Star Trek executive producer wants more Strange New Worlds episodes, and I’m nervous

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.

Reva,

What quality? It has the writing and acting quality of Big Bang Theory.

flowerofanarchy,

I don’t agree at all. I always liked how long the seasons were for TNG, DS9,and Voyager. Also the low episode count at the moment isn’t about quality over quantity it just is less work for the cast and crew. Honestly the more Star Trek the better. Even the worst episodes of Trek have their charm aside from TNG Season 1 Episode 3 “Code of Honor”. Some of the TOS episodes haven’t aged the best but its the 60s so whatever.

changingfmh,

Michelle Hurd has been championing longer seasons of television for the sake of job security. We really just need to accept that 10 episode series are not there to “cut out the bad stuff” but to put the cast and crew in a worse position. Produce less content, if it “flops” then you’ve only spent so much and can cut everyone loose and recoup the loss elsewhere instead of investing jn the future.

I think more episodes of SNW would do the show a lot of good. Right now, the status quo (in my eyes, at least) is gimmick episodes. We’re not getting nearly enough “normal” Trek. Season 2 specifically has mostly been gimmicks, crossovers, and bottle episodes. You really need to construct before you deconstruct, make a status quo before you break it. It would make these big episodes stand out more.

Schooner,

What are bottle episodes?

r_thndr,

Episodes that occur entirely on the ship (Enterprise) with no interactions or consequences outside of the ship.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_episode

PuppyOSAndCoffee,
@PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml avatar

Not just this that, but how s2 ended…

BRUH

Don’t do us like that!

spoilerI don’t mind a little bit of tune in next year but to chop it off like that is totes BS

So…

More episodes would allow SNW to be more things for more people, and try to color outside the lines of traditional sci fi drama. Some people love the quirky episodes, and that’s cool. I am not into musicals; however, if there is one “that time I went to band camp” episode a year that doesn’t fill a 10 ep slot, ok, whatever. 10eps is REALLY SHORT.

HobbitFoot,

That might be good, but I don’t think the actors would be able to take it. There are already bottle episodes like “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

williams_482,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is definitely not a “bottle episode”. Bottle episodes are episodes which require minimal or no additional budget for SFX, sets, etc beyond what is already available from previous/upcoming episodes. They exist as a money saving device which was necessary for shows to run 26 episode seasons and shell out for expensive productions while remaining within their budget. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow wouldn’t have been the most expensive episode to film, but there’s still a lot of exterior scenes, VFX, etc which make it quite a bit pricier than an episode almost entirely confined to a handful of existing sets.

It is a happy accident (whether by chance, or because the format forces an emphasis on the stories Trek has been best at telling) that Trek bottle episodes tend to include some of the best writing and character moments of the various series. This naturally leads to some confusion about what a “bottle episode” actually means.

Strange New Worlds has not had any true “bottle episodes” to date, although they certainly have been able to work in a lot of high quality character moments.

HobbitFoot,

If you look at the issue being actor fatigue instead of cash, the episode looks a lot more like a bottle episode.

The main character for the episode is someone who would be considered to be supporting cast. The only other characters from the show with significant screen time are also supporting cast.

It is an expensive bottle episode, but the scenes take place in a modern day city with a deep film industry. That is one step above TOS having an episode in a Western setting because the soundstage for it was already built.

riley0,
@riley0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I liked seeing La’an’s character develop in this one.

startrekexplained,

The second wasnt so good, I just liked two episodes out of 10. So if they cant even chunk out 10 good episodes, i dont know if i want more.

Tired8281,

I don’t see the problem. They obviously would hire more people to do double the episode load.

Madison_rogue,
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

While I understand your hesitation, I definitely believe there could have been at least five more relevant episodes in Season 2. This season was overall character driven instead of a "planet of the week" format we've seen before. So, there could have been some extra episodes that extrapolated on the seasonal Gorn arc, or an Ortegas episode, or a Pelia episode. There's a lot of potential to provide spanning character and seasonal arcs while delivering episodes from different planets over a 15 episode season.

I definitely believe 20 episodes is pushing it, but a 12-15 episode season could work if the stories are laid out well.

skellener,
@skellener@kbin.social avatar

Pay the writers, pay the actors, sign the contract order more episodes! ✊It’s a great show!

xusontha,

I would enjoy having more episodes, and I (hopefully) don’t think that enough people would approve anything that would compromise the quality, given how they clearly know what they’re doing

MSugarhill,
@MSugarhill@feddit.de avatar

Hey, with more episodes we might have gotten a proper Ortegas episode…

xusontha,

:(

StillPaisleyCat,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

It’s likely the impact of the sudden and unexpected death of Melissa Navia’s husband led to a lightning of her role in the second season.

She’s written about how hard it was for her to go into production just a couple of months after that. She was a musical theatre performer as a child, so it’s likely that a larger singing role was planned for her in 2 x 09. We can be thankful that she has apparently decided to stick with her career after some profound doubts in 2022.

MajorHavoc,

I hope Melissa continues to find the fandom to be a source of surrogate family. It was nice to see the fandom’s outpouring of empathy and support after her tragic loss. It’s not the same, but since it seems to have given her some comfort, I hope that dynamic can be something special for her for a long time.

MSugarhill,
@MSugarhill@feddit.de avatar

Oh damn. I had no idea.

Stormygeddon,

But we had her episode. We know her name is Erica Ortegas and that she flies the ship. What else do we need?

gogreenranger,

I’ve been rewatching TNG and it has become very, very apparent to me how much of the charm of the show was due to two things:

  1. The sheer chemistry of the cast. Since really learning how much they all loved each other, it really just feels like a ship of joy.
  2. The filler episodes let you spend time with the cast. I mean, you rarely get something like a whole scene about Data painting, or stroking a fake beard, or Geordi striking out with multiple women, or Troi extolling the virtues of chocolate sundaes.

I’ve been really impressed by how much SNW has been able to do with the ensemble, it really feels like the cast have relationships, so if we can get more of that, yes please!

I almost want to believe that they’re cancelling Discovery to give more resources to SNW’s production schedule. ;)

buckykat,

I don’t understand this idea that fewer episodes is better. Basically my only complaint about SNW season 2 is how rushed it felt.

Richard,
@Richard@startrek.website avatar

How did it feel rushed? We had a new adventure every week that was largely unrelated to the previous one, and character development was distributed all throughout the season. The only thing I felt was rushed were some of the episodes like the one with the tower (Among the Lotus Eaters) where the resolution to the conflict came very surprisingly and abruptly, but longer seasons wouldn’t have changed that.

buckykat,

The big one is Chapel and Spock. She goes straight from pursuing him to leaving him without much of any actual relationship in between. Pelia doesn’t get to do much as the chief engineer, and Ortegas barely gets any screen time at all.

Infinity187,

I’m down for more episodes per season, granted they have a good crew. It means more work for screenwriters and a potential for some amazing episodes. Let’s give it a shot!

BeardedPip,

The traditional American 20+ episode format is superior and I have no problems dying on this hill. It is the format that got almost everyone into Star Trek, and as such we are limiting ourselves with binge-junky 10 episode format.

richieadler,

It requires 8 or 9 months of 18+ hours, 6 days weeks work. It’s insane and only possible in the US.

stephfinitely,
@stephfinitely@artemis.camp avatar

This way I think we should sit at 12 to 15 and the norm. I love have 20+ season but for the well being of cast and crew the 12+ makes more since and while at time it would only be 2 more then the streaming 10 episode the extra wiggle room would allow for more stand alone episode.

lucidinferno,

Epic poems, such as the Iliad, were the preferred storytelling methods at one time, yet society had little issue with building upon that as they left it behind. It’s one thing to prefer something, and another to say that because something was once one way, that’s how it always should be. Things change and hopefully improve. Kind of the main theme of Trek.

Richard,
@Richard@startrek.website avatar

However, the message of Trek also is that not all change is good, already evident in the M5 episode of TOS. There’s no shame in taking a step back if the prior state was superior, which some think it is (with regard to the 20 episode scheme)

lucidinferno,

Good point.

Woozy, (edited )

Longer seasons would allow them to throw in a few SciFi oriented episodes that don’t necessarily advance character arcs. Where would SNW be if TOS didn’t have the “Arena” (Gorn) episode that was based on a completely unrelated SciFi short story?

Mirror, Mirror was a SciFi episode that not only gave us the foundation for Discovery, but cemented the evil-twin-goatee trope into pupular culture.

Space Seed (Botany Bay/Khan) was also a one-off SciFi episode. Where would the entire franchise be without it?

I really hope SNW makes room for exploring the sort of SciFi ideas that Star Trek was originally based on.

lucidinferno, (edited )

Part of the reason why TNG was good beyond the first couple seasons was because of the open script submission policy that’s no longer in existence. According to ex-Trek producer Ronald D. Moore, they were reading something like 3000 scripts a year. It allowed them to be choosy (though there were still some stinkers). Now that the characters are established, if the seasons were longer, it might be cool to see the open script submissions come back (though, as I’m typing this, maybe implementing this during or shortly after a writers strike would be a poor choice, even though there were limits to how many scripts one could submit before going through “official” channels). Anyway, one could argue that a huge amount of ideas need to be generated for a show as great as TNG to exist, more than a small group of writers could produce. If outside script admissions were allowed, I’m sure we’d see some great sci-fi episodes from writers who weren’t even thinking “Star Trek” as they wrote them.

I’m not against filler, and my post may have come off as being that way. Not every story has to advance character or advance some storyline. I’m just against bad filler.

gogreenranger,

Just a fun note: Ron Moore got his start through that open submissions policy when submitted a script for what became “The Bonding.” He had no writing credits before that.

StillPaisleyCat,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Several of the Relaunch novelverse TrekLit authors tried out with spec scripts before being picked up to write tie-in fiction.

David Mack, a film school grad, got script credits for 2 DS9 episodes, Starship Down and Only a Paper Moon before being contracted for some Starfleet Core of Engineers stories.

Kirsten Beyer, a theatre grad, never got into one of the shows with a spec script, but was picked up to write Voyager books, then came full circle to be in the writers rooms on all the new live-action shows.

Richard,
@Richard@startrek.website avatar

Wow thanks, that really explains well why the modern shows respect (at least some of) “beta canon” more than what I would expect. A natural consequence when some of the authors sit in the writer’s room :)

StillPaisleyCat,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

David Mack was more recently a consultant for the development and first seasons of both Lower Decks and Prodigy as well. I believe we can thank him for bringing Peter David’s Brikar aliens (from the YA Starfleet Academy and the New Frontier books) into onscreen canon with the character of Rok Tahk in Prodigy.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Man, if they opened up script submissions, they’d probably be able to reap a LOT of fanfic-grown talent out there. Yeah, the slush pile would SUCK because it’s much easier to submit online than in the days of snail mail and paper, but we’ve had about 20 years of really explosive writing growth with the advent of fanfic online and as far as I know nobody’s really “mentoring” those people in this day and age.

I know people laugh and snort at fanfic, but writing is writing is writing . You’d do as well to laugh at painters who sketch bowls of fruit or sketch nudes from live subjects (as if people haven’t drawn those things for literal centuries!). It doesn’t really matter WHERE you practice and learn so long as you do it, and if fanfic/fanart/whatever gets you going, that’s how you’re going to grow your talent, by practicing over and over.

And some people get really damn good at it. If Trek opened up script submissions again, it’d open the doors to a new generation of writers kicking their careers off.

lucidinferno,

I couldn’t agree more. With Star Trek, or any established properties where the originator isn’t in control (Marvel, Star Wars, etc.), it’s all pretty much fanfic, professional or not. The writers are playing in a world they haven’t created.

goldfishmotorcycle,

SNW has been pretty good with the standalone episodes though, no? Maybe leaning a little more on the comedy and hijinks than the sci-fi this season but they don’t seem too afraid of treating an episode as a mini movie in its own right.

I wouldn’t mind a few more episodes anyway, but 20 does feel like too much. And honestly I’m not unhappy with 10 either, particularly considering the quality of them and that it’s not the only Trek in town. 10 episodes of this show, but there’s like three or four other shows too. We’re not at a loss for Trek.

yildo,

A new challenge with open submissions would be low effort AI spam. Scifi magazines are buckling under the tidal wave of crud right now https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/25/23613752/ai-generated-short-stories-literary-magazines-clarkesworld-science-fiction

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