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.
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.