Star Trek and Narrowcasting
Another article from trekmovie.com has excerpts from Star Trek Magazine (the new UK version that is sold in the U.S.) and their interviews with Brent Spiner and Rick Berman. Brent Spiner has some interesting things to say that actually mirror my opinions about Star Trek’s audience numbers:
“And that’s the big fear with this Star Trek movie because this new regime at Paramount; I don’t know that they understand the franchise. Maybe [Abrams] will be able to do it, maybe he’ll be able to bridge the gap between the fans and the general public, but everyone’s tried to do that - that’s always been the intention - and they’ve never been able to do it. They’ve realised that if you spend any more than fifty million dollars on one of these movies you’re going to lose money. There are only so many fans that are going to go. If they come along and make an one-hundred and fifty million dollar movie they’re going to have problems. But I think he could be the guy to do it. He’s a perfectly capable guy and his shows are fun and he seems to know what he’s doing.”
The emphasis in bold up there is mine. Apparently Brent never saw Star Trek’s 1, 2, 4 and 8 (8 is “First Contact” a movie Brent was in) all of which did respectable business along a wide range of demographics. My point being that if you make a good movie that serves the needs of Star Trek with a good story, people will come to the theater no matter what. That is not my ultimate point.
Why not “cater to the fans?” Ultimately, any attempt to do Star Trek has to involve a good story with decent dialog, acting and SFX but it should serve the greater canon as well. That is one reason Enterprise didn’t work for three seasons. It didn’t feel like Star Trek. Of course, Rick Berman has something to say about that:
“There was a feeling that Enterprise was going to be a show that was a precursor to The Original Series, and although I’ve read a lot of depictions of both Brannon and myself ‘hating’ the original series, that could not be farther from the truth. We were not obsessed by the original series. I can openly admit that I did not see all 79 episodes of the original series, or 80 if you include the various versions of the pilot, but it was something we respected and did our best to lead up to. But I think that was something that was unsettling for the fans.”
Again, the bold text is mine. Berman and Braga didn’t see all the episodes of the original series? They don’t have to say they hate it to insult the collective intelligence of the entire fan base, that alone is enough to write off the first three seasons of Enterprise. More:
“They weren’t from the distant future as much. And we felt we could have more of a contemporary television show and less of a show-taking place in the distant future, something a little different from the Roddenberry humans of the 23rd Century or even the 24th Century who were pretty flawless. From that point of view, these were the choices at the time that seemed very reasonable and I would probably do again. But it had pitfalls and maybe at times it became a bit too casual, and a bit too contemporary, and lost some of its science fiction flavour and some of its futuristic flavour that would make it a precursor to the original series. It certainly had its problems.”
If you throw out his assumption about humans from the 23rd century being “flawless” this statement almost makes sense, but having not seen all of TOS, renders it moot. There is no way you can compare the casts of TOS with TNG or Voyager. Deep Space Nine is another matter once Ira Stephen Behr came on as show runner. The problem the post-Roddenberry producers (Berman, Braga, Piller and Taylor) had with Trek was that they thought they couldn’t go anywhere with the human characters, so they concentrated on the aliens instead. More:
“Manny (Coto) had a tremendous amount of excitement about the potential links between Enterprise and the first season of the original series, and he wanted to build those bridges, or at least create steps that would foreshadow some of the things that would happen in the original series. I think to the hardcore fans it was a terrific direction to go. On the other hand, the ratings continued to slip a bit. The problems that existed continued after the release of our final movie [Nemesis] did not help.”
So, it was all Manny Coto’s fault! If Mr. Berman is reading this, let me tell you that there are basically two types of Star Trek fan; the one you can take practically anywhere and the one that takes only three or four episodes to conclude that your show is a stinkburger. Voyager and Enterprise actually bred more of the latter. Once that word of mouth is out in fandom, it is hard to reel it back in. By the time Manny Coto got to be show runner on Enterprise, the damage had already been done. One more:
“Looking back, the lack of support and the lack of interest people seemed to have in UPN didn’t help us, either. We were working on a network that, in a sense, was completely contradictory to the nature of the show. UPN had become a network of young women and girls and it was not a good marriage at that point.”
Let’s blame UPN for not supporting Enterprise as well. I’m so glad none of the problems of Star Trek can be laid directly at the feet of Mr. Berman. This leads me to my final, big picture point
Perhaps the needs of Enterprise would have been better served on SciFi or Spike. Manny Coto basically built a fourth season that had more great episodes than the first three seasons of Enterprise combined and I think eventually word of mouth and sharing those episodes would probably have been enough to get people to check out a fifth season wherever it landed
On SciFi and Spike you don’t necessarily have to be in the top 100 to survive week to week. You also have a better shot to hit the target you are going for. I do agree with Brent Spiner, I think that there are only about 20 million Star Trek fans that watch whatever is put on, but I also thought narrowcasting was what cable was going to be for anyway. Both the content and the advertising can be tailored to the audience. If you sell 20 million things for a dollar a piece…
If they are going to try to get this new animated thing off the ground, and they want to go from Web to TV, they should try it on Spike first before they see if it can fly on CBS.
Filed under: Star Trek
