Fade In: Michael Piller's BTS look at writing Insurrection

[Srelex]

What's sad is that Voyager and Enterprise could have really been their own unique series had the production team been slightly different.

[JME2]

What's sad is that Voyager and Enterprise could have really been their own unique series had the production team been slightly different.

Agreed.

To expand on my earlier post, the revelations from Piller's memoirs were simultaneously disturbing and enlightening. I've thought for years that VGR's problems lay primarily in how Berman and Braga handled the early seasons and how it negatively impacted the progression of the show (the failed conflict between the Maquis and Starfleet, the lack of character development, etc.).

Now, that excerpt shows that VGR was doomed before they'd even begun shooting the pilot. What a waste...

[Big Orange]

VOY and ENT were creatively hamstrung mainly because they weren't syndicated (unlike TNG and DS9) and more under the control of Paramount through the pissant UPN network. And what worked well for Rick Berman and Paramount in 1991 did not cut the mustard as well in 2001. And there was the 1990s explosion of fantasy/sci-fi TV shows in the wake of TNG's great success to spread the "geek" viewers more thinly and mount more pressure on to the Trek franchiese (The X-Files, Stargate SG-1, Time Trax, Nowhere Man, SeaQuest DSV, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Babylon 5, Lexx, Dark Skies, FarScape, The Outer Limits, Highlander: The Series, Sliders, Space: Above and Beyond, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess, etc, etc, etc).

[Stark]

Are you for real? You think Nowhere Man and SAAB put pressure on the Trek ratings?

[JME2]

I'm not discounting UPN or Paramount's involvement in the decline represented by VGR and ENT. They contributed certainly, but Piller's own words show that VGR was flawed and screwed from the moment of inception. The narcissism of Berman and the greediness of the backers only added to the quagmire.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Did you read the same post as I did, Stark? Because on my screen it looks like he mentions fourteen other shows along with those two, which, collectively, probably did put some pressure on Star Trek.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Are you for real? You think Nowhere Man and SAAB put pressure on the Trek ratings?

Probably not by themselves, considering their relatively low ratings and short lifespan, but they still contributed a little. The basic idea still has merit: there were a lot more sci-fi and fantasy shows in the mid to late 1990s than there had been in the late 1980s or early 1990s. When TNG started in 1987 nearly all of the early 1980s shows had already gone off the air.

[Stark]

Unless they're in competing timeslots, you'd have to posit some limit to how much scifi people would watch. It's far more sensible to say ST sucking was a bad idea when there were plenty of alternatives.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Unless they're in competing timeslots, you'd have to posit some limit to how much scifi people would watch. It's far more sensible to say ST sucking was a bad idea when there were plenty of alternatives.

That's just a modification of the same basic hypothesis. Season 1 of TNG sucked apart from a couple of episodes pretty badly, but people still kept watching because it was almost the only scifi show on TV at the time.

[Stark]

'Ratings pressure' suggests to me that it had to struggle in some way to retain viewers; this is a pretty disingenuous way of saying 'it struggled to hold viewers because it sucked'. Most of those other shows listed sucked too (most of them worse), and like I just said, it's not like people watch only 1 scifi show, is it now? Does NCIS put 'ratings pressure' on a different crime show on a different timeslot? Why does someone watching the X-Files put 'pressure' on Star Trek when they're not even on the same day, have similar plots or themes, etc?

Claiming fucking Dark Skies and Buffy drew away the core ST audience is something that needs evidence.

[Stofsk]

What was Voyager's ratings like anyway? It would be interesting to see when it started to fall, because I for one gave up on Voyager fairly early.

(this is also why I would have preferred TNG continue on - TNG season seven dropped in quality, but was still ok and viewable - Voyager basically sucked straight away)

[Stark]

It'd be interesting to compare Voyager's ratings to that of a show like nBSG; nBSG apparently never really got great ratings (4-6million I believe), whereas I imagine the fanbloc prevented Voyager getting terrible ratings, at least domesticaly.

A quick look at ratings suggests Voyager was all over the place throughout the run, ranging from 2 to 7 (I imagine millions). So sometimes it rated shit, sometimes it rated comparably to later shows.

By contrast farscapeworld.com suggests Farscape never rose above the ratings of the worst Voyager episode throughout.

[SeaTrooper]

[quote="Stark"]It'd be interesting to compare Voyager's ratings to that of a show like nBSG; nBSG apparently never really got great ratings (4-6million I believe), whereas I imagine the fanbloc prevented Voyager getting terrible ratings, at least domesticaly.

A quick look at ratings suggests Voyager was all over the place throughout the run, ranging from 2 to 7 (I imagine millions). So sometimes it rated shit, sometimes it rated comparably to later shows.

By contrast farscapeworld.com suggests Farscape never rose above the ratings of the worst Voyager episode throughout.[/quote\]

Which is a real bugger, since I felt Farscape was only getting better and better as it went along. (sigh)

[RedImperator]

You can't really make a direct comparison between a cable show like Farscape or nBSG and Voyager. Network broadcasts have much higher ratings expectations, even shows on a shitty network like UPN. nBSG was considered a smash success for Sci-Fi with ratings that would have gotten it canceled after four episodes on NBC.

Anyhow, the idea that somehow Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (really? for serious?) was cutting into Trek's slice of the pie is fucking ridiculous. I know this is going to come as a terrible shock, but nerds don't and can't make or break a show. TNG was averaging something like eight or nine million viewers a night, and I guarantee you most of those people weren't wearing Spock ears. A science fiction TV show is competing against mainstream shows in its time slot, and needs mainstream viewers to survive unless it's buried somewhere on Deep Cable like nBSG was.

[CDiehl]

A science fiction TV show is competing against mainstream shows in its time slot, and needs mainstream viewers to survive unless it's buried somewhere on Deep Cable like nBSG was.

Thank you for saying this. Science-fiction and other genre programs also have a few strikes against them. They are expensive to produce right off the bat, and tend to have a limited audience. Also, they tend to attract an annoying, hard to please fanbase which turns off more conventional viewers and who do annoying things when a show is cancelled. Mainstream programs, such as cop shows, lawyer shows and shows set in an office, are cheaper and easier to make, don't have to explain lots of things, people don't feel weird saying they watch them, people don't complain about inconsistencies or start stupid PR stunt campaigns to get them back on the air if they're cancelled. Given the choice between Geek Cred: the Series and Generic Cop Drama #168, most companies pick the latter because it's cheaper, more likely to make money and most people can understand what they're watching even if they come to it later.

[JME2]

You can't really make a direct comparison between a cable show like Farscape or nBSG and Voyager. Network broadcasts have much higher ratings expectations, even shows on a shitty network like UPN. nBSG was considered a smash success for Sci-Fi with ratings that would have gotten it canceled after four episodes on NBC.

Yeah. Same with the Stargate shows.

[Skylon]

You can't really make a direct comparison between a cable show like Farscape or nBSG and Voyager. Network broadcasts have much higher ratings expectations, even shows on a shitty network like UPN. nBSG was considered a smash success for Sci-Fi with ratings that would have gotten it canceled after four episodes on NBC.

Yeah. Same with the Stargate shows.

In addition, Voyager was on in an era where shows weren't on DVD a month after a season concluded, or streaming shows online...BSG made up for some of its ratings deficiencies in those areas.

[Instant Sunrise]

TNG also had the advantage that cable didn't have the same amount of penetration that Voyager had when Voyager was running compared to TNG.

By the way, the share statistic is the more useful one. the rating only matters if you are an advertiser. The rating is the percentage of people who own a TV watching your show when it airs. The share is the percentage of people were were watching a particular show out of the people who were watching television at the time.

Ratings compete with everything that is not watching television, the share is just the competition from other TV shows.