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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

While there are examples of shows that needed some time to find their footing (S1 of ST:TNG was mostly pretty forgettable), I don't in general find the powering through season after season until the audience drops off model of TV series especially admirable.

To be honest, even if the show stays strong, you start to hit the 6th and 7th season of 20x1hr seasons and I've probably lost interest. I know there are people who would be happy for their favorite shows to just keep going year after year because they're old friends but I'm not one of them.

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This. Even without mentioning the shows that go to 15+ seasons and become formulaic, there are a lot of things out there which have 5-7 seasons with some filler in each season, a couple of poor seasons, the last season usually significantly worse, when 3 tight seasons with a meaningful super-arc would have done better justice to the idea. If you really love it, you can watch it again.

I think it's significant that two much loved, much mourned shows with huge fandoms, Gilmore Girls and Arrested Development were revived on Netflix and neither really came up with any fresh ideas.

I think the only show I've ever seen get revived and still come up with more good stuff is Futurama. And even as much as I loved it, when it ended for the last time, I was satisfied.

Otherwise I just don't get excited about "revivals" anymore.

The only show I want to see 9 seasons of is The Expanse, and thats because they are following a 9 book novel series. Each season (after the weirdly timed first one) tells a complete novel worth of story, and the full series tells a complete and finished tale. No salty half baked Game of Thrones endings or whatever.

FWIW Wikipedia suggests TNG had very strong viewership numbers for every season.

It did. At the time, there was basically nothing like it on TV. It wasn't just the scifi stories themselves, it was the budget. Nothing like it had been seen. Star Trek: TOS reruns was a high budget show for the time. It's primary competition is Doctor Who reruns on PBS, and while it may have had good stories at times, it's a series whose idea of "high budget villian" is wrapping a guy in bubble wrap and spray-painting it green.

So at the time, the first season didn't seem so bad. It was probably on par with what most people of the time expected. In hindsight ST:TNG may seem like "a decent show with a bad start", but at the time it seemed like "a pretty decent show that just kept getting better". ST:TNG is part of what set the modern bar, and it's a lot of what set the modern bar if you kind of lump it in with Deep Space Nine.

By modern standards it is weak because the tech of the time didn't support season-long arcs because there was very little rewatchability, but if you try to delve into science fiction prior to ST:TNG, be prepared to... make concessions.

One of the very best features of ST:TNG is it's lack of major season-long arcs. I find shows with deep season long plot to be much too stressful to watch. Unfortunately, this is common with nearly all Netflix shows.

Many shows are like movies, where stopping between two episodes feels like you're stopping a movie right at the most intense spot.

You either binge watch the whole show, or rage-quite at 3am never to watch another episode.

I found out that I personally prefer two types of shows:

- ones with a season-long arc. This gives the authors time and space to develop the characters, and reach a satisfying conclusion. But these often suffer from pacing issues, because mid-season episodes become filler.

- ones with episodic stories and with a season-long arc (a problem or a villain that keeps popping up). This helps with pacing, but still lets authors build up momentum and develop characters and stories. These often suffer from underdeveloped arcs though and unresolved season cliffhangers hinting at "that arc we developed, it's so much bigger than you thought".

TNG had the right number of multi-episode arcs and recurring characters (especially Q). Also every season finale was a cliffhanger two-parter with the first episode of the next season. Unlike TOS, it felt like things that happened in the episodic TNG episodes (heh) actually mattered in the larger world, even when it wasn't directly a part of a story arc.

DS9 is my favorite though, partially because of the story arc. It was also done quite brilliantly, with the story arc always being present, but not really solidifying into something substantial right away. This along with Babylon 5 were amazing. Prior to these shows, the only television sci-fi I had ever seen with a story arc was Robotech. Battlestar Galatica (original) had something of an arc, but was more like TNG.

Blake's 7 is an interesting old series with an arc and strong characters. You definitely need concessions with the special effects, though.

Remember, there was a huge pent-up demand for a new Star Trek TV series when TNG came out. To the degree that many, myself included, were willing to overlook a rather uneven Season One.

I assume that's been less the case for the newer Star Trek universe series. I don't actually know the numbers but the TV landscape is too different to really compare anyway.

Added: As someone who remembers watching TNG when it first came out, my recollection is that the reaction to "Encounter at Farpoint" (S1E1) was along the lines of a bit disappointing but certainly has promise. And it's new Star Trek on TV!

Agree. Think about The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, Peaky Blinders which had brilliant early seasons, but then had a formulaic season arc. Here are the new bad guys -- worse than the old bad guys, even though we told you last season's bad guys were the worst, we got re-upped for a season and now we have Armenians, neo-Nazi's or American Mafiosi. Whatever it takes to squeeze out a few more episodes.

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