I understand where he is coming from but this outcome was expected. He says there's a bigger audience for old school Star Trek but I highly doubt that.
The problem with this assertion, is it's just assumed to be true because nobodies making that kind of show (except for the Orville, which was pretty much critically panned but was still getting decent ratings).
If you want darker, violent, highly serialized scifi there's literally dozens of options available to watch and stream right now.
And stuff like WestWorld is waaaaaaaaaay fucking better than Picard is.
You can see episodic TV still exists and is still successful in other genres - shit, the procedural has this down to a fine art by now with your mid season and whole season arcs but syndication friendly episodic format - and there's still a spread in tone between like, a Criminal Minds, an SVU or a Lethal Weapon.
What Star Trek had was a unique selling point; it had its own niche. What it is now is directly competing with your Expanses and your WestWorlds, and frankly, it needs to seriously up its writing game if it wants people to buy a CBS sub over an Amazon or HBO.
I think the issue is the combination of the setting and type of show.
Shows set in current times or history have the problem solving and relationship arcs. Because that's what the target audience wants to see and expects.
I would say a good example are the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones minus the cheap violence and softcore porn it was just about the character interactions, problem solving, politics etc. .
That also changed in later seasons because the audience responded really well to the big fights, doomsday plot and over the top violence. The production values went up, the writing took a dive.
Sci-fi set in space across the board is more action or more thriller focused and when a movie comes out that doesn't do that, people hop online to complain that it is 'boring' and 'dull'.
I think we're finally seeing a shift in that with the audience rejecting an action packed roller coaster Star Wars and instead preferring the Mandalorian instead.
Still, the largest chunk of the audience wants to see action, just look at what's trending on Netflix daily. It's usually the latest Originals action flick they just dropped.
I think a good example is Blade Runner, it was assumed that because the original had built up a cult following a sequel would be a big hit and the IP would finally get the attention it deserved. Instead it flopped.
Not to mention this show is also for modern audiences that liked the J.J. Abrams movies. Because that was so successful it sorta became the template for bringing back old IP's.
It is going to be interesting to see what the Dune reboot is going to be like.
As for the writing of Star Strek, they sort of copy pasted the plot from Mass Effect and did it poorly so yeah these people are talentless hacks.
Who knows maybe if they went with the 1 story = 1 episode structure it might've been praised like The Mandalorian for being 'different' but that would've been a big risk compared to creating a long action packed Star Trek movie
starring Patrick Stewart based on the plot of Mass Effect.
