According to Variety: Source: https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-renewed-lower-decks-ending-1235969332/ Strange New Worlds is getting a 4th season, which is great news, but Star Trek Lower Decks will end with Season 5. I hate this because I feel Lower Decks could go another two or more seasons easily, but that's the latest news out of Paramount.
I mean, it looks like 5 years is the new 7 years, but I can't help feeling that we're kind of getting shortchanged, since most seasons are only about 13 episodes, give or take a few.
It's not like attention spans have lowered any. Gen Zers are binging through the old shows with their 22 episode seasons just fine.
Yep. Honestly, I see it as budget slashing. Paramount wants to make money without spending money, and we're seeing shows that could easily run 7 to 10 seasons being cut now in their prime. Some folks might think that's good, a show ends while it's still popular, but at the same time it also shows they're willing to slash anything if it saves them a dime. We deserve better than that. Granted, the bean counters have always been in charge, but there used to be creatives at the top who could wrangle them into going along with the vision for a while longer.
Y'know what I think a part of it is? Internet media doesn't carry the gatekeeping authoritative heft paper media used to. TNG became a phenom in large part thanks to TV Guide. If TV Guide put you on the cover, you'd made it. Digital cable and streaming have built in guide, and there's no one magic magazine that everyone reads anymore. We have to word-of-mouth that shit now. And who are we? We're not TV Guide.
The lockdown brought them into the fold. They started watching TNG and Voyager first then everything else, but Paramount hadn’t caught on to that and maybe still haven’t. Star Trek is a niche show, but they want to make it into a MCU type franchise and it’s just not that. This probably why they’re doing Star Trek The Beginning or whatever the title is, They want to bring in new fans with yet another prequel so people will watch TOS and TNG.
I don't think it's that binary. MCU? No. But neither is it "niche". It's a pretty huge fucking multi-generational niche. Paramount's reach may exceed their grasp, but y'know what? So be it. We get more content that way. The accountants will work out all the pluses and minuses. It'll all hash out. Always has.
I don't buy the "too much of a good thing "argument either. The culture warriors (I didn't say CHUD for a change ) had their whines about the entire run of Discovery, and the first 2 seasons of Picard, but SNW and LD have been worth it. If it were this steady downward slope that the haters are trying to create by willpower, those shows wouldn't exist, much less be so good. Some of it will be good, some of it will be bad, but let them try. Even Marvel-Netflix had fuckin' "Iron Fist". Did anyone go "pee yoo! Throw Marvel-Netflix away!! It's ruined!! ". No, we got fucking Punisher and Defenders after that. We only get that shit with Star Trek. Its been going on since DS9. The first couple season struggled, and it was like "kill the whole franchise!! ". Think of what we would have missed if we listened to those dingbats.
Seems dumb to cancel Lower Decks in it's prime when so much "modern" Trek is built around "let's bring back those actors from the 90s" and "let's bring back those characters from the 60s." You have the cast and crew together now, just use them now. How long until we get a gritty follow-up series about Old Man Boimler, a prequel about the adventures of the Cerritos before Tendi came onboard, and a show for preschoolers featuring Eugene Cordero as the voice of holo-Rutherford?
But that universe doesn't exist. You've got one and a half shows you don't like next to two you do. Stop being binary.
Very excited that SNW will continue but kind of bummed out that LD is getting canned. Lower Decks deserves more.
It's a little more complicated than that. Sumner Redstone (who owned Paramount/Viacom/CBS/and a bunch of other shit), kept putting his girlfriends on the payroll for huge sums of money to do absolutely nothing (other than hang on his arm). Eventually, his kids and girlfriends got in a nasty fight over control of the company. It cost everyone involved a bunch of money and prevented them from doing a lot of things that they probably should have. One of Redstone's daughters wound up controlling the company and she's rumored to not really have the best business smarts, and is refusing to do a lot of things that might help the company's finances for one reason or another. There's reportedly a lot of speculation that if things don't change, she'll be forced out by either the board or her relatives.
I have a science fiction story in my head. Well, one of many. But, this one is … more … thought through and fleshed out. Why don’t I just sit down and write it? Because it’s so much fucking easier to watch someone else’s imagination, read their stories, than to sit down and type out my story. Now. I could sit here and bitch because every story on tv and at the cinema isn’t the story I would have written, but that seems like as much work as just writing my story to begin with. The Critical Drinker is can be funny. But, his job is to “critically” review movies. It’s literally what he gets paid to do. I don’t like his style but some people do and that’s ok. I like to make fun of him too. If I ever see him, it’s my deepest desire to ask him how many times in 1 minute can he say Portperson. Anyway, the reason for bringing him up, is, you do not have to do his schtick for him. If we want to watch a movie, we can go see it or, if we want a negative rant because he doesn’t like some actress, we can go to you tube. So you could leave the critical reviews to the professionals or write your own goddamn story.
I want to see the Enterprise-E die on LD. Whatever it was, it was stupid, pointless, and embarrassed the Hell out of Worf. That makes it LD fodder.
I just wanted to see if I could get a spit-take with that bit, I genuinely don't know what you're referring to about Worf being embarrassed.
Picard made a passing reference to something very bad happening to the Enterprise-E, and Worf said it wasn't his fault. It was a blink-and-you'll miss it moment, but obviously very significant.