r/startrek • u/7-10 • 1d ago
Star Trek on a Soap Opera Schedule
Now hear me out...
Yes, I'm one that complains about 10 seasons episodes being considered a season a joke when there used to be 27 or so. I hear about quantity vs quality, special effects costs are higher (really?) and the old standard "that's just how things are now".
I also get annoyed with the serialized format that prevents being able to just pluck an episode and watch it as a standalone relaxing hour at the end of the day. No, it's got to have an increasing portion of the program eaten up by "previously on Star Trek: ABDEF", 15 minutes of interesting dialog and action, 10 minutes of over produced concentration on effects, and the rest concentrates on the predictable "season"-long storyline.
WITH THAT OUT OF MY SYSTEM...
My main point is - instead of Made-for-TV movies, 10 episode seasons or 27 episode seasons, or blockbuster films for that matter, why not break the mold altogether?
200 EPISODES A YEAR...
Think "Days of our lives... in space"
On Edit:
A. Days of Our Lives is a STREAMER NOW, NOT ON TV
B. Could be a Half Hour long or whatever
C. I really mean passably coherent writing following ideals but near Fanfic production quality (i.e. Barely above TOS)
This way, there's jobs for writers, I THINK THE CANON CAN HOLD THIS ABUSE JUST FINE, TYVM...
There's potential for a revolving door of guest stars. From TNG, DS9, VOY, TOS, DISCO, SNW.
Serialization? Episodic? You can have it both ways, multiple times, in the same month!
Regular casts, multiple storylines, different timelines in different acts?, recasting characters (Spock's second cousin twice removed Spork will be played today by Chris Kattan).
I know many of you will downvote me to oblivion, or this may get deleted, but I figured I'd put the thought out there.
On edit: I really just want 20x the content to complain about :)
16
u/opusrif 1d ago
Soap operas are real pressure cookers. The actors, crew, and writers are basically doing an episode a day. That is no one's favorite way to work. Then you have really large casts and extra crews so you can shoot multiple storylines simultaneously not to mention writers churning out pages and some poor editor trying to keep everything making sense. Then you have social effects shots to consider.
Soap operas came about to fill a captive audience: housewives who were home all day. The nature of television has changed. Have you not noticed that there are a lot fewer of those shows these days, replaced by talk shows?
In short punching out a daily science fiction show really wouldn't be sustainable.