As mentioned I’ve been watching Star Trek Discovery, and I think one of my biggest complaints is how expensive the show is. The sets are super high tech, sleek, and ultra futuristic looking. There is significant use of CGI in every episode and it all looks pristine, with high octane spaceship fights, sweeping panoramic views of alien landscapes, and ultra cool energy weapons and other effects as needed for the various sci fi gizmos and phenominon. The alien make up is elaborate and detailed, with the redesigned Klingons looking, at least by season 2, as both recognizably Klingon but incredibly beautifully realized, the Kelpiens looking truly alien and unique, and cyborgs like Airiam and Detmer looking awesome and seamless. Moreover, the action sequences and fights are all intricately choreographed and exciting, and every single one culminates in someone lifting someone else up one handed by the neck, which was impressive the first time and honestly somewhat baffling the eight time. Every camera shot is panning or spiraling around someone or even going upside down.
And I don’t like any of it very much. Like, its all good stuff - but I kinda don’t care? I watch Star Trek, frankly, for the dialogue and politics and moral dilemmas. Star Trek to me is about a bunch of nerds sitting around a conference table talking about the trolley problem, basically. I don’t need fancy space fights for it - some static models and a cheap pew pew phaser is fine. I don’t need choreographed fights - give me a single karate chop to the back of the neck. Wasting time and money on those things when they really don’t add anything to the experience seems pointless - but worse, every second of screen time taken up by spaceship fights and choreographed punching is a second less of talking around a conference table. I wouldn’t say that I necessarily WANT Star Trek to look cheap, but I would say that I certainly don’t care how expensive it looks.
And not only is each second spent on fancy CGI and fights less time to be spent on other things, but its also just less time in general. If they spent less on all those things, they could divert more budget to paying actors and writers and camera men and give us more episodes with better writing, leasing to exponentially more time around the conference table talking about all different kinds of trolleys. Boring scifi shows about conversations around conference tables may not be objectively better than high octane action scifi, but I do honestly prefer it, and its way cheaper, and its what Star Trek mostly was until Enterprise was cancelled.
And it’s not just Star Trek. In general it feels every show is spending tons of money looking polished and expensive when I would rather them spend money making them well written, well acted, and just plain more. Seasons used to be 23-26 episodes long. Now they are ten or eight or six. I know this is a consequence of the streaming model but I feel like a new model needs to be designed, that can make cheaper shows with more episodes on a quicker timeline. A cheaper show also would not need to reach nearly as many people to be profitable, and the more time writers and actors get working on one show, the better they can refine their characters, the story, and the world, and the better they get. This is not universally the case, but you can definitely seen it in a lot of Star Treks that they get better over time as they refine things, as well as in long running comedies like Bob’s Burger’s. Obviously there are more factors, and if there is a lot of turnover in a writer’s room - as is standard for streaming shows - it won’t happen, but it SHOULD happen. If we want compelling shows, it needs to happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment