What started as a failed TV show more than four decades ago can now safely be called the most successful franchise in the history of television. However it may have entered into your life, Star Trek's influence can be seen all around us, from our technology to our social interaction, and even creating a string of catch phrases that have survived for forty years. But after leaving such a footprint on society, how is it that Star Trek is no longer on the air?
Before moving forward with the series, it is important to understand just what caused the downfall of the previous series to avoid it happening again.
THE FALL OF A GIANT
Just what caused the demise of Trek? After all, hardly a day goes by without a thread being found on local message boards asking for a new Trek series, or asking how the franchise can be saved. With so many fans out there, Star Trek should be an instant success in any incarnation. So what happened? There obviously is not one cause for such a downfall, but rather, a number of factors.
Some will attribute the fall to simple viewer fatigue. After 18 straight years of trek, many of those years with more than one series overlapping, it took a great deal of concentration and commitment to tell them all apart. Writing became stale, plots overused and it seemed as if the meaning of Star Trek was lost in the shuffle.
Others will attribute the fall to an inconvenient broadcast. UPN is not a mainstream network like CBS. Many people across the country never even had access to it, and those that did generally did not make viewing it a priority.
But perhaps the most important element of Trek's downfall was the terrible writing. Hardly anyone can argue that story was sacrificed routinely for ratings. While this may be an acceptable practice for some franchises, Star Trek is mainly successful because of its enormous base of fans, and once those fans are alienated by cheap promotional elements, you lose what makes Star Trek such a guaranteed success.
An amazing 12,540,000 fans were on hand to watch the series premier. By the time the season ended, only 5,280,000 fans remained.
Why did they leave? The evidence was all around. Message boards were flooded with complaints about dragging story and utter ignorance towards continuity. Most fans continued to watch even after a disappointing few episodes to start the series, still in the honeymoon phase, hoping that maybe the series would improve.
But as time went on, more and more real fans were driven away. Without the fans, the series could no longer muster enough support to remain on the air.
So, how do we fix it?
Saving the Unsinkable Franchise
Why is a Star Trek series almost a guaranteed success?
As we've discovered in the previous section, the secret is in the fan base. The fan base came to watch Enterprise, expecting a new hit show, and soon became so alienated that all Enterprise could attract were casual fans.
The Trek fan base is a unique audience, bringing more than just simple ratings. It brings a crowd that otherwise would not be interested in CBS programming onto the channel. The more fans that visit the Channel, the more fans will stay to watch other CBS shows.
The secret lies in that fan base, giving them a reason to watch every week.
It's very similar to politics; If you want to win elections, you must cater to your base, while at the same time, trying to add to that base, rather than simply trying to appeal to the moderates.
In terms of Star Trek, that means writing the same kind of engaging stories that attracted the fans in the first place, making sure they watch every week, and attracting new fans that share the same passions, rather than try to appeal to everyone.
In short, it means a fan must be put in charge.
In an attempt to get my finger on the pulse of the Trek Nation, my partners and I have been trolling message boards, reading blogs and talking to radio audiences about what they want out of a trek series. I took their suggestions and comments and used them to form the backbone of a series concept that could spell the saving breath for the franchise. While the ideas were diverse, I found that the stories within the stories had commonalities.
A CONCEPT BORNE OF FANS
Simply pointing in a random direction and exploring no longer works for fans of today. Star Trek fans expect an engaging, fast moving story with a definite direction in mind. The story must have a purpose, a soul that interconnects the various stories. Everything must have meaning.
In that vein, we give you the crew of the USS Cardinal, a small vessel which is charged with the unglorified job of maintaining the Ferengi border, a small rectangle that also happens to connect the Romulans to the Cardassians in a smugglers corridor. The crew would be charged with chasing criminals and would-be invaders. If this were the be all and end all to the series, some Trek fans might burn the studio down in protest.
But it is not the be all and end all. We're not just giving the crew a mission and leaving it to the writers to decide what random aliens they will encounter every week. Instead, the crew of the Cardinal is inadvertently placed in the center of events that will change the entire galaxy.
From the very beginning, the crew is faced with mysteries that don't have solutions, mysteries that are causing powers to challenge other powers. The Cardinal is placed in the unenviable position of stopping a war, something that becomes increasingly harder until they are no longer able to stop it.
A former teacher of mine once told me that a good screenwriter never begins a script without knowing the ending, and this concept holds true to a series as well. Without a definite plan for five seasons of story lines, the story may change direction too many times and lead in alternate routes. Instead of blindly moving forward, there is a definite plan that is brought to a logical conclusion at the end of season five.
While the external factors remain planned, internal factors must not be forgotten. It is easy to attempt a grab at ratings by creating a spontaneous romance, or a random attitude shift in the crew, but it alienates fans in the long-run. Instead, character interaction must be well planned, especially in a series so focused on character.
For the crew of the Cardinal, this will involve a more realistic view of family than we are used to. One of the largest complaints about Star Trek: The Next Generation was the lack of conflict among the crew. The crew of a starship is a family, but families will hardly come together instantly after being placed in a difficult situation.
Instead, the crew is filled with characters that are constantly in conflict. Family is not chosen, after all, it is thrust upon you, and you need to make good with what you have. With each character in direct conflict with at least one other character, and a ship that forces interaction among the crew, we are left with a crew that must work past its problems with each other to solve the external problems facing the ship. As old conflicts are closed and forgotten, new ones arise to take their place. There will never be a lack of character conflict with a crew of this nature.
The crew in question is also not the best and the brightest we are used to seeing. Instead, they are those who could be the best and the brightest, if only they were given the chance. There are those plagued by their past, or fearful of their future, or perhaps even fearful of themselves. They are from different cultures, ages and sexes, and many of their differences cause a great deal of friction among other members of the crew.
The ship serves as an analogy of the crew. It is also a ship that simply was never given a chance; a cramped, glitchy ship that was not deemed worthy enough to serve as a front-line vessel. It is a mix of different technologies that were never designed to work together, and without much effort, considered irreparable.
The more the crew learns to work together, the better the ship begins to perform. Troubles set aside between crew mates coincide with mechanical problems being fixed on the ship.
CREATIVE PLAN
We will begin with a two-hour pilot episode which will introduce a number of mysteries and deal with tension growing between powers. Surrounded by warships, the crew must stop one power from invading another. The stakes are high; any mistake could lead to war. The Cardinal is out-gunned and has almost no hope of succeeding, and can only rely on the wit of its crew to succeed.
The action-oriented pilot will bring characters and concepts together in a way that will grab the attention of the fans and hold them for the coming episodes, as well as provide a glimpse of the softer side the series offers, underneath the constant action. With well-defined, fan-inspired story arches following, the enormous base of Trek fans will gladly spend an hour every week watching CBS.
While fans have done a great deal to inspire the concept, this is hardly the end of their interaction.
With the knowledge in hand that the fans had inspired the show, there will be a renewed effort among fans to become involved with message boards and other forms of online communication with other trek fans, in the hope that their ideas will be heard. The greater the buzz, the higher the ratings, and more importantly, the more attention will be paid, attracting both new fans and advertisers to the station.
The series format will be somewhat unique. While series with horizontal (linear) and vertical (non-linear) storylines have their pros and cons, Cardinal will attempt to use the best of both worlds in what we call a 'Tree' format. Essentially, the show begins very vertical, allowing new viewers the chance to come into the series late without being lost, and after ample time has passed, it begins to branch out into more horizontal stories.
We refer to season one as "From Genesis to Revelations" because of the feel the two halves of the season give the viewer. The first half of the season is mostly about exposition, not only of the characters, but the villains, the political state of the galaxy and everything else needed for the remainder of the show. It takes an entire half season because rather than bore our audience with tedious information, each bit of important information is contained inside an exciting episode. Soon, we move into the second half of the season, which begins the build-up to the climax of the final episode, which transfers us to the chaos of season two. Season two then builds to our very own version of the apocalypse, which continues throughout season three.
By season four, the series changes. Cardinal, a ship which relies on constant re-supplying, must spend almost the entire season alone behind enemy lines. Its journey home becomes by far the most intense arc of the franchise to date. Season five then begins a very strong look at morality in a time of extreme violence. Surrounded by such chaos, order to do things no one should ever do, Cardinal must struggle to find its place in the chaos around them, which leads to one last decision during the final three-episode finally to the series.
To keep costs low, Cardinal is written with the knowledge that it must stay within a low budget. To this end, episodes rarely require expensive sets and costumes, and rely much more on the actual substance of the story than expensive effects. The sets Cardinal will employ will also aid this agenda, with a small number of sets being able to do the work of three times their number through various re-dressings and creative maneuvering by the episode writers. This unique design, coupled with the low above-line costs allow Cardinal to work on a budget only slightly larger than the average sit-com.
SUCCESS BEYOND AN HOUR A WEEK
Is the success brought to a network by Star Trek simply based on the number of fans it brings in? The fact is, the type of fan it brings in is much more important.
Cardinal recently commissioned a poll of Star Trek fans through an independent polling firm. The questions were simple, mostly about viewing habits of the average Trekkie. The results were staggering!
A full 78% of Trek fans claim they do not watch CBS regularly, yet a majority of them said they were interested in CBS programming, especially the various CSI series. This could only mean that an entire block of potential CBS viewers is waiting for a reason to watch the channel. With Trek a definite priority for these viewers, placing it before or after a popular drama like CSI should bolster that show's ratings. This is aided by the 'crime drama' feel a number of Cardinal episodes apply, drawing many fans of CSI to Cardinal as well. With an entire block of new, unique viewers to mold into CBS fans, advertisers not only see improved ratings, but a completely new demographic to appeal to.
CONCLUSION
With such an obvious success waiting to be made, there is little reason not to attempt a resurrection of Star Trek. With a smaller ship, a thrifty writing style, low above-line costs and improvements in digital graphics, the cost of production is no longer the staggering price it once was, and as a result, the franchise is poised to be a large cash crop, not only for the five planned years of the series, but in subsequent years, as more Trek series are likely to follow in the successful footsteps of this one.
