UPN Officially Cancels 'Star Trek: Enterprise'

Tycoon Guy writes "It's official now: UPN has decided to cancel 'Enterprise.' The show's series finale, which may feature Jonathan Frakes (William T. Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi), will air on Friday the 13th of May. The show's fate was probably sealed when last Friday's episode reached only 2.5 million viewers - but even so, the people at EnterpriseFans.com are still trying to raise money for a fan campaign to save the show."

Comments

Re:Hrm..

[Rick the Red]

Buy Dad a TiVo and use it to record "Enterprise."

ST needs a hiatus

[abde]

If the franchise takes 5 years off, and comes back with new people at the helm (and not Berman or Braga - they had their chance, it's time for fresh blood), it might actually be something that can reignite fandom again.

Star Trek's roots are in social criticism, raw idealism, and triumphalism about the human spirit. There was very little of any of those themes in Star Trek series in recent years. A return to roots is neccessary, especially since the bar has been raised on production values (Battlestar Galactica), story arc writing (Babylon 5) and character development (Farscape).

Or, they could just hire Wil Wheaton as the next captain - playing a different character than Wesley Crusher, natch - give him a starship, and set him loose.

Just stop having episodes with Nazis. Or on historical Earth. Or both.

Re:ST needs a hiatus

[drunkenbatman]

Star Trek's roots are in social criticism, raw idealism, and triumphalism about the human spirit.

Odd, I thought its roots were unnecessary man-to-man fist fights that are way too slow and choreographed, spaceships, and space pussy.

Re:ST needs a hiatus

[lidocaineus]

DS9 "had its moments"? I'm hardly a ST fan, but man, that series blew everything else out of the water. It had everything people here have been clamoring about: deep (very deep) character development, HUGE plot arc, a different view of pristine Starfleet, and some especially well written episodes. It made TNG look almost quaint at times, what with its 'run into problem of the week while running around for no particular reason'.

The true test? I could actually get other people who wouldn't touch ST with a ten foot pole to actually LIKE watching DS9. Why? Because underneath, it was a truly character driven ensemble cast, with so many shades of gray that people were never clearly good and never clearly bad throughout the whole series.

Re:ST needs a hiatus

[archen]

Considering what people really want to see, I'd think you'd have to go a bit farther than that. So how about this.

Instead of a federation ship, we have a Klingong ship. They start out the show with some mysterious music and space stuff. And the voice over says "Our goal, to pilage the universe, accumulate as many women as possible and drink the blood of our enemies!". From there you have klingons just running around blowing shit up. Maybe have some hot vulcan chick as the science officer who pulls kung-fu on anyone who looks at her wrong. Every time they have a tough moral delema, they say "fuck it, blow it up!" Maybe have Wesly be a federation starship captin who is the snobby enemy of the klingon state, as a regular.

Hmm... I think I'd actually watch that.

Shock horror (not)

[Motor]

Is anyone really surprised? I mean, Star Trek has been getting steadily worse. Voyager royally sucked and Enterprise was, at best, mediocre.

Trek fans shouldn't take this too hard. This cancellation could give the staggeringly lazy Trek writers and producers a kick up the arse -- it's a good excuse for a badly needed clean out of the wasters that have taken up residence in the Star Trek creative departments over its long history. The next Trek series might actually be worth watching as a result.

In the meantime take a look at the new Battlestar Galactica. I'm British, I've seen the entire series already and it's fantastic stuff.

What about Stargate?

[ravenspear]

It was moved to Friday, which we all know is teh death nell for any SciFi show.

I find that a rather illogical statement, considering that Stargate and Battlestar Galactica are both doing very well on Friday, and they are even on cable which doesn't reach as many households as UPN.

The problem with Enterprise was that the first two seasons sucked ass and it consequently never developed a strong fanbase beyond the die hard trekkies during the early life of the show. The last two seasons have been better, but unfortuantely not good enough to save it.

The sad thing is

[wowbagger]

The sad thing is, they have FINALLY started doing what they should have been doing from day one - namely, showing the foundation of the Federation - showing why the Federation didn't come into being UNTIL Earth started poking its collective noses into everything.

Had they launched into that, instead of the "Temporal cold war" bullshit (and the Xindi weapon bullshit), they could have caught and held the fans' attention.

But the Temporal Cold war crap turned off a lot of people.

And the Xindi weapon arc turned off many more people.

And that whole "Go back in time to WWII and fight the Nazis, who are working with fugly aliens" ... well, the less said about it the better, save that it, too, served to turn off more people.

So when they FINALLY start showing the founding of the Federation - when they finally explain how the stuck-up asshole Vulcans of the first seasons became the race we knew in TOS/TNG/DSV, how the alliances formed because of Starfleet, and how the Romulan wars started - there were no significant viewers left.

Which is a shame, as the series is finally starting to show some potential.

Somewhere along the line..

[js3]

I'm not sure what happened but startrek is not drama, it is sci-fi. Somehow this got lost during the brainstorming of enterprise. I'll watch an hour of the borg, even the crappy ones in voyager but I won't last 15mins into the episode on who T-Pol sleeps with next.

More sci-fi, less drama. More psychobabbling nonsense about spacetime continuums and prime directives, that is what will get the fans back.

Re:Somewhere along the line..

[JudgeFurious]

Actually that's more than just "Insightful" in my opinion. It's extremely insightful. As much as Star Trek is dogged for it's techno-babble dialog you're actually advocating more of that and less of the interpersonal relationship focus.

I think you're dead on with that. Character development IS important but there are plenty of ensemble cast shows on the air set in the here and now where we can sit and speculate on which cast members are going to pair off. Star Trek is supposed to be SciFi though and drama is only a part of that. The producers lost sight of this and their show is going away as a result.

I also think Enterprise and Star Trek in general has just crumbled under the weight of it's own enormous history. When your fan base can spot even a minor continuity error from a mile away and there are volumes of material available detailing the history of your imaginary universe then you've got to walk a very fine line with your stories. Each season slowly tightens the noose a little more. The people doing Star Trek have gotten progressively worse at keeping things plausible and Enterprise has been a train wreck where continuity is concerned.

There are just so many reasons why this died and so many things it could have been if done well. All this work and effort and in the end Scott Bakula is going to go down as the George Clooney of Starship captains. He'll be the guy who's tour of duty killed the franchise (A disctinction that should have gone to his predecessor on Voyager. I can't remember her name for some reason, all I can think of is "The woman with the munchkin voice")

Re: Somewhere along the line..

[gidds]

As much as Star Trek is dogged for it's techno-babble dialog you're actually advocating more of that and less of the interpersonal relationship focus.

If you're equating 'science fiction' with 'technobabble' then you get my strong disagreement!

As far as I'm concerned, proper science fiction is about ideas. The bigger the better. The nature of causality and time, the confusion of reality and computer-generated fantasy, insanity, the nature of language and communication, the reliability of memory, faith, &c are all big ideas that have led to (IMO) really great stories, in Trek and elsewhere. Technology per se, and the alien of the week, do not necessarily make proper science fiction, unless they are part of an interesting idea. Similarly, relationships and personal development aren't necessarily excluded, provided that they relate directly to the big idea.

For me, then, The Truman Show counted as science fiction, even though you saw very little technology, no aliens, no laser beams, no starships, no robots, and none of the usual SF trappings, because it had at its core an amazing idea. Whereas I count most of the Star Wars films as space opera, not science fiction, despite the presence of all of those things. I consider Alien a horror film with SF trappings, but Bladerunner is true science fiction not just because it deals with replicants, but because it uses them to look at the nature of humanity.

I haven't followed Enterprise, so I can't quote you examples there. But I hope you can see my point. If the writers think that by just throwing in exotic aliens, weird energy beams, and some incomprehensible technobabble, that they're necessarily creating science fiction, then they've been doing the series -- and the general public -- a great disservice.

Opportunity wasted.

[Yaztromo]

Let's put the results aside for a moment (the show has had some serious issues), and take a look at what could have been.

Enterprise started off with two things going for it: a decent premise, and a good cast. What Star Trek fan isn't interested in how the Federation was started? Or how the war with the Klingons started? How about the formation of the Neutral Zone with the Romulans? Or how about the evolution of technology from rougghly what we know today, to what was available in ST:TOS?

Unfortunately, all of this was an opportunity that was wasted and squandered. Sure, they tried a few episodes dealing with the evolution of technology, but all of them were of the sort where the episode started with "Hey, we need X", and by the end, they had X (for all X in "Phasers", Transporters", etc.)

Part of that was just bad writing, and bad story planning. But then there was the introduction of time travel, which was completely unnecessary, and made the whole thing completely unbelievable. Whomever came up with the "Temporal Cold War" should be summarily fired...out of a canon. Into a pool of sharks. With laser beams on their heads.

Then there is the ship. I'm sure it would make a fine set for any number of sci-fi shows, but not for a Star Trek series that is supposed to take place before TOS. The interiour should look like that of a modern day battleship, and not filled with zinc plates and chrome. Yes, it would have been hard to make the series believable by not having any display terminals (TOS didn't have them, but here in the 2000's we do, so it would be somewhat difficult not to have them), but they should have taken a cue from a modern military warship for interiour design. It would have made the show more believable, and would have added some "grit" for the writers to work with.

The big year-long story arc with the Xindi (sp?) didn't help either. It was hard to just tune into an episode here and there, particularily towardds the end. I was in the middle of nowhere during the first four months of 2004, where TV wasn't really available, and the one time I did get a chance to see part of an episode I couldn't get into it because I had no idea what was going on. I missed the whole resolution of the story arc as well, making the whole season a total write-off for me. I can only imagine what the casual Star Trek watcher would think trying to watch just a few episodes here and there.

I feel bad for the cast, who are now going to be out of jobs after such a short run (but not too bad -- it isn't as if people in the tech industry don't know what it's like to be without a job...:P). There was some good potential for this series, but the people in charge completely munged it. Let's hope they find themselves jobless for a while so they can ponder their grand failure.

Yaz.

Another triumph for the forces of darkness

[farbles]

The minute I saw the episode this season with Archer looking at the coffins of the slain, I thought *finally* they're playing to original Trek's best trait - social commentary on present day events. I also thought the second someone in authority sees this episode, this series is doomed.

When they had Vulcan desert insurgents fighting, I thought, you guys are getting too clever, they will get you. (I also wondered where T'Pau's thick accent disappeared to.)

Original Trek played against the background of Viet Nam and a tidal wave of social change. This season Enterprise started to come around to that and tweaked some present day noses. In today's rat-out-your-neighbor-to-Homeland-Security-for-not -being -patriotic-enough climate, there was no way this could go on, could it?

Look, one of the central tenets of Star Trek is that humanity stops warring amongst itself, forms a world government and then heads out to the stars. In an ideal world, Enterprise could have shown some of that process in action using the example of how the Federation came into being as a model for how we can do it ourselves and bring all these disparate nations together to form a peaceful whole.

In this real world, I'm afraid that the forces of darkness are winning. Any notion of a peaceful world government is considered (at best) traitorous liberal propaganda. A substantial portion of the population of the US believes that the end of the world is real close and (incredibly) that this is a good thing since it means Jesus will be here soon. Selfless acts and working for the betterment of all rather than just your own clan is considered a sign of weakness, not strength. Honor has no value. Science and education have no value. Only money and power are worth anything to us and only blind obedience and unquestioning patriotism is worth anything to our leaders.

We need all the idealistic dreams and heroes that we can get now because this century is going to be getting worse before (if) it gets any better. Progress is not a new feature for your cell phone, it is the march of humans from our barbarous past to a better future. At its best, that is the heart and soul of Star Trek and that is what we all need so very very badly right now.