adam_grif wrote:Take Voyager for example. It's premise is rock-solid awesome. It should have been a great show. But it wasn't, because of incompetent writing and production from the top.
The fact that shit writers write shit scripts is totally unrelated to the fact that good writers start churning out mediocre scripts as time wears on because they've already done so much with the characters and it's hard to keep writing fresh stories and situations. Monster of the week shows suffer from this more than shows with lots of arcs, but they're hardly immune.
Of course they're not immune, the point I am making is that a show doesn't become mediocre after a set time but because of the writing staff getting tired of it. The idea that 'there's only so much you can write' doesn't cut it. It's a simplistic explanation. If the problem is weak scripts, the first place you should look to is the writers. That's why I agree with Stark. The idea that there's a fixed age to a show is ridiculous. How can it explain shows which start off shit, like Voyager, and never improve for their entire run? How does it explain shows that start off weak and don't get good until it's third year, like TNG, when a new creative team (with a new vision for the show) came onboard?
You propose replacing the writers with other competent writers as a solution, but that's something of a double edged sword, because new writers rarely know the characters as well and you get inconsistent characterizations or in bad cases total character derailments. Not just characters of course, the universe as a whole will inevitably shift from the vision that the original writers had, which can be good or bad. Nothing here is an obvious silver bullet solution that will guarantee quality across the run for arbitrary lengths of time.
That was one thing I proposed, and I never said it was a silver bullet solution. One of the things I've already mentioned is that Jeri Taylor took over from Piller, and this had a drastic effect on the show's production. She ended Piller's policy of accepting outside script submissions and she kept everything in-house. That's like the complete opposite of what you should do. People like Ron Moore got into the show based on Piller's policy. That's what you need to keep a show fresh: have an inviting work environment that allows new talent to emerge.
Marcus Aurelius wrote:Well, you have to separate the merits of the premise and the merits of the writing staff.
Griffo was talking about the merits of the premise failing to provide, which I don't agree with. The premise of a show and its execution is only as good as the writers are capable of delivering.
Voyager did have an decent premise, not really great since it was essentially yet another modification of TOS' premise, but okay nevertheless.
On this I disagree. TOS and TNG were about going out to the frontier, voluntarily leaving behind earth, to seek out new planets and have adventures on them with crazy aliens. But they could always return for repairs, supplies, and so on. Voyager was a modification but I think that doesn't give it enough credit. The idea behind Voyager was one small ship stranded on the other side of the galaxy where returning home would take years if not decades. They're not voluntarily out there. And they're not trying to push out even further, they've already gone farther than any other ship has ever gone before. And they're trying to return home, not go explorin' with wild abandon. That premise actually is really intriguing and promising, and it's almost a total reversal of TOS and TNG, especially when you consider half the crew are renegades and not even starfleet. Yet what happens by the end of the first episode? Even the Maquis are wearing starfleet colours. They abandoned their premise right at the start.
Would it still had been possible to make a good show using a modification of the original Star Trek premise? Probably, with the right creative team, but there are not a lot of good examples of that happening in long-running franchises. You could say the Doctor Who is one and I would tend to agree, but then again Doctor Who's premise is very non-restrictive; you can do almost anything with it as long as it still has the Doctor. With Star Trek you had by Voyager a large amount of historical baggage including fan expectations of what a proper ST series should look like. DS9 was always an offshoot of that tree, but I don't think it was better just because it had Piller's creative leadership. It is simply easier to make a good show when you have genuinely more room to maneuver. So show premises may not have a fixed expiration date, but extending a certain premise becomes more difficult as it gathers baggage, and new writers can't eject all that baggage without alienating a significant portion of the fans.
I agree with your views here, but the problem is you're not recognising the sheer ambitious potential a premise like Voyager's had. So Star Trek has a lot of baggage? Hey why don't we take one small ship and strand them in another part of the galaxy where there is none of that baggage. Old adversaries like the Klingons and Romulans becoming boring? Well we're on the other side of the galaxy so none of those guys should even be a factor. But several episodes into it we've already met a Romulan, one of the Maquis crew is actually a Cardassian spy (who predictably and unbelievably turns on the crew to side with a the kazon). There's even episodes which take place on earth for fuck's sake. There was one episode in season 2 that had Harry Kim wake up and he was on earth. Species 8470 builds a mock-up of Starfleet Command on some planet to try and fool Voyager's crew. The Doctor gets beamed onto a Federation ship that's been taken over by Romulans. They even bump into a Klingon ship.
All of that -
all of it - due to the writers not even having the balls to stay true to the creative vision that supposedly drove this show's creation. Yes the longer a show continues the harder it is to keep things fresh and original and engaging, but I don't take that as a given. It's a danger for any show, but I agree with Stark, there is nothing intrinsic about television that says a show must become stale after x years have passed. It is more accurate to say that the production team has a limited shelf life and once you acknowledge that you can guard against it or prepare for it.
