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And we don’t really know how “well watched” it is. P+ hasn’t released any numbers apart from at one point claiming it was their most watched program. But of course, that doesn’t mean “well watched”. As I’ve said before. The highest point in FL is just over 300′ That is not a high mountain. Just high for Florida.

People like him need to be ignored. Anyone trying to claim DSC isn’t well-watched is fooling themselves.

It’s on its fifth season, has a high budget, and more than ever before Paramount has all the data to show if there’s an audience, being on a DTC streaming service.

If nobody was watching, it wouldn’t keep getting renewed. Period. Now, we can debate how much of the existing trek audience is watching it, but I would never lean on IMDB for that. Heavily skewed.

And at the end of the day, if DSC is 50% Trekkies, and 50% new audience, well… you’ve just increased the amount of Trekkies by 50%.

Love it or hate it, DSC is Star Trek, and there’s a lot of people watching, and i’d say the people watching are now part of the fandom. Sorry if that upsets the gatekeepers, but it’s the truth.

Pretty much agree with all of your points, however I do enjoy conversing with ML31, who always does make a case to support their views, even though I don’t agree with all of them.

They’ve been touting the numbers for the shows that have debuted since the rebrand as always setting new viewership records for P+, without actually giving specifics. Oh how I miss Nielsen ratings and box office tallies.

But I think it’s safe to assume Discovery still out-rates the rest of the lineup, the deal to claw back international rights from Netflix would only be worth it if it was doing well for them. But as you say, good for P+ is a different scale than good for another streamer. Like how Voyager settled into a “good for UPN” level of success which would not have translated as well on a bigger network.

…and?

Agreed on P+. It’s steadily become a pretty good service, and the inclusion of Paramount movies really helped. But there’s now quite a few really great exclusive shows on there, and they’re drawing subscribers who are now finding Discovery.

I’d be willing to bet that watches of Season 1 and 2 increased over the last year or two as people went back and watched it as new subscribers browsed the service.

“How I miss nielsen ratings”

I don’t miss the nielsen ratings. Neilsen ratings got great shows canned and kept terrible shows on the air longer than they should have. Horrible metric for a shows actual viewing numbers.

And it’s amazing that a Trek fan would miss them, since the original Star Trek is the PERFECT example of the flaw in Nielsen ratings.

I think Enterprise would’ve lasted longer if they paid more attention to the DVR viewings than ratings, but that’s when all of that was new and the networks wasn’t focused on it at all. Now it’s a different story today. The best example of that today was Agents of Shield. The Nielsen ratings would’ve killed that show by the fourth season but they were super strong for DVR watches and how it lasted for seven seasons.

Today studios have a more direct approach with DVR and streaming viewings. Nielsons was really not an exact science to say the least but it’s still part of the industry standard, just thankfully not the only standard anymore.

That doesn’t really matter since obviously DSC and the Trek franchise are doing very well financially on the service to allow for continual greenlights to new series, and very substantial budgets for each entry. Never so far have we heard of any budget constraints.

So it doesn’t really matter.

Nah, maybe if it was a private company with venture capital committed, but it’s publicly traded company with dividends to deliver and stockholders to answer to. Publicly traded companies simply don’t invest much in developments that don’t offer payback in 2.5 years…unless you are Apple, Facebook or Google anyway. So it’s extremely unlikely that your scenario could be the case over the amount the years that they are into this now. Can I prove this, no. But I think it’s extremely unlikely.

Better storytelling and writing is subjective. I don’t like it, you may not like it, but it’s awfully haughty and obnoxious to sit there and claim “people who want better TV need to be served.”

Get over yourself, you’re not the barometer of quality storytelling. I mean, there are plenty of people out there who’d say the same about what you consider well-written Trek, who view it as poorly written TV, or who look down on sci-fi in general as populist tripe.

Well, yes, I’m more of a sci-fi fan than a soap opera fan. And I believe that a ship like Discovery should be run by folks who conduct themselves as professionals – rather than indulging in lots of kisses, hugs, tears and cheers, etc. Roddenberry once compared the operation of the starship Enterprise to the running of the aircraft carrier Enterprise. No one in their right mind would turn over the operation of that iconic aircraft carrier to the collection of emotional misfits aboard the Discovery (Saru probably being the only exception; perhaps the doctor as well). Credible characters help with that all-important ‘suspension of disbelief’.

I wouldn’t say DIS isn’t working for “a lot” of the fandom. Outside of this website, the show gets an awful lot of praise and fans. It’s more likely that there is a small but VERY vocal subset of the fans who need to endlessly complain about the show and insist that it’s on the verge of being cancelled and Alex Kurtzman has been fired. Looking at online review sites such Rotten Tomatoes should never be taken as gospel since there have been shows and films that have been ‘review bombed’ there in order to purposefully drive down scores by angry fans- think The Last Jedi, Ghostbusters 2016, Batwoman etc.

Star Trek has been used to break the ice for Paramount for ages. It got them a space in the sci-fi franchise business post-Star Wars. It got them lucrative first run syndication deals that cut out the middle men at networks. It got them guaranteed extra attention for their own network, then their streaming service.

As with what happened with UPN, eventually something, be it Halo or a Taylor Sheridan show or something else, will overshadow Trek, which they’ve probably squeezed about as much out of fandom as they could by now and now just need to hold our interest. Hopefully it’s something more prestigious than WWE Smackdown! or America’s Next Top Model this time. Star Trek tends to have a ceiling of popularity which is great behind a paywall, but they can’t expect it to be more than a building block to expand the service if they want to compete with the big boys.

Again, if Discovery was a huge hit from day one, then they wouldn’t have moved it 930 years into the future lol. What’s the saying,, if it isn’t broke…

I get it, you really like the show personally. But you have to also admit there was a LOT of acrimony about it, especially in its first season. And they clearly knew that but from season 2 on, they tried to course correct every issue fans were complaining about from giving the Klingons hair to just making the show feel a little more fun and upbeat. That’s why Pike and Spock was brought on, they knew they had to make it feel a little more ‘TOS’ as possible. Because also remember they said several times we wouldn’t even SEE Spock on Discovery and they changed course on that too.

Clearly this very small but vocal audience has had a profound influence on the show since it’s almost a completely different show now from first season. No Star Trek show has had so many changes since DS9. That was probably the most altered show in the franchise until Discovery showed up. At least DS9 was able to stay in its time period.

All that said, I think Discovery is much more liked today for sure. But look at all the work they done to achieve that. And this is all good IMO. I never understand why some people (not you) get upset when you simply point out the fact the show was changed due to fan pressure? A. EVERY spin off show was changed due to fan pressure of some kind and B. It proves the producers and writers care. They probably see the problems themselves and course correct. If you don’t want your show prematurely cancelled, you simply try to improve it.

But even now, Discovery still seems like a pretty divisive show today. And it’s not just THIS website. Again, this is my point. Go to ANY website where fans can rate the show: Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, Metacritic, etc. Discovery is the lowest ranked show out of all the Star Trek shows. Seriously, just click them on and have a look. Stop acting like people only hate the show on one website. I’m not trying to put down the show, I’m only looking at the data we can find and based on that, Discovery still has a lot of issues overall in the fanbase WHEN compared to the other shows.

It doesn’t mean more people don’t like it or even most people, but it’s also very hated on the other side to a crazy degree. If you can’t admit that fine, but this fallacy it’s really a super popular show that is praised doesn’t show up in reality.

Bryan Fuller was talking about an anthology show. This is not remotely the same thing. That and the fact he was talking about moving era to era with new crews, ie, TOS era, TOS films, TNG era and eventually a post Nemesis era. Nowhere was it suggested it would just jump 900 years past everything we know lol.

The reason it didn’t fly was because he basically wanted a complete reset every season with new actors and sets and it would’ve been very costly. That’s apples and oranges. And nowhere has it ever been even implied they moved the show to follow what Fuller was thinking. If anything, they basically ignored everything Fuller wanted for the show from season two on and hence why Burnham is now a Captain when she was suppose to be a lower ranked officer.

LOL that’s literally what I just said. It DIDN’T do that. It skipped Kirk and Picard completely and just went to a new setting. This is just spin man, c’mon. Discovery didn’t move because of that or had anything to do with Fuller’s original vision.

And dude, you’re just cherry picking what his entire concept was suppose to be. This is full idea that he wanted:

 “Fuller sat with CBS executives to deliver his pitch. It wasn’t just for a ‘Trek’ series but for multiple serialized anthology shows that would begin with the ‘Discovery’ prequel, journey through the eras of Captain James T. Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and then go beyond to a time in ‘Trek’ that’s never been seen before. “The original pitch was to do for science fiction what ‘American Horror Story’ had done for horror,” Fuller says. “It would platform a universe of ‘Trek’ shows.” CBS countered with the plan of creating a single serialized show and then seeing how it performed. It was a fair compromise, yet demonstrated the first conflict of vision between a powerful company and an inventive writer that would eventually lead to a dramatic falling-out.”

Fuller was suggesting what I said, have different characters go through different eras, one by one like in a normal timeline and eventually go to the post-Nemesis era which my guess is where Picard is currently at, not 900 years into the future lol. That was strictly what Alex Kurtzman came up with.

Nothing in this original concept has anything to do with Discovery. The biggest point that you didn’t cite being the American Horror Story angle. I don’t know if you seen that show but I’ve seen a little of it in different seasons and that show is an anthology show. Every season starts with a different premise, setting and characters. They all have a beginning, middle and end and then reset it next season. Some of the actors even come back but still play totally different roles from previous seasons.

THAT’S what Bryan Fuller wanted. An actual anthology show where nothing is connected season to season. It just sounds like he wanted to set every season in a new era and with different characters.

His idea went even farther than what I was suggesting because it sounds like he wanted multiple shows. But maybe all he meant was each show would just go one season and then restart it with another show? Either way he was talking about something much more ambitious (and expensive lol).

Discovery is not an anthology show. It doesn’t completely reset itself. It’s a continuation of the same show with the same characters and it’s not going to a different era every season. They simply jumped to another setting. It’s apples and oranges.

It’s not the same thing man. It had ZIP to do with Fuller’s original idea. And no, you’re still wrong. Read the post again, the IDEA was for SEPARATE shows to be in a different era. Discovery was just going to be in the era it was originally in for one season. After that, then a new story with new characters would show up next in a different time period and setting. And then a new crew and time period after that. It would go on like that season after season. That was the idea.

It wasn’t about ONE ship “time jumping” to other eras. That was not anything remotely related to his idea. Based on Fuller’s idea, Discovery story would’ve just ended after it’s first season probably after it defeated the Klingons. And then the next season would have a new ship and a completely new set of characters doing something 20 years later in the Beta quadrant or something.

Anyone can read what the guy was envisioning. You tried to cherry pick the most basic idea leaving out the fact he was talking about an anthology show that would be set in various time periods and tell different stories with different crews and ships. That has nothing to do with Discovery. Again, apples and oranges.

Aaron Harberts, one of the original EP before he got the boot said back in season one when the moaning over visual canon started that they would reconcile the issue in season 2. His words:

“We have ten years until the original series comes into play. It is a challenge creatively because we have lots of choices in terms of how do we reconcile this [Spore] Drive? This surrogate daughter of Sarek? How do we reconcile these things the closer we get to the original series? That’s going to be a big discussion that we have in season two.”

SMG later said that season 2 will explain why Spock never mentioned his sister in TOS. Her words:

“Alex Kurtzman said ‘I know a lot of people are asking why he didn’t ever mention her.’ He was like, ‘Trust us. There will be an explanation.’”

So now we know what the ‘explanation’ was. They jumped 930 years in the future to keep fans from moaning about these issues for the next five seasons. Problem solved.

Trying to spin it had anything to do with trying to fulfill Fuller’s ‘vision’ because he mentioned other stories would take place in future periods is like suggesting Star Wars was actually Roddenberry’s vision because it took place in space and ships fought each other.

Seriously.

Yea, I appreciate that. I think at the end of the day it’s likely we are both partially right on this. The Fuller concept was an anthology and not just a time jump by one crew, but the time jump part of it gave Kurtzman and company an easy excuse to do a soft reboot of the series to improve it.

I would say that the show isn’t as well received with the “internet fanboy” types that include all of us who post on Trek sites daily. However, I know many casual fans, and nearly all of them are in the like-to-love DSC range of opinions.

True but they kept to his basic outline so this was always going to be the show. He made it clear the first season was going to deal with the Klingon war and he personally approved of the Orc-Klingons which went down brilliantly with fans. ;)

Maybe if he stayed it would’ve been a stronger and less eradicate first season but my guess the dark and cynical tone would’ve been the same regardless.

And your second paragraph is my entire point. People fell in love with second season BECAUSE they got Pike who just represented what people thought of Star Trek. People liked Lorca, but he isn’t a character that fans aspire to and for most fans someone like Pike are the type of characters they want in Star Trek. Even Michael Burnham, the main star started out as a mutineer first episode in. Not exactly inspirational or uplifting lol.

That’s why there was such an outpouring for a Pike show when Discovery was only in it’s second season. The show barely started and fans were already clamoring for something different. Because that’s exactly the kind of tone they wanted in both a main character and a show. If Discovery had Pike in first season as the main lead, my guess is it would’ve been a more popular show (even if not a better one) from the start. Fans wanted to see a more optimistic and Trek vibe season one clearly missed the mark on.

That’s really the only point I’m making.