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To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before

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Akima:
Meh. The last iteration of Star Trek, Enterprise, was bad enough that I stopped watching after... two seasons, I think, and Voyager was very patchy, so I don't really care any more. I think the big problem for Star Trek is not so much how they charge for it, as the dud quality of the product.

The Star Trek and Star Wars industries seem to work on the basis that they only have to wave a banner, and the fans will come out and pay, regardless of how poor the TV shows and films become. And they seem to be correct too.

BenRG:

--- Quote from: Akima on 10 Nov 2015, 00:44 ---The Star Trek and Star Wars industries seem to work on the basis that they only have to wave a banner, and the fans will come out and pay, regardless of how poor the TV shows and films become. And they seem to be correct too.
--- End quote ---

That may not be true anymore. Recall that Enterprise was cancelled early due to collapsing fan interest. In very many ways Star Trek - Nemesis was the last hoorah of the previous iteration of the show. Its qualified fan reception failure, IMHO at least, led directly to the Abramsverse reboot (which also seems to be in trouble).

The real problem isn't that Paramount/Viacom is unwilling to spend money and talent on the Trek franchise. They've proven that they're willing to sink tens of millions into it, if necessary. The problem seems to be that they genuinely don't seem to understand what the fanbase wants. Or, if they do, they lack confidence that pleasing the fan-base would be financially viable so they're trying to make popcorn-fare instead.

That said, fan ventures do seem to be doing well, so if The Powers That Be want clues, they only really have to look on YouTUBE to see what fans think Star Trek should look and feel like.

Neko_Ali:
The difference to me though Akima, is I actually think most of the Star Wars media is good. Yes, even the prequels despite the horrible decisions made by George Lucas in story and some of the terrible acting. I think the cartoon series have been great and I'm looking forward to the new movies with hope. On the other hand... Star Trek has for me declined in quality so much over the years that I haven't even seen Into Darkness, and probably won't ever bother. Voyager was very meh. Despite having a female captain, I couldn't get interested in any of the characters or their story. I never finished the first season. I liked Enterprise okay... But it honestly only barely felt like Star Trek to me. I honestly think they could have just change some of the names and made it a better show. Or they could have focused more on the creation of the Federation as we know it from the other shows. But more often they seemed to be wanting to do their own thing. Which isn't bad. It just left me feeling in the middle. I hated JJ Abrams' reboot. Saw it once, immediately regretted it and it's a large part why I don't care about Into Darkness or anything else Trek he does. Ironically enough, after seeing the movie, I said he would have done great on a Star Wars film, but he just didn't get what made Star Trek different than most science fiction shows.

Kugai:
Enterprise had potential, and while the first Season was OK and was, IMO, getting better, they lost me when they introduced that damnable Xindi arc. 

Here they had the opportunity after Season One to move the story forward into the founding of the Federation and the Romulan War, but they introduced that damned arc which made no sense to me considering just how much  back canon materieal, and they throw it all away for a stupid arc like that.

Akima:

--- Quote from: Neko_Ali on 10 Nov 2015, 07:50 ---I liked Enterprise okay... But it honestly only barely felt like Star Trek to me. I honestly think they could have just change some of the names and made it a better show. Or they could have focused more on the creation of the Federation as we know it from the other shows. But more often they seemed to be wanting to do their own thing.
--- End quote ---
The key problem with Enterprise, I thought, was incredibly lazy "generic Star Trek" stories that could have been slotted into TOS, TNG or Voyager. They started out with what could have been a very interesting pioneering, "founding the Federation" idea, with lower technology, less knowledge, and a corresponding greater feeling of exploration and threat. But instead, in what felt like five minutes, they rolled out the usual ST tropes, like phasers, and the "last second beam-out to avoid the explosion", and ground along the same old grooves. Again.

Slumping back into the old "white male Anglo-Americans run everything" comfy chair didn't help either. There was always a huge element of lip-service in Roddenberry's "vision" of an enlightened, post-nationalist, inclusive future, but he at least had the excuse of working on ST:TOS in the Sixties when he  rolled out the Federation as "the USA IN SPACE". The producers of Enterprise certainly didn't do anything different; they recast as bad-guys the Vulcans, the only non-human species to be treated consistently as anything like equal to humans across the previous ST cannon, and the notorious "America did everything ever in the history of space exploration" opening-credits sequence suggests that it never occurred to them to question the model.


--- Quote from: BenRG on 10 Nov 2015, 01:37 ---The problem seems to be that they genuinely don't seem to understand what the fanbase wants.
--- End quote ---
I'm not so sure. I think the producers work on the principle that the fans want "the same plus 10%", and I am not certain that they are wrong.

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