Strange New Worlds has been my favorite Trek since Next Generation, and if the quality continues, could easily be my favorite Trek ever. But with the e.p. wishing for more episodes per season, there’s a danger of diluting the show by adding weak episodes that would have never made it in a 10 episode season.
One of the things I’ve long admired with BBC shows is their normally low-episode seasons, which kept out a lot of filler that normally made it in to the broadcast shows from the states. But streaming (and before that, cable) changed things. Finally US based shows were able to create much lower episode seasons, allowing the creators to tell more of the story they wanted to tell, without stretching things out (too much), or being forced to add stories they weren’t thrilled with in order to fill the season. (Though, even with shorter runs, shows are still doing this. Picard season 2, for example, could have used some trimming. So, yeah, show runners are still being forced to fill seasons where X number of episodes were ordered before the story was fleshed out. Maybe it just seems more evident in serialized shows.)
I can’t help but think a longer season of SNW would be a “more is less” scenario. I’d much rather see Paramount create another Trek show that’s mainly episodic, that’s been shown the same attention to quality that SNW has received.
Man, if they opened up script submissions, they’d probably be able to reap a LOT of fanfic-grown talent out there. Yeah, the slush pile would SUCK because it’s much easier to submit online than in the days of snail mail and paper, but we’ve had about 20 years of really explosive writing growth with the advent of fanfic online and as far as I know nobody’s really “mentoring” those people in this day and age.
I know people laugh and snort at fanfic, but writing is writing is writing . You’d do as well to laugh at painters who sketch bowls of fruit or sketch nudes from live subjects (as if people haven’t drawn those things for literal centuries!). It doesn’t really matter WHERE you practice and learn so long as you do it, and if fanfic/fanart/whatever gets you going, that’s how you’re going to grow your talent, by practicing over and over.
And some people get really damn good at it. If Trek opened up script submissions again, it’d open the doors to a new generation of writers kicking their careers off.
