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Alex Kurtzman saying lower episode counts helps make "every episode count" and avoids filler since when can "we all know" which of those old Trek episodes were "spinning their wheels" when literally every story arc in the modern serialized live action Trek era has been padded to hell. Picard spent three episodes to get into space, and half a season stuck in a nebula, Picard season two has two episode's worth of plot expanded to ten hours from mostly pointless subplots, and even Disco's best season had a back half full of "okay we found them, whoops nope" episodes but uh they don't have lizard babies anymore so it's better
Just. Filler and wheel spinning from what? What plot is it distracting us from. Exploring strange new worlds and boldly going where no one has gone before is the only plot
This post was about live action, but I'm thinking about it in the context of anime, too. Something that strikes me about reboots of shows that were originally much longer is how... anemic? They can feel. Introducing the cast like a checklist; no time to have characters simply build their dynamics together in low-stakes episodes where the writers just threw ideas at the wall because a straight manga adaptation would run out of material far too fast. A lot of great moments in the original sailor moon anime just come from the writers Making Shit Up.
There are stories I would love to see retold, but not in an official capacity - not right now. Not when currently, television is binge-based, to be eaten in one sitting and forgotten instead of ruminated on between individual episode airings, shows cutting all the fat that adds the flavor because "filler is bad", and it's not even a "paid more to do less work" situation for the cast and crew. In terms of anime, the industry is still hell.
In terms of western animation and live action, streaming services have made shows shorter specifically to keep from having to pay as many royalties to cast and crew. And don't forget the entire movies that have been turned into lost media before seeing the light of day, because tax exemptions were more profitable than releasing movies - even movies for popular francises like Wonder Woman and Scooby Doo, apparently. I think new and independent stories suffer the most under the current media paradigm because they're given less chance to even be born. But Big Media Properties right now are starting to feel like... idk. Like a goose that lays golden eggs being badly taken care of for "efficiency", and then the farmer being mad that it's not laying the maximum number of eggs.
I think the goose should be confiscated.
