Don’t Take What’s Happening to Star Trek Personally: Paramount’s Just A Basketcase Right Now
Everything that the company’s been doing is, well, just illogical
Even with the incredible financial struggles that have been rocking the company for the last year or so, fans might be tempted to think that the suits at Paramount particularly have it out for Star Trek.
After years of an almost dizzying growth to the franchise after the launch of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, it seems like all we do these days is endure one bit of bad news, after another.
Star Trek: Prodigy axed after just one season (although ultimately resurrected over on Netflix), and both Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Lower Decks cancelled after only five years apiece.
All while the only scheduled replacement we get is Star Trek: Starfleet Academy but the spinoff that fans were actually clamoring for — Star Trek: Legacy — inexplicably goes unmade.
So, yes, sometimes it feels like Paramount executives are getting some special, perverse glee in taking a hacksaw to Star Trek.
But it really is nothing personal against our franchise.
Paramount has just turned into some kind of basketcase.
Anyone interested in how Paramount — and nearly every other Hollywood company who chased the folly of content streaming — ended up in this kind of financial hole, should watch this excellent video from Council of Geeks:
But even for a company under severe financial stress as Paramount is, the behavior of those at the top has been chaotic at least — and irrational at most.
Months after news broke that media heiress Shari Redstone was ready to cash out, and sell Paramount, sale of the company remains mired in indecision and disarray.
The company’s future remains uncertain, which could go any one of several possible ways.
A recent Wall Street Journal profile (paywall) on Redstone’s decision to sell was even headlined, “A Media Heiress’s Bid to Sell Sets Off Mayhem Inside Paramount.”
Further, Paramount CEO Bob Bakish was ousted in the midst of all this uncertainty, and replaced by an odd little corporate junta, three men known as the “Office of the CEO.”
Operations in the Paramount C-suites have gotten so bizarre that — in the midst of all this public chaos — executives thought they'd just add a little more when on a recent earnings call they decided not to take any questions and, instead blasted the Mission: Impossible theme song.
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This baffling encounter with investors lasted just nine minutes.
Hurry, someone needs to call Lt. Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) quick. Someone needs her to fly this ship.
Even for a company under the financial strain that Paramount is under, decision-making seems haphazard and not even with an eye to even bolstering enough value to boost any eventual sale.
But Star Trek isn’t being singled out for franchise abuse.
Paramount’s apparently mismanaging another of its most popular — lucrative — franchises: the NCIS family of military/police procedurals.
It cancelled NCIS: Hawai’i after only three seasons. It aired its last episode last week.
And the series wasn’t exactly even underperforming. It was averaging about 7.8 million viewers in Nielsen’s seven-day linear ratings this season, and hits 10 million viewers over 35 days of cross-platform viewing.
That’s incredibly solid. But Paramount suits still decided to burn this bit of content rather than put it up for sale with the rest of the company.
Yes, Paramount’s announced two new spinoffs in the NCIS library, but one seriously has to wonder how long they’ll get before getting cut in this topsy-turvy environment.
The point is this: it’s not only our beloved Star Trek that is suffering.
Paramount, Star Trek’s storied home for more than half a century, has fallen into full-on dysfunction.
The best that we, as fans, can probably hope for now is that executives get their acts together, and Star Trek goes to a new home that treats this valuable franchise with a bit more respect.
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