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Reboot, Revive, Recycle: The Year Of The TV Show Remake

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The good, the bad and the surging trend of television revivals. We’ll talk Star Trek, Gilmore Girls, Twin Peaks and more.

Thirteen years after the original series run, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are returning to their roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for a six-episode run on Fox. (©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Thirteen years after the original series run, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are returning to their roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for a six-episode run on Fox. (©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection)

"Star Trek" is coming back to the small screen. In 2017, on TV and then streaming online, somewhere in the future, up against who-knows-what, the crew of some Starship will have drama. That’s all we know. It’s the latest announced move in a string of revivals and reboots that brought back shows old and older. "Twin Peaks", "Gilmore Girl"s, coming up. "X-Files", back in January. After "The Muppets" and "The Odd Couple" and "Hawaii Five-O" and "24" and a whole lot more. The zillion-channel TV universe is voracious. Fans stay hungry. This hour On Point: the return of "Star Trek" and the age of TV revival.
-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Margaret Lyons, TV columnist at Vulture at New York magazine. (@margeincharge)

Larry Nemecek, a.k.a. "Dr. Trek", writer, actor, producer. (@larrynemecek)

Alan Sepinwall, TV critic for HitFix. (@sepinwall)

From Tom's Reading List

Vulture: How much should I be dreading TV revivals? Your pressing TV questions, answered -- "The new end product may or may not be good, that's true of all things. Let's chose to walk a path that seeks joy. Not all reboots/revivals/resurrections are created equal, so here are the questions I ask while trying to foster a hopeful attitude."

HitFix: Sometimes dead is better: Has TV's reboot fever run amok? -- "Once upon a time, TV was a zero sum game with limited shelf space, and if you wanted to make room for a show (or a kind of show) you cared about, then the continued existence of some show you disliked was doubly aggravating. That's not really the case anymore. The broadcast networks are programming year-round, and have given up on trying to show repeats of all but their most popular shows, and there are so many new players getting into the original content business that I fully expect to wake up tomorrow to find that my old Garmin GPS device has become the exclusive home to a "Veronica's Closet" revival."

Splitsider: The case for TV Revivals and reboots — "The nifty thing about many of these revivals is that, while the networks consider them enough of a sure thing to greenlight them, they’re still a gamble. Plenty of these revivals were handed deals for what is often called a “limited series” or an “event series,” one season runs with no guarantees of more episodes to come. Because of that, writers, if they’re smart, will take advantage of the limited series format to create a tighter, more focused season of television, maybe telling a single story that can mostly stand apart from the series that preceded it."

This program aired on November 6, 2015.

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