Strange New Worlds has been my favorite Trek since Next Generation, and if the quality continues, could easily be my favorite Trek ever. But with the e.p. wishing for more episodes per season, there’s a danger of diluting the show by adding weak episodes that would have never made it in a 10 episode season.
One of the things I’ve long admired with BBC shows is their normally low-episode seasons, which kept out a lot of filler that normally made it in to the broadcast shows from the states. But streaming (and before that, cable) changed things. Finally US based shows were able to create much lower episode seasons, allowing the creators to tell more of the story they wanted to tell, without stretching things out (too much), or being forced to add stories they weren’t thrilled with in order to fill the season. (Though, even with shorter runs, shows are still doing this. Picard season 2, for example, could have used some trimming. So, yeah, show runners are still being forced to fill seasons where X number of episodes were ordered before the story was fleshed out. Maybe it just seems more evident in serialized shows.)
I can’t help but think a longer season of SNW would be a “more is less” scenario. I’d much rather see Paramount create another Trek show that’s mainly episodic, that’s been shown the same attention to quality that SNW has received.
Next Generation was your favorite, and it had 24 episode seasons. Episode count and quality are not necessarily linked.
TNG was great, and the best episodes are incredible, but most episodes were fairly mediocre. I feel SNW’s average is higher, and it’s probably in part for having LESS than half the number of episodes per season.
I think they’d be fine with 12, maybe even 14, but beyond that I don’t they could keep it as great as it’s been.
@exscape @lucidinferno @BradleyUffner One need only look at the best British TV shows and how their seasons are shorter and their schedules are not yearly to see how time to work on scripts and production makes for great fiction, but that can’t be exploited.
Exception: Sherlock - everything after the first season was an unwatchable cash grab …
@kamenLady Ah, but you’ll notice I specified “the best British TV shows”. ‘Sherlock’ always was Moffat and Gatiss thinking they were more clever than Conan Doyle.
Rating each episode is part of the problem. We have t step back from that madness and enjoy the exploration of characters, species, and story that made us fall in love with Star Trek.
I’m not sure how it’s madness. An episode can be bad in itself and not contribute anything of value to the greater story arc, in which case I don’t see why it’s wrong to see it as bad.
NG is my favorite for now because it finished well, in spite of the notoriously bad episodes that were in each season. SNW hasn’t finished yet and could screw things up, so I can’t say it’s my favorite yet. But when comparing the two seasons of SNW to any two random seasons of NG, SNW wins. Episode count and quality aren’t necessarily linked, true, but my point is that there’s a higher chance of introducing poor episodes when the season is longer. A longer season could produce 20 great episodes instead of 10, but I have yet to see a show where this happens.
Up until Trek started streaming, the longer seasons were all we had, so comparing NG to all the other shows before streaming, it’s my favorite. Mainly comes down to the characters for me, as I think the storytelling in the network shows after NG were just as strong as seasons 3-7 of NG. And even though Disco and Picard had shorter seasons, they suffered under the weight of having to fill a predetermined episode count with a serialized show, so yes, episode count and quality aren’t necessarily linked. But an episodic show with a shorter season means the show runners can be picky with the episodes they want to film, much as a chef can be picky with what dishes they want to present.
It took me far too long to understand what NG meant. Why would you do this I feel TNG is an incredibly standard abbreviation
things are a great deal more expensive these days than they were then, even comparing like to like special effects, SNW is right near the very top, and TNG was 100% advertiser supported