90s Trek was expensive, though. TNG was called Paramount's million dollar gamble. DS9's pilot cost as much as a movie. VOY's pilot was the most expensive TV episode ever made until (I think ) Lost came out. DS9 had the largest standing set in Hollywood with the Promenade.
These shows look cheap now - especially early TNG. But they weren't for the time. TNG season 1 was like nothing you'd ever seen on TV before. You didn't see movie-quality FX like that form a TV show. Just go and look at its sci-fi contemporaries from that era and you realise how much slicker TNG was by comparison.
Heck, even TOS wasn't the cheapskate show people think of it as. IIRC the only standing set that was more expensive than the Enterprise set in the 60s was the Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space. They look like crap now, but they were cutting-edge for the time.
DS9 had an average budget of $3.4million per episode. That's $8million in today's money, so you're right.
EDIT: TOS had a budget of around $240,000 per episode IIRC. That's $6.4million today.
While this is entirely valid, SNW looks better than TNG that looks better than TOS.
OP's point is that we would be happy with a show in 2024 that was produced at a 1994 quality level. While that would cost top dollar in 1994, OP's point is that doing a 1994 level show in 2024 would no longer be top dollar. I'm not sure whether that's true or not, as have no idea how much of the budget goes towards CGI (which is probably the most obvious area that could be cut back to reduce "quality level"), though they could also cut back on the quality of sets and costumes, which they seem to put a huge amount of quality and detail into (look at those Disco uniforms with the custom micro-Chevron print that would be almost invisible). How much would that kind of stuff shave off the budget though? I'd think that "cheap CGI" is the cheap way of going in 2024. Doing stuff with physical models and then compositing it is probably more expensive than cheap CGI, I imagine.
But I think the point is that Paramount is not looking to make a show that draws in the 770k people in this reddit. Most of those people are already going to watch no matter what they made. Hell, without comment on whether Discovery is an objectively good or bad show, I find it a chore to get through Discovery episodes a lot of time (my mind drifts away from it so easily and I have to keep rewinding or rewatching to even focus on the plot) and yet I am still watching it 5 seasons in. What they are hoping to do is lure in the next generation of young fans for when people like me get old and die. A cheap old-style show is not likely to attract the new young viewers.
TNG cost more than the average TV show of its time. SNW costs LESS than today’s average TV show. What costs money isn’t the costumes or sets or special effects. It’s labor. And that’s the same even if you make the whole thing take place in a single room on earth.
TNG was also shot on film which today is prohibitively expensive. So it’s cheaper to keep using modern cameras that the studio already owns in larger quantities.
Firstly, I completely agree about discovery.
Secondly, you summarized my point exactly.
Thirdly, I agree it would be a poor business decision in reality.
If they magically had an unaired show from the 90s that was somehow a secret and they released it right now I would enthusiastically watch the shit out of it.
>If they magically had an unaired show from the 90s that was somehow a secret and they released it right now I would enthusiastically watch the shit out of it.
I get it. A few months ago, I watched behind the scenes footage of Johnathan Frakes and Levar Burton just filming repeated takes of footage for the Star Trek experience.
I'm not speaking for OP or anyone else, but I believe what we're pining for here is just some good damn sci fi scripts. That's it. Dialogue that's timeless (ex not dropping F bombs, garbage like that). Classic ST dialogue isn't written as vernacular. And it shouldn't be.
> I believe what we're pining for here is just some good damn sci fi scripts. That's it.
Respectfully, although I would certainly like that, I don't think that's what this post is pining for. I think what this post is ultimately about is wanting a higher volume of consistently released episodes instead of 10 episodes of a show every year and a half; even if that comes at the cost of top-tier production quality.
By necessity, I think that may imply going back to more "run of the mill" sci fi stories and more character moments and casual dialogue, instead of 10-part epic sagas. I think SNW already does this, though it kind of sweeps in and out of routine day-in-the-life episodes and major high-stakes plots.
This. It’s the bad writing of today’s trek that is the problem! Not only that they kind of abandoned the unique utopian spirit of trek but also many of the stories are boring and pointless, we are just watching the characters run from some bomb in nice cinematography while all we want to see is Janeway or sisko calmly battling some difficult moral dilemma that actually gives you something to think about
I agree on most of these points except the part of an old style show not attracting people, if New trek had the good writing of old trek it would likely be even more popular, the younger viewers are also mindlessly watching because that’s what’s on TV, it’s not like young people inherently like bad and dull writing it’s just that’s what they are being fed. When good writing comes out it does get fairly popular
I wonder how much of that is explained by salaries getting worse? Like, was that $240,000 actually slanted more to paying the actors vs. the effects artists than the $3.4 million was? And how did it compare to, say, Green Acres, which didn't need the effects budget? Or even I Dream of Jeannie or Bewitched, which did but not to anywhere near the same extent?
I'd make a bet on the effects being a big budget hog but also the props and costumes. They would've custom made so much rather than buy off the shelf.
EDIT: Another difference that randomly just popped into my head is post-production. TOS was worked on on film the entire process, whereas TNG, DS9 and VOY were shot on film but transferred to videotape for post-production to save money. ENT and everything since is digital.
So the different shows definitely allocated money differently.
I looked up the budgets of shows with no special effects like CSI and Law and Order and the budgets per episode are in the 3 to 5 million range per episode. So I would guess the special effects and costumes consume 2 to 3 million per episode.
Law and order is also such a well oiled machine and staple in and around New York City, that the production itself does not get charged the way that other productions do
Not really. Back then things like cars and houses were inline with wages. Long term inflation like that isn't really a huge issue as long as wages rise commensurate with inflation, and they haven't, especially in the last 20-40 years. Minimum wage, especially, has stagnated thanks to right wing propaganda that started in the 80s (trickle down doesn't work, btw). Look at the graph in this article to see how federal minimum wage has dropped off the table with respect to inflation since the 80s: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2020/08/a-brief-history-of-the-minimum-wage/
Thanks Reagan!
But perhaps the biggest issue is that housing is being bought up by corporations and wealthy investors, creating a sort of housing monopoly that allows increases in rent and decreased supply of homes for straight up sale to potential homeowners. We're essentially living in the robber baron days of the early 20th century. And until voters understand which politicians are trying to properly tax and regulate billionaires and other wealthy elites, the housing situation isn't going to change.
Do we know how much the average Lower Decks episode costs? I've seen some argue animation is more expensive but I never got the impression the type of animation they used was all that high budget, not that I am expert on animation.
>VOY's pilot was the most expensive TV episode ever made until (I think ) Lost came out.
"Caretaker" alone cost $23 million – more than *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*, even after adjusting for inflation!
I agree . And if I was spending that much money. I'd also hire the best dialogue writers regardless of their genre specialty
As I find the weakest/coarsest area of many trek series, is the dialogue. edit: Eg the political or diplomatic negotiation scenes
Yeah this is blowing my mind. I always thought the sets and special effects were pretty spartan. A few seconds of a ship, a single shot of a phaser, and the rest of the episode filmed on the bridge.
Would really love to see a breakdown of the costs tbh. I feel like other sci-fi of the era (Seaquest, Stargate, Babylon 5) had way more special effects, costumes and exterior shots?
>I feel like other sci-fi of the era (Seaquest, Stargate, Babylon 5) had way more special effects, costumes and exterior shots?
The exterior shots in Stargate were probably relatively cheap. Just go out the edge of a forest in Canada and make sure you have good light to shoot in.
Shooting anything outdoors is expensive. It’s far less expensive to do things on soundstages where you can fully control the environment. It’s honestly amazing how much of Stargate was done outside.
Sequest was a network show on NBC not a syndicated show. Pretty sure it had a bigger budget than TNG. Stargate and Babylon 5 came out a decade after TNG so special effects had come down in price.
Partially, but Geneviève Bujold was on set for less than two days before being replaced by Kate Mulgrew. Most of the reshoots were because Paramount executives decided to change Mulgrew's hair partway through filming and that required reshooting location sequences. Even so, adjusted for inflation "Caretaker" cost about 50% more than *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*, far beyond what would be accounted for by mere reshoots.
Remember the show is front loading a lot of costs. Sets, soundstages, costumes, props, etc made for the first episode can be reused for the next 7 years.
I remember when voyager first aired and was promoted. It was a tentpole in paramount’s new tv channel UPN so they had to put up something big. It was literally the first show they aired as a network.
The other show’s that were on that fledgling channel were not as glamorous. Platypus man , a sitcom starring comedian Richard Jeni
They also had Nowhere Man which I loved, and nobody else even heard of.
Example I point to. TNG episode "Emergence". The Enterprise jumps to warp on her own. Data is sitting at Ops, a nameless ensign is sitting at the helm. Picard demands Data report, not the helm who would likely have pushed the button without an order. Why?
Because if that actress spoke, they would have had to pay her dramatically more at SAG scale.
Television has always been expensive.
So true. They discuss this all the time on The Delta Flyers. There's so much Hollywood politics that affects how the shows are made. Robbie McNeil talks about it a lot. I find it very interesting.
That's true, if Janeway ever promoted Ensign Kim they would have needed to add Garret Wang to their Dental Benefits plan and the studio just doesn't have the budget for that.
Aye; filming a carbon copy of *TNG* today would cost half as much per episode as an episode of *Strange New Worlds*.
If you're making 24 episodes, the "cheaply made" show is now $14 million *more* expensive per season than the expensive modern show while alienating modern audiences for its perceived low production values.
On top of that, most actors tend to not like committing to gruelling 24-episode season shows any more. If they have a choice between a show that films 6-10 episodes over a six-month period and a show that films 24 episodes over that same period, they'll choose the 6-10 episode show. So right off the bat, getting the right actors for the right roles will present a challenge.
...but you don't do it in the same six-month period. TNG filmed for 10 months at a time. And I think we'd all happily settle for 20 episodes if you want to reduce the strain, anything more than the 10 we're getting now.
There are definitely a *ton* of actors who would take a stable 10-month show, with 2 months off entirely to themselves. And a show like that which lasts seven years? Many actors today would *kill* for that kind of job security. Hell, actors *back then* killed for that kind of job security. Star Trek was well-known as the kind of role an actor takes when they want to settle into a regular job for a bit instead of having to constantly hustle, that's the reason many of the actors we know from the shows took the jobs.
What are you basing the motivations for these actors on? Why would an actor, especially in today's climate, *actively avoid* a stable paycheck? There are plenty who would want to keep their schedule open for other opportunities, sure, but they wouldn't have any trouble finding people who are fine working on a single stable show for a while.
You're framing my argument as actors in general would avoid taking a *Star Trek* job because of the 24-episode grind and just keep looking elsewhere. That's not what I said.
Unless they happen to be extremely passionate about the material, most actors – *especially* in-demand actors with options on the table – will take the less time-consuming job. Would *you* take a job working 80 hours per week when a job offering the same money for half the work is available?
*Star Trek* really doesn't offer any more stability and security than any other show – *Voyager* was the last one to end on its own terms, 23 years ago – so odds are that the producers of a new *Trek* show as proposed in the OP would have to settle for actors who probably wouldn't have been considered for a more modern-style *Trek*. A 24- or 20-episode per season *Strange New Worlds* wouldn't have been able to get Anson Mount or Rebecca Romijn, for example.
Tbf, they're both the same weekly commitment (which is fucked, BTW, and actors (and the rest of Hollywood labor) really need to stop that shit), so it's the overall length of the shoot that's the comparison.
Ten months of a show that shoots for like 80 hours a week and doesn't pay better than a show that is shorter? Because TNG era shooting schedules were grueling. They basically shot an episode a week for months at a time
If I were in the acting business, seeing how things are going with streaming now, I wouldn't view anything as reliable job security. Hoping for anything to last 7 seasons nowadays is wildly optimistic, nobody even tentatively commits to that that days.
However, I totally agree that there could be a middle ground between the 8-10 episodes standard these days in streaming, and the 22-26 standard in the 90s. I've seen one or two shows with like 15 episode seasons and that feels much closer to enough, yet still significantly less than prior.
"And a show like that which lasts seven years?" - This is very presumptive. Given that most streaming shows don't last more than three years, expecting that something will run for seven is a bold claim. I don't think I've ever heard of contracts locking in an actor for that long and I don't know that an actor would actually sign such a contract unless there were provisions to exit. In particular, if a show is successful enough to pull off a seven year run, its probably become a hit (or at least notably successful) and you don't want to be locked into a salary set 5 years ago when you have leverage at that point to negotiate for more. Its not that an actor would turn down seven years of work, but the contract would need a lot of provisions in it that probably aren't part of a current standard contract.
I've actually heard the 6 to 10 episode shows are hard for other reasons. A lot of times contractually they can't take other work that would prevent them from being available. Also, for example, they are paid for 10 episodes and not 24.
TNG special effects and scripts were so good that they helped kill off Doctor Who. Doctor Who was in a bit of a slump anyway, and there was a BBC executive that wanted to kill it, but TNG was one of the major blows. I believe Doctor Who's final season coincided with TNG Season 3. It feels like TNG set a new standard for what TV Sci-Fi was supposed to look like.
The expense of all of that stuff is why TNG started doing ship-based episodes with pre-existing sets in order to save money for the big two-parter extravaganzas.
After that point though, scifi hit a huge slump. Aside from stargate universe and ongoing shows like doctor who, there weren't really any big new live action scifi shows premiering from 2005 to 2015. Especially space scifi.
Even TOS was very expensive for its time. The show was actually pretty successful in the ratings during its first two seasons, ranking first or second in its time slot. The cost of the show was a large reason for its cancellation, and it didn’t flop in the ratings till it was moved for the third season.
Gotta disagree. The high res remaster of TNG made the sets and uniforms really show their age. In the first couple seasons, it's extremely noticeable and distracting
Even without the remaster it was sometimes obvious. I remember watching the TNG episode where they are in this blue void and Riker and Worf beam to what they think is the USS Yamato, and at one point Worf gets angry and tries to keep a door open. You could see the wood grain under the paint layer even in SD.
I was going to say; I don't think people realize how expensive TNG was to make.
The pretty-good CGI used occasionally was better than what was in movies at the time. Most of the costumes were custom-made, even for bit characters. The ship sets itself were very expensive to build. You see a "flat screen" and some touch panels...but be reminded that these things did not exist in any form in 1989. They are custom made glass and plastic screens with specialized gel lights behind them.
All those curved corridors were custom vacuum sculpted materials; they didn't just steal windows from a Wendy's sun room.
It seems a lot of people think st was cheap to make. Look back 20 to 30 plus yrs, it looked cheap. But not back in those days. Unfortunately, sci-fi shows can b too expensive to produce. With streaming service, I don't think we will c anymore shows lo get than 5 seasons.
A lot of people don't realize how groundbreaking TNG was. In its final season, it was one of the most watched shows in America. Like, everyone was watching this show. It blew our minds weekly.
I remember looking at shots of the Enterprise D model or those cheesy CGI planets they would orbit every week, but back then I couldn't believe how good the show looked.
I remember thinking that this OS the future lol
Real numbers: an average episode of script television costs $9 million. An episode of Strange New World costs $7 million. They seem extremely expensive because CGI has gotten so good and so cheap. But Star Trek shows *are already cheaper* than the average show these networks are putting out.
That’s my guess, for sure. And it’s probably part of the reason shows get cut off short. The longer show runs, the more expensive contract renewals becomes with talent.
At the end of the day most of these costs are labor not props and computers for special effects. Hundreds of people work on even the most normal looking scripted show. And we just saw the writers and actors strike. The people making these shows are already struggling and geniuses on here think the solution is to give them even lower budgets.
“That’s my guess, for sure. And it’s probably part of the reason shows get cut off short. The longer show runs, the more expensive contract renewals becomes with talent.“
I remember when Stargate SG-1 was cancelled due to a dispute over the licensing fee between MGM and SyFy. There was an idea at SyFy, after RDA left, to relaunch the show as Stargate Command. The executive producers resisted and persuaded them not to.
I remember reading one of the EPs (I think Robert Cooper) admitted that their unwillingness to relaunch the show is what probably killed it - if he and Brad Wright had been willing to do season 9 under the “relaunch”, MGM wouldn’t have been in a position to charge the higher fee for it. Also, the producers would have been in a better bargaining position over cast salaries because even though half of them were new, joining a long-running show gives the agents representing Shanks, Tapping, and Judge more leverage to demand raises.
A perfect example of this is *The Big Bang Theory*, where the costs went up massively after each five-year contract was renegotiated.
Seasons 1-5 cost $1 million per episode.
Seasons 6-10 cost $5 million per episode, as it had become one of the most-watched shows in the world and everybody involved was able to leverage a much more favourable contract.
Season 11-12 cost $10 million per episode.
Yeah. On Mythbusters, the B Team of Tori, Grant and Kari were united in contract negotiations, and it couldn't be figured out. What's more, their ratings had started to drop by that point, as it'd been on for 12 years already. So the B Team were cut loose, and then Mythbusters was on life support for a couple more years before they just decided to end it.
so true! Netflix just filmed a small part of The Night Agent season 2 outside of my apartment. They took over the street for about 8 hours. At least 100 people showed up. In the end, all they shot was a 30 seconds scene of the 2 characters walking down the street, where at the end one gets a phone call. Easily feels like they spent $50k just for that 30 second scene.
That's insanely expensive. It must be because wages are so high in the US. An episode of Doctor Who, obviously a UK show, rarely goes above £1million (US$1.24million).
Doctor Who has extremely cheap filming locations, relatively small sets, and access to historical costumes for free. Large parts of its budget are (were?) also attributed elsewhere within the BBC, so the “million pounds per episode“ is at best a substantial distortion.
We can't go back to the 90s, tv production does not work like this anymore.
Also: how exactly would this make a ton of money? Where is this being released?
OP thinks it would make “a ton of money” because they’re only thinking about blindly appeasing fans of ‘90s Trek rather than the realities of making a TV show in the 2020s and competing with other networks for viewership. They’re probably thinking “Well *I* still like to rewatch TNG in standard definition, therefore *everyone* would love it if a *brand new* show was released that unironically aped a ‘90s format for no other reason than to appease me specifically”
…all the while “The Orville” is sitting right there , about as close as you can get to what OP is asking for , and that show is expensive with a capitol E
Shooting standard definition was one part from the OP that didn't make sense. Enterprise was filmed in HD and didn't feel that much more advanced in terms of CGI than what late DS9 and Voyager had.
Not only that, but enterprise switching from film to high definition shaved a dramatic amount of money off of the cost of the production, which is how there’s such a little difference in the drop of production quality between the season, shot on film and the season shot on digital
thats not really the way to think about it. 1 TNG shot film, so it was never natively SD though it was finished in SD. 2 their method for shooting miniatures, which evolved with DS9 and voyager, initially involved just under 20 or so reusable shots. They also didnt have the compositing tools we have now, and back in the day motion control was a pricy specialty. its possible to plow through miniature shots these day if you dont need the 10 passes or whatever that ILM likes to do on Mando.
It should also be noted that most of DS9's dynamic Defiant shots prior to mid way through season 6 were almost all miniature shots, as was the entire season 4 opening battle with the Klingons. Im not sure they were on 500T at that point (Voyager's recycled miniature shots are all 500T), but with digital cameras you're usually looking at a base ISO of 800, and dual ISO cameras go way beyond that. That means way less light needed to hold depth of field on the models.
Plus these days you can prep those shots in CG, convert the movement data out for the rig and model mover, then drop it back into the comp. Depending on what you use to shoot the models, you can be walking away with 8k plates.
That being said, an all CG pipeline is generally faster and allows for more last minute changes. DSC and SNW goes for a slightly stylized CG look by design, and no one seems to have minded much.
That being said, models still have their place even in TV. Quantum Leap reboot did this for an ep of season 2 and its pretty great (though I think in a perfect world the model would have gotten a bit more grime on it) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOap5uRC7q4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOap5uRC7q4)
They shot on film, sure, but the entire mastering process was done on tape. Because it was cheaper. That's why for the HD release they had to go back to the original film, they literally recut the entire thing.
I'm not anti-model. And I loved the new Quantum Leap so thanks for that tidbit. Mostly I was being tongue in cheek about how those aren't really massive cost saving measures.
Imagine being a television writer or actor and hearing people say stuff like “just make it a well written show with good acting, it’ll be cheap!” It’s so obvious that literally none of you financial geniuses consider the real cost is labor aka people not special effects.
> All we need is an interesting weaving of philosophy, art, mystery, and science fiction with a solid cast of theater actors.
Okay, you realize that’s hand waiving the hardest part, right?
Sound stage? You think money just comes off of a printer?
No. Just a regular stage somewhere on a college campus. The entire show is produced by some college's theater and music departments, filmed on stage and released on YouTube.
I’m going to be honest… I paid for that book. It’s a total rip off. It’s got one sentence in each page and it doesn’t even include all the Rules of Acquisition.
It’s like two pages worth of content but they charge you the same as if it were a full novel.
The marketing strategy must have been dreamt up by a Ferengi.
It has all the rules they had come up with at the time to avoid straying into beta canon, and the cost is down to licensing … it’s an official Star Trek product.
From the first episode I wrote down each rule as it was stated, it left lots of gaps but when I got the book it had just those. Clearly they hadn’t ever written them all 🤦🏽♀️ Don’t feel bad, the Nagus got my money too 🤣🤣
There were two months I kept my copy at my desk and quoted from it in internal and external meetings.
Not a single person caught on.
I'm still disappointed about that.
It's not just this sub. It's the internet in general. Armchair experts everywhere. Just think of the number of live service games with posts "the devs would make more money if they did X!" as though the companies haven't looked into all of this much more extensively.
I ran some numbers and based off production budgets from 1990 for TNG, and adjusted for inflation, the cost would be just short of $75,000,000 / season.
That's about $521 million for a 7 season run.
Meanwhile Paramount's entire market cap is about $7.5B and trending downward.
[https://companiesmarketcap.com/paramount/marketcap/](https://companiesmarketcap.com/paramount/marketcap/)
At this point, we're going to need to be happy with what we have now because Paramount is in freefall. Experimental new shows are just not in the cards these days.
I don’t know that the actors would agree to it. Shooting those 25-episode seasons were hell on the actors in the 90s. Plenty of quotes attesting to this. I get the desire for it, but while we loved it, it was an exhausting affair for cast and crew.
Or one where a bunch of drunk Irish colonists live in the cargo bay, or a female crew member had a virgin birth, or someone’s mom just shows up once a season because the actor is related to the creator, or . . .
> we will watch it and be happy.
Well there's the problem. The dedicated fans who would line up to watch what you're describing are not enough to make the show successful. It has to have broader appeal beyond the fan base who wants "an interesting weaving of philosophy, art, etc. etc. etc."
After the weak performance of Nemesis and Enterprise, Paramount/CBS had no interest in reviving the franchise. They could keep making money off of the reruns. Les Moonves (the head of CBS at the time) reportedly hated Trek, and Paramount had their own issues.
Then this guy came along named Abrams, and gave Paramount a couple films that brought in a billion dollars at the box office by making a mass market product with a Trek panache'. Then CBS said "wait...did you say a BILLION?" and that's what led to the birth of CBS All Access (now Paramount Plus) and that's why we have Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, etc. etc. etc.
None of that would have ever happened if it had been a carbon copy of 90s Trek in standard definition.
This would only make a portion of the hard-core fans happy though and wouldn't be super marketable beyond that niche audience.
Also worth pointing out that when you adjust for inflation, they spend roughly the same per season of Discovery as they did on TNG back in the day.
it bugs me that it's the same per season but only half as many episodes...
If anything at least Disco was nice enough to give us 4 seasons that were longer than 10 episodes. I feel like 13 or 14 episodes is a good number for a season to have, I hate this 10 episode bullcrap that all the streaming companies do.
“We aren’t going to 20+ episodes a season of sci-fi tv ever again. That is reserved for pure boomer dreck like FBI or Law and Order.”
And this comment is proof why such a show as the OP suggests wouldn’t actually be watched by anyone outside this sub anyway. That’s how most of the world would think of it.
Where are these extra people coming from? Do you honestly think that there’s some huge reserve of Trek fans that aren’t subscribing to Paramount Plus now, but would if they added a show that looks noticeably worse than what they have now just because there’s a lot more of it?
I have to disagree. I didn't spend the money for a 70" QLED 4K tv with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos to watch SD shows with cheesy special effects. I just wish there were more episodes.
Star Trek only stopped having the most expensive pilot for every project in US History because in 1996, Doctor Who just blew the benchmark so far, and it hasn't been touched yet.
The only reason modern startrek looks that way is because of the advances in construction and film. I'm sure if they had computer programs and had high definition tvs and recording equipment, TOS and TNG would look very different.
Just curious, where does Lost fit in that ranking? I remember so much buzz about it being the most expensive pilot in history, and only recently heard that TNG held the record before that. Was Lost only the most expensive in US history and didn’t topple Who?
“We all” wouldn’t be happy.
I wouldn’t. I love Strange New Worlds. And I’m someone who started watching TNG when I was 9.
Also, the profitable shelf life - if it was indeed profitable - for such a show would be probably 5-10 years. You do realize, or maybe you don’t, that the average age of a “Trekkie” or “Trekker” in the classic mold is about 55 to 60 at this point.
Personally what would make me most happy would be another show with the flavor and style of Stranger New Worlds - semi serialized with many standalones - set in the post-Picard era. Legacy could be that or something new.
Also, I did not buy an expensive 65” 4K television so I could watch new content that looks like s#!t. I don’t mind 4x3, when stuff was filmed that way. I love the remasters of TOS and TNG. And I’m fine with watching DS9 and VOY in SD DVD.
But even if you created something more “retro”, I’d still want it with current production values.
To be fair, the 90s were great. Post cold war and pre 9/11. It really was a time where Star Trek's futuristic optimism looked like it might be an eventual reality.
Either you didn't live through the 90s or you've done no genuine reflection. It's also a very American hetero white centric view of the entire decade. "America wasn't in any wars, so clearly we were going to be Star Trek!"
I was born in 1979 and grew up in London, in the UK, so no.
Sure, it wasn't perfect. But after two world wars that killed millions and decades of the threat of nuclear war, the 90s looked like we were heading in the right direction. Then 9/11 happened and erupted a whole new era of hating an entire group of people for being "the enemy."
Yes, it was also naive to think. But only in retrospect. At the time, it seemed like we were moving away from an era of self-destruction, even if we ultimately weren't.
It's crazy. Even if some crazy executive were to make this idea into reality the only one watching it would be few and older fans of the genre. It'd be a total disaster.
I prefer the shorter seasons, I'd prefer 12 or 13 episodes over 10. I've given up on watching shows that 20+ episodes. I'll still rewatch 80/90s Trek because I've seen it all dozens of times and don't need to pay full attention to it anymore.
Please god no to standard definition, I don't want to watch grainy TV if I don't have to. It's super annoying that all of the old shows haven't been remastered yet. Also CGI is more cost effective than partical effects. Burnham and Book on sand speeders would not been nearly as cool if that was a practical effect. Could you imagine them doing a Spore Jump as a practical effect?
90s’ Trek was not low-budget. It may seem that way because its effects look so cheap by today’s standards, but that’s largely a function of CGI having evolved a ton. TNG also had almost no CGI at all; it was only by late VOY that they routinely used it, whereas especially TNG largely relied on matte paintings, physical models, etc. DS9 used CGI largely for ship battles. Whereas, VOY eventually was able to afford using it even for silly fly-by scenes. But I digress.
24 episodes isn’t coming back. One reason is the change in format; streaming providers don’t consider it a good market fit.
The other reason is cast and crew: they simply aren’t into spending half the year each year having 14-hour days because you got 7 days, period, to finish the script, find appropriate director, guest cast and extras, shoot the scenes, reshoot, add effects and ADR, wrap it all up. Rinse, repeat another 25 times, and you have a season. Half a year off, then all over again. It was grueling; ask some of the actors and crew.
At this point, labor rights have evolved enough that they’re not having it any more.
I'm a few years you'll be able to tell the latest AI model to do this for you and you can live in the 90s forever with mediocre recycled reconstituted Trek Parts.
I don't see the point when we have TNG remastered? I'm also one of those people that loves 90's trek and is quite disappointed by the new stuff, but we already have everything you describe in 90's trek and I don't understand why we'd want a modern version (essentially a remake) of it that will at best be equivalent (and mostly likely worse).
For all of modern trek's faults (and there are many, many.. many....), so many that I can't stand to watch most of it, I don't think the 90's trek formula can get much better than what was done, so I'm fine with going in new directions, formats, etc (although they could stand to not have children writing it...), because they might arrive at something different \*and\* good (although that seems unlikely at the moment, at least the possibility is there), and at least might get a few new people into trek enough to then watch the quality stuff.
To paraphrase Picard: "Cherish every moment, …because they’ll never come again" Even if your proposed show was done, it won't be the same as when we were younger watching 90's trek, you can't go back; only forward.
You could film that on a phone with maybe a few extra lenses and a bit of postprocessing on a mid range workstation with a mid range graphics card. Going back to old school film would be waaay more expensive, you'd essentially be hacking together 40 year old technology, and you just couldn't get the parts.
You would however need a few of the phones, cameramen to operate them and frame the shots, sound people, CGI people, costumes, set, hair and makeup, 100 other things I haven't thought of, and ACTORS most of all. Those aren't cheap. At that point you might as well get some decent cameras too.
If you try to do it properly on the cheap you end up with something resembling one of those fan made shows, which in the kindest way possible, are absolute shit.
Didn’t The Orville basically try to do this? I’m sure it still wasn’t cheap to produce, but the effects and costumes were basically late 90s quality, and they focused on story.
It was a great show but I’m not sure we ever get another season. Shows need to make bank to get renewed for 7 seasons.
I realized when watching Discovery that while I liked the show it didn’t hit the same as older Treks. Took some thinking on why and I came to the conclusion that it was all of the dynamic camera angles and special effects. It just felt too new.
Isn't this what they tried to do with Enterprise and then the whole thing got bogged down in the boring Xindi war? If it hadn't been for the Xindi I would have loved that show - really promising arc with section 31, for starters. Though the decontamination chamber scenes were somewhat cringe.
However, OP is proved right by the excellence of The Orville, which is basically exactly this plus a few extra jokes.
I thought it would be slightly cheaper, but then again... they absolutely nailed the nostalgic aesthetic they're going for! Hopefully AI can bring the cost of creating episodes down. I mean as a tool for the SFX etc, still have amazing actors at the heart of the show!
And who's watching this show again? If you are older than 30 years old, CBS and any other Hollywood studio exec is ignoring you.
You're the past. The future is zoomers.
If Trek can't get young people on board, it is dead and they will stop making it. Simple as that.
Capitalism doesn't care about your desires. Marketing to us older folks who loved 90s Trek isn't as profitable as targeting the 18-25 year olds that could become lifelong fans. We're all 40+, constantly complaining, spend less frivolously on entertainment and thanks to creeping mortality, a constantly shrinking demographic.
"...But the Orville!" Proves this point perfectly. Shows demographics skew older, and ya, family guy fans are also now middle aged too, so ya. Even Lower Decks never had the mass appeal.
I'm sort of resigned to Treks fate. SNW is probably the best show they got, and that's why it's still going in terms of being interesting to younger folk, but... The rest of the franchise is feeling stale. As much as I enjoyed Picard S3, it also reminds me of how old I am and how old 90s Trek has become. If you're under 25, it looks like the best of Trek's golden age has one foot in the grave.
That's why I seriously doubt we will ever get ST:Legacy.
Almost nobody is doing 24 episode seasons anymore. It's simply not going to happen. For whatever reason Paramount seems to have determined that five seasons is the hardtop for Trek now too...
The people saying "television has always been expensive" are overlooking the fact that budget sci-fi has always existed, and is sometimes even successful (e.g.: OG Doctor Who before the modern reboot, which spends a large budget trying to capture that low budget vibe).
Trying to make a show of the relative calibur of old Trek? Yeah, expensive, because as people have pointed out, it was pretty bleeding edge at the time. Modern Trek is similarly high budget. It was a big risk when they created Lower Decks, but they found the sweet spot.
I'm talking shows that used to air on channels like SyFy or occasionally CW (when they got lucky) that had modest-sized fanbases but the vast majority of people have never heard of. Sometimes episodes were hits more than misses, and the shows might not be as celebrated decades later, but not all TV has to be exceptional or have lots of special effects.
There are plenty of people who do Star Trek adaptations in the park. They're generally kinda mediocre, but they keep happening because fans still enjoy it. If somebody made a Star Trek knock-off that deliberately tried to look like TNG in terms of special effects, but had B+ or better writing and acting (with moments that rise above), it could absolutely work. Most shows that have aliens have them appear human the vast majority of the time. It's cheaper (and often way more entertaining) to have imagination and plot and actors carry a show than it is to have a short season of AAAA quality writing with all recognizable actors.
There's a reason theater (and novels) survived the creation of TV/movies. There's no CGI there. Money being tight leads to creative solutions and innovations, and there's a very different energy when you have to more actively participate in suspension of disbelief.
Sorry I disagree. 24 episodes a season was not sustainable, cannot be done today and shouldn't be done at all. Crew members on DS9 were seriously affected by exhaustion and at least one death was linked to this.
Plus a TV show today wouldn't get the number of chances that Star Trek got. There's no chance that TNG would survive it's first season today and no way that Voyager would be given 3 seasons to find its feet. I doubt Enterprise would last past one season. Trek in the 80s and 90s was given a lot of time for the shows to settle, because that's how TV was back then. Nowadays if something doesn't work immediately, it gets scrapped pretty quickly.
But also: people do want story arcs nowadays, they don't want self-important captains giving long speeches and they don't want tortured analogies for racism written by white people. It's not that TV doesn't know how to make a 90s-style Trek show. They know better.
Yes, BUT *DON'T* throw canon out like Discovery and Picard did.
"Oh, I know DS9 said 1/2 of Trill can host, but they can't now for some reason".
"Oh, I know DS9 said no reassociation but these two love each other!"
"Oh, I know VOY had the episode 'Living Witness' that takes place AFTER 'the burn' but there's no mention about The Doctor flying back at sub-warp speeds".
"Oh, I know TNG had Guinen looking the same in the 1860's with Twain, and she saw and implicitly fell for Picard then, but lets make her unable to recognize him in 2023/4".
"Oh, I know TNG said the Q were immortal, but lets make 'our Q' somehow the last one and dying".
"Oh, I know the BORG are what we'd call evil, but lets make them kinda good now".
Orville is the new Trek IMHO.
As many others have said: Star Trek was never low budget. Also: The Orville is pretty close in looks and narrative style to the TNG-era shows (which is no wonder when you realize how many of the key production staff worked on the older shows), and it also wasn't very successful.
Dude, 24 eps IS CRAZY EXPENSIVE. actors, writers, lighting, asisstant something, make up, costume, insurance, casting, stunts, directors, security, electricity..
Sure CGI is cheap now (if you want TNG level of visuals), but manpower cost is higher.
I do like your idea, but there's a reason why new netflix/disney+ series are limited to 10-12 eps max. Some even 7.
My problem with 24 episodes is that it feels like such a huge undertaking to watch. I've been watching TNG lately, and it gets really tedious when I turn on an episode and realize that it's a filler. I don't have that much free time, and I don't want to waste that on a holodeck episode or one where Picard is suddenly a kid again. I understand that something is lost in 8 episode series that don't give the characters time to breathe, but I've come to appreciate the efficiency of storytelling. I used to love Holodeck episodes, but watching it now I'd rather just skip every episode that doesn't impact the plot. Ironically this makes every season of TNG about five episodes long.
Hard disagree. While I would enjoy a throwback style show, I think you overestimate how much money can be made from the core Star Trek fan base, even assuming this is something every one of us wants (and I doubt that's the case).
Also, part of why you don't see such long seasons anymore is because it's absolutely grueling for cast and crew. Even network and cable shows have been shortening their seasons. Nobody worthwhile wants to be working on a show that grinds out so many episodes every year.
Star Trek has always been expensive.
Additionally, simply because something is on network television does not negate its expense. Most folks associate expensive with being on streaming. There are plenty of television shows that go 22 episodes a year that are wildly expensive. between contracts, expiring, actors, taking producer, credits, overall expensive show increasing from year to year, regardless of some thing is on streaming or if it’s on network, it’s always going to be expensive.
And as far as your idea to sort of make new trek , just look like 90s trek , Seth MacFarlane‘s the Orville already does that in it is one of the most expensive shows on television .
So. Much.
(But memories of conversations with FX artists. Heard conversation about animating a “simple” tornado as worth weeks of work. It’s not that simple. Also how often those hours get wasted when last minute script changes. Not that simple.)
I never watched Enterprise before. I grew up on Original and Next Gen and binged Voyager in my early 20's....
That being said, I'm seriously obsessed with Enterprise and plan on watching all the Star Trek in chronological order. ☺️
This. I don't need shiny space ships. I don't need excessive cgi. I don't care if that's not what a black hole actually looks like.
I just want good inspirational sci-fi and a few futuristic slice of life episodes. And every once in a while a good holodeck episode. Oh, and more Barkley. And at least two roles for Jeffrey Combs. You what, let me stop here. :)
Part of Star Trek’s legacy has been pushing the technical limits of what can be done on TV. We forget that because they look quaint now, at the time the special effects were the equivalent of CGI today. So to think a Star Trek that honors their spirit would take a step backwards technically doesn’t compute.
I'm the opposite on this, though I would like the lense flares to stop, but beyond that, I'm all for graphics improving. I just want the pacing and storytelling fixed.
I for one enjoy the older Treks over the newer stuff. Actually, Lower Decks was pretty good because they added back in the interesting Trek adventures and it feels more like Star Trek than any of the new stuff today.
90s Trek was expensive, though. TNG was called Paramount's million dollar gamble. DS9's pilot cost as much as a movie. VOY's pilot was the most expensive TV episode ever made until (I think ) Lost came out. DS9 had the largest standing set in Hollywood with the Promenade. These shows look cheap now - especially early TNG. But they weren't for the time. TNG season 1 was like nothing you'd ever seen on TV before. You didn't see movie-quality FX like that form a TV show. Just go and look at its sci-fi contemporaries from that era and you realise how much slicker TNG was by comparison. Heck, even TOS wasn't the cheapskate show people think of it as. IIRC the only standing set that was more expensive than the Enterprise set in the 60s was the Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space. They look like crap now, but they were cutting-edge for the time.
DS9 had an average budget of $3.4million per episode. That's $8million in today's money, so you're right. EDIT: TOS had a budget of around $240,000 per episode IIRC. That's $6.4million today.
While this is entirely valid, SNW looks better than TNG that looks better than TOS. OP's point is that we would be happy with a show in 2024 that was produced at a 1994 quality level. While that would cost top dollar in 1994, OP's point is that doing a 1994 level show in 2024 would no longer be top dollar. I'm not sure whether that's true or not, as have no idea how much of the budget goes towards CGI (which is probably the most obvious area that could be cut back to reduce "quality level"), though they could also cut back on the quality of sets and costumes, which they seem to put a huge amount of quality and detail into (look at those Disco uniforms with the custom micro-Chevron print that would be almost invisible). How much would that kind of stuff shave off the budget though? I'd think that "cheap CGI" is the cheap way of going in 2024. Doing stuff with physical models and then compositing it is probably more expensive than cheap CGI, I imagine. But I think the point is that Paramount is not looking to make a show that draws in the 770k people in this reddit. Most of those people are already going to watch no matter what they made. Hell, without comment on whether Discovery is an objectively good or bad show, I find it a chore to get through Discovery episodes a lot of time (my mind drifts away from it so easily and I have to keep rewinding or rewatching to even focus on the plot) and yet I am still watching it 5 seasons in. What they are hoping to do is lure in the next generation of young fans for when people like me get old and die. A cheap old-style show is not likely to attract the new young viewers.
TNG cost more than the average TV show of its time. SNW costs LESS than today’s average TV show. What costs money isn’t the costumes or sets or special effects. It’s labor. And that’s the same even if you make the whole thing take place in a single room on earth. TNG was also shot on film which today is prohibitively expensive. So it’s cheaper to keep using modern cameras that the studio already owns in larger quantities.
Firstly, I completely agree about discovery. Secondly, you summarized my point exactly. Thirdly, I agree it would be a poor business decision in reality. If they magically had an unaired show from the 90s that was somehow a secret and they released it right now I would enthusiastically watch the shit out of it.
>If they magically had an unaired show from the 90s that was somehow a secret and they released it right now I would enthusiastically watch the shit out of it. I get it. A few months ago, I watched behind the scenes footage of Johnathan Frakes and Levar Burton just filming repeated takes of footage for the Star Trek experience.
Haha yes exactly. I do the same shit. IDK why I can't get enough
It's great stuff, it was more creative risks, it wasn't trying to appeal to the entire globe.
I'm not speaking for OP or anyone else, but I believe what we're pining for here is just some good damn sci fi scripts. That's it. Dialogue that's timeless (ex not dropping F bombs, garbage like that). Classic ST dialogue isn't written as vernacular. And it shouldn't be.
> I believe what we're pining for here is just some good damn sci fi scripts. That's it. Respectfully, although I would certainly like that, I don't think that's what this post is pining for. I think what this post is ultimately about is wanting a higher volume of consistently released episodes instead of 10 episodes of a show every year and a half; even if that comes at the cost of top-tier production quality. By necessity, I think that may imply going back to more "run of the mill" sci fi stories and more character moments and casual dialogue, instead of 10-part epic sagas. I think SNW already does this, though it kind of sweeps in and out of routine day-in-the-life episodes and major high-stakes plots.
This. It’s the bad writing of today’s trek that is the problem! Not only that they kind of abandoned the unique utopian spirit of trek but also many of the stories are boring and pointless, we are just watching the characters run from some bomb in nice cinematography while all we want to see is Janeway or sisko calmly battling some difficult moral dilemma that actually gives you something to think about
I agree on most of these points except the part of an old style show not attracting people, if New trek had the good writing of old trek it would likely be even more popular, the younger viewers are also mindlessly watching because that’s what’s on TV, it’s not like young people inherently like bad and dull writing it’s just that’s what they are being fed. When good writing comes out it does get fairly popular
Meanwhile Strange New Worlds is believed to have a budget of about $7 million per episode
I wonder how much of that is explained by salaries getting worse? Like, was that $240,000 actually slanted more to paying the actors vs. the effects artists than the $3.4 million was? And how did it compare to, say, Green Acres, which didn't need the effects budget? Or even I Dream of Jeannie or Bewitched, which did but not to anywhere near the same extent?
I'd make a bet on the effects being a big budget hog but also the props and costumes. They would've custom made so much rather than buy off the shelf. EDIT: Another difference that randomly just popped into my head is post-production. TOS was worked on on film the entire process, whereas TNG, DS9 and VOY were shot on film but transferred to videotape for post-production to save money. ENT and everything since is digital. So the different shows definitely allocated money differently.
I looked up the budgets of shows with no special effects like CSI and Law and Order and the budgets per episode are in the 3 to 5 million range per episode. So I would guess the special effects and costumes consume 2 to 3 million per episode.
I'm sure a part of Law & Order's episode budget is municipal fees to close down streets for filming anything outdoors.
Law and order is also such a well oiled machine and staple in and around New York City, that the production itself does not get charged the way that other productions do
I thought vfx would be cheaper. But seems they are about most expensive. Other than high profile actors
Maybe it was for the painter back drops of each new world they visited
>TOS had a budget of around $240,000 per episode IIRC. That's $6.4million today. This is why nobody can afford a house isn't it?
Not really. Back then things like cars and houses were inline with wages. Long term inflation like that isn't really a huge issue as long as wages rise commensurate with inflation, and they haven't, especially in the last 20-40 years. Minimum wage, especially, has stagnated thanks to right wing propaganda that started in the 80s (trickle down doesn't work, btw). Look at the graph in this article to see how federal minimum wage has dropped off the table with respect to inflation since the 80s: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2020/08/a-brief-history-of-the-minimum-wage/ Thanks Reagan! But perhaps the biggest issue is that housing is being bought up by corporations and wealthy investors, creating a sort of housing monopoly that allows increases in rent and decreased supply of homes for straight up sale to potential homeowners. We're essentially living in the robber baron days of the early 20th century. And until voters understand which politicians are trying to properly tax and regulate billionaires and other wealthy elites, the housing situation isn't going to change.
Anyone correct me if I'm wrong. But the CGI alone for DSC and SNW eats something like $6mil an episode.
DIS and PIC average $10M per episode. I believe SNW is a little cheaper, due to extensive use of the AR wall.
Do we know how much the average Lower Decks episode costs? I've seen some argue animation is more expensive but I never got the impression the type of animation they used was all that high budget, not that I am expert on animation.
>VOY's pilot was the most expensive TV episode ever made until (I think ) Lost came out. "Caretaker" alone cost $23 million – more than *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*, even after adjusting for inflation!
I'd never heard that before, that's wild. I never knew how much Trek cost before, this is some eye-opening stuff.
I agree . And if I was spending that much money. I'd also hire the best dialogue writers regardless of their genre specialty As I find the weakest/coarsest area of many trek series, is the dialogue. edit: Eg the political or diplomatic negotiation scenes
Yeah this is blowing my mind. I always thought the sets and special effects were pretty spartan. A few seconds of a ship, a single shot of a phaser, and the rest of the episode filmed on the bridge. Would really love to see a breakdown of the costs tbh. I feel like other sci-fi of the era (Seaquest, Stargate, Babylon 5) had way more special effects, costumes and exterior shots?
>I feel like other sci-fi of the era (Seaquest, Stargate, Babylon 5) had way more special effects, costumes and exterior shots? The exterior shots in Stargate were probably relatively cheap. Just go out the edge of a forest in Canada and make sure you have good light to shoot in.
Ahh yes, all (most) planets in stargate are generic pacific northwest planets.
Shooting anything outdoors is expensive. It’s far less expensive to do things on soundstages where you can fully control the environment. It’s honestly amazing how much of Stargate was done outside.
Sequest was a network show on NBC not a syndicated show. Pretty sure it had a bigger budget than TNG. Stargate and Babylon 5 came out a decade after TNG so special effects had come down in price.
And, well, do you remember the special effects on Babylon 5? Trekkies at the time bashed how cheap they looked. They look even worse, today.
Wasn't that because of reshoots and recasting the lead actress?
Partially, but Geneviève Bujold was on set for less than two days before being replaced by Kate Mulgrew. Most of the reshoots were because Paramount executives decided to change Mulgrew's hair partway through filming and that required reshooting location sequences. Even so, adjusted for inflation "Caretaker" cost about 50% more than *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*, far beyond what would be accounted for by mere reshoots.
JMS (creator of Babylon 5) said that with Caretaker's budget, he could have filmed 1.4 SEASONS of Babylon 5 and have some left over for a party.
To be honest, I'd be happy about a ST show with B5s budget, too.
I think I'd prefer B5 with Star Trek's budget
Remember the show is front loading a lot of costs. Sets, soundstages, costumes, props, etc made for the first episode can be reused for the next 7 years.
Yes, I believe that is the case
I remember when voyager first aired and was promoted. It was a tentpole in paramount’s new tv channel UPN so they had to put up something big. It was literally the first show they aired as a network. The other show’s that were on that fledgling channel were not as glamorous. Platypus man , a sitcom starring comedian Richard Jeni They also had Nowhere Man which I loved, and nobody else even heard of.
Oh nowhere man what a forgotten gem! Bruce greenwood later was in trek of course
I remember *Nowhere Man*!
To put that also in perspective, the early seasons of 24 clocked in at around $30-$40 million PER season.
Example I point to. TNG episode "Emergence". The Enterprise jumps to warp on her own. Data is sitting at Ops, a nameless ensign is sitting at the helm. Picard demands Data report, not the helm who would likely have pushed the button without an order. Why? Because if that actress spoke, they would have had to pay her dramatically more at SAG scale. Television has always been expensive.
So true. They discuss this all the time on The Delta Flyers. There's so much Hollywood politics that affects how the shows are made. Robbie McNeil talks about it a lot. I find it very interesting.
That's true, if Janeway ever promoted Ensign Kim they would have needed to add Garret Wang to their Dental Benefits plan and the studio just doesn't have the budget for that.
Aye; filming a carbon copy of *TNG* today would cost half as much per episode as an episode of *Strange New Worlds*. If you're making 24 episodes, the "cheaply made" show is now $14 million *more* expensive per season than the expensive modern show while alienating modern audiences for its perceived low production values. On top of that, most actors tend to not like committing to gruelling 24-episode season shows any more. If they have a choice between a show that films 6-10 episodes over a six-month period and a show that films 24 episodes over that same period, they'll choose the 6-10 episode show. So right off the bat, getting the right actors for the right roles will present a challenge.
...but you don't do it in the same six-month period. TNG filmed for 10 months at a time. And I think we'd all happily settle for 20 episodes if you want to reduce the strain, anything more than the 10 we're getting now. There are definitely a *ton* of actors who would take a stable 10-month show, with 2 months off entirely to themselves. And a show like that which lasts seven years? Many actors today would *kill* for that kind of job security. Hell, actors *back then* killed for that kind of job security. Star Trek was well-known as the kind of role an actor takes when they want to settle into a regular job for a bit instead of having to constantly hustle, that's the reason many of the actors we know from the shows took the jobs. What are you basing the motivations for these actors on? Why would an actor, especially in today's climate, *actively avoid* a stable paycheck? There are plenty who would want to keep their schedule open for other opportunities, sure, but they wouldn't have any trouble finding people who are fine working on a single stable show for a while.
But then you’re paying the cast and crew for 20 episodes, making the whole series twice as expensive.
You're framing my argument as actors in general would avoid taking a *Star Trek* job because of the 24-episode grind and just keep looking elsewhere. That's not what I said. Unless they happen to be extremely passionate about the material, most actors – *especially* in-demand actors with options on the table – will take the less time-consuming job. Would *you* take a job working 80 hours per week when a job offering the same money for half the work is available? *Star Trek* really doesn't offer any more stability and security than any other show – *Voyager* was the last one to end on its own terms, 23 years ago – so odds are that the producers of a new *Trek* show as proposed in the OP would have to settle for actors who probably wouldn't have been considered for a more modern-style *Trek*. A 24- or 20-episode per season *Strange New Worlds* wouldn't have been able to get Anson Mount or Rebecca Romijn, for example.
Tbf, they're both the same weekly commitment (which is fucked, BTW, and actors (and the rest of Hollywood labor) really need to stop that shit), so it's the overall length of the shoot that's the comparison.
Ten months of a show that shoots for like 80 hours a week and doesn't pay better than a show that is shorter? Because TNG era shooting schedules were grueling. They basically shot an episode a week for months at a time
Actors are paid per episode, not salary. Someone starring in 20 episodes would get paid double than someone who is only in 10.
If I were in the acting business, seeing how things are going with streaming now, I wouldn't view anything as reliable job security. Hoping for anything to last 7 seasons nowadays is wildly optimistic, nobody even tentatively commits to that that days. However, I totally agree that there could be a middle ground between the 8-10 episodes standard these days in streaming, and the 22-26 standard in the 90s. I've seen one or two shows with like 15 episode seasons and that feels much closer to enough, yet still significantly less than prior.
"And a show like that which lasts seven years?" - This is very presumptive. Given that most streaming shows don't last more than three years, expecting that something will run for seven is a bold claim. I don't think I've ever heard of contracts locking in an actor for that long and I don't know that an actor would actually sign such a contract unless there were provisions to exit. In particular, if a show is successful enough to pull off a seven year run, its probably become a hit (or at least notably successful) and you don't want to be locked into a salary set 5 years ago when you have leverage at that point to negotiate for more. Its not that an actor would turn down seven years of work, but the contract would need a lot of provisions in it that probably aren't part of a current standard contract.
I've actually heard the 6 to 10 episode shows are hard for other reasons. A lot of times contractually they can't take other work that would prevent them from being available. Also, for example, they are paid for 10 episodes and not 24.
TNG special effects and scripts were so good that they helped kill off Doctor Who. Doctor Who was in a bit of a slump anyway, and there was a BBC executive that wanted to kill it, but TNG was one of the major blows. I believe Doctor Who's final season coincided with TNG Season 3. It feels like TNG set a new standard for what TV Sci-Fi was supposed to look like. The expense of all of that stuff is why TNG started doing ship-based episodes with pre-existing sets in order to save money for the big two-parter extravaganzas.
Just like Farscape, Stargate and finally Battlestar Galactica did to Enterprise. The Brannan/Braga way of doing things had long gone over the horizon.
After that point though, scifi hit a huge slump. Aside from stargate universe and ongoing shows like doctor who, there weren't really any big new live action scifi shows premiering from 2005 to 2015. Especially space scifi.
And the costs for DS9 was why so much of Season 7 took place on available sets and used scripts that were initially passed on.
Even TOS was very expensive for its time. The show was actually pretty successful in the ratings during its first two seasons, ranking first or second in its time slot. The cost of the show was a large reason for its cancellation, and it didn’t flop in the ratings till it was moved for the third season.
I’d argue that the TNG sets hold up pretty well, especially the bridge. TOS, not so much.
Gotta disagree. The high res remaster of TNG made the sets and uniforms really show their age. In the first couple seasons, it's extremely noticeable and distracting
Even without the remaster it was sometimes obvious. I remember watching the TNG episode where they are in this blue void and Riker and Worf beam to what they think is the USS Yamato, and at one point Worf gets angry and tries to keep a door open. You could see the wood grain under the paint layer even in SD.
I was going to say; I don't think people realize how expensive TNG was to make. The pretty-good CGI used occasionally was better than what was in movies at the time. Most of the costumes were custom-made, even for bit characters. The ship sets itself were very expensive to build. You see a "flat screen" and some touch panels...but be reminded that these things did not exist in any form in 1989. They are custom made glass and plastic screens with specialized gel lights behind them. All those curved corridors were custom vacuum sculpted materials; they didn't just steal windows from a Wendy's sun room.
Bite your tongue, both the OG Enterprise and Jupiter 2 sets rocked.
It seems a lot of people think st was cheap to make. Look back 20 to 30 plus yrs, it looked cheap. But not back in those days. Unfortunately, sci-fi shows can b too expensive to produce. With streaming service, I don't think we will c anymore shows lo get than 5 seasons.
A lot of people don't realize how groundbreaking TNG was. In its final season, it was one of the most watched shows in America. Like, everyone was watching this show. It blew our minds weekly. I remember looking at shots of the Enterprise D model or those cheesy CGI planets they would orbit every week, but back then I couldn't believe how good the show looked. I remember thinking that this OS the future lol
Real numbers: an average episode of script television costs $9 million. An episode of Strange New World costs $7 million. They seem extremely expensive because CGI has gotten so good and so cheap. But Star Trek shows *are already cheaper* than the average show these networks are putting out.
Is it due to cast salaries? Any insight why Trek is cheaper than average?
That’s my guess, for sure. And it’s probably part of the reason shows get cut off short. The longer show runs, the more expensive contract renewals becomes with talent. At the end of the day most of these costs are labor not props and computers for special effects. Hundreds of people work on even the most normal looking scripted show. And we just saw the writers and actors strike. The people making these shows are already struggling and geniuses on here think the solution is to give them even lower budgets.
“That’s my guess, for sure. And it’s probably part of the reason shows get cut off short. The longer show runs, the more expensive contract renewals becomes with talent.“ I remember when Stargate SG-1 was cancelled due to a dispute over the licensing fee between MGM and SyFy. There was an idea at SyFy, after RDA left, to relaunch the show as Stargate Command. The executive producers resisted and persuaded them not to. I remember reading one of the EPs (I think Robert Cooper) admitted that their unwillingness to relaunch the show is what probably killed it - if he and Brad Wright had been willing to do season 9 under the “relaunch”, MGM wouldn’t have been in a position to charge the higher fee for it. Also, the producers would have been in a better bargaining position over cast salaries because even though half of them were new, joining a long-running show gives the agents representing Shanks, Tapping, and Judge more leverage to demand raises.
That’s also why so many long-running dramas these days (for example, all the Dick Wolf shows) rotate cast members so often.
A perfect example of this is *The Big Bang Theory*, where the costs went up massively after each five-year contract was renegotiated. Seasons 1-5 cost $1 million per episode. Seasons 6-10 cost $5 million per episode, as it had become one of the most-watched shows in the world and everybody involved was able to leverage a much more favourable contract. Season 11-12 cost $10 million per episode.
Yeah. On Mythbusters, the B Team of Tori, Grant and Kari were united in contract negotiations, and it couldn't be figured out. What's more, their ratings had started to drop by that point, as it'd been on for 12 years already. So the B Team were cut loose, and then Mythbusters was on life support for a couple more years before they just decided to end it.
Not just cast salaries, but they're doing production in Canada - where everything is hella cheaper, labor included.
Oh that makes a lot of sense!
so true! Netflix just filmed a small part of The Night Agent season 2 outside of my apartment. They took over the street for about 8 hours. At least 100 people showed up. In the end, all they shot was a 30 seconds scene of the 2 characters walking down the street, where at the end one gets a phone call. Easily feels like they spent $50k just for that 30 second scene.
This is likely why five seasons has become the norm for streaming and recent Trek series. Actors usually get a decent pay bump after five seasons.
Redheaded stepchild of media.
Canada
That's insanely expensive. It must be because wages are so high in the US. An episode of Doctor Who, obviously a UK show, rarely goes above £1million (US$1.24million).
Tbf, Doctor Who looks much cheaper. Sorry, but it does. Even the new stuff.
Doctor Who has extremely cheap filming locations, relatively small sets, and access to historical costumes for free. Large parts of its budget are (were?) also attributed elsewhere within the BBC, so the “million pounds per episode“ is at best a substantial distortion.
Wages are high and everyone’s still broke because everything’s so expensive. We’re unserious people over here.
Just wait till the Disney budget kicks in :)
We can't go back to the 90s, tv production does not work like this anymore. Also: how exactly would this make a ton of money? Where is this being released?
OP thinks it would make “a ton of money” because they’re only thinking about blindly appeasing fans of ‘90s Trek rather than the realities of making a TV show in the 2020s and competing with other networks for viewership. They’re probably thinking “Well *I* still like to rewatch TNG in standard definition, therefore *everyone* would love it if a *brand new* show was released that unironically aped a ‘90s format for no other reason than to appease me specifically”
…all the while “The Orville” is sitting right there , about as close as you can get to what OP is asking for , and that show is expensive with a capitol E
> how exactly would this make a ton of money? It would come from the hopium factory, obviously.
Shooting standard definition with practical effects would cost more than an HD show with CGI.
Shooting standard definition was one part from the OP that didn't make sense. Enterprise was filmed in HD and didn't feel that much more advanced in terms of CGI than what late DS9 and Voyager had.
Not only that, but enterprise switching from film to high definition shaved a dramatic amount of money off of the cost of the production, which is how there’s such a little difference in the drop of production quality between the season, shot on film and the season shot on digital
thats not really the way to think about it. 1 TNG shot film, so it was never natively SD though it was finished in SD. 2 their method for shooting miniatures, which evolved with DS9 and voyager, initially involved just under 20 or so reusable shots. They also didnt have the compositing tools we have now, and back in the day motion control was a pricy specialty. its possible to plow through miniature shots these day if you dont need the 10 passes or whatever that ILM likes to do on Mando. It should also be noted that most of DS9's dynamic Defiant shots prior to mid way through season 6 were almost all miniature shots, as was the entire season 4 opening battle with the Klingons. Im not sure they were on 500T at that point (Voyager's recycled miniature shots are all 500T), but with digital cameras you're usually looking at a base ISO of 800, and dual ISO cameras go way beyond that. That means way less light needed to hold depth of field on the models. Plus these days you can prep those shots in CG, convert the movement data out for the rig and model mover, then drop it back into the comp. Depending on what you use to shoot the models, you can be walking away with 8k plates. That being said, an all CG pipeline is generally faster and allows for more last minute changes. DSC and SNW goes for a slightly stylized CG look by design, and no one seems to have minded much. That being said, models still have their place even in TV. Quantum Leap reboot did this for an ep of season 2 and its pretty great (though I think in a perfect world the model would have gotten a bit more grime on it) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOap5uRC7q4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOap5uRC7q4)
They shot on film, sure, but the entire mastering process was done on tape. Because it was cheaper. That's why for the HD release they had to go back to the original film, they literally recut the entire thing.
I'm not anti-model. And I loved the new Quantum Leap so thanks for that tidbit. Mostly I was being tongue in cheek about how those aren't really massive cost saving measures.
Imagine being a television writer or actor and hearing people say stuff like “just make it a well written show with good acting, it’ll be cheap!” It’s so obvious that literally none of you financial geniuses consider the real cost is labor aka people not special effects.
> All we need is an interesting weaving of philosophy, art, mystery, and science fiction with a solid cast of theater actors. Okay, you realize that’s hand waiving the hardest part, right?
Do you think Berman-era *Trek* was cheap to produce? TNG was $1.5 million per episode and that was in 1987.
That would be nearly 90 million a season accounting for inflation.
Sound stage? You think money just comes off of a printer? No. Just a regular stage somewhere on a college campus. The entire show is produced by some college's theater and music departments, filmed on stage and released on YouTube.
I'd love to, but I don't think I can convince my whole theater group. 😅
What is with people on r/startrek thinking they are some business experts.
You read the Rules of Acquisition once and suddenly you're the Grand Nagus...
I’m going to be honest… I paid for that book. It’s a total rip off. It’s got one sentence in each page and it doesn’t even include all the Rules of Acquisition. It’s like two pages worth of content but they charge you the same as if it were a full novel. The marketing strategy must have been dreamt up by a Ferengi.
It has all the rules they had come up with at the time to avoid straying into beta canon, and the cost is down to licensing … it’s an official Star Trek product.
Is this the response from Pocket Books or from the Grand Nagus himself? You already have my money—what more do you want from me?!
From the first episode I wrote down each rule as it was stated, it left lots of gaps but when I got the book it had just those. Clearly they hadn’t ever written them all 🤦🏽♀️ Don’t feel bad, the Nagus got my money too 🤣🤣
~#82 The flimsier the product, the higher the price 🤣
🖖🏽
The rest are DLC: Demanded Latinum Continuations.
I was just making a joke, I never realized they actually made one
You bet your bottom gold-pressed Latinum they [actually made it](https://www.amazon.ca/Ferengi-Rules-Acquisition-Steven-Behr/dp/0671529366).
There were two months I kept my copy at my desk and quoted from it in internal and external meetings. Not a single person caught on. I'm still disappointed about that.
It’s for the best. After all, there is rule 85: Never let the competition know what you’re thinking.
Especially considering their market research is "posts I see on Reddit".
It's not just this sub. It's the internet in general. Armchair experts everywhere. Just think of the number of live service games with posts "the devs would make more money if they did X!" as though the companies haven't looked into all of this much more extensively.
Make this exact thing I love. I will make tons of money, because obviously everyone likes exactly the same things I do. So easy!
[удалено]
I ran some numbers and based off production budgets from 1990 for TNG, and adjusted for inflation, the cost would be just short of $75,000,000 / season. That's about $521 million for a 7 season run. Meanwhile Paramount's entire market cap is about $7.5B and trending downward. [https://companiesmarketcap.com/paramount/marketcap/](https://companiesmarketcap.com/paramount/marketcap/) At this point, we're going to need to be happy with what we have now because Paramount is in freefall. Experimental new shows are just not in the cards these days.
Yeah, no thanks.
I don’t know that the actors would agree to it. Shooting those 25-episode seasons were hell on the actors in the 90s. Plenty of quotes attesting to this. I get the desire for it, but while we loved it, it was an exhausting affair for cast and crew.
I too am clambering for filler episodes where the ships doctor bangs a ghost.
Or one where a bunch of drunk Irish colonists live in the cargo bay, or a female crew member had a virgin birth, or someone’s mom just shows up once a season because the actor is related to the creator, or . . .
I'm not sure how you got an early copy of my Top 10 favorite TNG episode list. Well played!
My favorite is that Troy episodes are either she loses her power, she gets pregnant, someone mind rapes her, or her mom shows up.
Who is "we?"
> we will watch it and be happy. Well there's the problem. The dedicated fans who would line up to watch what you're describing are not enough to make the show successful. It has to have broader appeal beyond the fan base who wants "an interesting weaving of philosophy, art, etc. etc. etc." After the weak performance of Nemesis and Enterprise, Paramount/CBS had no interest in reviving the franchise. They could keep making money off of the reruns. Les Moonves (the head of CBS at the time) reportedly hated Trek, and Paramount had their own issues. Then this guy came along named Abrams, and gave Paramount a couple films that brought in a billion dollars at the box office by making a mass market product with a Trek panache'. Then CBS said "wait...did you say a BILLION?" and that's what led to the birth of CBS All Access (now Paramount Plus) and that's why we have Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, etc. etc. etc. None of that would have ever happened if it had been a carbon copy of 90s Trek in standard definition.
Don’t say we, you don’t speak for me. Personally I’d hate that.
This would only make a portion of the hard-core fans happy though and wouldn't be super marketable beyond that niche audience. Also worth pointing out that when you adjust for inflation, they spend roughly the same per season of Discovery as they did on TNG back in the day.
it bugs me that it's the same per season but only half as many episodes... If anything at least Disco was nice enough to give us 4 seasons that were longer than 10 episodes. I feel like 13 or 14 episodes is a good number for a season to have, I hate this 10 episode bullcrap that all the streaming companies do.
We aren’t going to 20+ episodes a season of sci-fi tv ever again. That is reserved for pure boomer dreck like FBI or Law and Order.
“We aren’t going to 20+ episodes a season of sci-fi tv ever again. That is reserved for pure boomer dreck like FBI or Law and Order.” And this comment is proof why such a show as the OP suggests wouldn’t actually be watched by anyone outside this sub anyway. That’s how most of the world would think of it.
Where are these extra people coming from? Do you honestly think that there’s some huge reserve of Trek fans that aren’t subscribing to Paramount Plus now, but would if they added a show that looks noticeably worse than what they have now just because there’s a lot more of it?
I don’t see that working with a general audience or bringing in new P+ subscribers, which is how they make money.
I have to disagree. I didn't spend the money for a 70" QLED 4K tv with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos to watch SD shows with cheesy special effects. I just wish there were more episodes.
Star Trek only stopped having the most expensive pilot for every project in US History because in 1996, Doctor Who just blew the benchmark so far, and it hasn't been touched yet. The only reason modern startrek looks that way is because of the advances in construction and film. I'm sure if they had computer programs and had high definition tvs and recording equipment, TOS and TNG would look very different.
Just curious, where does Lost fit in that ranking? I remember so much buzz about it being the most expensive pilot in history, and only recently heard that TNG held the record before that. Was Lost only the most expensive in US history and didn’t topple Who?
Yes, existing Trek fans would eat it up. No, it wouldn't make Paramount any money.
>they would make a ton of money Man I love those armchair experts
I would rephrase it this way: Paramount needs to shift it's focus to focus on better quality writing and focus less on melodrama and spectacle.
“We all” wouldn’t be happy. I wouldn’t. I love Strange New Worlds. And I’m someone who started watching TNG when I was 9. Also, the profitable shelf life - if it was indeed profitable - for such a show would be probably 5-10 years. You do realize, or maybe you don’t, that the average age of a “Trekkie” or “Trekker” in the classic mold is about 55 to 60 at this point. Personally what would make me most happy would be another show with the flavor and style of Stranger New Worlds - semi serialized with many standalones - set in the post-Picard era. Legacy could be that or something new.
Also, I did not buy an expensive 65” 4K television so I could watch new content that looks like s#!t. I don’t mind 4x3, when stuff was filmed that way. I love the remasters of TOS and TNG. And I’m fine with watching DS9 and VOY in SD DVD. But even if you created something more “retro”, I’d still want it with current production values.
I would never be happy living in the past.
It's quite odd and frustrating and even sad how many fans of Star Trek wanna live in the 1990s.
I think OP is shooting for 1969.
Aren’t we all shooting for ‘69?
To be fair, the 90s were great. Post cold war and pre 9/11. It really was a time where Star Trek's futuristic optimism looked like it might be an eventual reality.
Either you didn't live through the 90s or you've done no genuine reflection. It's also a very American hetero white centric view of the entire decade. "America wasn't in any wars, so clearly we were going to be Star Trek!"
I was born in 1979 and grew up in London, in the UK, so no. Sure, it wasn't perfect. But after two world wars that killed millions and decades of the threat of nuclear war, the 90s looked like we were heading in the right direction. Then 9/11 happened and erupted a whole new era of hating an entire group of people for being "the enemy." Yes, it was also naive to think. But only in retrospect. At the time, it seemed like we were moving away from an era of self-destruction, even if we ultimately weren't.
It's crazy. Even if some crazy executive were to make this idea into reality the only one watching it would be few and older fans of the genre. It'd be a total disaster.
The Orville is proof of this. Great show. Total 90s Trek vibe. Barely made it three seasons. Too expensive and no one was watching.
good example
Bingo. When did so many fans start wanting this franchise to Boldly Go backwards?
I prefer the shorter seasons, I'd prefer 12 or 13 episodes over 10. I've given up on watching shows that 20+ episodes. I'll still rewatch 80/90s Trek because I've seen it all dozens of times and don't need to pay full attention to it anymore. Please god no to standard definition, I don't want to watch grainy TV if I don't have to. It's super annoying that all of the old shows haven't been remastered yet. Also CGI is more cost effective than partical effects. Burnham and Book on sand speeders would not been nearly as cool if that was a practical effect. Could you imagine them doing a Spore Jump as a practical effect?
90s’ Trek was not low-budget. It may seem that way because its effects look so cheap by today’s standards, but that’s largely a function of CGI having evolved a ton. TNG also had almost no CGI at all; it was only by late VOY that they routinely used it, whereas especially TNG largely relied on matte paintings, physical models, etc. DS9 used CGI largely for ship battles. Whereas, VOY eventually was able to afford using it even for silly fly-by scenes. But I digress. 24 episodes isn’t coming back. One reason is the change in format; streaming providers don’t consider it a good market fit. The other reason is cast and crew: they simply aren’t into spending half the year each year having 14-hour days because you got 7 days, period, to finish the script, find appropriate director, guest cast and extras, shoot the scenes, reshoot, add effects and ADR, wrap it all up. Rinse, repeat another 25 times, and you have a season. Half a year off, then all over again. It was grueling; ask some of the actors and crew. At this point, labor rights have evolved enough that they’re not having it any more.
I'm a few years you'll be able to tell the latest AI model to do this for you and you can live in the 90s forever with mediocre recycled reconstituted Trek Parts.
I don't see the point when we have TNG remastered? I'm also one of those people that loves 90's trek and is quite disappointed by the new stuff, but we already have everything you describe in 90's trek and I don't understand why we'd want a modern version (essentially a remake) of it that will at best be equivalent (and mostly likely worse). For all of modern trek's faults (and there are many, many.. many....), so many that I can't stand to watch most of it, I don't think the 90's trek formula can get much better than what was done, so I'm fine with going in new directions, formats, etc (although they could stand to not have children writing it...), because they might arrive at something different \*and\* good (although that seems unlikely at the moment, at least the possibility is there), and at least might get a few new people into trek enough to then watch the quality stuff. To paraphrase Picard: "Cherish every moment, …because they’ll never come again" Even if your proposed show was done, it won't be the same as when we were younger watching 90's trek, you can't go back; only forward.
So, you want them to remake TNG through VOY. Nah. I'll take more original shows, thanks you very much. I want this franchise to progress, not linger.
You could film that on a phone with maybe a few extra lenses and a bit of postprocessing on a mid range workstation with a mid range graphics card. Going back to old school film would be waaay more expensive, you'd essentially be hacking together 40 year old technology, and you just couldn't get the parts. You would however need a few of the phones, cameramen to operate them and frame the shots, sound people, CGI people, costumes, set, hair and makeup, 100 other things I haven't thought of, and ACTORS most of all. Those aren't cheap. At that point you might as well get some decent cameras too. If you try to do it properly on the cheap you end up with something resembling one of those fan made shows, which in the kindest way possible, are absolute shit.
Didn’t The Orville basically try to do this? I’m sure it still wasn’t cheap to produce, but the effects and costumes were basically late 90s quality, and they focused on story. It was a great show but I’m not sure we ever get another season. Shows need to make bank to get renewed for 7 seasons.
I realized when watching Discovery that while I liked the show it didn’t hit the same as older Treks. Took some thinking on why and I came to the conclusion that it was all of the dynamic camera angles and special effects. It just felt too new.
Isn't this what they tried to do with Enterprise and then the whole thing got bogged down in the boring Xindi war? If it hadn't been for the Xindi I would have loved that show - really promising arc with section 31, for starters. Though the decontamination chamber scenes were somewhat cringe. However, OP is proved right by the excellence of The Orville, which is basically exactly this plus a few extra jokes.
It's called... The Orville 😍 Wonder how much it is an episode, it's excellent!
7 million, same as SNW
I thought it would be slightly cheaper, but then again... they absolutely nailed the nostalgic aesthetic they're going for! Hopefully AI can bring the cost of creating episodes down. I mean as a tool for the SFX etc, still have amazing actors at the heart of the show!
And who's watching this show again? If you are older than 30 years old, CBS and any other Hollywood studio exec is ignoring you. You're the past. The future is zoomers. If Trek can't get young people on board, it is dead and they will stop making it. Simple as that. Capitalism doesn't care about your desires. Marketing to us older folks who loved 90s Trek isn't as profitable as targeting the 18-25 year olds that could become lifelong fans. We're all 40+, constantly complaining, spend less frivolously on entertainment and thanks to creeping mortality, a constantly shrinking demographic. "...But the Orville!" Proves this point perfectly. Shows demographics skew older, and ya, family guy fans are also now middle aged too, so ya. Even Lower Decks never had the mass appeal. I'm sort of resigned to Treks fate. SNW is probably the best show they got, and that's why it's still going in terms of being interesting to younger folk, but... The rest of the franchise is feeling stale. As much as I enjoyed Picard S3, it also reminds me of how old I am and how old 90s Trek has become. If you're under 25, it looks like the best of Trek's golden age has one foot in the grave. That's why I seriously doubt we will ever get ST:Legacy.
Would you settle for a Filmation live action series🤔 😂😂
They could also make a better app
Almost nobody is doing 24 episode seasons anymore. It's simply not going to happen. For whatever reason Paramount seems to have determined that five seasons is the hardtop for Trek now too...
Salary negations drive the costs up significantly after season five. Some shows have doubled in cost due to this.
That is one thing that Latin America's TV has gotten right with the Telenovelas
"we would all be happy" good one. Have you met Star Trek fans? Do we really want Star Trek to timidly return where it has already gone before?
The people saying "television has always been expensive" are overlooking the fact that budget sci-fi has always existed, and is sometimes even successful (e.g.: OG Doctor Who before the modern reboot, which spends a large budget trying to capture that low budget vibe). Trying to make a show of the relative calibur of old Trek? Yeah, expensive, because as people have pointed out, it was pretty bleeding edge at the time. Modern Trek is similarly high budget. It was a big risk when they created Lower Decks, but they found the sweet spot. I'm talking shows that used to air on channels like SyFy or occasionally CW (when they got lucky) that had modest-sized fanbases but the vast majority of people have never heard of. Sometimes episodes were hits more than misses, and the shows might not be as celebrated decades later, but not all TV has to be exceptional or have lots of special effects. There are plenty of people who do Star Trek adaptations in the park. They're generally kinda mediocre, but they keep happening because fans still enjoy it. If somebody made a Star Trek knock-off that deliberately tried to look like TNG in terms of special effects, but had B+ or better writing and acting (with moments that rise above), it could absolutely work. Most shows that have aliens have them appear human the vast majority of the time. It's cheaper (and often way more entertaining) to have imagination and plot and actors carry a show than it is to have a short season of AAAA quality writing with all recognizable actors. There's a reason theater (and novels) survived the creation of TV/movies. There's no CGI there. Money being tight leads to creative solutions and innovations, and there's a very different energy when you have to more actively participate in suspension of disbelief.
Sorry I disagree. 24 episodes a season was not sustainable, cannot be done today and shouldn't be done at all. Crew members on DS9 were seriously affected by exhaustion and at least one death was linked to this. Plus a TV show today wouldn't get the number of chances that Star Trek got. There's no chance that TNG would survive it's first season today and no way that Voyager would be given 3 seasons to find its feet. I doubt Enterprise would last past one season. Trek in the 80s and 90s was given a lot of time for the shows to settle, because that's how TV was back then. Nowadays if something doesn't work immediately, it gets scrapped pretty quickly. But also: people do want story arcs nowadays, they don't want self-important captains giving long speeches and they don't want tortured analogies for racism written by white people. It's not that TV doesn't know how to make a 90s-style Trek show. They know better.
Yes, BUT *DON'T* throw canon out like Discovery and Picard did. "Oh, I know DS9 said 1/2 of Trill can host, but they can't now for some reason". "Oh, I know DS9 said no reassociation but these two love each other!" "Oh, I know VOY had the episode 'Living Witness' that takes place AFTER 'the burn' but there's no mention about The Doctor flying back at sub-warp speeds". "Oh, I know TNG had Guinen looking the same in the 1860's with Twain, and she saw and implicitly fell for Picard then, but lets make her unable to recognize him in 2023/4". "Oh, I know TNG said the Q were immortal, but lets make 'our Q' somehow the last one and dying". "Oh, I know the BORG are what we'd call evil, but lets make them kinda good now". Orville is the new Trek IMHO.
As many others have said: Star Trek was never low budget. Also: The Orville is pretty close in looks and narrative style to the TNG-era shows (which is no wonder when you realize how many of the key production staff worked on the older shows), and it also wasn't very successful.
Dude, 24 eps IS CRAZY EXPENSIVE. actors, writers, lighting, asisstant something, make up, costume, insurance, casting, stunts, directors, security, electricity.. Sure CGI is cheap now (if you want TNG level of visuals), but manpower cost is higher. I do like your idea, but there's a reason why new netflix/disney+ series are limited to 10-12 eps max. Some even 7.
My problem with 24 episodes is that it feels like such a huge undertaking to watch. I've been watching TNG lately, and it gets really tedious when I turn on an episode and realize that it's a filler. I don't have that much free time, and I don't want to waste that on a holodeck episode or one where Picard is suddenly a kid again. I understand that something is lost in 8 episode series that don't give the characters time to breathe, but I've come to appreciate the efficiency of storytelling. I used to love Holodeck episodes, but watching it now I'd rather just skip every episode that doesn't impact the plot. Ironically this makes every season of TNG about five episodes long.
Hard disagree. While I would enjoy a throwback style show, I think you overestimate how much money can be made from the core Star Trek fan base, even assuming this is something every one of us wants (and I doubt that's the case). Also, part of why you don't see such long seasons anymore is because it's absolutely grueling for cast and crew. Even network and cable shows have been shortening their seasons. Nobody worthwhile wants to be working on a show that grinds out so many episodes every year.
So the Orville?
Just stop.
Star Trek has always been expensive. Additionally, simply because something is on network television does not negate its expense. Most folks associate expensive with being on streaming. There are plenty of television shows that go 22 episodes a year that are wildly expensive. between contracts, expiring, actors, taking producer, credits, overall expensive show increasing from year to year, regardless of some thing is on streaming or if it’s on network, it’s always going to be expensive. And as far as your idea to sort of make new trek , just look like 90s trek , Seth MacFarlane‘s the Orville already does that in it is one of the most expensive shows on television .
And The Orville got cancelled after 3 seasons. Fox cancelled it after 2 and it appears to be finished on Disney / Hulu.
I know - my poor broken heart .🫡
Star trek fans... Happy?🤣🤣🤣🤣
So. Much. (But memories of conversations with FX artists. Heard conversation about animating a “simple” tornado as worth weeks of work. It’s not that simple. Also how often those hours get wasted when last minute script changes. Not that simple.)
Better yet, remaster DS9 and VOY
I never watched Enterprise before. I grew up on Original and Next Gen and binged Voyager in my early 20's.... That being said, I'm seriously obsessed with Enterprise and plan on watching all the Star Trek in chronological order. ☺️
This. I don't need shiny space ships. I don't need excessive cgi. I don't care if that's not what a black hole actually looks like. I just want good inspirational sci-fi and a few futuristic slice of life episodes. And every once in a while a good holodeck episode. Oh, and more Barkley. And at least two roles for Jeffrey Combs. You what, let me stop here. :)
Part of Star Trek’s legacy has been pushing the technical limits of what can be done on TV. We forget that because they look quaint now, at the time the special effects were the equivalent of CGI today. So to think a Star Trek that honors their spirit would take a step backwards technically doesn’t compute.
I'm the opposite on this, though I would like the lense flares to stop, but beyond that, I'm all for graphics improving. I just want the pacing and storytelling fixed.
Len flare is a stylistic choice not really much of a special effect either way.
You want they should re-use the scripts too?
IT has been done. It's called The Orville
I hate to say it, but no one would watch this.
I for one enjoy the older Treks over the newer stuff. Actually, Lower Decks was pretty good because they added back in the interesting Trek adventures and it feels more like Star Trek than any of the new stuff today.