People seem to not realize that the biggest problem with the higher episode count is not the budget, it’s the work life balance issues. Ask any actor, producer, or crew member from the 24-26 episode a year days and they will all tell you it was a living hell to meet that output. Higher caliber actors won’t sign up for that kind of commitment these days. With there no longer being a need to sell to syndication there’s also no financial incentive for studios to push for those episode counts. People just need to let it go, we’re never going to have 24 episode seasons of Trek again, it’s just not practical in any sense. Now, if we could push to 15 from and spread the budget thinner, maybe that might still be reasonable. But I don’t know how that would affect the people working on the shows.
Depends on the production. Lots of actors in the olden days loved getting a series because it meant they were closer to home and had a consistent schedule. Very little location shooting out of state, giving them more time to spend with family. Summers off meant the ability to do movies or stage work if they wanted to.
Lucille Ball’s daughter has said in interviews that Desilu ran a tight schedule and everyone went home at a decent hour because Lucy wanted everyone to go home at a decent hour (including her).
Unions need to flex their muscle if cast or crew is having to work excessive overtime.
Lucy had hella pull though, not like most actors in modern shows. I can see Desilu bending over for whatever the hell she demanded, including a Cuban husband!
Divide the crew into groups. Have an episode focused around the command staff, an episode focused around engineering, an episode focused around sickbay, etc. Have the casts be mostly separate from each other barring the occasional cameo appearance or viewscreen conversation. Basically treat it as several shows that happen to take place on the same ship.
They’d typically still have a central cast that played a major role in every episode. For instance, on the various broadcast TV Star Trek shows the captain would almost always have a major role. I’m talking about separating things to the point that the different episode-types could have their own cast and crew and film simultaneously.
People seem to not realize that the biggest problem with the higher episode count is not the budget, it’s the work life balance issues. Ask any actor, producer, or crew member from the 24-26 episode a year days and they will all tell you it was a living hell to meet that output. Higher caliber actors won’t sign up for that kind of commitment these days. With there no longer being a need to sell to syndication there’s also no financial incentive for studios to push for those episode counts. People just need to let it go, we’re never going to have 24 episode seasons of Trek again, it’s just not practical in any sense. Now, if we could push to 15 from and spread the budget thinner, maybe that might still be reasonable. But I don’t know how that would affect the people working on the shows.
Depends on the production. Lots of actors in the olden days loved getting a series because it meant they were closer to home and had a consistent schedule. Very little location shooting out of state, giving them more time to spend with family. Summers off meant the ability to do movies or stage work if they wanted to.
Lucille Ball’s daughter has said in interviews that Desilu ran a tight schedule and everyone went home at a decent hour because Lucy wanted everyone to go home at a decent hour (including her).
Unions need to flex their muscle if cast or crew is having to work excessive overtime.
Lucy had hella pull though, not like most actors in modern shows. I can see Desilu bending over for whatever the hell she demanded, including a Cuban husband!
Network TV is still at 20 episodes per year.
Anthologies have been very popular. Change up the cast every year. That keeps costs down even more.
Divide the crew into groups. Have an episode focused around the command staff, an episode focused around engineering, an episode focused around sickbay, etc. Have the casts be mostly separate from each other barring the occasional cameo appearance or viewscreen conversation. Basically treat it as several shows that happen to take place on the same ship.
That’s what episodic tv used to do.
They’d typically still have a central cast that played a major role in every episode. For instance, on the various broadcast TV Star Trek shows the captain would almost always have a major role. I’m talking about separating things to the point that the different episode-types could have their own cast and crew and film simultaneously.
They used to do that but in the same episode. Is one of the reasons hour long shows often had an A story and B story.
It also made commercial breaks less jarring as you were already used to bouncing between stories.