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UPN Renews 'Star Trek: Enterprise'
Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that 'Enterprise' has been renewed for a fourth season. UPN will make the official announcement on Thursday, but production executives already told the SaveEnterprise.com fan campaign the show will be back, and the show's actors have been ordered back to work. The only snag? It looks like 'Enterprise' might be moved to Fridays next year, and Firefly fans can tell you what a great place that is..."
Well, this is good news. Enterprise is not my favorite flavor of Trek, but it's better than nothing. Besides, there have been a couple good episodes this season.
I'm sure some people would have revelled in an Enterprise cancellation... to them, I'd like to pose a question which always bugged me: if you don't like a show, you don't watch it, right? If you don't watch it why would it matter to you whether or not it is cancelled? It just seems so mean-spirited to wish for a show's cancellation-- over a hundred people lose their jobs as a result, and I'm not talking about high-paid actors, I'm talking about camera men, editors, janitors-- normal people. It's not fun losing a job, folks.
Anyway... on with the flame fest.
jrjBlog
This is how NBC killed ST:TOS...
So it is shown usually at 11:00 pm Friday, but sometimes the Fox station moves it without telling anyone. Not only that, they replace the "next episode" teaser with ads for their own WWE shows. I hope someday that CBS shuts down UPN and moves the couple/few UPN shows worth saving to the regular CBS schedule.
This Fox affiliate actually showed the UPN show "Dilbert" only at 1:00 AM Sunday morning. I kind of wanted to see that one.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Can never be happy. Stay with me on this one before you hit that mod button :). Basically either you have shows people liked that get cancelled in their prime, thus to be lauded forever as the best show ever if only it had been able to reach its potential...
OR
You have them where they go on too long and thus should have been cancelled long ago. Thus you have purists that only recognize seasons 2,3,5, but not 4 where they went to that alternate dimension, what were they thinking!.
I guess this can be said for most shows, but it seems to apply more to scifi for some reasons. I think really only Babylon 5 went out on the perfect note, mainly because thats when it was supposed to happen.
I doubt that's true: I would venture a guess that it takes at least twice as many people (and 5 times as much money, which goes into the economy through special effects shops, etc.) to make an episode of Enterprise than it does to make an episode of "Who Wants to Marry a One-legged Garbage man with a Flattulance problem?"
:)
It's not quite a zero-sum game.
jrjBlog
More opportunity for Rick Berman to urinate on Roddenberry's vision.
:-) The man just doesn't understand what Roddenberry created, and now he's trying to compete head on with other Sci Fi or with the memory of Babylon 5. Is it any wonder Star Trek has been in a downward spiral for the past 10 years?
I know it's cool to knock Enterprise, but I've been knocking Berman since long before it was cool.
Enterprise's ratings weren't good enough "just exploring" (and as they were doing a poor job of it I'm not surprised), so instead they spent a third of season 2 building up a relationship with the Klingons only to drop it at the last second to run off on a blatant 9/11-inspired warmed over mini-epic. (And stolen from a 1980s Star Trek computer game for the Commodore 64 called "Star Trek: Rebel Universe".) Everything about it is predictable, from the plot right down to the characters involved. And of course there's no tension, because we all know (since it's a prequel) that Earth isn't going to be destroyed.
Of course, Berman isn't pitching to people who know Star Trek, he's pitching to 20-somethings that the beancounters like to pitch to. Of course, those people don't watch Star Trek BECAUSE it's Star Trek. Don't alienate your existing fan base to go after a new one that doesn't want you.
Of course, after this season's finale, then what? Go back to exploring? Yeah, that will help ratings now that they've said that exploring "isn't big enough". Throw in another huge season-long pseudo-epic plot thread to further destroy the timeline? I don't know what they're going to do.
On the one hand, it's Trek, yay, there will be more. On the other, this isn't the Trek I grew up on (TNG and reruns of TOS), and I wouldn't greatly miss it.
Although moving the show to Friday night means that it won't be lasting much longer. That is how NBC killed the original series, after all.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
What I would love to see next season, is more on the Klingons, the Romulans....the Vulcans. How the war between the humans and the Klingons came about....The formation of the federation, Invention of tractor beams, shields....
In short, try to channel the story to the TOS timeline.
Those of us who were around for Star Trek: The Original Series remember that, after NBC was forced to renew ST:TOS thanks to the massive letter-writing campaign, they moved the show from its original 8:30 time slot (Thursdays the first season, Fridays the second) to Fridays at 10 PM, thereby ensuring that the show would never make it to a fourth season because that time slot was a ratings graveyard.
Today with VCRs and TiVos abounding fans of the show will probably be able to catch it no matter when it airs, but still, couldn't they have found a better time slot? Seems to me it's sort of like being in a half-empty movie theater and choosing to sit in the worst seat possible.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Enterprise never appealed that much to me, but apparently there are some very intense fans and there must be a good reason for that.
Firefly didn't float my boat either, but I seem to recall it getting good reviews.
Farscape was constantly gaining new fans for its four year run. And I paid really close attention to the events surrounding Farscape. It was the show that pulled SCIFI out of relative obscurity among cable stations, their most popular show, yet they tried like hell to get it canceled. They jerked its time slot around when they stopped liking it, surrounded it with lackluster programming (Invisible Man being an exception), and as far as advertising goes, did their best to pretend it didn't exist.
Looks like the same thing is happening with Enterprise. The devoted fans (basically a captive audience for advertisers, read: A GOOD THING) saved the show it appears, and yet the network is screwing up its time slot to drive its popularity down. If you don't want to air the show, just fsckin' say so and send it to another network.
Is there a petition out there to bring back the NextGen crew for another few movies? ST:TNG was some of the best Trek ever.
I for one am glad that Enterprise will be renewed. I've never owned any ST merchandise much less been to a convention, but I have watched all the Star Trek series and I liked having them around.
I agree that Enterprise is not perfect, but show me a Star Trek series that was?
TOS had more than a few god-awful episodes (e.g. And the Children shall lead, Miri, Charlie X (title?).
TNG started out very shakily IMHO as the actors/writers settled into the characters (e.g. Picard wasn't quite yet his reserved and commanding self, and Worf just snarled at everything); and for the length of the series you had many fans screaming about any episode which Troi or Wesley starred in.
DS9 was pretty good, though I think the situation is somewhat comparable with Enterprise in that the show, IMHO, has a stronger and more interesting supporting cast than the 'starring' captain.
Voyager had a lot of well-known problems.
Perfect shows are rare - enjoy your favorite parts of this one and hope the other parts get better.
I have to say that towards the end of this season it has kept my interest. I was starting to tire of the whole story arc with the xindi, but the story has picked up steam. I am glad it is staying.
I liked that in some aspects that Archer was willing to set his P.C. outlook on some things to get stuff done.
BTW:I don't care what night it is on, that is why I have Tivo.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
I like the show, although I am annoyed that they've already resorted to time travel. I thought they'd already figured out that that's when the other shows started going down hill.
I'd also like them to take a more X-Files approach, where you mix the continuing storyline with single standalone episodes. I think they've concentrated too much on the Xindi (?). If you don't like that storyline, the whole season's been a wash, and while I like the storyline, it's just been going on too long.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Anyone remember that? The Suliban and all that? What happened to it?
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
I'm gonna go out on a limb: I think the theme song is the best theme song ever written for any series. It captures the mood of the series perfectly. The first time I heard it I didn't like it, but then as I watched the opening sequence again I realized what they were trying to do and how well the song fit.
I'll admit I loathe it less than I did when the show first started. However, it's still a dumb song, and it actually got WORSE with season 3. Not because of the "jazzing up" of the music, but because they changed the premise of the show!
The musical style doesn't fit Trek. The video sequence, however, fits perfectly. That's good. The first half or so of the lyrics do sort of fit the idea for the first two seasons. (Vulcans won't stop us from getting out in to space like my daddy wanted me to, yee haw! --John Archer) The second half ("faith of the heart" repeated over and over again) is just plain dumb, and also doesn't fit Trek.
But then Berman decided that exploring and defying the Vulcans by being all exploration-like "wasn't big enough". So instead, let's throw in a terrorist plot (it's the in thing) and then rip off a 1980s computer game (no one will remember it) after wasting a third of season 2 building up the Klingons and doing nothing with it (because it's like, we can say Duras a lot, Trekkies know that name, right?). And then we keep the theme music that no longer is even tangentially related to the overall plot arc of season 3!
That makes about as much sense as anything else Berman has done. That is to say, none. Fire Berman and his team and hire some REAL writers (DC Fontana, Diane Duane, Diane Carey, Peter David, all old Trek hands who "got it"), and maybe Trek will start not-sucking again.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Personally, I find the usual format of star trek (one captain/crew/ship) limiting. After all there is supposed to be an entire FLEET of ships zooming around the galaxy, but it seems there is ever only ONE ship having interesting adventures. I would like to see a anthology ST series, sort of like the old Police stories series where you feature a different ship/crew every week (or two). You could use the premise of history lessons at starfleet academy to set up each episode and tie the series together. It could be called 'Star fleet chronicles' or some such. Of course, whatever type of series they make, they need better, more imaginative scripts, that aren't retreads of the same old tired themes. (time travel, alien possesion, ect.) That and I wish they paid more attention to continuity. I don't read Star Trek novels, because they have nothing to do with series or movie cannon.
Babylon 5 - Christopher Franke
Battlestar Galactica - Stu Phillips
Buck Rogers - Stu Phillips
Doctor Who - Ron Grainer
Farscape - SubVision
Firefly - Josh Whedon
Futurama - Danny Elfman
Red Dwarf - Howard Goodall
ST:DS9 - Dennis McCarthy
ST:Enterprise - Diane Warren
ST:TOS - Alexander Courage
Stargate - David Arnold & Joel Goldsmith
I Wanna Be a Cowboy Neal - Boys Don't Cry
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
BEEP!!! BEEP!!! BEEP!!!
Don't forget backing up to the kiss of death fridays.
I think that wouldn't be so bad if they used an airing system like ADULTSWIM on cartoon network. They run a show three times a night and their timing lets them catch all the night owls. If UPN replayed the show say at 1am and 3am they would catch everyone coming in from a night of fun. Drunks like scifi too!
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
to no longer be the "Unwatchable Programmes Network":
1. Let (read: force) LeVar Burton direct as many episodes as his schedule will allow, and
2. Get Wil Wheaton to guest-star.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
I see this over and over, again and again in these posts.
Can anyone provide some factual, documented, examples of why these two are the BANE of the ST universe?