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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."
Shame, enterprise was the only good one.
Still, too many of them are too 'lets break all the rules, oh and against all the odds it all works out'.
and wtf kind of captain keeps risking his ship and thousands of crew to save one or two people?
plain stupid
Without attracting a troll modifier, I'm glad. The genre is now sufficiently well-established that there are other franchises (Farscape spin-off anyone?) who could do more interesting things with the Network's money.
It's sad letting our favourite things end, but moving on is cool too.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
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."
Crossing my fingers....
and we will sick the borg on you and turn you into a FOX look alike.
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.
http://www.22balmoralroad.net/ http://www.tinynetworks.co.uk/
Whoopses. Sky over here in the UK is heavily plugging Jake 2.0 which is due to start in February.
Nothing like starting to watch a series which has already been canned!
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Good!
Not to knock the entirety of Star Trek, but the recent "Franchises" (do you want fries with that?) have been crap. I could barely watch Star Trek: A Three Hour Tour, and Star Trek: Boobies and Scott Bakula was not even worth the John Tesh opening theme. I'm not saying the age old "Ever since Gene died...blah blah blah", but the corporates at Paramont really have taken over and pissed on the whole deal.
There are better sci-fi shows out there: Bablylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, to name a few. Some are in threat of being cancelled or already in limbo. Support THOSE! Try to revive the GOOD series!
Let Star Trek die the death it has been begging for since ST:DS9 ended. Don't let it drag on. (Flame on!)
Zodiac Survey
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
Much has been said about the control that Gene Roddenberry had over the Star Trek franchise & many have criticised the power he had over it.
However, under Roddenberry, we were at least guaranteed a cohesive Star Trek universe.
"Enterprise", I'm told at least, did not fit into the pre-Kirk Trek universe and deliberately did not do so. The lame excuse that Rick Berman/Brannon Braga gave for this was that events in "First Contact" caused the timeline to be changed.
Berman & Braga have made a complete hash of Trek since they got their grubby paws on the franchise that has seen it deteriorate more and more since Roddenberry's passing - TNG was, on the whole, excellent, DS9 had a poorish start but improved as things went on, Voyager had a handful of good stories and Enterprise was a complete waste of time.
I watched the first series, hoping to see an improvement and then gave up with it. Recently, I tuned into a repeat episode (possibly 2nd series) to see a plot stolen straight out of "Enemy Mine" (human and alien stranded together on a planet) & was shocked at how unoriginal the plots had become.
The only good thing about Trek recently is that my lack of enthusiasm for it has caused me to go buy the Babylon 5 DVDs (I missed all but a hndful of episodes when it was shown on TV) and to restore my faith in good, well-made science fiction TV series.
Braga & Berman can go sit on the scrapheap - I'll not lose any sleep over it...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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!
That repetitive drivel like Enterprise gets to last this long while the ream gems (FireFly, Farscape) pass away tragically.
Those shows had more originality, creativity and quality writing than the Star Trek franchise can hope to match. Not to say that Star Trek wasn't good and original in its day, but that day has passed.
I recently showed Firefly to a housemate for the first time, he was hooked after the pilot. After each episode (we just finished the last one), he sits in stunned amazement, quietly saying "why was this cancelled?". It's sad really.
...just how much a (post-original) Trek show has to suck before they'll pull the plug.
Now that this has been empirically verified, let's never conduct this experiment again please.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Disclaimer: This is not a troll nor flamebait, but a talking point.
Much of the discussion about "how much Trek sucks" usually ends up blaming Rick Berman. How much of this is his fault here? I have no judgement, but I'm tossing this out for discussion's sake.
I think my personal opinion is thus: Create work that is quality, and I will consume it.
I thought that's how the system was supposed to work... but yet, somehow, shows like UPN's planned "reality" show chronicling the wacky misadventures of Amish teens have more marketability than (insert your genre of interest here).
I think they keep trying to draw audiences by injecting episodes with BIG ACTION and SEXY SITUATIONS... well, that's not what made TNG good. TNG was good because of interesting ideas that were expanded on, often very subtly, sometimes without any threat to human life.
And every episode seems to follow a plot that's been done, what, like three, four times on previous Trek shows? My advice to save Enterprise is to fire Brannon and Braga, and hire only writer s that have never worked on any of the shows before. Keep around a 'bible' expert for continuity, but look for talented writers and producers. This is what will save the show.
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
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.
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
Well if they are going to cancel it please make sure we get some closure as there is nothing worse than just leave something hanging. At least let Enterprise go out on a high if not up to the standard of DS9/TNG.
Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
I'm sorry, but so what? Star Trek jumped the shark as soon as they threw that half-baked Battlestar Galactica rip-off, Voyager, on the air. (Don't agree? Borg = Cyclons, Voyager = Galactica, far from home and lost.) Berman and Braga fucked up what could potentially be a great series by trying to do the same stupid Time War shit they did with Voyager, etc.
In the end, as much as I find the characters interesting, I just can't bring myself to care too much about the premature end of this five-year mission. You can't keep a show running, much less grabbing public interest, based on potential. This show had it, but it failed to deliver on it.
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The "Flop of Nemesis"???
*smacks forhead*
How about this: Don't release movie number 10 in a series of niche movies a weekend before one of the most anticipated movies of all time, which had been promoted for several years, comes out.
I didn't have a problem with nemesis. I actually liked it. Did I go see it in a theatre? No, i saved my $15 for Lord of the Rings. Duh.
~Will
sig?
I am surprised, because most of the other countries in the world do end up watching a lot of american shows
Most of the shows are made just for the American market, perhaps you can make an exception for Friends, but it's still got a lot of in US jokes which we don't get until we hear the audience laugh.
The sad fact is that it's cheaper to buy US rejects or old US shows (you'd be surprised at what's still running on African TV stations) so they get shown instead of locally produced content, or newer European content...
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
One more crippling bombshell hit the already discouraged and defeated Star Trek franchise when UPN confirmed that Enterprise has dropped yet again after Voyager showed to be a miserable failure as well. Coming on the heels of a recent Gallop survey which plainly states that Rick Berman has lost the peoples confidence in his ability to innovate and make progress, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The Star Trek franchise is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the ratings.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Enterprise's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Enterprise faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Enterprise because Enterprise is dying. Things are looking very bad for Enterprise. As many of us are already aware, Enterprise continues to lose viewers. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The Star Trek franchise is the most endangered science fiction franchise of them all, having lost 93% of its core nerds. There can no longer be any doubt: Enterprise is dying.
All major surveys show that Enterprise has steadily declined in consumer confidence. Enterprise is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Enterprise is to survive at all it will be among sci-fi dilettante dabblers. Enterprise continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Enterprise is dead.
Fact: Enterprise is dying
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.
I think syndication would be a better choice than UPN any day. I quite enjoy Enterprise. My biggest problem with it is that the local UPN affiliate keeps pre-empting the show for Orlando Magic games. I'd rather watch BAD Star Trek (Voyager) than ANY basketball game...
This is apparently a major problem for UPN, whose affiliates are largely made up of not-very-committed-to-the-network stations (Like WRBW) or even shared with WB network.
If Enterprise gets canned, quite frankly I hope the entire UPN network folds, as has been rumored. We don't need another network filled with generic ethnic sitcoms and Reality Shows.
I wouldn't want Sci-Fi to pick it up. They'd completely ruin it and then bury it at some odd time, or turn it into "Tremors: in Space".
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Sci-fi fans have higher expectations from series these days. We just don't like episodic television. Lost in space was over 30 years ago.
Events from one episode have to influence future ones. Babylon 5 did this. So did Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Star Trek franchise managed to learn this in the end with DS9, but now they've totally forgotten. Season 3 has had a couple of references to the Xindi backstory, but really we need more than that. We never get the feeling anything has happened after an episode has finished.
Paramount doesn't even seem to want to try. There were clear signs of a subversive effort to change this in Voyager, with Janeway slowly losing it in Equinox, but then the franchise backed away. At the end of that episode all was forgiven and forgotten. Chakotay decided that going on the Ahab revenge thing and locking him in the brig was only a minor misunderstanding, and they could still be friends.
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...
Right. And every one knows that crossovers are an absolute necessity for good drama, rather than just a tired old cliche, used by writers who are totally out of ideas.
Ok, I'll bite.
I don't suppose you have ever watched Angel, by any chance? Just to prove that cross overs don't negate good writing, rather they add to it.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Personally after being lost in the delta quadrant for years on voyager, I thought trek would get back to some basic Treking. Klingon's (Bad ones, nasty ones, Enterprise's Klingons are more like TNG's, which in my opinion ought not to be the case). Bad Ass Romulans, and the discovery of thier link with the vulcans (this was touched on Briefly, very Briefly, and really ought to get more attention as well. They really need to round up the writers and directorys that made some of the DS9, TNG episodes that really stick out as Classics. Best of Both Worlds, the Bell Riots, The entire Bajorian Religious Arc at the end of DS9 (the final season was one of the best seasons of Trek ever). I also feel like Enterprise has quickly degenerated into the Captain Archer Show, which some Trip and T'Pol thrown in here and there. They need to open up the cast more let us get into the other characters heads, and perhaps even give us a few more characters. It looked like they were headed that way they had that ensign (Cartright? maybe?) who seemed to get some focus in a couple episodes (on an away mission in the episode with the slave race, and the episode where she has a crush on Flox)...ah well I hope they work something out and we get a season 4 and perhaps they can strighgten this out...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I do enjoy the whole Star Trek universe, but it's hard to deny that Enterprise has largely been unoriginal. This hairbrained season-long plot hasn't worked out well, and I find that the only episodes I most like heavily feature Phlox.
.02 $US.
If the series had instead of going with this "temporal cold war" idea gone with a simple "explore nearby space and meet new races" type idea, I heavily suspect that things would have been better. I mean, hell; TNG and TOS were great; DS9 was alright, but Voyager was a step in the WRONG DIRECTION.
Just my
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
It seems like every sci-fi show, good or bad, popular amongst us geeks or not, gets cancelled.
Instead, we have these mind-numbing 'reality' tv shows, vapid sit-coms, and corny teenage melodramas.
I watch Enterprise. It's not that I think it's that great, it's just better than most of the other rubbish on TV. At least it's mildly entertaining, and I need something to watch while I exercise.
Does anybody REALLY want another Joe Millionaire/Survivor 14/Bachlor(ette) clone to replace it?
I might shoot plot holes though Enterprise all day, but at least my brain functions while doing it.
Yes, it is all Rick Berman's fault. Every ST movie that has royally sucked was his fault.
umm how do you explain Star Trek 1? Vger? come on take the cosmic dust off for gods sake. worst movie of them all. 2 was best. i know it had holes but i was never a fan of TOS so i thought it was great and continue to repeatly watch it. 3 ok. 4 wacky humor. 5 is where we start seeing a down turn until after generations.
Star Trek:
Western in space. Kinda campy but did have its moments. Very memorable characters. Fanbase: Big enough to get a few movies going after its cancelation. Noteworthy: The fans loved the show and movies enough to get an entire freakin' space shuttle renamed. Nae bad.
Star Trek: The Next Generation:
Pretty deep plots. Much deeper than much of what is shown on TV, which really doesn't say much. Very memorable characters. Very powerful episodes. (Remember the one where the crew find a probe and Picard spends a lifetime on a dieing planet?) Had many people who aren't fans of scifi watching. Noteworthy: Roddenbery died during this series.
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Very deep storyline spanning many seasons. Characters not as memorable as those on TNG, but memorable none the less.
Star Trek: Voyager:
Unmemorable characters, superficial plots, enough gaps in the plot to make Spock have a stroke. The previously immortal and near unbeatable borg were made to look like a bunch of pussies in this. Time travel became more cliche than it previously was. It's crap, Jim.
Star Trek: Enterprise
New 'hip' series that shits on the pre-federation history laid out by the previous series and movies. Superficial. Unmemorable characters. Plots so shallow not even an infant could drown in them. Superficial. Tries to grab your attention with random semi-nudity. Predictable. Superficial. Theme song sucks. Superficial.
As somebody who used to be a HUGE Trek fan 10 years ago - good. The horse is laying in the middle of the field, four broken legs, broken ribs, and is oozing blood out of its ears. Just shoot it and get it over with. I hate seeing my childhood fave raped for ratings.
Berman and Braga can kiss the fattest part of my ass.
Truism:
Odd numbered star treks suck.
No way around it, they just do.
5, incidentally, is so bad that most of us write it off as not having existed in the first place. I think one trekkie described it best when he said "Kirk and god compare egos, god loses."
1 can't even compare to that.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
They say that as if it's a bad thing.
I've watched a lot of dire sci-fi (War Of The Worlds springs to mind) in my time but ST:E really scrapes the bottom of the barrel. The characters are a joke (there's not a single one that I can empathise with or admire), and the storylines are almost entirely incompatible with the rest of the Star Trek universe (Klingons that look like TNG/DS9/Voyager rather than TOS, etc).
Frankly, I'm amazed it lasted this long. Personally, I think the decision to cast Scott Bakula as Captain Archer was telling: the producers and the network knew that the concept was so weak and limited that they needed an established sci-fi lead to help bring viewers on board. (All the previous Star Trek shows featured actors who were virtual unknowns at the time of being cast, and perhaps the shhows were that much better because of it.)
If I'd been in charge of pushing the Star Trek envelope and creating a fifth show, ST:E would have been the last thing that I would have come up with. Perhaps a series set even further into the future with a focus that included the temporal time directive would have been better - it's hard to see how it could have been much worse.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
When I heard rumors of a New Trek Series I had been hoping for something along the logical progression of the Trek Universe.
1. We have for years had teasing hints of the Post Kirk Era, in seeing Sulu on the Excellsior(I know I spelled that wrong). I had been hoping that perhaps a new Trek Series would go down that line.
2. We have also seen bits of the Post Kirk Pre-picard Universe in seeing the Enterprise-B, and C I had hoped that maybe a new series would go in this direction especially the C. The Federation in the middle of an all out war would make for a refreshing change from the general Peace and love universe we are all used to seeing.
3. I heard a rumor of a Star Fleet Academy show at one point, Not sure about this one, but it might have worked.
4. A Post Picard Setting, where the Federation is on the verge of, or has already colapsed.
5. A Post Picard Setting way way into the future, jump forward 100-200 years (Leaves lots of room for back story) set on the the Enterprise - L. Perhaps things are very different in this age, the Romulans, Klingons and Cardasians are Full Memebers of the Federation, perhaps the Enterprise is even Commanded by a Klingon, with a Vulcan/Romulan first officer (A decendant of Spock fathered during his time on Romulus).
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I actually like Enterprise and am disappointed that it may get cancelled. I absolutely agree that the plots have been done to death and that the aliens are sadly predictable in appearance but I more or less like this crew.
I think Bakula makes a good captain and his play with the Vulcan Sub-Commander is good. That can't carry the show however as much of the other crew hasn't been allowed to breath (except for Hoshi in the Psychic/Alien episode which isn't saying much).
But there is a lot of untested material in the Star Trek universe. There should be more Andorran plots and it would be really nice if the writers remembered the Gorn Empire or the Tholians. The universe was unstable back then (as opposed to TNG Federation/Romulan/Klingon triumvirate) and that instability could make for some good shows.
This season's "Expanse" theme is interesting and I personally like it. However, it can't go on forever, for the very fact that none of it was ever mentioned in any past series.
The show needs to get back to its beginnings. USE the tried plot but lets not forget that space is a new and exciting and unknown place. Everything that the crew seems to encounter has already been encountered before. The original series used that unknown as the backbone of plot. TNG really built up a crew centric aspect. The other two kind of let me down. Enterprise has the potential to do a lot but isn't going anywhere.
They should really let the fans be the writers. Set up a contest or something on the website to submit an episode. Star Trek is a good and proven concept but there needs to be more trekking and more weird discoveries.
When they cancell it they won't replace it with new FireFly or new Farscape or even Futurama reruns.
They will replace it with EXXXXTREME Survivor Pop Idol Challenge Get Me Out Of Here!!! Now with MORE Celebrities!!!! Some of whom you might even have heard of!!!!!!!
The kind of programming so bad that the 15-20 mins of advertising per hour are actually the highlight.
Beep beep.
Isnt it amazing that every 4+ comment is negative. I would imagine that this could be seen as a voting mechanism by the randomly chosen moderators of the opinions they think are worthwhile. No two random people are defending startrek.
Sci-Fi producers should canvas slashdot for community advice since its not the diehard supporters (ie: the few hundred that read alt.sf.star-trek (or whatever)) but the public that they seek to entertain.
-Tim
What do you think of the possibility that Star Trek: Enterprise may be cancelled?
- "Who cares? Kirk rules!"
- "Who cares? Picard rules!"
- "Berman sux. I expected it any day."
- "Ahh... I just watched it for the hot Vulcan chick anyways."
- "I just wait for the Trek movies."
- "That's horrible, I just decided that Crusher was cool because he runs Linux, now this!"
- "It's all the fault of CowboyNeal and his Nielsen-connected TiVo!"
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I kinda like their present plot, and enterprise is one of two shows I watch with any regularity (the other being West Wing). If they continued with traditional plots people would complain about them only rehashing already explored subjects. That said I would like the see more of the relationships between the Big-Three Species (Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans).
They have, however created a plot line that could easily extend for some number of years. The time-traveler plot has taken a back seat to the Zindi excursion, but I suppose that will be tied back in by year's end.
There is a lot of good plots out there though, so much stuff to cover in pre-Federation human society. Come on UPN, don't you realize this is the only show some people watch on your network?
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Huh? 5 was the most awful of them all, and Generations was... meh, not bad. But, 6 was possibly the best, IMHO. I can understand if it's not someone's favorite, but it was a good movie and deserves some recognition, dammit! :)
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I can sum them all up. We'll have a few pages of people who don't even watch the show saying "good", "it's rubbish".
Never mind the drastic improvement the show has gone through this season. Just cancel it because a few people on Slashdot say so.
I think the trick with TOS, TNG, and DS9 was that they were only drawing on events to make parallels rather than clubbing us over the head with them.
Enterprise did one thing even worse, the "technology'll get us out of this jam" routine. I mean, c'mon, they were able to defeat the bloody Borg (the doc even purged what were now strangely slow moving nano probes out of his system). Need to sneak into a place? Fortunately someone left their cloaking pod and we'll just borrow that (and oh yeah, an overload in it will cloak someone's arm...)
So what do we get now? Star Trek: Law & Order (plots ripped STRAIGHT FROM TODAY'S HEADLINES!!!)
The whole idea of Star Trek was to escape from today's problems, not bask in them with transporters.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
It was last year (was that season 1) where they met a guy on a desert world who gave them hospitality, and they befriended. They enjoyed hanging with him and his clan. They were contacted by the world government that called the group terrorists...
The desert "terrorists" who were portrayed in a positive light wore the headgarb associated with Arabs (which really is generic desert gear, but we see it on Middle Eastern Arabs all the time), and the representative from the world government was a Jewish guy with stereotypical Jewish curls...
I couldn't watch the show after that. ST:TOS was a drama that tackled big issues b/c being in space, the metaphores were there but not in your face. This one offended me, as I couldn't help but see it as Anti-American/Anti-Israel/Anti-Semetic bullshit.
Enterprise blew from the beginning. They used what appeared to be left-over ST:TNG scripts, instead of protraying the crew as REALLY being the first crew in space. Too much idealism, no sense of Real Politick, no concept of making allies for Earth... just not realistic for the first flight out.
The show should have been "rougher" than Star Trek, not more enlightened than ST:TNG.
That was the idea and premise, but the delivery was ST:TNG with new aliens... It was Voyager. Voyager, DS9, Enterprise, all started with the premise of "something new" in Star Trek, with odd crew memebers (terrorists, terrorists, pre-Kirk days), and quickly became another ST:TNG ripoff.
ST:TNG had the background for the super-enlightened team... Giant ship with families on board, shields and weapons that can waste ANYTHING in space (until the Borg), older, established Captain. Fleet's flagship with unlimited resources. That makes it reasonable to do a happy-shiny enlightened show. The other 3 shows were "frontier" Star Treks (like the original), but didn't have the campy shoot from the hip feel that Star Trek had.
Alex
If it means I don't have to hear that godawful intro music again, this is a good thing. Makes me cringe every time.
/. hasn't covered this, actually.
On a more serious note, the whole Star Trek genre has been stale for a long time. I watched a fair bit of Enterprise, almost out of habit, but I wasn't really "wowed" by any of it. Star Trek seems to run off a formula, to such an extent that you can almost map Enterprise episodes onto past stories from the other series. (And even within those, there was never huge variety.)
On the other hand, Farscape really drew me in. I was looking forward to the next episode to find out what happened, rather than watching just because "it was on".
I'm also rediscovering Babylon 5. I didn't really appreciate it at the time as I missed half (or more) of the episodes, but now I'm rewatching it all in sequence, I've come to the conclusion it's the best sci-fi series of all time. In Star Trek, nothing really surprising happens - you know that in each episode the crew will face some insurmountable challenge, overcome it by suddenly discovering they can supe-up some component of the ship, and at the end of the episode things will be just the same as they were at the start. B5 on the other hand (and to a lesser extent, Farscape) has real suspense and drama. Sure, you know they'll win out at the end, but you have no idea what is gonna happen on the way.
And I'm glad to hear, there are rumours abound of another B5 project in the works. Surprised that
Mod me -1 troll if you want, but this is really what I think.
A decade of Berman at the helm has proved that mindless action, tight outfits, gibberish Trek pseudoscience, and petty, artificial conflicts does not a compelling sci-fi series make.
It's time to replace him with some one who can put mystery, suspense, and yes, realistic characters back into Trek.
I've got an idea. Take a capable producer and a couple of good writers, not necessarily from sci-fi backgrounds. Over the course of a month, Have them spend a week at JPL, a week aboard a nuclear submarine , a week hanging out with David Blaine, and a week with Donald Trump. Afterwards, lock them in a cabin for a week and tell them to transport the characters they've met to the Trek universe. I'll eat my shoe if they can't come up with a blockbuster.
I thought it was a crappy remake of Wrath of Kahn!
Your in charge of a very populare TV franchies. Your job is to kill it.
I could go over a whole list of stuff they did wrong but the first mistake was simply ignoring the fans.
Way back (1993?) Paramount let slip rummors of plans for a star trek exploring the foundations of star fleat. The fan base booed the idea and continued to boo the idea for many years.
You'd think after a few years of booing Paramount would get the idea.
I don't actually exist.
I've thoroughly enjoyed Enterprise so far. I would hate for it to be cancelled. Was Jake 2.0 cancelled? I thought it was just on hiatas.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
If you know Wil's history with Berman, you'd know he'd be the last (or maybe the second-to-last) person in the ST machine Wil would want to talk to.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
At least I had been into it until this weeks episode. It felt a little deflated.
For me what peaked my interest was when they started to set out on the whole story arc with the Xindi, the expanse, and the devistation on earth with a 9/11 twist. Everyone had a little different approach to dealing with the massive loss of life.
I will continue to watch and I for one hope that they do not pull the plug. However, in the same breath, I think that they do need to back off a little on the whole Star Trek Universe. Nemisis did suck, not as bad as ST:5 though.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
Trektoday.com reported that they shortened this season, and will have a similar 24-episode season next year to reach the magic 100 episode count for syndication.
If they believe they can sell it to syndication, they'll keep going, by all means. If they don't think they'll sell it, it probably won't last out the season.
How can they keep it alive? Half-dressed Vulcans don't seem to be enough.
Design for Use, not Construction!
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.
It's not any one factor that makes the series uninteresting, but a combination of factors that screams (or bleats) out "we're only going through the motions here". It wasn't the viewers that killed Star Trek, it was the producer.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The criminaly bad theme music.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
After Nemesis and Enterprise, Star Trek needs to die. Brannon Braga and Rick Berman are a bunch of greedy fuckwits, dumbing down and morally sterilizing the franchise (God, I hate Janeway) to attract Mr. and Mrs. MTV lobotomized American, and should be killed as horribly and painfully as possible.
Okay, a little far. But Star Trek needs some serious time off, after which it should be handed over to someone who might actually care about the franchise, and hire proven, good writers who aren't afraid to take a chance. Berman, the franchise's current head, was Roddenberry's money guy, and Braga, the main writer, is a wannabe Jerry Bruckheimer hack, and he's not even very good at that. Someone like Joss Whedon (not sure if he even likes Star Trek, but he'd still do well), Ira Steven Behr, or even fucking Jonathan Frakes. I'm sure there are other, better candidates, but I haven't done my research.
The best idea I've heard, I'd even go so far as to say the only idea that might salvage our beloved Trek, is to do "Star Trek Adventures" (lame name, but I'm not in fucking marketing). Essentially, a series of short miniseries set in various times and places throughout the mythology. Like 3 gritty episodes following a Klingon strike team in the Dominion War, then a few following Q around, having fun. You could jump to way the fuck in the future and watch the crew of the Enterprise-Q make first (well, second) contact with the Andromeda galaxy, spend an episode following the successful assimilation of a civilization from the people's point of view, then another, from the Borgs', and then spend a few weeks chronicling Khan's rise to power in the 21st century. You could take any genre, jam it into a Star Trek setting, and have a go. It's unlimited! They could even pander to a few episodes of CSI: Ferenginar, or a stupid sitcom set on Bolius Prime. Hell, after a hiatus, you might even enjoy dropping in on the NX-01 for a while.
The current producers need to go, they need to get the fuck off UPN, and they possibly even need to ditch the whole lone ship of exploration thing. TOS and TNG were mostly original, DS9 went somewhere entirely different, and did damn well at it (mostly because Berman and Braga ignored it, and left it to his subordinates), Voyager was utterly derivative of TOS and TNG, with a quarter the enthusiasm and passion, and Enterprise started out as the third iteration of the law of diminishing returns on the whole lone ship in an increasingly sickeningly PC unexplored space. Something like "Star Trek Adventures", without Berman and Braga, is the only way to save Star Trek.
Star Trek has been crap for a long time, which makes me very sad. The only thing they haven't tried is to put Scrappy Doo on the show. I predict that next season, if they are picked up, we're going to see the addition of the following characters:
Scrappy Doo, Oliver (from the Brady Bunch), a "long lost cousin" of the Fonz, Neelix, and a monkey dressed in a dagget suit.
And Berman will be wondering aloud why people just aren't watching the show.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
TNG: great
DS9: good
STV: poor
ENT: awful
and it started out on a good foot. I overlooked the obvious inconsistencies in the interest of light entertainment, but over time the plot just seemed to stagnate. They introduce the expanse and the xindi to 'spice' the show up and the new season has been so obviously slutting for ratings. The new uniforms, the close intimate scenes between T'Pol and Tucker, the added combat element, the "ohnoes we're in constant danger" expanse ( with klingons thrown in for good measure ), and the melodramtic revenge motives all add up to something that deserves to be dead and buried and forgotten.
Enterprise tried to be a "star trek for the common viewer" but in doing so it has disenfranchised the Star Trek fanbase while failing to impress on any new potential audience.
-- hjw http://puzl.info/
There are several things I like about Andromeda (I haven't caught many eps this season due to the show being moved around) was that it didn't take it-self too seriously. They could have a comedic episode every once and a while and not break the series format. They would also expermement with different techniques every once and a while (The Timecode ep was interesting but wierd). It was B-grade SF, and knew it. The best part was the one liners that got tossed arround ("Nothing can blow up a Black hole ... ... well almost nothing ... "). That said, Andromina get the science right more often the Star Trek does. Inter system communication often takes the form of messages that will take x minutes to get to the destination, and hence 2x minutes for a reply message. In short, Andromina is one of my guilty pleasures, and I am surprised that it has stayed on the air as long as it has.
The plot crutch that ST:TNG came up with - incessant time travel used as a means to show alternate timelines or realities - has helped to ruin Enterprise.
What I mean is - it's been discussed on the newsgroups that Enterprise is creating a future for itself that is *not* the NCC-1701A, due to the meddling of "future guy" and the Suliban. So we have an Enterprise that is creating a timeline that may not even *include* Kirk or Picard.
The most boring episodes of TNG were those where Picard gave a knowing wink to Guinan and said something idiotic like "I'll see YOU in 500 years in a few minutes". This "anything goes because the writers have a trap door for all situations" removes tension and human interest.
The writers and producers of this show lack any spark of creativity whatsoever. The Trek franchise is a friggin' Cuisinart of bad and repetitive writing. One episode last season was a blatant ripoff of "Alien Mine" down to the shape of the lizard alien's head. And they have to rely on elaborate deus ex machina crap for most of their story ideas and for resolution of plots.
Kill it, Jim, it's dead already.
Please go here and read.
We should all send a card to them to let the producers know we care about the show and want them to continue
http://www.enterpriseproject.org/
I watched the first couple of shows, then got bored. I accidentally watched this season 1st ep, and got hooked; it seems very TOS-like.
William Shatner wants to appear on Enterprise; they should let him, every trekker would tune in.
Put Wil Wheaton on the next week (maybe let Kirk kill Wesley Crusher? ahh, the visuals), that's another additional 200,000 viewers above normal.
Kill the time-travel aspect after that, it sucks.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Taking your sweeping series at face value, let me point out a few things. DS9 had some real stinker episodes and even some stinker story arcs. Voyager had a few episodes that were among the best in the franchise.
The point is, the thing that really had me rolling my eyes at many of the Voyager and DS9 episodes is how poorly written they were. They were organized around gimmicks which were simply patronizing to the fans of the franchise. To be fair, doing something memorable is going to be a huge challenge in along running franchise like ST. However, I think the ST writers would do well to be suspicious of "concepts" that scream to be summed up on one line ending with an exclamation point, e.g. "Let's have the whole cast play a baseball games against the vulcans!", or " Let's have Janeway fall in love with a hologram (OK, I can buy that) from a cute irish village!" Message to Mr. Berman: desperation is showing.
This has been a bit of a problem in every post TOS series, but it has steadily grown. Enterprise is the worst offender. I often feel like the writers are talking down to me. Or perhaps they aren't trying to talk to me, but to a demographic. You know, the kind that has to have "edginess". It's art by formula, but Komar and Melamid they ain't.
It's not a mystery that the franchise has lost its way since Rodenberry's death. The thing about Rodenberry is that he had a vision. At times it was a cringe-inducingly naive and parochial vision. But it was a vision you could buy into because the show really believed in it.
With Enterprise, the franchise's masters are trying to recapture the sexiness of TOS. But they fail because what they come up with is as artifical as a pair of regulation issue 40DD boobs. Enterprise doesn't believe in sexiness, it just needs a certain amount of it to meet the product specifications they have in mind. Take so much T&A, so much gunplay and battle, sprinkle at least one gimmick, stir and serve lukewarm.
Even when Enterprise raises what could be a provocative issue ("can torture be justified"), it ends up shying away because it doesn't believe anything. Time for another half nude shot of Jolene Blalock! No offense to her; despite her obvious endowments I think she is quite skilled and talented, as is much of the rest of the cast. They just aren't given anything interesting to do. I'd be glad to see a half-nude or even full-nude shots of Jolene Blalock in every episode. Rodenberry would have loved it. Just give the rest of my brain something to keep it occupied.
So, Enerprise just drifts in limbo, having neither the freshness and energy of TOS, or the gravitas and maturity of TNG. What it does have is "edginess", which I suppose is a kind of nervous tick. The fascination of that kind of thing is rather limited.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The real problem with Star Trek is that it's controlled by a pair of egotists who:
1) Think of Star Trek as a franchise to be exploited, instead of as an opportunity to tell great stories. This means that everything is derivitive retreads of existing material, because that's the safest tactic. This is whey don't hire real SF writers (e.g. Niven, Ellison, Gerrold) but instead hire TV writers who slap SF gadgetry and doubletalk over generic TV show plots.
2) resent the fact that everyone likes Gene Roddenberry's work better, and keep trying to create an "original vision" instead of executing GR's vision well. This is why they even took the name "Star Trek" off of Enterprise. They don't want to make Star Trek a success, they want to make something "new" a success, only they don't have the guts to actually create anything new, so they're trying to hijack Star Trek. This same issue is why the movie of Dune sucked (the director didn't want to simply film Dune, but had to get his ego involved), but LOTR was wonderful (Jackson told the original story perfectly, no ego BS), only Enterprise gets to suck weekly.
It's a shame, since Star Trek has so many fans, and the actors and effects in Enterprise are first rate. It's just the writing that sucks.
My advice: hire real SF writers and give them real creative control. Or watch Outer Limits instead. Or Farscape, Lexx, or SG-1....
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Getting the scripts from good writers.
But I'd go a bit further. Hire the good writers to come up with a story that can be broken down into 5 years worth of scripts. A real story. One that fits with the existing mythology.
Then, each writer could handle different scripts. Each episode would be part of the same story, but they would be told in a different fashion. You could even have one writer handling a sub-story for 5 or 6 episodes in a row.
Do the original, "5 year mission" of the FIRST star ship to leave our solar system. Things break, people get on each other's nerves, people DIE, the crew sees things that no other human has ever seen. The characters grow and develop.
If they did that right, they could even get two movies out in that time frame.
Good writers (not all science fiction) collaborating on a multi-year series and a couple films.
It will never happen, but I think it would be a great idea.
I do thik the writing is inconsistent, and plotlines die off like neadertals (so, are Trip and T'Pol gonna make it or what? Whatever happened to the Space Delta Force guys?) But overall, I like the cast and their mission.
One major problem is that it competes directly with two hit shows - That 70's Show and Smallville. A move to another time slot might help.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Have you even seen an episode of Star Trek: TNG from its heyday?
TNG was about making statements on humanity and exploring social issues, using the backdrop of a sci-fi space drama.
They keep showing the episode on Spike TV where the young recruit goes on the undercover mission with the terrorist organization, grows fond of them, and eventually defects. The last shot of the episode is Picard sitting in his room in defeat, lost in thought, wondering if he pushed her too hard...
That was good writing.
Dude, the captain is the best. You just have to bang your remote from time to time and say "Al?" and the show gets a lot better. I like to mute the TV during the opening credits and sing "Love Touch" or "Maggie", to get me stoked. You're right though, the vulcan chick is hot. I can't wait for it to get cancelled so she can do some more mainstream work.
More free time for me to read books/surf the net/game/work on my car/etc.
Seriously. Commercial TV is dead. We'll keep skipping commercials as long as it's still technically feasible to do so. Studios will cease making series that run multiple years, or cost tons of money. And ALL of Human Civilization will be better off.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Maybe if UPN developed a Trek that fit their core audience, like Moesha in Space or something.... nahh.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
... but good.
I can't say I'm sorry to hear that Enterprise is in danger of cancellation. I recently began reading Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry, and hearing in Roddenberry's own words about his vision of Star Trek, I can only say that the current Trek producers are pretty much raping the hell out of the Trek dream for pure marketing and financial reasons. Most of the movies and television series have become incredibly jingoistic and militaristic, and both ironically pretty much encompass almost every single thing that Roddenberry warns against. Roddenberry didn't have it perfect, either, but he cared with an obsessive-compulsive passion about the cohesiveness of his creation. The loss of that shows clearly. And the sheer contempt for prior series continuity that is evident in Enterprise absolutely disgusts me.
I'm a Trek fan. Not a con-attending, fanfic-writing one, but certainly semi-passionate; I often find myself reading the books, trying to catch the movies, etc. I was a Trekker even before TNG came out, and read the books as a young teenager. And right now, I could see nothing better for the franchise than for it to die. It's been milked to death and beyond, and the people in charge of the franchise now remind me of necrophiliacs who will simply continue humping the corpse until it decays to dust around them. Strong words, but sincerely, non-trollishly meant.
Nailed it in one. It's quatro formagio with extra cheese. None of the other STs had such a lame effort.
I always thought it should start with a flashing blue light, a view of the main screen showing a klingon ship firing, and then cut to the captain who says "Oh boy!"
As I was watching the last Star Trek film, I was wondering, "why is this so boring" Then I noticed that most of the film takes place on the bridge, which is just a big room with a wide-screen TV in the middle and some swivel armchairs and formica covered desks... hell, it's just a badly furnished yuppie living room floating through space.
Wow, journalism is getting better all the time... an anonymous person writes a note to cinescape telling them he's heard the people on the set are worried about getting cancled... wow - that's some cool research right there!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The first show was on for what, 3 years before it was cancelled? The last four series have been on continually for the last 16 years! Maybe viewers are just burnt out. The producers should take a break for a while. They can explore a few ideas through books and video games to assess interest in new themes and come back with something fresh in a decade or so.
I don't quite get what people are all bitching about, in regard to enterprise. I mean, yes for the first couple seasons it was pretty lame, but that's always been a standard for Star Trek series'. TNG, seasons one and two blew donkey balls. DS9, while personally my favorite, also had some fairly shitty episodes in its first two seasons. As far as voyager is concerned, even that series was decent up until about season five or so. If any of you dittoheads would just watch the latter part of season two, and up to the latest episodes, you might notice that it doesn't quite suck anymore. In fact, I'd rate it higher than Voyager, even when I put myself back to a time when I actually liked it.
I agree that a captain that's not a gigantic linebacker, or one that doesn't have an english accent, may not be as impressive at first as the former. But archer has really developed a much-needed ruthlessness, and overall has gotten more comfortable in his role, which really helps flesh out the character, and I've even noticed a much smaller emphasis on showing off T'pol's tits for rating's sake.
So, conclusion: Enterprise is doing what every star trek series EVER has done, it's gone from being incredibly shitty the first two seasons, to actually being decent and even GOOD. Now if you mindless assholes would just give the show half a chance, maybe you'd realize how wrong you were. Then again, this is slashdot...
Put Wil Wheaton on the next week (maybe let Kirk kill Wesley Crusher? ahh, the visuals), that's another additional 200,000 viewers above normal.
Dude.
I would totally kick his ass, using the patented "pull the toupee over his eyes" maneuver, perfected (but never used) by Kahn.
I honestly thought the first mission into deep-space would be tossed into a new galaxy -- a sort of Voyager on steroids.
I said, wow, not only are they going to be fresh out into deep space, but way out into some crazy, unknown worlds. The Vulcans, Klingons, and all the rest would be history. What a way to avoid the legacy, I thought.
Alas, I was in error. Instead, they churned-out the same old, same old.
The original Trek series tackled the greatest sci-fi concepts of the time. The Next Generation tried its best to emulate this idea and bring it into current times (the later episodes excepted).
Enterprise sucks. Hell, I even regret defending Bacula being cast as lead role, as he has been flat and lifeless.
Enterprise's death will not be the end of Trek on TV, I assure you. It will, however, clear the way for truely innovative efforts and captivating stories that deserve to be told.
Regards, Lex
I agree with the comment in the article that we may not see any good Star Trek outside of the books. Thing is, the books have been doing it better than anything on screen ever since DS9 (the last good show IMO) ended.
As a matter of fact, the recently culminated DS9 literary relaunch was like a printed version of the TV show except better... fates of established characters played out, new and interesting characters introduced and given significant development without neglecting others, hanging plot threads from 1st season TNG and beyond brought back and redeveloped... and this is only one example of many being published right now.
Peter David's New Frontier flat-out rocks even if it streches credibility in some places, the Lost Era series has filled in long-standing continuity holes (including aforementioned Sulu-Excelsior, Enterprise-B, and Enterprise-C stories) spectacularly, and next month will see the beginning of a TNG miniseries that will hopefully explain the travesty that was Nemesis. I've watched a total of three episodes of Enterprise, two of which were hyped as the heralds of a new era for the show, and I was barely entertained by any of the three. I could pick out the archetypical Trek crew positions, but some of those were so woefully underdeveloped that they might as well have been cardboard standees. Judging from reviews I've read of other episodes, I can't expect any better fare from this show. Thankfully, the books allow me to remember the magic and good storytelling that assimilated (hur hur) me into Trek fandom.
Now, like every armchair producer, I have my ideas about where Trek should go from here. I would be thankful if Enterprise went away, for the very simple reason that it would reduce the likehood that somebody could confuse it with something I'm actually interested. New and good Trek is already being produced in the books, but this would clear the way for something decent onscreen, which I miss dearly. Unlike most everybody else, I don't think Trek should just disappear for a decade (I've got three movies and part of a TV series planned out in my head... yes I'm a shameless fanboy). They need something epic and awe-inspiring like LotR. I'm not saying rip off LotR (which is probably what Berman would do). LotR did not focus on producing something quick and flashy just to get butts in the seats. LotR was one of the biggest movie productions ever, and it got massive numbers of butts in the seats (including mine (do I even need to mention this on slashdot?)) because it had a story to tell and didn't care how long it took or how much money it spent to do it.
LotR and Trek are similar because they both have an established fanbase and mythos. In the end, I think whoever ends up producing Trek (Christ, get Johnathan Frakes, he's passionate about it) should and should want to focus on this. Put out something that will tell a compelling story with compelling characters and hey, you've got a good product.