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Comment by decremental | Hacker News Reader

Kurtzman is a hack fraud but even if he wasn't attached to it there's basically no way TNG-era Trek was going to get made today. It was a product of its time. That said, Roddenberry gets too much credit compared to people like Dorothy Fontana and Rick Berman who had a huge hand in what we think about when we get nostalgic about Star Trek.

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I felt that Star Trek writing never got serious and real until Ronald D. Moore came to the scene. His TNG episodes set a new course for Trek; DS9 was full of phenomenal writing; and the premise of Voyager had tons of hope. Then, he moved on, and as many sci-fi fans know he threw himself into the BSG reboot and other excellent projects. The Moore years were Trek's best years.

> there's basically no way TNG-era Trek was going to get made today.

I mentioned up thread, but I'd argue the success of Star Wars' Clone Wars animated show proves otherwise.

I think audiences are hungry for people solving problems by sitting around a conference table discussing options from their unique perspectives; especially now.

One aspect of TNG-era Trek was that it was mostly episodic. I'm not sure, outside of maybe procedurals, how much mid/high budget drama TV these days isn't serialized given time-shifting and streaming. (I imagine syndication is less of a driving force as well.)

Heck, even a comedy like Ted Lasso is serialized.

DS9 demonstrated that season-long and even multi-season-long major plot arcs can work in Star Trek setting. It's a matter of execution.

I think that worked because it didn't consume the show. The Dominion existed, but not every episode was centered around that war. The show remained pretty much episodic, with reminders of "hey, we have this going on", without being forefront every episode. Once in a while I rewatch an episode, and I am just blown away by the fact the "war" with the Dominion started so early in the show's run. It was a major plot point yet so subtle at least I could forget until it became prominent in the last season.

I think DS9 could have worked even in more serialized form--and, as you say, latterly it was pretty serialized. I'm not arguing that episodes good, serialized bad. I'd maybe come closer to arguing the opposite. I'm mostly agreeing that the mostly episodic TNG probably wouldn't get made today.

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