Marketing Trek

This is the second time I'm talking about this on my blog already.  I'm probably going to keep talking about this, even though I'm not an industry professional.  I'm an armchair sports commentator, but I'd love to be better informed about this kind of thing.  A few quick Google searches isn't a good substitute for market trends that I can't see as a consumer.

600 quatloos on Star Trek Beyond being a box office flop!

According to Chris Pine, "You can’t make a cerebral Star Trek in 2016. It just wouldn’t work in today’s marketplace."

I'm sorry, what?  What marketplace is he talking about?  Who is he marketing to?  Probably not Star Trek fans.  And when you're charging market-competitive prices on StarTrek.com's web store (~$50-$300 for brand-related merch) and fans are actually paying for it, it seems to me like they've got money in their pockets to burn on seeing the kind of Star Trek they grew up seeing on television.

I want to take a second to qualify my picture of the Triskelion Brains above - I think that Star Trek Beyond will be a box office flop for a multitude of reasons.  I don't think that it will be a terrible movie by any means (though certainly not something counted among the best of Trek).  I'm still excited to see it, and as someone who wants to see more Star Trek in the future I will pay money for this movie to show my support.  My reason for asserting that it will be a box office failure has a lot more to do with the real market - the one that doesn't recognize the Star Trek franchise name as belonging to an action adventure series.

That's why Kirk never learned how to actually fight in hand-to-hand combat.

You see, when you have 726 episodes of high-concept science fiction rigmarole, your franchise picks up a bit of a reputation (you know, the one that screams, "NERD!").  That reputation is not affiliated with science fiction action, even when you've got almost 15 movies under your belt as well.  Not surprisingly, the three generations of Star Trek television shows still have more weight than the movies.

There are some other reasons why I think it won't be a huge success, and another big one is that successful movies (especially sequels) don't have to have their cast and crew giving defensive interviews before the movie comes out.  The folks who made this movie are well aware that it's a different kind of Star Trek.

We've tried action adventure Trek before, we know what it looks like.

Going back to my earlier post, there has only been one cerebral Star Trek movie.  And that's fine - I don't expect Star Trek movies to be thought provoking for the same reason The Motion Picture was a slow, boring mess.

My God!  It was mankind all along!  We caused this problem!

But what Christopher Pine is arguing isn't limiting the franchise to movies.  Christopher Pine is arguing that any and every kind of cerebral Star Trek is just not suitable for the current marketplace.

Computer, let me have a readout of all Netflix viewing trends for the past decade.

Netflix has every episode of Star Trek aired to date, and more than once have the series popped up on the Netflix Trending menu (especially The Next Generation).  The streaming service is known for upsetting visual media consumption trends along with its counterparts Youtube and Twitch.Tv.  In 2014, when CBS was in covert talks with Paramount about what new Trek on television would look like, Netflix was rumored to be emailing CBS in hopes of funding their own season of Star Trek.

Now, Netflix has a fancy algorithm they run in order to determine what is and isn't popular which they have used in the past to successfully synthesize such hot shows as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and (a personal favorite) BoJack Horseman.

This show is all about how classy Hollywoo really is.

If there's any truth to the rumor that Netflix was seeking to acquire the rights to make their own Star Trek series you can damn well be sure that there was demand for it.  And since in 2014 Netflix wasn't streaming all of the Star Trek movies, all of that demand was derived from the 726 episodes of the television series.

So when Christopher Pine says he thinks that you just can't sell a cerebral Star Trek in 2016's marketplace, what he's saying is that he thinks the average consumer is an idiot.  That's the bare bones honest interpretation of what he's saying.  Although the actors who've played Kirk haven't exactly been known for having humble egos...

You like being the only genius level repeat offender in the Midwest?

...it seems clear to me that Chris Pine thinks he's a cut above most, at least in terms of determining what will sell to Star Trek fans (or anyone who might watch anything with the words "Star Trek" in front of it).  Despite most likely being an intelligent and well-educated person, I'm not sure he's the best market analyst to be predicting what kind of Star Trek movie will sell in "today's market" at all.  As an actor, I'm not sure how much of the marketing side of things he's actually involved in with Star Trek aside from how many royalties he gets when toys are made of his likeness.

So remember, Mr. Pine, and any naysayers of intellectualism in Hollywoo, that when the people who pay to see things from the franchise request more, they're talking about...

...Spock dealing with the struggle of logic versus emotion...

...Riker falling in love with a being of androgynous gender...

...Picard warning about the dangers of trading security for peace...

...Sisko exploring what it means to continue to exist as a human being...

...The Doctor learning what it means to have a family...

...Phlox refusing to stop the natural extinction of a species...

...and many, many more examples of why cerebral Star Trek is the best Star Trek.  It was difficult to narrow it down to even these few examples, and TNG definitely got two mentions (there are many more from every series) but my point is that these kinds of stories are the ones that appeal to us.

When we go to the theaters, and when we watch Star Trek at home on our TV screens and computer monitors, let us all come together as Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.  Let us not be as Shaka when the walls fell.  There is indeed a market for cerebral Star Trek in 2016, and it's with the people who buy things that say Star Trek on them (not with traditional action movie-goer audiences).

If you're concerned about whether that's too small of an audience, well...

...I think you may find that there are a lot of us out there and we all want to see more Star Trek!