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Star Trek: Enterprise in Danger of Being Cancelled
jkcity writes "According to Cinscape.com The Star Trek Enterprise set is awash with rumour that it will not be renewed for a 4th season, It was previous told it was safe by UPN but so was Enteprise's lead-out show Jake 2.0 which was just Cancelled. Star Trek: Enterprise has also been reduced to 24 episodes this season by UPN, things don't look good for the Star Trek Television Franchise and after the flop of Star Trek: Nemesis it could be many years before we ever see any new Star Trek outside of books."
Could it be that such innovative plot twists as alien 768 is an alien because it's got REALLY funny headbumps isn't enough to entertain the audience anymore?
I loved TNG, liked DS9, and my attention started to waver half way through Voyager...that said, I'm impressed that they could keep it going for another series and a half. I gave them much more of my time than I would have given ANY other medoicre show. Looks like I'm not the only one that managed to stop watching this year. (Funny, I didn't miss it, either.)
I turned Enterprise on last week while channel surfing to find it was the exact same formula that's been used every week for the last _five_ years. (0:06 mystery, 0:23 find out mystery is horrible threat, 0:42 make threat seem impossible to overcome, 0:58 solve problem with seconds to spare, 0:59 have credits roll over zany laughing cast.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Maybe it's time for the franchise to take a rest. I was a fan of the original series. Then with TNG came out, after the first season, I started to get interested (I think the actors didn't really find their characters until mid-second series).
I know a lot of people enjoyed DS9, though I didn't really care for it that much. I personally enjoyed a number of episodes of Voyager.
But maybe it's time to let things rest for a while. Maybe come back to it in 5 or 10 years with some fresh ideas and in the meantime, let people build up their appetite for it again as well. I think they've just really gotten to the point where their grasping for new story ideas and nothing is really drawing people in to the series. Maybe it's just me. I watched a few episodes of Enterprise. It's not bad, but it's not that great either.
People have high expectations of the Star Trek franchise, and if they're not going to be able to meet those expectations, they ought to let it rest until they can. But that's just my opinion.
It just occurred to me to ask the question of why Enterprise needs to be on every week for each new season? Why not go with a mini-series every year. The hype increases, there is more latitude to do something different and there is less danger of worrying about ratings.
Just a thought....
Jake 2.0 hasn't even started over in the UK yet, and its already cancelled! Another good buy by Sky!
Enterprise is a good series, much grittier than TNG, on a par with DS9. Pity to see it go.
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Well, it worked. It also helps that the show is nothing at all like Star Trek. Basic premise of every episode: Let's take a good idea from TOS or TNG, update it with a new cast and new effects, and completely ruing the meaning!
A recent episode had what seemed like interstellar terrorists on it. The theme was a sort-of "with us or against us" thing, as if the episode had come straight out of a propaganda machine. I don't need my Star Trek telling me what to think. I want my Star Trek making me think. That's what Trek was always best at: making people think about things. What if? Why? The settings was incidental. The effects were irrelevant. The story was what mattered. Enterprise ditched that and focused on everything else. The result?
Star Trek Lite: It tastes bland and isn't very filling, but people accept it anyway.
The sad thing is the cast works. I think Backula does a great job, and I loved his role in Quantum Leap. Phlox is pretty entertaining. But these few perks just can't make up for the general disarray of the series.
And don't even get me STARTED on Star Trek timeline continuity. If Trek continuity were a person, it would be time for it to seek rape consoling! The Borg episode... the Romulans? What the hell? Have the writers ever even watched any of the previous Treks?
Sorry Enterprise, but I can't say I will miss you.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
With each new iteration, Star Trek distorts and dilutes its own mythos. I thought this would be an interesting take on Starfleet's early history, with raw, unpolished versions, or complete absence of, the day to day technologies that the TOS and later crews used and of course modified at the eleventh hour to avert a crisis. The writers wasted no time updating/uprating Enterprises' systems and accoutrements ("phase pistols" anyone?) so now the ship is nearly indistinguishable from its descendants. The exploration oriented format is too similar to the preceding shows. The TOS crew have earned a Campbell-esque place in our pantheon of modern day mythic heroes. Picard may ascend to that pinnacle. Janeway and Cisko never will. Neither will Jonathan Archer. Star Trek is in a decadent stage. A long hiatus with no series and no movies would serve everyone best, giving both the general public and hardcore fans some time to build up some real desire. Hire completlely new writers and give them years, if need be, to come up with a really fresh take. Some ideas for a next Trek: How about a show with a built-in limited lifespan, starting right at the post-Shuttle era, and ending with Archer's Enterprise? Each season would be a complete epoch, showing the development of the technology, and the adaptation of people to long-term life in space. Another idea: breakdown of the Federation. It collapses sometime after Picard's retirement, and a starship crew makes the rounds restoring order to worlds and rebuilding alliances. Once again, a series that's planned out ahead of time to run for a certain number of seasons. See, the open-ended nature of each Star Trek series is the problem. I hope the next writers come up with something great, but most importantly, KEEP FOCUSED!
Its sad to see the "Star Trek Franchise" fail so misserably. But after Nemesis and Enterprise, it seems like they finally killed it for good.
:-/
The entire idea of a pre-quel sounded hokie from the start. But well, I did try to like it
I still think Deep Space 9 was the best series. It could have used one or two more seasons.
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I think you got the link wrong. It should have linked to here Instead. Yes, it is all Rick Berman's fault. Every ST movie that has royally sucked was his fault. Every episode that royally sucked was his fault. It's his genius idea to NOT write (or even allow) star trek episodes that reference any part of the star trek mythology.
Seriously, when the FIRST episode of Enterprise didn't fit in the continuity (Klingons, huh?). I knew it was dead, despite the amazing amount of potential a pissed captain has. Right now they just took the events of 9/11 and turned into into a third season of ST:Enterprise.
A review at the beginning of the season in USA Today brought up some very good points on the lack of focus in Enterprise. Although Paramount wants you to think they took the show for a dramatic twist this season, nothing really has changed. They are still exploring the unknown, which is what they have been doing the first two seasons. Nothing to see here, move along.
To fix Enterprise they need to:
Be a little more subtle with public commentary. Compare Similitude with TOS's Let That Be Your Last Battleground
More friction among the crew.
Lose the T'Pol-Tucker story line
Slow DOWN THE TRANSPORTER!!!! It's faster than The Original Series'!
There have been a couple good episodes:
Shockwave
Chosen Realm
And a lot of duds:
A remake of Data's Day: Dear Doctor
An A-Team episode: Marauders
And just a really lame episode: Extinction
What, me worry?
...IMHO Enterprise should make a whole lot more of the fact that they're much closer to NASA, military outfits, etc, than the others.
Which doesn't mean technology which doesn't work as well... it means a completely different social structure and way of doing things... the crew shouldn't be one big happy family.
I have yet to see a really entertaining episode (although I admit I've only watched five or six random ones).
I suppose I should probably accept that I'm not in the target demographic... although exactly what the target demographic is, I'm not sure. As a 19-year-old compsci student I should be quite a good bet for sci-fi...
I thought they were on a roll, managing to get two scenes with the female characters half undressed, and a tacticless space ship fight into almost every episode.
When I first heard the premise for this new series, I was actually quite interested. A primitive Entreprise, first real deep sapce ship from Earth, presumably out gunned by almost everyone they meet, and maybe having to do some interesting things to win through.
But no. They turn out to be able to beat crap out of almost everyone. The only way to get a plot is to have something blow up on board, or mysterious `gravimetric bullshiterons' hold them while the inferior aliens attack, so that 10 minutes later they can beat crap out of those same aliens without breaking sweat... scene of vulcan underwear giving engineer a hand job... end of episode.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
than Mayweather, Hoshi and Malcom
Who?
Star trek, always has, and always will be about saving former or future porn stars, who may or may not be painted greem, and possibly wearing silver gogo outfits, from either guys wearing fu-man-chu's, what you see when you look in a kaleidoscope, a burlap sack, or nazis. There is a very good reason for this. Nerds, like all guys like stuff blowing up and girls in tight or non-existant clothes. But they also like space. And everyone hates Nazis and people with bumpy foreheads.
I also like snappy banter, pop culture references, girls with guns, and body paint, which is why I prefer Farscape. (Which is essentially Buck Rogers re-imagined with a wink and a nod to go with the camp.) "Cocksure American saves universe by swaggering while exotic foreign babes salivate" fits in nicely with my world view.
Something about this series had me interested right from episode 1, and I can't say that about the others. With every Star Trek series there has been a period of growing pains. Spock smiling, Data using contrations, Riker without a beard, etc. But Enterprise had their characters and concepts nailed as soon as it started. I hope this can be saved. I'll miss this show.
Enterprise has been well in line with Sturgeon's law: 90% of the episodes have been crap. Instead of buying decent scripts, they (hmmm) "borrowed" and rehashed old, hoary plots, substituted random nudity in favor of developing characters you could care about, and have saved so many impossible situations with the deus ex machina time-travel garbage that, well...
I just want to see the puppy save the ship. Once. I'll Tivo episodes and fast-forward 'til I see that.
One thing *could* save the show: Solicit scripts from old heavies. I know it's painful, but buy some writing from the likes of Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold and other people with reasonable horsepower. Doesn't even have to be their best work; I'm sure they've got something stashed away that could be adapted quickly. Heavily publicize the eps. Watch the ratings spike.
Until some good writing happens, Enterprise will be good riddance as far as I'm concerned. Bring back Firefly. Jesus, what a business.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
You can't go any farther into the future. The TNG era technology has already established that you can pretty much do anything. You can order the computer to solve any problem, produce any goods or services, create artificial crewmembers that are as good as the real thing, etc.
A good premise for a ST series would be similar to what you were saying about the "verge of collapse". Have a disaster that renders federation/klingon/romulan/major species computer technology useless. As a bonus, have it somehow involve the destruction of the borg for all time.
They have to retrofit what ships they have with older technology. The plot of the series can be discovering what went wrong, and defending the federation from the minor races who now have the technological advantage.
I must admit that part of me agrees with you. The reason I watch(ed) all of the various ST series is because I was raised on the the first one. because of that one, I was also raised on Space:1999, Quark (I know, it's a guilty pleasure), Buck Rogers (original and the 70's version), and who knows what else that's been produced over my 35 years. I'm a fan of the genre, and will watch scifi on TV whenever something new comes out. I'm still pissed that Farscape got cancelled, and miss B5 very much.
Having said that, I totally agree that B&B have turned the Star Trek world to shit. There's no imagination anymore. There's no innovation, and no risk-taking. There's also nothing even remotely mentally stimulating about what has been produced since DS9 ended. I can't watch any ST episode with a holodeck, because they're all uniformly bad. I have never seen why more than one trip to 20th Century Earth or another planet suspiciously similar was necessary.
Here's my greatest wish for Star Trek: Make a new series set in the same time as the previous 3. Now that a really rich universe has been created with lots of different species and locations, rules, technology, and other such factors there's a real strong environment for creating something interesting. There's a tremendous amount of familiarity with all of this in the viewer population.
Now, instead of a serialized show with the same characters in it every week, make it more of an anthology. Different characters and different stories every week. One week, maybe the story revolves around a Ferengi merchant ship and some issue they face. The next week, parents deal with the fact that their child is (or is not) joining Star Fleet. Another could be comical - Klingons trying to spy on the Federation or someting like that.
The fans would get the "in" jokes, already know the political environment, and understand the different cultures of the species from the show. There's this huge universe to draw upon, and so much of it hasn't been explored...like anything NOT having to do with Star Fleet.
So, who would write the shows? Fans. You and me. Anybody could submit 1 (one) story per season. The best ones would get produced. You'd have good writing, fresh ideas every week, and a show that I believe people would look forward to every week. If you get a bad one, it's no big deal because it's not like you're going to have to put up with the same crappy acting or writing the next time. If somebody does exceptionally well, they could come back and do another one the next season. We would end up with some favorite recurring characters...maybe you would see a popular, flamboyant character (Harry Mudd, anyone?) in some small role occasionally to lend a sense of continuity.
Maybe I'm just insane. I just think that there's so much here to draw from that it really takes tremendous effort to make something as bad as Enterprise or Voyager. Like I said, I'll still watch them because it's hard-coded into my behavior. But that doesn't mean that they can't be better.