Why people are going to see the new Star Trek film

Any TV program, by virtue of its repetition, partakes of ritual. Quiz-show and sit-
com, newscast and episodic drama, talk-show and sports show, each establishes a format
and rhythm, enhanced by repetitive theme music, which creates a particular signature. A
prime pleasure of television viewing is to sync in with the ritualistic repetitions of each
favored program, surrendering to the (usually narrow) spectrum of responses that the
program dependably, predictably elicits. A successful program achieves its own defined
space, which it repeats and repeats and repeats. Thus each program is, in an archetypal
sense, a kind of Mass, with its own particular and peculiar Communion. You know
what’s going to happen before you get there, though you don’t exactly know--and this
knowing-but-not-quite-knowing sustains both the comfort level and the interest.

Michael Ventura