Y’know, if I had a nickel for every time Jonathan Frakes was involved in a Star Trek episode that unexpectedly became the series finale, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
From what I understand in television writing it was a constant struggle of “should we write a cliffhanger hoping it gets us renewed” to “we should have some closure in case we get cancelled”, since many writers had no idea what would happen.
I don’t think we know of a case where it convinced a studio executive, but then again we know very little about the reasons why some shows get renewed and some don’t.
We do know cases where ending on a cliffhanger helped drumm up enough fan engagement to reverse a cancellation (timeless on nbc is a recent(ish) example for that)
ENT’s trip to 1944 between seasons 3 and 4. Or in other words what must be the writer’s “you made us make this temporal cold war cake and by koala we are gonna make you eat it” letter to the execs.
Or that Seasons 3 and 4 and 5 were a terrifyingly large Holodeck Program run by Tom Paris to see what would happen if the U.S.S. Discovery arrived in the 32nd century and that the U.S.S. Discovery was teleported back to the times of the Iconians?
There’s a lot of “emotionally” in that article. Kinda fits the series that was over-filled with emotional crap. (tbf, I aborted watching somewhere in Season 3, so maybe that changed afterwards. But I doubt it.)
yea, love it or hate it, Discovery did not really change its core vibe. I think I had hopes it would in season 3. Season 2 had already played with different vibes with Pike/Spock etc. And the idea for the premise of season 3 was so bold (and which I think is the best and most forward pushing premise of Trek since Next-Gen and DS9) that I figured something new was in stall. It seemed so at first … but then wasn’t really IMO.
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