Last week, when I posted about the long-dormant proposal for a "Star Trek" re-boot, written by J. Michael Straczynski and myself two years ago, I didn't appreciate how it would be such a classic lesson in the power of the web to get info out there quickly. But it is.
You have to understand that this blog averages only about 100 hits a day. I'd started the blog to better understand the whole experience, teach myself some new computer skills, and so on. Anyway, the baseline: 100 hits a day. These are distinct "visits" from unique people and not just "page views" (we get about 180 of those).
Yesterday, "For What It's Worth" received 8,758 hits. Let's see: that's 87 times normal. Here's what it looks like on Site Meter:
You can see for yourself that it was cruising along in the 80-120 hits per day, 100 hits average. Then a couple of other blogs picked up on it and I had two 900 hits days in a row and I was astounded. I figured that was the big traffic and it would die down. But then the Sci-Fi Channel web-site picked up on it and it went through the roof. Yesterday, at its peak wave, the blog was hit by nearly 700 people in a single hour, something I thought was possible only on porn sites. Here's a look at what the week looked like:
I entertained the idea of re-writing that blog post to focus only on "Star Trek" but opted to keep it in its original state. What prompted me to put the treatment out there for download in the first place was no grand scheme but the comments of Stephen Hawking about needing to move out into the stars. I started writing about that, and suddenly I'd verged into "Star Trek" territory and just kind of went with that energy.
In retrospect, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We all know how powerful the "Star Trek" franchise is and how deeply its fans care about it.
As a consequence, a lot of people have posted thoughtful comments both here and elsewhere on the web about the content of that blog and the proposal it described. I learned a lot. Thanks to everyone who took the time, and let's hope some good comes out of all this.
Not everyone agrees on what should happen with "Star Trek," of course. Lots of different ideas. But the majority did seem to spark to the simplicity of what JMS and I were saying:
There is so damn much continuity to take into consideration in the "Star Trek" world that the best thing to do is a complete re-boot, to start over, and let a new generation of writers take a swing at it without the Old Guard wagging fingers pre-emptively on new takes and directions.
People are still dropping in to read that post but, in a few days, things will probably return to normal. Anyway, thanks for stopping by this blog, all of you from all around the world, and please do come back again.
