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Author Topic: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves  (Read 6236 times)

ilpt4u

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #25 on: November 29, 2019, 02:04:49 PM »

No proof, but my gut feeling as to why the last 2 seasons of Game of Thrones seemed like a major downgrade from previous seasons, was due to HBO’s new Corporate Lord, AT&T

Of course, the fact that the show writers got ahead of the source material novels means the story to tell was not fully established, so that could also be on the writers as well
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DaBigE

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #26 on: November 29, 2019, 05:39:11 PM »

ABC's decision to change the style (and cast) of Scrubs for season 9. Because of the move, most fans do not recognize there even being a season 9 and claiming the show ended after season 8.
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Revive 755

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #27 on: November 30, 2019, 10:52:04 PM »

Similarly, one of Voyager's problems is setting up this whole situation with the Maquis crew merging into Voyager's crew and the potential for conflict that had - and then never did anything with it (aside from the second episode, which is probably a remnant of the original plans for the series before the executives got involved) because the executives wanted a TNG clone, so anything relating to conflict within the crew and exploring what being stranded in the Delta Quadrant meant for ship provisions and repairs was either given lip service or dropped.  While the latter can be blamed on being too episodic, the former probably could have still been done even in an episodic format.

Closest Voyager ever came to "conflict" was Seska.

There's a bit of a conflict in "Learning Curve" where Tuvok is trying to train some of the Maquis crew members.  I thought there were a few other bits of conflict in the first season?

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PHLBOS

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #28 on: December 02, 2019, 10:10:06 AM »

Lost in Space had a lot of potential before Johnathan Harris started chewing the scenery.

Lost In Space was on the verge of cancellation before Jonathan Harris started chewing the scenery.  It aired opposite Batman beginning in 1966, and the producers felt that it had to bring in campy humor, as well as more color and more Dr. Smith and the robot, in order to compete.  It worked, to a point.
To flesh out the above a tad more: the initial plan was to have the Dr. Smith character killed off after the first few episodes; hence the original reason for the Special Guest Star billing for Harris. 

Even before the Batman series debuted (which actually had a shorter run than Lost In Space); the decision to not only keep the Dr. Smith character around but to reinvent him as well was already in the pipeline.  One needs to remember that the show originally aired at 7:30 on Wednesday evenings; so networks may have had some issues with having the Smith character being too dark & sinister for its air-time back then.

Harris not only played a significant role in reinventing his Smith character but Irwin Allen essentially gave him carte blanche with the role; Harris was allowed to rewrite his character's dialogue.

From what I've read, the series' 1968 cancellation boiled down to money.  The special effects used, explosions & all, costed a pretty penny (the coin, not Angela Cartwright).

CBS proposed a budget cap for the show's potential 4th season production & Allen essentially refused to accept the terms of said-cap.
________________________________

Back to the topic at hand:

One show that definitely lost its way was Person of Interest.  The show's plotline initially involved only Finch, Reese, Carter & Fosco; but in later seasons, more characters were added and the storylines went all over the place & became more of a challenge to follow.  My mother loved the show when it first came out but lost interest in the show in its later seasons due to the changes.

One show that became a victim of a timeslot change was CSI-Miami.  To make room for the then-new rebooted Hawaii Five-0 in the fall of 2010; CBS moved its long-running CSI-Miami series from its Monday night 10 PM timeslot to Sunday nights at 10 PM.  Unfortunately, such a move coming on the heels of football season meant that all Sunday evening shows were preempted when games were being played/showed.  As a result, a preempted 10 PM show wouldn't be aired until well over an hour later at times.  By the time football season was over, the damage was already done & the series wound up being cancelled.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2019, 10:19:18 AM by PHLBOS »
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Rothman

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #29 on: December 02, 2019, 10:15:58 AM »

Have to agree about Person of Interest.  Although some new characters were welcome, the last couple of seasons were pretty lost and even bland.

You could even say that after Taraji Henson left that was the start of the decline.
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US71

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #30 on: December 02, 2019, 12:49:03 PM »

Lost in Space had a lot of potential before Johnathan Harris started chewing the scenery.

Lost In Space was on the verge of cancellation before Jonathan Harris started chewing the scenery.  It aired opposite Batman beginning in 1966, and the producers felt that it had to bring in campy humor, as well as more color and more Dr. Smith and the robot, in order to compete.  It worked, to a point.
To flesh out the above a tad more: the initial plan was to have the Dr. Smith character killed off after the first few episodes; hence the original reason for the Special Guest Star billing for Harris. 

It had always been my understanding that Harris held out for Special Guest Star because he was not content to be just another name scrolling by on the credits.
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PHLBOS

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #31 on: December 02, 2019, 01:16:05 PM »

Lost in Space had a lot of potential before Johnathan Harris started chewing the scenery.

Lost In Space was on the verge of cancellation before Jonathan Harris started chewing the scenery.  It aired opposite Batman beginning in 1966, and the producers felt that it had to bring in campy humor, as well as more color and more Dr. Smith and the robot, in order to compete.  It worked, to a point.
To flesh out the above a tad more: the initial plan was to have the Dr. Smith character killed off after the first few episodes; hence the original reason for the Special Guest Star billing for Harris. 

It had always been my understanding that Harris held out for Special Guest Star because he was not content to be just another name scrolling by on the credits.
Such may have been a latter reason for having such continue for the show's entire 3-year run; but not originally.
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triplemultiplex

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #32 on: December 02, 2019, 04:33:06 PM »

Enterprise's problem is that the executives tried to make a TNG clone and shove in the Temporal Cold War plot rather than embrace its prequel status.  While I do enjoy season 3, what makes season 4 better than what came before isn't that it made most episodes part of multi-part stories - it was that it decided to embrace being a prequel and tell the story of how we got from First Contact to TOS.

They went too far trying to retcon various things in Enterprise; especially in season 4.  Who cares if Worf has a bumpy head while Kirk was punching smooth-domed Klingons?  We didn't need an explanation for that.  It was dumb.  We get it, makeup was expensive and budgets were small.  That's why I applaud Discovery for having a different look for Klingons, but not wasting our time explaining why.  Because it doesn't matter.

I've always wondered if some TV executive had a hand in Voyager transitioning from Kes to Seven of Nine halfway through the series.  It really seems like the kind of thing a suit would push for.  "Hey you know that chick with the tom boy haircut and the raspy voice?  What if we replace her with a tall blonde with huge cans?  And have her wear a catsuit!"

« Last Edit: December 04, 2019, 09:14:30 AM by triplemultiplex »
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Rothman

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #33 on: December 02, 2019, 05:06:15 PM »

It seemed pretty obvious that Jeri Ryan and the catsuit were brought in to keep the series going by targeting that ever elusive demographic of lonely 25-45 year old single males.
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ARMOURERERIC

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #34 on: December 02, 2019, 06:01:41 PM »

I nominate the early 2000's iteration of Dragnet with Ed Oneill as Detective Joe Friday.  Great gritty, intense emotional scripting with young adults watch how Al Bundy absolutely  nailed his new role, sadly season 2 had Oneill office bound directing an ethnically diverse detective team, including Eva Longoria  in her first big role.  Season 2 is unwatchable  and only had about 6 episodes.  It was a Wolf Production on ABC on at 10 PM Saturday.  Great opening credits.
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vdeane

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #35 on: December 02, 2019, 09:20:56 PM »

They went too far trying to retcon various things in Enterprise; especially in season 4.  Who cares if Worf has a bumpy head while Kirk was punching smooth-domed Klingons?  We didn't need an explanation for that.  It was dumb.  We get it, makeup was expensive and budgets were small.  That's why I applaud Discovery for having a different look for Klingons, but not wasting our time explaining why.  Because it doesn't matter.
An explanation wouldn't have been needed, if not for a mistake the producers made in the Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations where they had the characters comment on the different appearance of the Klingons, thereby canonizing the fact that they looked different (rather than just letting everyone accept that they always looked like the did in the movies and later shows and just didn't have the budget to show that).  They thought it would just be a funny comment, not realizing that the fans take all episodes seriously.  Then after Enterprise had finally fixed this mistake, Discovery comes in and blows the issue up again (and the explanation they came up with in season 2 for why their look for the Klingons changed from season 1 was little more than a hand wave that makes no sense in the context of every other show; issues like these make it hard for me to consider modern Trek as the same level of canon as everything that came before Enterprise was cancelled).

Quote
I've always wondered if some TV executive had a hand in Voyager transitioning from Kes to Seven of Nine halfway through the series.  It really seems like the kind of thing a suit would push for.  "Hey you know that chick with the tom boy haircut and the raspy voice?  What if we replace her with a tall blonde with huge cans?  And have her walk around it a catsuit!"


It's worth noting that originally they were going to kill off Harry Kim (hence why he was attacked by Species 8472), but then Garrett Wang was named sexiest man of the year and the producers hastily changed that to write Kes out of the show.  Jennifer Lien didn't even know she was leaving until she read the script for The Gift!  This is also the real-world reason why they encounter the Krenim at the same time in both the show and in the Before and After timeline, even though in the show they should be 10 years closer to home thanks to Kes.
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Stephane Dumas

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #36 on: December 03, 2019, 10:00:51 AM »

Space 1999 got also this, season 2 was in production when Gerry and Sylvia Anderson divorced and they hired Fred Fredberger as the director aka "terminator" and some cast changes didn't helped either.

Btw, does shows who did network switch or channel hop as TV Tropes might said for example Get Smart from NBC to CBS or Diff'rent Strokes from NBC to ABC would fit this category as well?
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PHLBOS

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #37 on: December 03, 2019, 11:23:26 AM »

Btw, does shows who did network switch or channel hop as TV Tropes might said for example Get Smart from NBC to CBS or Diff'rent Strokes from NBC to ABC would fit this category as well?
Such would be more on a case-by-case basis & dependent upon whether or not the show did better or worse following said-station/network switch.
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Mr_Northside

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #38 on: December 03, 2019, 02:47:54 PM »

They went too far trying to retcon various things in Enterprise; especially in season 4.  Who cares if Worf has a bumpy head while Kirk was punching smooth-domed Klingons?  We didn't need an explanation for that.  It was dumb.  We get it, makeup was expensive and budgets were small.  That's why I applaud Discovery for having a different look for Klingons, but not wasting our time explaining why.  Because it doesn't matter.
An explanation wouldn't have been needed, if not for a mistake the producers made in the Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations where they had the characters comment on the different appearance of the Klingons, thereby canonizing the fact that they looked different

I guess you could argue that the actual original Trouble With Tribbles TOS episode did this though... given that a Klingon was so easily able to blend in and sabotage the grain, and was only outed by a tribble's reaction to him. 
Now, one could go down a hypothetical rabbit hole and say that THAT Klingon was altered in some way to look human, and the other Klingon's "looked like Klingons" - but the original episode never made an effort to explicitly point that out (I'm sure it's cause they didn't have any idea that Klingons would ever not look like humans at some point).
I guess it's just my opinion that the original episode sort of canonized that Klingons did look mostly like humans (to the characters) back then.
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vdeane

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #39 on: December 03, 2019, 09:27:59 PM »

Well, Trials and Tribble-ations did include a line from Dax saying "surgeon does nice work", but even using only TOS, it's not implausible.  A similar thing was done with Kirk for The Enterprise Incident, and the show didn't make a huge deal about that, so it's not like such alterations are unheard of.
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triplemultiplex

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #40 on: December 04, 2019, 09:27:43 AM »

It's worth noting that originally they were going to kill off Harry Kim (hence why he was attacked by Species 8472), but then Garrett Wang was named sexiest man of the year and the producers hastily changed that to write Kes out of the show.

Must've been a slow year. :-D
The guy's far from ugly, don't get me wrong, but sexiest man?   :hmmm:
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vdeane

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Re: TV Shows from Good to Bad because of dumb excecutive moves
« Reply #41 on: December 04, 2019, 01:55:44 PM »

It's worth noting that originally they were going to kill off Harry Kim (hence why he was attacked by Species 8472), but then Garrett Wang was named sexiest man of the year and the producers hastily changed that to write Kes out of the show.

Must've been a slow year. :-D
The guy's far from ugly, don't get me wrong, but sexiest man?   :hmmm:

It might have been something else (another source I saw today said People magazine's "50 most beautiful people" list).  Something along those lines.
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