Is CBS Star Trek going to be a household name this generation.

[Thebestoftherest]

By that I mean, is any of the shows, Piccard, Discovery, and Lower Decks going to be popular enough that some people would know about it even if they are not the biggest Trek fans.

[CrashGordon94]

I doubt it, not because of any quality thing but simply because that hasn't been much of a case for anything after TNG.

[CharlesPhipps]

Depends if there's a movie.

[Thebestoftherest]

Depends if there's a movie.

Yeah, the movies do help.

I think part of it is, I don't think anyone who isn't a trek fan would know much about discovery or lower decks. Same way DS9 never really got into pop culture as TNG.

[CharlesPhipps]

Depends if there's a movie.

Yeah, the movies do help.

I think part of it is, I don't think anyone who isn't a trek fan would know much about discovery or lower decks. Same way DS9 never really got into pop culture as TNG.

I pretty much agree. But that's also because there's a lot more things LIKE Star Trek out there than there ever have been before.

[clearspira]

The fact is that only two Star Trek shows have any great cultural osmosis and that is TOS and TNG. Even if you are not a Trek fan, you have at least heard of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. Next on that list is VOY and that is solely because of Jeri Ryan's tits. You can call me dirty for saying that, but all I ask is that you are honest about it whilst doing so. Those are probably the most famous breasts in science fiction barring Leia's bikini.

Point is, Trek had a Golden Age between TWOK and the end of TNG. We then very much entered a Silver Age and then never recovered no matter how you rate DS9 and beyond as that was the exact moment in which non-Trek fans would find it very hard to name you a single character.

Oh, and FYI, if the fourth Kelvin film cannot get funding, there ain't no one on Earth who is going to fund a Michael Burnham film. Its just not happening.

[Link8909]

Depends if there's a movie.

Yeah, the movies do help.

I think part of it is, I don't think anyone who isn't a trek fan would know much about discovery or lower decks. Same way DS9 never really got into pop culture as TNG.

I pretty much agree. But that's also because there's a lot more things LIKE Star Trek out there than there ever have been before.

Indeed.

Also while there was The Animated Series, The Next Generation is was many people consider the first sequel to The Original Series, with a gap of 18 years between the two, that's along time without new Trek, so the hype was real for The Next Generation.

But not only that we now have so much Star Trek content, and with people being very jaded nowadays, and with other television shows able to have the same level of quality as films now and do so much more like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, it would take something really special and groundbreaking to have the same cultural impacted as The Next Generation or even The Original Series did.

[Madner Kami]

Those are probably the most famous breasts in science fiction barring Leia's bikini.

Hm, I'd say Jolene "I can give Optimus Prime a blowjob" Blalock is a proverbially hot contender there.

[Thebestoftherest]

The fact is that only two Star Trek shows have any great cultural osmosis and that is TOS and TNG. Even if you are not a Trek fan, you have at least heard of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. Next on that list is VOY and that is solely because of Jeri Ryan's tits. You can call me dirty for saying that, but all I ask is that you are honest about it whilst doing so. Those are probably the most famous breasts in science fiction barring Leia's bikini.

Point is, Trek had a Golden Age between TWOK and the end of TNG. We then very much entered a Silver Age and then never recovered no matter how you rate DS9 and beyond as that was the exact moment in which non-Trek fans would find it very hard to name you a single character.

Oh, and FYI, if the fourth Kelvin film cannot get funding, there ain't no one on Earth who is going to fund a Michael Burnham film. Its just not happening.

Your not wrong, I would worry it would be kinda like a modern star trek 5 if it did.

Frankly I'm surprised there aren't talks of a TNG remake.

[Captain Crimson]

By that I mean, is any of the shows, Piccard, Discovery, and Lower Decks going to be popular enough that some people would know about it even if they are not the biggest Trek fans.

That sure is an interesting hypothesis since honestly, I would say very few things in the recent years, over the last decade, has earned enough of a following and fame and popularity to stay long enough in geek circles like those of old, where hushed reverence still follows decades after the release date. Sure, you can pin down many factors that may explain it, but to my money, I think it's just an age-old truth, that the studios underestimated all those projects, which were tiny and laughably underfunded jokes to them in terms of the production cost and values. The more support which they give it, higher spending is implemented, the more they take on a controlling role that smothers it out of their short-sighted, self-sabotaging need to make back buck in the present, I guess the same viewpoint they have for their employees, treating them as a business expense rather than a long-term asset to make even more profit past the dreams of avarice. Don't call me a lefty socialist, either, please. That's just my take on some of the corporate abuses, not all companies.

The only outlier to this I can imagine would be the way Mr. Lucas ran his company right up until the time that he sold it, and yet there are exceptions here, as something like TCW, with so much gushing praise heaped upon it, drowns out a lot of other viewpoints, like the way it still received criticisms on the changes to lore, and the viewership fell from 4-3 million to 2-1 million late into its run. While you could blame many factors, at the end of the day, although it will remain in the public eye for decades to come, it is standing in the shadow of the older lore that it was never meant to fit within, so it was literally the reboot before the reboot, but few seem able to make this connection. It is an interesting phenomenon where the diametrically opposed responses of both hate and love can equally drown out a lot of potential criticisms made that could try to help the story grow, people who get too ingrained into their perceived mindsets and confirmation biases. Certainty is a fine thing. Arrogance is not. But while Mr. Lucas was never the micromanager which destroys creativity, as his reputation became late into his tenure that was being falsely perpetuated by all the brown-nosers on the payroll, I'd contend even Mr. Bob Iger is not a micromanager that way either, and such policies that would smother it fall squarely upon Ms Kennedy's shoulders.

Another factor could be the slavery to the nostalgia market we have, all due to the fact of the '90s being the first most perfectly preserved snapshot of this select moment in history, and the advent of CGI, so corporate profit-minded laziness is at an all-time high, compared to past years. It was always there, but our tools in the day and age have enhanced all the flaws we'd had present in the system. A schizophrenic blend of factory production and inbreeding among the entertainment we consume. It's why for me, back when TFA was generating so much buzz, I felt their use of the promise of "practical effects" was a smokescreen tactic. Practical effects mean nothing if you don't have a plan, have only piecemeal ideas on where to go, and all these narcissistic Hollywood personalities stepping in to ruin things - refer to Ms. Kennedy's firing of many directors and the prompting of several reshoots, to go back to the example above.

So to sum it all down, corporate excesses and advanced tools running ahead of our game would be why, IMO, such stories nowadays don't generally have long shelf life in geek circles, and of those that might, we've seen very few of the same ilk in the new '10s. Most of it's already been done, and there's little freshness one could derive to keep it going longer. I would be very skeptical if they do, at least to all but supercasuals to fandom. In that respect, I would peg stories like SGU and TCW as the last of an era. I've heard great things about entertainment since, don't get me wrong. But, do you really see even something widely beloved now like, say, The Orville being mentioned decades from now? And the ST have their own flaws. It's too many choices, too much to absorb, all at once - and humans were never designed to take in so much information in such a short timespan, so we are all running on sensory overload and it's become, in a sense, a way to cope with the strife of the daily grind, which is the reason I'd pin down to lowering audience expectations. It's a modern-day type of substance abuse. And now in the future, we have our own subcultures within subcultures to fall into, and the end of the entertainment monoculture.

Just how I see it in this long, rambling essay.