MickeyTwo Franchises
Way back before Star Trek was a franchise, it was just a TV show. A cancelled TV show, but being so much better than the pablum we were being inundated with in the early 70's it lived on in reruns. The syndication success convinced Paramount to produce a movie reuniting the original cast, and the success of that movie prompted them to make a good one (Wrath of Khan is still the best Star Trek movie), more movies, comic books, bedsheets, computer games and so on.
Given the profitability of the franchise, it was little wonder that Paramount decided to even try launching a new Star Trek TV series. Next Generation got off to a rocky start but by their third season they were delivering some solid stories. Likewise, when their popularity spawned Deep Space Nine, that show finally came into its own by removing the saccharine Utopia complex that made the human race too perfect to be interesting.
Their next effort, Voyager, suffered in comparison- not just to other Star Trek series, but to other sci fi shows on the air, other shows cancelled after less than one season, movies on Mystery Science Theater, etc... inane characters, turgid stories and vapid treknobabble left even die-hard trekkies cracking jokes about this show. When Enterprise simply unloaded more of the same, that show died in the ratings so fast they were gone in four years instead of the expected seven.
By contrast, the original Battlestar Galactica was so hokey, silly and childish that news of the revival on SciFi had many of us expecting the same bang-bang "Look at the way cool 'splosions!" stuff, just with way cool modern CGI special effects. The producers took the basic premise, but then put in realistic, believable adult characters who had to cope with the reality of fleeing, barely surviving after their civilization was destroyed.
Star Trek is dead (Okay, comatose... like Spock, Star Trek has been dead before) because we had such high expectations, and the producers keptscrewing us lowering the bar. The original Galactica was so corny that we weren't expecting anything impressive from the remake, but then they blew us away with the realistic, gripping gotta-see-what-happens-next stories.
Despite what one might expect from perusing the TV schedule, the audience has brains, taste and the patience to stick with a show if we can expect our faith to pay off. No one ever killed off a franchise by respecting us.
Given the profitability of the franchise, it was little wonder that Paramount decided to even try launching a new Star Trek TV series. Next Generation got off to a rocky start but by their third season they were delivering some solid stories. Likewise, when their popularity spawned Deep Space Nine, that show finally came into its own by removing the saccharine Utopia complex that made the human race too perfect to be interesting.
Their next effort, Voyager, suffered in comparison- not just to other Star Trek series, but to other sci fi shows on the air, other shows cancelled after less than one season, movies on Mystery Science Theater, etc... inane characters, turgid stories and vapid treknobabble left even die-hard trekkies cracking jokes about this show. When Enterprise simply unloaded more of the same, that show died in the ratings so fast they were gone in four years instead of the expected seven.
By contrast, the original Battlestar Galactica was so hokey, silly and childish that news of the revival on SciFi had many of us expecting the same bang-bang "Look at the way cool 'splosions!" stuff, just with way cool modern CGI special effects. The producers took the basic premise, but then put in realistic, believable adult characters who had to cope with the reality of fleeing, barely surviving after their civilization was destroyed.
Star Trek is dead (Okay, comatose... like Spock, Star Trek has been dead before) because we had such high expectations, and the producers kept
Despite what one might expect from perusing the TV schedule, the audience has brains, taste and the patience to stick with a show if we can expect our faith to pay off. No one ever killed off a franchise by respecting us.
Old Quotes
Toy Nostalgia
Passionate Apathy
The audience is narrow now, after the last two Star Trek
debaclesspin-offs, but back at the height of Next Generation it was in the tens of millions. Likewise the box office for the good Star Trek films show tat the audience will be there for a good movie.It isn't special effects that will win back the audience, but effective stories crafted about characters we can care about.