Star Trek News and Rumour's

[Freak]

Don't Trust Rotten Tomato scores. The Critics always seem to be opersite from the General Public.
Stuff they love the general audience hate and stuff the they love the general audience hates. This has been the trend for the few years or so.

Also Rotten Tomato's like to delete the public score if it coming up rotten. They been doing that with this season Doctor Who. That was at 16% and they deleted a bunch of votes and it shot up to 96%, then dropped back down 0% in a few hours.
They seem to do this each week. The Majority of people watching current Dr. Who hate it. There is noting Rotten Tomato's change that fact.


As for Trek on TV going over budget, Thats Kurtzman for just look at everything he has worked on. It gone over budget.
The only think that has not is stuff he is not a producer on or it your typical Cop Show that are unexpansive to make.

[scifieric]

I've seen all the episodes of Picard thus far, and it's not too bad.  It's certainly not Star Trek: The Next Generation, but then I can watch the original seven seasons of that.  It's ... interesting.  At least now Picard is in space.  I think he's trying to right a wrong before he dies.  Just a guess.

[scifidude79]

Don't Trust Rotten Tomato scores. The Critics always seem to be opersite from the General Public.
Stuff they love the general audience hate and stuff the they love the general audience hates. This has been the trend for the few years or so.

Also Rotten Tomato's like to delete the public score if it coming up rotten. They been doing that with this season Doctor Who. That was at 16% and they deleted a bunch of votes and it shot up to 96%, then dropped back down 0% in a few hours.
They seem to do this each week. The Majority of people watching current Dr. Who hate it. There is noting Rotten Tomato's change that fact.

That's why I mentioned IMDb also. Though, again, the scores can be faked there too. People have been known to sign up for accounts just to raise or lower a score on something because they have no lives. I take scores from either of those sites with a huge grain of salt. (or just don't look at them)

However, I still say Star Trek is better on the small screen. The type of stories they like to tell in ST fit best in the television medium, in my opinion.

[Freak]

However, I still say Star Trek is better on the small screen. The type of stories they like to tell in ST fit best in the television medium, in my opinion.

I totally agree with you on that.
Not sure on the whole serialised storytelling Trek has taken with STD and Picard. I know that the norm for TV show these days. But if your going to do that, you need to have the season planned out before filming. Start, Middle and End of said story.
The Expanse and (first five seasons) Game of Thrones dose this very well, They know how to start and finish each season.
But then it was based on Novels and had the writers of said Novels helping the show writers when adapting the Novels for TV.

With Trek I get the feeling they know where they want to start but don't have a clue how to finish the story which is why episodes are a hot mess. (the Jury is still out on Picard.) But this was very obvious with the Season 2 of STD, They started one story then went of in a completely different direction with another story only to realises they need to bring both stories together to get it finished.

Maybe they should go back and do what DS9 did, self contained episodes as the main story and the B story being a season wide story arc that sometime becomes the main story. Of course they had 26 episode back then and current Trek has between 10 and 13.

[scifidude79]

I like a show with a season long plot, but I still like an episodic format. You can do both, with occasional mentions/updates on the big plot. It's been done before. But, as you said, it takes good planning.

[scifieric]

You can do both in a show, but it takes a certain kind of writer or a unique group of writers.  DSN was a direct ripoff of Babylon 5, but Joe Straczynski was great at long, convoluted plots and was not that great at standalone episodes.  Don't get me wrong, his season-spanning stories were GREAT!

[Freak]

Yeah your right about JMS. Even before he started pitching B5, he had a rough plan for it, a Start middle and a end.
Right from the off he know it was going to be five seasons long and no more than that.
He also outlined what each season was going to be about.

It was only once the show had been picked up did he and the writers he hired start breaking down the season into individual episode.

He did not even plan the four? TV movies that came out afterword's. That was a bonus and the first film In the Beginning Explained the Earth Membari War, which used a lot of what was seen in the show. Given how successful they where the other films where green lighted but don't really tie into the overall story of B5.

As for the spinoff, part of the reason they did not last past half a season was because JMS had not planned them out like he did with B5 and was no where near as good.

[scifidude79]

I've found it very hard to get into Babylon 5, despite a couple attempts to do just that. I think it's probably a symptom of that thing where you say it suffers on the episode level but shines on the ongoing story arc.

Funny you mention DS9, because I was actually thinking of the overall story with the Dominion, which actually starts earlier into season 2 than when they finally appear in the season finale. It's woven into various episodes and then finally comes full circle at the end of the season. They also had that plot with the Klingon war, and they managed to still have episodic stories with both of those story arcs. They also did that with the Temporal Cold War and Xindii story arcs on Enterprise. They managed to have episodic episodes mixed in, but still further the overall season (or series) story arcs. So, it can be done, but they definitely need careful planning ahead of time.

[Freak]

Yeah DS9 and Enterprise did this very well. But the difference between them and the current Trek shows.
Is one major factor and that's the writers. DS9 and Enterprise had some of the best writers that have gone on to even bigger an better success. But when they did this story arc, they had them planned out well in advanced before the cameras started to roll. Did thing change as the season they where writing went along. Yes it did but they where able to adapt to those changes as they had a plan.

while the writers for Discovery all came from CW type programs (Revenge etc.) and don't have any background in writing for this sort of genre. Yes some of those programs are serialised but they also had the same problems. A good premised but poor execution. This come from not planning out the season before anything is written into a script.
So by the end everything is just a hot mess of not making any scene. Revenge is a good example of this.


While Picard so far has only had Michael Chabon, Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman as writers.
Chabon is a very good writer when it come to Novels, but when it come to TV I find his work very lacking.
As for Goldman and Kurtzman, I find them to be hacks altogether. Though when Goldman is not working in the sci-fi genre he is actually very good.

[scifidude79]

I think Discovery's second season did better with the long story arc than the first one did. The first one was kind of weird. It started with the Klingons, then made a drastic switch to the mirror universe from Mirror, Mirror. Then, when that was done, it was like, "Oh yeah, we're still fighting the Klingons." I would have liked it if the Klingon plot was cleaned up more before they went to the Terran Empire, but that's not how it was done. With season 2, you could tell they were committed to that main plot for the whole season. The problem it had was that it just wasn't necessarily that great of a plot. Sure, it was interesting, but it has a lot of issues. And, I'm even a fan of the show, but I'm not one of those fans who can't see the faults in a series that I really like.

DS9 definitely had some great episodes and writing, but some of the earlier season 1 stuff was a whole lot of "meh." I think getting into stuff like the plots with the Maquis and then the Dominion really helped them. And, of course, having the Klingons on the opposite side as the Federation is never a bad thing. I think DS9 really needed the longer plots to break through the tedium of "Ooh, something came from the wormhole, what can it be?" episodes. Enterprise was kind of the opposite. I think the episodes where they're just showing early exploration are good. I didn't mind the Temporal Cold War plot, but I thought the Xindii plot kind of went on too long. I get that they were in a ratings slump and needed something to try and get viewers, but I'm not sure a season long plot with aliens that were allegedly Federation members but who we never saw in the later shows was the way to go. That's one reason I think season 4 was so good, they got away from that formula, wrapped up the Xindii and Temporal Cold War plots and got back to smaller scale stories. Sure, they had some longer plots, but they were plots that only lasted 2-3 episodes.

So, yeah, I think it just depends on the series on whether longer plots are necessary. With DS9 being stationary, I think they needed longer plots to keep it interesting, whereas the shows that follow a starship going to different worlds can always be interesting, as they can go to different worlds and see new stuff. So, you don't necessarily need season plots to keep them going, provided your episodic writing is good.

[Freak]

You hit the nail on the head right there Chris.

I was never a fan of the Temporal Cold War plot & Xindii plot.
But when they started to do those two to three episode stories they got it right. Those are the best episode of Enterprise.

As for the first two season of DS9 and like Captain Janeway, they really did not know what to do with the show.
Thanks god Bhur was on staff, because it was him that guide DS9 to greatness.

[Freak]

I saw a news article this morning saying that all Trek under Kurtzman was being rebranded as The Relaunch Timeline.
I can't find the article again to post it here. However if this is true, I guess that Discovery and Picard and Lower Decks are not part of the Canon Timeline.

[scifidude79]

I find the farther along we get with this stuff, the less I care about what is considered part of what timeline. But, I'm sure some people will find validation in that revelation, as they were saying it wasn't part of the main timeline. I expect this is also something that CBS will use to say that these shows were never part of the main timeline so that they don't have to follow anything from them moving forward past Kurtzman. Kind of like when Marvel restarted Captain America in the 1960s, and they said the real Captain America was frozen in ice at the end of WWII and the Captain America and Bucky from the late 40s and 50s were imposters.

I need to get caught up on Picard episodes. I haven't watched 4 or 5 yet.

[Freak]

Some of the people that enjoy Discovery and what we seen of Picard so far, have said it does not fix with the original timeline. And those that hate it for all sorts of reason have said They could accept it better if they had come out and said it not part of that Timeline.
I think they may of made this announcement to get some of the fans to come back, I don't know.
We don't see the viewing figures from CBSAA, Netflix and Amazon Prime. But we can from Canada, and they are not good and dropping.

I would not count the viewing figures from E4 in the UK for Season 1 of Discovery, as that has already been shown on Netflix and most households here has it. (The viewers on E4 was just over half a million and dropped fast after the second episode.)

I like a lot of what we saw in episode 4, but there was still a lot I did not like but that was down to story writing.
As for episode 5, the only thing I will say is that it the opening made a lot of fan unhappy.

Chris after you watch it, I am curious to see what you though of it.

[Freak]

Chris and Eric. Have you had a chance to catch up with Picard?

I know some of you are not fan of the Nerdrotic Channel.
But he has posted a new video on the Lawsuit against CBS and Netflix.
It also shows Plagiarism or Homage with Star Trek Discovery and Picard. Of course this his option on that subject.
But you can decided weather it is Plagiarism or Homage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvE8aEb2OcY