembers how to rub more than two nickels together to make a season?
I met my wife on Tinder many years ago 🥲
The problem is that those longer seasons required 12 hour days for actors and crew.
Why does it mean that? Why can't they just record over a longer period of time at 8 hours a day?
I’m trying to get my tinder date, Murderbot, into an LTR.
Also with significantly smaller budgets, please.
It's abundantly clear that bigger budgets just get wasted on creating spectacle. With small budgets the strength has to be in the writing to carry the episodes.
Do you have any idea how expensive chatgpt tokens are for a writing room!? It'd be way cheaper to just have a few lines of dialog and 30-40 minutes of cgi explosions
As Ronald D Moore said you can do any genre in Star Trek having longer Seasons gives them more opportunity to have those different genres the shorter seasons and super serialized format taken to the extreme have stripped Away that Swing for the fences mentality that Star Trek once had. Does that mean sometimes you're going to have a bad episode every once in awhile yeah, but it also means that you're going to have great ones.
We all know the perfect balance between episodic and serialized television was Deep Space Nine. Because it had that perfect balance of you could do an episodic swing for the fences story or if you needed to tell a story over you know four or five episodes you could going the extreme one way or the other is always going to be a recipe for disaster.
This guy stinks, but I agree that Trek is better with more episodes per season. Bring in more guest writers, and do cheaper episodes. Try weird stuff! Some of the best episodes are just are just two guys, sometimes one's an alien, talking in front of a camera
The seasons, when they were longer.
Sokath, his eyes uncovered
Paramount is trying to save money, like most other studies, 8-10 if your lucky, its thier way of not paying too much. 20-30episodes per season had alot of content, and it was great, but the current streamers anrnt going to do that. and then whats worst is having 1-2 years between season, even more with some of the other streams.
Trying to save money? Nearly the entirety of this last season was overly-gratuitous spend-fest. For a dime to add to the plot.
Almost good, if you're trying to market some splendid tailors' conglomerate or fantastic CGI badasses, but they didn't. They just handed money out to look flashy (I don't know who they got to do the spendy bits. Good chance they are amazing, but the producers didn't spend it on good or intelligent presentation, just flash. Kinda like they thought media (& story-telling) could be learned from OurDearLeaderAssetOrange).
But even 18 or 15 would be better.
Given the purchase of Paramount by the Ellison family, I unfortunately think we are going to witness the eshitification of Trek in the coming decade 😢
Edit: meaning they will want to remove the "wokeness"
it happened after jj abrams, kurtzman ruined the franchise with his dislike of the franchise(i dont he actually want to be showrunner). In his own words he doesnt care about the continuity.
there was like a 5-6 year drought after enterprise ended. oh yea right wingers bought P+, it wont go well when they demand certain"unsavory elements" be removed from trek.
Yeah, I am very worried about Trek (and Avatar).
Are Trekkies not in a panic over this? I guess Ellison isn’t super famous, and a lot of criticism is probably censored/deranked, but still.
Deep space nine type gray areas are a must. Give me a spock by the pale moonlight episode.
My god, your mind.
For everyone saying this can’t be done anymore, etc. etc. I’d like to introduce you to The Pitt.
They just made fifteen (15!) one-hour episodes with no filler and they will have another 15 ready to show in January - a turnaround time of under 12 months.
pitt is very different, also HBO? tend to make better shows in general.
Take it slow, take your time, let us fill in the blanks, give us the journey, let’s grow together.
So long as it doesn't mean adding filler episodes where any changes to the established situation get undone in the last five minutes, yes.
How about just one or two at a time, with ~20 episodes per season? Actually sounds kinda familiar.
Brits: Must be nice. We get 1 series with like 3 episodes annually and a Christmas special every leap year. Unless it's a panel show or Taskmaster which each have 10 series a year.
Unless it's a panel show
which each have 10 series a year.
Unless it's Taskmaster, which is 1/2 a year, did we skip back to 2010?
Most of the panel shows are gone, since you can't do reruns of weekly topical shows for years.
Long form content, in general, seems to be going out of fashion.
It's not just TV. Short articles outperform long deep dives in papers. Same with longer YouTube videos, which extends to the rise of shorts. Mobile and 'short session' games make up a huge chunk of playtime. I'm not sure about 'big' literature, but even fanfiction and amateur works are skewing towards collections of short, fluffy pieces instead of long-form adventures now.
It's not just attention spans or strained attention capacity either; my impression is energy/time levels to devote to that are dropping. I know a working couple with no kids that still transitioned to shorter-form YouTube stuff over TV because they're just too tired from work + basic maintenance.
I enjoyed Babylon 5 which had 22 episode seasons. As much as I'd like to go back to that format, each season did have a bunch of filler episodes.
I guess it helped break up the season so you didn't just have a run of 8-10 episodes all on the same thing, but at the same time, how much of the filler gets re-watched?
I'm being told Peacemaker Season 2, Episodes 6-8 get NUTS. To a point where it feels like season 3 in 3 episodes. Guess we'll find out on Thursday...
loki was only 6 per season, and most marvel ones are that long. 8-9 is probably the average they will do, and it shows the cracks in the quality.
Marvel Studios under Disney really only knows how to make movies. So their shows end up being long movies. That works better for some stories than others, but on the whole I'd say it was detrimental for them.
I thought Loki was longer than that? I guess not. FELT longer. LOL. I know Eyes of Wakanda and Marvel Zombies are just 4.
I was about to say "and that's too short!" but I watched Marvel Zombies tonight and was already bored 1/2 way through the first episode, read a Wiki for #2 and 3 to make sure I didn't miss anything (surprise! I did not!) and jumped to the end.
just celebrated my 6 year anniversary (we met on tinder btw)
Happy anniversary!
ty
Good comparison. Explains why I never even started any of the modern shows in the first place.
As someone who is in his 40s and still trying to catch up with all the Star Trek series, I'm actually grateful for the short series. It lets me explore scenarios and relationships in a tight-knit story, without a lot of fluff. Longer than a movie, but not drawn out over dozens of episodes.
It keeps the story more focused and less about a handful of random storylines with over a dozen characters who all get lengthy screentime. I'm likely in the minority, but I feel we need more of these brief kind of seasons.
Granted, it's easy to say this after the fact when I'm binging multiple complete series, but I do get the frustration when you're waiting on a new show and it seems like it's over before it even began.
I disagree. I don’t think episodic TV cranking out 24 episodes in a season is the best way to do it. There’s too much filler and not enough attention paid to the overall story arc. Many shows were excellent for seasons 1-2 but then the creativity faded.
There is a middle ground, I think. Breaking bad, for example, had a contiguous storyline, but also had limited episodes. Critically, I think, the network didn’t come in and say “can you do another 3 seasons of the same thing”.
Babylon 5 is literally the only show I can think of with full length seasons and seasons that don't have episodes wasted on filler, and that really only applies to seasons 3 and 4, when the showrunner personally wrote every single script. He also wrote all of season 5, but there were production issues that messed with the pacing of the front half. The stress of writing 22 cohesive and relevant episodes every year was also getting to him. Somewhere in the 10-14 per year range feels like the sweet spot to me.
That said, a season needs to come out each year, not every other year. When there's too much time between seasons, the audience and the writers start losing track of how little time has passed in-universe and then characters start getting over things oddly fast.
The problem with season 5 was they didn't know if they were going to be able to do it or not, so season 4 had to have at least something of an ending for the series. It really messed with his five year plan for the story.
It’s on my watch list but considering I haven’t finished Dexter… i might see it in 2050.
it made the seasons so awkward, like with invincible, people are so over it, plus the bad animation, especially if they have the comics they can read instead of waiting multiple years. AOT , was by far the worst offendor.
Most importantly, this just isn’t how TV is made anymore. Nobody comes home on 6 on Tuesdays cause their favourite show is on, and it’s a routine.
Viewers today (and I do include myself there) want either something lowkey engaging to have as background noise or something that demands your attention—and really, I’ll give my attention to 10x1h but not 24 times per year.
Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it. My in laws watch tv religiously from 5-10 every night and that’s what a lot of people did on cable, and some people watch in the morning too. It’s pretty crazy to me because I grew up without a tv. (Mind you I’m scrolling my phone). But that’s the scenario for episodic tv. 30 min of “content”, 10 min of development, and 20 min of ads.
Plenty of people binge-watch shows now with the advent of streaming services - 10x1h is not as daunting as you suggest.
Forgot to add but: I’d rather have my new trek be something I look forward to and cherish, albeit rare, and not something that might as well be replaced by random episodes of 90s TV or a twitch stream.
Kinky
I would rather have 10 great episodes that are tight and we’ll written, than a 24 episode season that feels cheap and is jammed with filler. Those long shows will have season long arches that go on so long i stop caring by the end
Disagree. It gives you the opportunity to have ~10 tight episodes rather than ~20 with a lot of filler. It's rare to find a ~20 episode season of TV on any show where you unequivocally like every single one (TNG season 3 comes pretty close). It does happen with ~10 episode seasons, like the first few seasons of House of Cards.
It does happen with ~10 episode seasons, like the first few seasons of House of Cards.
I mean technically yea, but how many are actually pulling that off. A lot of these shows coming out now still have shit pacing even with short seasons covering only a few story lines. Two examples off the top of my head, The Acolyte was like 8 episodes long and they had a flashback episode. Picard S2 could have been wrapped up as a 2 parter. At least with the long seasons you get more content even if a few duds end up in there.
I think there's going to be a lot more examples of solid 10 episode seasons than 20. Proportionately speaking; there's a longer history of traditional TV to draw on. Of course, not everything is going to be gold.
Nah, that's just a load of crappy filler.
Respect my time and I'll let you have it.
Some of the best episodes of TNG, DS9, and VOY were “filler episodes.” Called bottle shows, these were episodes with almost no budget which used only the regular sets and very limited guest appearances and effects. The purpose of bottle shows was to save budget for the really big episodes such as the Borg episodes.
Bottle shows had some of the best stories and the best acting in all 3 of those series. They really went all out to make the best episodes they could without relying on fancy sets or expensive visual effects.
If you’re interested in bottle shows, check out that link which includes a longer writeup and a list of known bottle shows.
Yea they knew how to make some of the fillers work, the only wierd ones was with tng ones, with a certain someone that have relationships with apparitions.
TNG didn't have filler, it had episodes. Some were so good they still get talked about decades later. Others were forgettable or bad. But most were pretty good. Some even advanced the plot forward
i think alot of them were not followed up in later seasons, hence why they were interesting.
Monster of the week episodes don't have to be filler. An episode that tells an interesting side story without advancing an overall plot can still have value and enrich the characters and setting.
Or they could just give me an anthology series like they teased with Short Treks.
I wouldn't know.
My only relationship lasted 15 years, she cheated on me and I've had no success on Tinder.
If I had a guess, Star Trek will just remain like everything else in my life: dissapointing
There's this fruit used for lemonade that I discovered recently, it's called chinotto. It's very bitter and delicious, but only in small doses. You can add a lot of sugar and drink more of it, but it's still not good all by itself in big doses. You gotta add water. With bubbles if you want it more festive.
Like cola?
Cola is disappointing in any amount.
Sell the cast and crew on 8-9 months of 16 hours shooting days when most of them have families. I dare you.