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Could TNG Stunt Casting Save 'Enterprise'?
Tycoon Guy writes "It seems Star Trek: Enterprise isn't about to go down without a fight. TrekToday is reporting that Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis will guest-star on the season finale of Star Trek: Enterprise, to reprise their Next Generation roles of William T. Riker and Deanna Troi. Hello stunt casting! The news has been confirmed on Sirtis' official fan site."
How about they just do it the old fashioned way and revive the series by reversing polarity and firing anion thrusters to create a temporary wormhole that can act as a gateway to the ratings.
No... That didn't work at all for Voyager...
Much as I wouldn't mind seeing Frakes and Sirtis in action again, it would only be because for nostalgia's sake. When your show becomes characterized by this kind of hysterical desperation, it's a pretty good sign you should just let it die.
TNG and DS9 were at the top of their repective games in their later seasons -- they just got better and better, IMHO. Neither shows needed this kind of nonsense to shore them up for another handful of weary episodes. If Enterprise doesn't have enough momentum to propel it after all this time, then it's just plain out of gas, and stunt casting is not going to save it.
Especially when I, as a not-so-fanatical Star Trek watcher, can probably tell you the plot of this episode right now. Picard and Troi, on board the Titan on a diplomatic mission to Head-Ridge VII, run into a subspace anomaly and are transported back in time, and must deal with the cultural and technological gaps while...zzz...
I'd advise letting Enterprise, and Trek, rest in peace for another few years while it still has some dignity, but unfortunately that moment is already long past (for me, the last of TNG's dignity departed with the introduction of Retarded Data in Nemesis). I guess now the best we can hope for is that these sorts of decisions don't bury the franchise altogether.
Troi maybe, but Riker? Come on, the man is a legend.
Apparently, the last scene in this episode is a shot of 'The Fonze' donning water skiis.
Despite the fact that this is probably the last season being abandoned on a Friday night ... I think Enterprise is finally hitting its groove. I know everyone has their opinion, but while it isn't comparable to the very best of DS9 or even TNG, its certainly miles ahead of Voyager in terms of quality. I don't think its the casting that's necessarily weak - but probably more the characters. Still, TNG didn't have characters as good as TOS ... and DS9 was weaker than TNG until they brought Worf aboard. It took Avery Brooks until probably Season 3 or 4 to really start getting into Sisko ... he wasn't like Patrick Stewart who had a great screen presence almost from the beginning (sorry, it took me a while to get used to the bald captain :) ). Voyager never .. NEVER had good characters .. at least the new series has Hoshi :) And really there isn't anyone groan inducing like Neelix (which is strange - because the doctor kind of reminds me of him - just not annoying) or Nog from DS9 or Wesley (sorry Wil .. still think *you're* cool) from TNG.
... go back and watch enterprise lately .. I think they are doing a great job. Not as good as it could be, and certainly not as "cool" (now the in thing is to be anti Star Trek) as Battlestar (now that we decided not to kill anyone for a female Starbuck and human cylons) or Stargate (but not Atlantis, because thats NOT cool in the eyes of the SF culture police) ... but they are making it entertaining at least ...
Seriously
...DeForest Kelley, and I'll be impressed.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
I have to disagree with that.
I'm not a Star Trek fan nor have I seen all of the movies.
I don't know all of the character names in any of the shows. In fact I hardly can recall the names of the main characters.
However, out of all of the TV shows that I have given a shot, including the other Star Trek series when they ran, I really enjoy Enterprise.
It is one of two shows that I try to watch every week and would hate to see it die off.
Out of all the crap that they try to shovel down our throats on national television, Star Trek is most certainly a relief from it.
If you look at the bolded text - this is why the show is tanking - Non - fans are starting to dig it, and the fans were told to sit down and shut up.
That's why the neilsen ratings are teh crap, and they have to jump the great white every fifteen minutes in the show.
Had they not gone with the stupid premise of being a prequel, and outstanding cast could of done Oh so much, unfortunately, they were saddled with berman and Braga - the "ren and stimpy" of the star trek world.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
How about instead they ditch those two, save all that money and instead spend it on a 45 minute long lesbian scene between t'pol and hoshi, no not some crappy kid-safe scene, a proper late-night special, go beyond the final frontier, the next generation, boldly! and it could even involve some elaborate time-travel scenario where they must get completely naked or else risk being stranded in a half-way dimension. Now tell me seriously that this episode won't get viewers?
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[Enterprise 1 set vanishes, replaced by empty holodeck]
Riker: [taps badge] Riker to bridge. Captain, the runaway holodeck virus has been destroyed.
Picard (heard through communicator): Very good Number One. Mr. Crusher, ahead warp 5.
Troi: How are you feeling?
Riker: Hungry. For a hot fudge sundae. In your quarters.
Troi: [knowing smile]
Theme music up, Enterprise D goes into warp. Roll credits.
Somewhere I read that the premise behind "Star Trek" was, "Let's see what's out there," while the premise behind the new "Galactica" is, "Run like hell, they're after us."
The premise of the old "Galactica," of course, was, "Run like hell, they're --ooh, a casino planet!" First recorded instance of a TV show with ADD.
Can't they get the terms right. It should be Battle Stations or Red Alert--not Action Alert.
...for the Royal Navy. They also say "set condition one," which is correct jargon for the US Navy.
... and it's succeeding.
Actually, they say "action stations," not "action alert." "Action stations" is correct military jargon
The milieu of the new "Galactica" is a blend of US Navy, Royal Navy, US Marines and a few of the less silly aspects of the old, 1970s show. For instance, during the series pilot if you listen carefully you can hear a voice on the 1MC say, "Do not radiate or rotate antennas while personnel are aloft," which is exactly what you'd hear aboard a ship in the US Navy. I mean, word for word. On the other hand, the order of battle for the officers goes lieutenant, captain, colonel, commander, which is not similar to any existing military force structure. It's a direct lift from the old show's character names: Commander Adama, Colonel Tigh, Captain Apollo, Lieutenant Starbuck.
There's no great technical advances in the show as far as the character's technology.
Correct. This is by conscious design. The show was written from the start to be a very low-tech science-fiction show. The in-band story behind that is that cylons were able to infiltrate and corrupt any computer system they encountered, so the Colonials got rid of almost all of their automation. After decades of peace, the Colonials reinstated their automation, and it was because of this automation that the cylons were able to so overwhelmingly defeat the Colonials with their surprise attack.
BG has no such exscuse besides the laziness of the wanna-be writer.
It's not laziness. It's much, much harder to write a sensible, internally consistent story from realistic premises than it is to just make up technobabble every week. When he sat down to write "Galactica," Moore asked, "What if this happened to us?" In doing so, he set a nearly impossible task for himself: to tell a story set in a distant solar system about spaceships and robots in a way that would be not merely alien-of-the-week science fiction but character-driven high drama.
Now, you may not like that sort of thing. But it seems like, from looking at things like TV ratings over the past few years, that most people do. Shows like "The West Wing," "NYPD Blue" and "Lost" have been both critically lauded and phenomenally successful. "Galactica" is in the same class.
If you're looking for space aliens and shoot-em-ups and jargon and gadgets, "Galactica" probably isn't the show for you. Doesn't mean it's bad; quite the contrary. In my opinion, with the lackluster performance of "The West Wing" this year and the fact that "Lost" isn't paying off quite like I think it should, I think "Battlestar Galactica" is the best scripted drama show on US television right now. Not just among genre shows, but among all shows.
But if you don't like those kinds of shows, then you're not gonna be happy with "Galactica." That's not because it's trying to be genre science fiction and failing. It's because it's trying to be character drama that happens to be set in outer space
Funny story. The series pilot (a 3-hour movie that was run in December 2003 as a miniseries, and later edited down and run on NBC as a movie-of-the-week) is out on DVD now, and it comes with a commentary track. The writer, Ron Moore, is on the track, and he talks about the one part of the pilot that he really, really regrets.
I don't know if you've seen it, but at one point Capt. Lee "Apollo" Adama uses a set of electric pulse generators to send out a big burst of radiation in order to cover the refugees' escape from a cylon attack. In the commentary, Moore says that he hated putting that kind of technobabble bullshit into his script, but he'd written himself into a corner and that the jargon was the only practical way out of it.
But he did poke some fun at himself along the way. After Apollo gave his wordy, jargony, meaningless speech to one of the other characters, her slightly glazed-over reply was, "The lesson here is not to ask follow-up questions."
I thought it was a good line at the time. Now that I know the story behind it, I think it's brilliant.