This is part 2 of the Nostalgia Curve; part 1 and part 3 are already posted.*
In the first post of this series we described how nostalgia functions as a factor in the calculus of content production, how it feeds into the algorithm of whether something gets made. So that leads to the question: how to determine the value of nostalgia.
Now, I’m not particularly privy to the internal calculations of Hollywood finance, but it might be worth plotting those out, comparing released titles in a franchise versus the real (or subjective) value they held for the franchise owner. For illustrative purposes, we’ll use the Star Trek series released during the streaming era. Those include the following:
Star Trek Discovery (2017-2024): a prequel series with an all-new cast, and the first Star Trek series in 10 years, with a premiere on regular television before the rest of the episodes were released via streaming. There was some contention over earlier episodes, but it received high praise, and was noted as a driver of subscriptions.
Star Trek: Picard (2020-2023): a series following the captain of the Enterprise from Star Trek: the Next Generation, with eventual appearances of other cast members from that series. It received critical acclaim, with reviews generally around the 80% range, and it was a driver of subscriptions to the Paramount+ online channel.
Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-ongoing): an adult animated series based on a premise from a Star Trek: the Next Generation episode from 1994, following the misadventures of low-ranked characters. Lower Decks has gathered critical praise and generally positive reviews, but it doesn’t appear to be the driver of the ongoing Star Trek stories in the way that the other series are.
Star Trek: Prodigy (2021-ongoing): a computer animated Star Trek show aimed at children, with a tie-in to Star Trek: Voyager. Appearing on Nickelodeon, it was cancelled after one season despite critical praise and an Emmy, and picked up by Netflix for the second season, and possibly more.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022-ongoing): follows the Enterprise before Kirk became the captain and the events depicted in Star Trek: the Original Series (1966-1969). Feeling in some ways like a direct homage of the original show, it has received accolades, with a third season in production and a fourth ordered.
For all these series, we can see a number of commonalities: varying degrees of nostalgia, with some series tying more directly to past properties and the extended universe; there is a difficultly judging the impact as the streaming services are reticent to provide their viewership data; and tailoring each show to appeal to different segments of the larger Star Trek fandom.
Plotting these series out, we start to see what the curve looks like:
There are several takeaways:
- Value is subjective; absent real data on the viewership, it can be tough to place the titles on the curve, or to judge their impact
- Value is relative; for a show like Prodigy, it wasn’t worth it for Nickelodeon, but Netflix was more than happy to pick up and release the show.
- Nostalgia is also subjective, but the more closely tied a property is to what has gone before – the trappings and tropes of the extended universe – the more constrained the creators can be in what they can make.
But there are other approaches we can take: value isn’t the only way to rate nostalgia. Perhaps point three can give us a clue: comparing the nostalgia a show evokes versus the novelty that it approaches the subject with. Let’s take a look at the Shape of that Curve in our next post.
* Disclaimer: due to the vagaries of blogging and this being an exercise in “thinking through writing”, this piece (part 2) ended up getting posted after part 3 on “the Shape of the Curve“. Whoops! My bad. Hope it didn’t cause too much confusion.