TBH I don't mind if a modern season is 12 or so episodes, so long as those episodes are rock solid! One downside to 22-24 episode seasons is they obviously phone in a couple episodes, have some filler including the ever-dreaded clip-show.
That's what I miss, some of the filler episodes would give so much more depth to the world and characters.
Every Ferengi episode in Ds9 was a treasure
All hail the bottle episodes!
Just think, due to budget distribution, we got "Family" right after "Best of Both Worlds, pt. 2" and it's among the best Picard-centric episodes (and provided thematic ground for Generations, First Contact, and Picard--for good and not-so-good)!
Other than "Profit and Lace", I agree with you.
i would rather have the 'longer' seasons with relatively consistent schedules and early announcement of cancellation or renewal. ya know, like the 'olden days'. yea. i feel as old as i sound. idc. that's what i want.
For Strange New Worlds we almost got that, short seasons, but it looks like they only skipped 2024 and were on a very consistent schedule so far. The cancellation/ending of the show was announced last year for I assume next year.
On the other hand, sometimes episodes written specifically to be take it easy can still be exceptionally good. Duet was a cost-saving exercise and I consider it to be one of the best Trek episodes of all time. A modern show with a movie-tier per-episode budget is not going to have the kind of constraints that caused the writers to focus that intensely on characterization.
They also tend to be episodic, with only a few as part of a full narrative.
NuTrek is more like a movie trilogy, with hour long episodes often being part of a series. You get a single overarching plot with minor subplots. And the production value is far more in line with movie production values.
I miss the episodic vibe. I feel like the writers have so little wiggle room to do characterization when the characters are committed to a long narrative arc. No rando stand-alone, self-contained stories that edify and deepen. No contemplative presentation of ideas. The only device allowed for this is flashbacks, and generally only when it feels like the character is missing some context to explain their behavior in the current scene. It is the second most depressing aspect of NuTrek with the first being that Trek stopped being about presenting a utopia vision for the future.
I feel like the writers have so little wiggle room to do characterization when the characters are committed to a long narrative arc. No rando stand-alone, self-contained stories that edify and deepen.
Yeah, I get that. TNG had a lot more room to play with Data's quest for humanity than Picard. Which is ironic, given that Data was about as important as Picard in the second series.
But I also didn't need to watch Beverly Crusher have sex with a ghost. So, trade-offs.
It is the second most depressing aspect of NuTrek with the first being that Trek stopped being about presenting a utopia vision for the future.
I always found the Utopianism of Old Trek overstated. More often than not, it was the Trek crew stumbling on some alien race or society that was experimenting with another Sci-Fi author's idea of Utopianism. And then the Trek crew became the vehicle of Rodenberry's critique of the utopian philosophy.
I do think a lot of the NuTrek writers keyed in on the season long conflicts in DS9 and decided "This is what we need to do going forward". And, as a result, you got these increasingly narrow, black-and-white, action-focused adventures (the post-OS movies were the worst offenders of this trope). The apex of this (for me) was JJ Abrams blowing up Vulcan in his movie adaptation, so he could do Star Wars in Starfleet Uniforms.
But if you go back to the older episodes, I might argue that it was the captains who were Utopian. But the Trek Society was still very militant and authoritarian.
I would actually argue that Seth MacFarlane's Orville did a much better job of painting a utopian intergalactic federation than Rodenberry or his successors ever did. The culmination of the third season really painted the triumph of politics and inter-uh-galacticism over Realpolitik and imperialism.
But I also didn't need to watch Beverly Crusher have sex with a ghost.
Take it back, next thing I know you'll say the episode dealing with Lt. Broccoli's gooning problem was unnecessary
EPISODIC with underlying overarching plot hinting at future episodes too.
I do mind. Most of the time the modern short season system means, its a long movie or to use buzz words = binge worthy. You must watch every episode and in order. With the old system, you could watch most of the season out of order and skip episodes. The ones that need to be watched, are usually the double or tripple episodes. The old system allows full episodes for side/background characters, developing their story.
Of course there is the budget and with more episodes, it allows for a bigger difference. I don't mind cheaper episodes but I hate a big "previously on" episode, where there is not even character development.
I'm pretty sure it was less than a year between seasons too.
None of this wait 2-3 years and wonder if its actually been cancelled.
They would take a break equal to public schools being let out for the summer, at the same time schools let out for summer. They have much longer breaks now due to the writer's union fighting to get longer seasonal breaks, as well as adding mid-season breaks.
True.
Today, we're lucky to get half that. Eight is more common.
nO ONe waNtS tO woRK AnYmORE!
“Why do people keep canceling their subscription?”
Because you only release enough episodes to binge during a weekend.
I think it's little more than producers have found the idealized timing to pack in all the melodrama they can and get you to watch all X episodes.
Then have you come back for something else, a "variation on a theme".
The producers simply know how to sucker us in.
The producers simply know how to sucker us in.
They know how to sucker investors in, certainly. Idk about the long term health of the medium. People still just binge watch Friends, ffs. So much of the most popular material is behind us.
A discussion yesterday about netflix shows dropping 50% of their audience between season 1 and 2 was talking about this. Shows used to run 9 months and have 22 - 26 shows in that time. Then there'd be a 3 month hiatus before you got another 22+ episodes. A streaming show would take 7 season to get to 50 episodes, and with a year or more between 8 episode chunks it'd take 15 years to get there.
I don't miss filler episodes or saving the budget for sweeps, but I miss shows I love constantly producing new content.
netflixs problem is usually due them cancelling shows after 1-2 seasons, or forced cancellation of a show that goes on longer than 2. like thats why they lose viewership, plus the immense time in between seasons. like sandman, BOz.
Bottle episodes meant people didn't need to be invested in years long sagas. People don't know what they want. They're force fed fancy wine, thinking they've become connoisseurs by their own choice, but actually it's box wine from Walmart. They get fed up and quit after a season or two, but they don't know why. They tell themselves it's because the writers or studios are doing it wrong. Of course that's true, but not for the reasons they think. Give people something easier to digest in small bites and they'll continue watching shows.
The same problem happened to Marvel. At this point nobody has kept track of the dozens of movies and all the plot lines. They lose viewers by attrition. They gain none because nobody is watching hundreds of hours of movies to catch up. Bottle episodes and standalones make it easy for people to start and stop at any point.
Standalone content got a derogatory label "filler". So people hate it because they're told to.
Discoverability is also in the toilet. You can't just turn on the television and find Star Trek. You have to be subscribed to the right streaming services in this landscape, and to do that, you have to want to watch it in the first place. It's not like when Discovery was new, and there was more or less just Netflix that people either had or didn't have.
Star Trek's now in the unenviable position of trying to attract a new causal audience, but being set up in places where more dedicated viewers will be the ones that can find and watch it.
they keep coming out with new series, only to cancel it, because the show becomes sloppier and sloppier than STD, AND picard. also the fact that ELLISON owns it now.
Most of the nest star trek episodes were bottles
Well yeah, they could crank out a whole episode in like a day back then. These days people expect every episode to have the quality of Hollywood movie.
The nature of tv has changed. The gap between tv and movie has largely closed. People lament that we are moving away from traditional Hollywood movies, but I'd argue that we're more moving away from traditional television with premium tv now taking the place of movies in many ways.
It's not that people like stories less, they just seem to prefer a series of 1 hour movies told in 8 parts over a single 90 minute plotline.
Television used to be sooooo much different than Hollywood. There used to be almost no overlap in skills or technique. I used to work in TV, and what I used to do just isn't done anymore. The closest thing out there now to old tv is Saturday night live. They still kinda do it in that style.
I don't think people prefer this. I think this is what we've been forced to prefer because that's the only thing available right now.
These days people expect every episode to have the quality of Hollywood movie.
Don't put that shit on me!
Its not the brevity, it's the extended delay between them
A 16 episode season would be a nice compromise for a more detailed story and character development while not being much longer for those who bury their faces in phones or other devices and can’t be bothered to listen to more than 8-10 episodes. 👀 /s
A little extra breathing room compared to what’s common now would be great.
The only modern show to approach that was 20 episode Prodigy seasons, but those were 1/2 hour episodes (less without commercials), so it works out to be the same amount of content as a 10 episode Strange New Worlds season.
Half of them were filler and three of them were compilation recap episodes and they ran for 22 minutes each not counting ads, but yes, that's what USA TV series were like.
And actors were visibly bored and mailing it in by episode 16.
Yeah, but actors and film crews who worked those syndicated TV shows will tell you how tortorous the work schedules were. Labor protections are a big part of the changes in episode production, and it's a good thing.
That's 24 with Christmas and Halloween specials. Or a clip show, ugh.
More than a few low quality episodes, a couple flashback episodes, and extensive repetition before commercial breaks. It wasn’t good TV.
plus some excellent bottles episodes to compensate the budget
Clip show episodes worked then because DVRs and on-demand streaming wasn't a thing.
I remember getting super excited when my parents got a VCR with a timed record function so that we could record shows and watch them on our own schedule.
Same way with anime. They used to be 24-26 and then they invented a new word “cour” (I know, probably not new) for 12-14 episodes and acted like series were always that short.
But what was even more annoying is that for a lot of series after about 2010-2013 they would do one cour and leave you on a cliffhanger to try to entice you to go buy the light novels. They used to be fully self contained arcs and stories with 24 episodes to work with.
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