most trek series started out pretty rough and it took 3 or so years for each to really find its footing.... not that they were all bad episodes early on, just that they needed to to really adjust and tune them in. TNG, DS9 and VOY were all this way.
While I agree that this is true to an extent, and that TNG needed two seasons and DS9 needed three seasons to find its footing, I have to respectfully disagree about VOY. I would argue that VOY is the only Trek series that new what it was doing exactly from day one, and that's largely because it had one defined goal in mind: find a way back to Earth. While it's true that VOY made some tweaks, they weren't nearly as significant as the change in writing style with TNG S3 or the change in overall plot that technically started with the finale of DS9 S3, or the introduction of the Defiant in DS9 S4.
ENT was produced in a different time, after widespread Internet access was readily available, and anyone with a phone line (nevermind high–speed access that would have been available to a studio) could see the complaints leveled against ENT. In "the old days," Paramount would have to screen an episode, do a focus group, and get feedback from a test audience, and then hope that their sampling was good to determine what changes needed to be made. By the time ENT was airing, all they had to do was have someone go online and they could see the most common complaints ranging from the theme song to the Captain having the personality of a cardboard box, (which even Scott Backula has criticized,) and easily have addressed them. It's when ENT failed to do this that it willingly lost viewers, while the loss of UPN affiliates only added to the problem by causing the show to unwillingly lose viewers. The three–year–warm–up shouldn't be necessary for good Trek; if CBS can't producing something comparable to the higher–end fan–films that are floating around, (e.g. Renegades,) they should fire their production staff and higher the people who have been creating fan–films in the spirit of Trek to run their official show, and they should do so quickly. TNG–VOY were conceived of in a radically different era than ENT, and ENT was conceived of in a radically different era than the new show. (Internet access was already widespread, but the widespread proliferation of smartphones wouldn't come into existance until a couple years after ENT was cancelled. Likewise, early crowd–sourced funding attempts were made to keep ENT on the air, but that was in a pre–Kickstarter world.)
I even thought ENT was finding its footing in season 4 when they brought Manny Coto in.
Manny Coto definitely turned ENT around, but he was admittedly tasked with digging it out of a pretty deep hole. The problem wasn't anything Manny Coto did, it was that two of the three preceding seasons were atrocious, and while the show was hemmoraging viewers, UPN started to hemmorage affiliates and that really ensured that seasons three and four wouldn't be able to save ENT. I honestly wish we'd gotten Manny Coto instead of Alex Kurtzman for the new series on the grounds that Coto knew that if he could save ENT, his pitch for the next Trek was going to be a post–VOY/NEM 25th Century series that would have given the fans what they were (and still are) craving. I honestly wish CBS would bring him onboard for the new series given how well he handled ENT. The show's failure was not for a lack of Manny Coto's involvement by any means, and it seems like he was unnecessarily punished for Berman and Braga's mistakes.
My biggest concern with Kurtzman is he's a conspiracy nut, and inevitably it shows in his writing. When your writing shows like Fringe or Alias... that works, but lets be honest. Transformers was enough of a disaster that he actual won a Razzie for worst screen play!
Actually, Orci is the giant conspiracy nut, (and the one who was a Trek fan out of those two,) which has honestly made it hard for me to get a read on Kurtzman's style. Transformers had problems with its second film as a result of a WGA strike, (much like the WGA strike that made TNG season two a bit of a mess,) and Kurtzman and Orci both acknowledged that it was a rushed script that largely sucked in several interviews; they knew they had to get it out the door fast, and that it was going to be a disaster as a result. The one thing I give that abomination credit for though is that they managed to film on the actual Egyptian Pyramids as a result of one of their contacts in the Egyptian government being a huge Transformers fan who managed to work quite a bit of leverage to get a camera crew onto the Pyramids. Notice that the Egyptian government was portrayed in a very positive light in that film—access to the Pyramids was almost definitely the reason for that. As far as Kurtzman's razzie win, is it really any worse than William Shatner cleaning up at the Razzies in 1988 for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier? Granted, I'd still rather see Manny Coto in charge, but I have some hope for Kurtzman now that he's no longer working with Orci as much as he used too.
Also, it's worth pointing out that the reason Roberto Orci has been dropped from so many film projects is widely rumored to be a result of alcohol abuse. (The exception to this being Power Rangers, which he was effectively forced by Paramount to back out of in order to work on Star Trek Beyond, only to be shown the airlock shortly after doing so.) Given that even Kurtzman has wanted to move away from working with him, I'm not sure how I'd feel about having him involved in this new Trek series even if he wasn't a conspiracy nut.
The thing about the Enterprise going under water, visually it was spectacular, visually I was so excited when I first saw it but beyond it looking cool where's the reason for it to be under water? Thats the problem with the new movies, they do things because they might look cool. Theres always been that style over substance in Star Trek movies. Granted it has gone to a completely new level of style due to the money now being spent on the Star Trek movies but this is why the movies are just filler for the TV series, they just maintain the franchise whilst there is no new series or that.
This is really what I think gets under people's skin about that scene; it was a flashy VFX sequence for the sake of a flashy VFX sequence. Granted, that's not always a bad things, but in a movie that was almost entirely style over substance anyway, this just made things worse. Yes, movies have to emphasize style since the entire point of paying for a movie ticket is to get an experience that's not possible at home, but the older films at least matched it in substance. All of the earlier films attempted to match style with the same level of substance, although some did so better than others. With the JJ–verse, that attempt isn't even made; it's all–phasers all the time, and that doesn't work for Trek. The movies don't even have to be the way they are though; you can have style and substance, but not when Abrams is treating Trek like it's Star Wars. In fact, a lot of what I despise about the way Abrams handled Trek are things that have me very excited about The Force Awakens, because they're concepts that work in Star Wars but not in Star Trek.
CBS simply HAVE to base this Star Trek in the prime universe.
I completely agree with you, and while I can't believe I'm saying this, one advantage to CBS All–Access for North American audiences is that we can vote with our wallets if they don't do this. As much as I dislike the All–Access concept, at least I finally have some say as a Trek fan as to how this show is handled, which might be a good incentive for CBS to avoid botching this series.
One more bit of hope for the Prime Universe though is that CBS apparently isn't too fond of Abrams. Back when Trek XI was being developed, Abrams wanted to create a new show in his universe, produced by his production company, along with all sorts of other media tie–ins like comic books and webisodes and the like. The "catch" was that these would be produced by Bad Robot (Abrams production company,) and that Abrams wanted "Prime Universe" Trek merchandise pulled if this was going to happen. That last part was non–negotiable, and CBS refused to pull stuff featuring Shatner's Kirk in favor of stuff strictly featuring Pine's Kirk, so Abrams cancelled his plans and decided not to bother putting as much effort into Trek. Depending on what media company you ask, Abrams is either a "genuis" or a "hack," with CBS generally considering him to be the latter while Disney considers him to be the former. I could very well see CBS going with the Prime Universe for that reason alone, but then again, stranger things have happened before, so I just hope CBS is smart enough to avoid setting this in anything other than the Prime Universe. Not giving fans what they were after was a large part of ENT's downfall on top of its myriad of other problems, and this is a self–inflicted wound that I don't want to see repeated a second time.
Roberto Orci was more of the conspiracy nut and he has seemingly fallen off of the planet in regards to Star Trek. He wouldn't have been my first choice though. It would have been better in my opinion to go for someone like Ron Moore or Vince Gilligan or Seth McFarlane or Bryan Fuller, Manny Coto or someone of that ilk.
Orci's sort of fallen off the planet in general, see my comment above for the reason why. Likewise, I fimrly believe that this series should be set in the 25th century, and I fully support the idea of Manny Coto being involved to make that happen. Seth McFarlane is another name I wouldn't mind having attached to this even if it's in the capacity of a writer contributing occasional episodes. I'd be a bit more reluctant to have Ronald D. Moore involved though; while he contributed some interesting stories to TNG, and arguably had a brilliant (albeit unfeasable at the time) concept for VOY, (which he later used for BSG '04,) a lot of his writing style clashes with the universe of Trek which is largely science–driven when possible. Barge of the Dead was his last contribution to Trek, and while it was a good episode of VOY, it dodged the question of how what we saw actually happened. This was great for BSG '04 which could play by different rules, but not that great for Trek.
It's so so so so so so so so so so so sooooo essential they don't bugger this up, Kurtzman and Kadin aren't the strongest of producers out there in terms of must-watch TV but neither was Vince Gilligan before Breaking Bad and now he's very sort after.
Again, I agree with you. My worry isn't that Kurtzman and Kadin are "weak" producers so much as it's that they're not really the kind of producers that seem to "get" Trek. Scorpion is probably the closest they've come to something like Trek, and based on what little I've seen of it, it's more along the lines of a "comedic action–procedural" with some scientific grounding than a "morality play" like Trek. This isn't to say that Kurztman and Kadin couldn't do something impressive, but the lack of anything similar in their respective portfolios does cause some concern for me.
Prior to ENT, the execs were willing to give TV trek the leash it needed to develop. My fear is that they treat it like ENT and don't allow it to be fine tuned and adjusted.
Trek received time to develop in a very different era than the one we're in today. ENT was produced in an era where it shouldn't have taken three years to fine–tune and adjust a series, and there's plenty of intelligent TV available now in a way that there wasn't when TNG–VOY were airing. The word "cerebral" is no longer a negative, and it shouldn't take three years to come up with an intelligent and successful TV series anymore. It should be easier to adjust faster, and while I'm for giving Trek a year or two to find its footing given how long its been off the air, it shouldn't take nearly as long as it was taking ENT to do so. The best thing CBS could do is ensure that this is in the Prime Universe, promote the hell out of it, and then stay as hands off as possible. Ideally they'll shoot it in some form of UHD or 4K DCI resolution that's on par with 35mm film, but something like green–lighting those tech specs should be the most that CBS execs do. The less they meddle with the script, the better.
I can't believe I'm typing this, but at least with the on-demand format there perhaps won't be as much pressure to appease network execs and advertisers, as well as the Outrage Industrial Complex that could force self-censorship when it comes to story themes. In other words, the show's audience will be the existing fan base and that's it, rather than the octogenarian network-TV-watcher crowd flipping thru the channels and being offended at everything that isn't Reading Rainbow.
(Just who watches CBS in 2015 anyway? People in waiting rooms in oil change shops?)
Unfortunately, with the way CBS All–Access is ad–supported, you can almost bet that the pressure to appease advertisers will still be therere. Likewise, the "Outrage Industrial Complex," (which is really an excellent take on a classic phrase in my opinion,) will likely be as strong as ever since they tend to convene online more often than not, and are typically willing to pay for new things to kvetch about. Aside from the fans, this is the other group that will inevitably watch the new Trek, the fans (good) and the people who just want something to complain about (bad) in a fit of phony outrage.
Oddly enough, while CBS has always aimed for a more mature audience, they do bring in a lot of young viewers and have typically been good with fresh faces in their content. They've got an audience that's young, but that typically has some income unlike the average 18–25 year old that the other networks aim their programming at.
TNG and DS9 had to hold a lot of stuff back when it came to themes of war, ethics, violence etc -- they were written in a different "ideas" environment than, say, the modern Battlestar Galactica that took on controversial issues head-on.
I honestly think that this was one of Trek's strong–points. The inability to just rip a story from the headlines forced the writers to be more creative, to use more allegories/metaphors, and to create a more intelligent show as a result. This is also part of what changed with ENT, the allegories/metaphors disappeared and the show just ripped ideas from the headlines, and the end result was schlock that lacked the creativity of the earlier shows. In my opinion, Trek is best when it doesn't go head–on, but relies on those allegories and metaphors to tell its morality plays. BSG '04 was good, but it was a very different show. There are some concepts that could be applied to Trek, (and that arguably were borrowed from Trek in some cases,) but others that I would prefer Trek to handled with its traditional level of gravitas. For example, The Siege of AR–588 was an excellent episode of DS9, but the reason it's memorable is that it's one of the few times when the crew actually had to leave a ship in a warzone, and actually had to tackle the cost of war head–on. If this was done more frequently, that episode would likely be far less memorable. (I also don't think there would have been much to gain by blowing off both of Nog's legs for the whole "half a man" metaphor, and feel that it would have been more of a "violence for the sake of violence" scenario.) Another good example of this would be Chain of Command, which did an excellent job of tackling the subject of torture, particularly because it wasn't too graphic about it, and focused on Picard not breaking under pressure, rather than how much blood his interrogator spilled over the number of lights in the ceiling. I'm all for Trek tackling controversial issues head–on, but it's never had an issue doing that before. What I worry about is "lazy" writing that avoids the allegories that make Trek interesting. ENT's "religous fanatics/suicide bomber" episode is a great example of what I'm getting at. In TNG–VOY they'd be a race willing to wipe themselves out over something comparable to religion, but not religion itself, but the allegory would be obvious. ENT didn't have to be creative about that sort of thing though, so we got a story that didn't make us think about who was analogous to who, and that wasn't nearly as well written as it could have been. (The ending of that episode was rather well executed though, but the rest of the episode did it a disservice, which is truly a shame.)
