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

SPOILER

[Anonymous Coward]

In the finale, Q takes Riker to the past, present and future to correct the timeline and prevent Enterprise from happening.

Re:SPOILER

[Anonymous Coward]

Or... "Sam, thank God I found you! Ziggy says there's a 98% chance you've messed up the timeline and pissed off the fans. You've got to fix it before you can leap".

Re:SPOILER

[thegreat682]

In the final episode will end suddenly when Dianna Troi wakes up frightened and runs into the loving arms of Will Riker. While explaining her nightmare, Riker stops to inform her that everything will be okay. He pauses for a second and then asks "Archer, who is Archer?" The camera will then slowly zoom in on his face. The end.

I can see the headlines now...

[dennbruce]

a DDOS attach brought down UPN networks late yesterday shortly after news that Star Trek: Enterprise would be canceled. No details were available at this time

Re:I can see the headlines now...

[rscrawford]

Really? Can one fan arrange all that?

Bummer

[NanoGator]

I enjoyed the show. But if people weren't watching it, then all I can really say is 'farewell'.

Hmm maybe now we'll get that Star Trek: Titan show that was rumored to be about Captain Riker and the fall of the Federation....

Re:Bummer

[Rick the Red]

I'm still waiting for the series set at Starfleet Academy, with Picard as the Headmaster, and My Favorite Martian as the gardner. Well, OK, he's dead. But still, wouldn't it be cool having a whole academy full of disposible characters (students) to die at the hands of of their fellow classmates in horrible science experiments gone wrong, or fatal navigation errors while on internships, or in illegal flying stunts, or...

Re:Bummer

[mcc]

So in other words you want HARRY POTTER IN SPAAAAACE.

Re:Bummer

[EnronHaliburton2004]

to die at the hands of of their fellow classmates in horrible science experiments gone wrong, or fatal navigation errors while on internships, or in illegal flying stunts, or...

"Welcome Freshmen, to the Red Shirt Academy!!!"

Re:Bummer

[kwalker]

Actually, that is a show called Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda starring Kevin Sorbo and produced by Majel Roddenberry. But they had to remove the Trek part, but just substitute "Federation" every time someone says "Commonwealth" and you'll know what I mean.

Re:Bummer

[MalachiConstant]

"Welcome Freshmen, to the Red Shirt Academy!!!"

Most of you will die long before graduation.

But a few lucky cadets, the cadets that excel, can look forward to serving on a real starship and perhaps meeting a real starship captain before being burned alive by a Horta, or absorbed by a vague energy cloud on some backwater planet.

Our fine academy will train you to be a specialist. We have no combat training or engineering classes.

You won't be needing those.

Here you will be trained to creep around a desert planet with a phaser in hand, or perhaps simply wander off on your own and touch any random glowing thing you find. Some of you may major in Provoking Reptilian Aliens, or Ignoring Repeated Warnings.

I myself majored in Agonized Screaming, though I've never had to ... had to ... AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHH... (gets eaten by a Gorn)

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.

Re:One Word

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to see how it ends. Will Sam Beckett finally get back home?

With apologies to JMS...

[Tackhead]

"Faith manages."
- JMS

"Rick Berman, on the other hand..."
- Trek's fanbase

Cause I've got faith - but no art,
Goin' where the ratings take me,
I've got faith to believe,
Borg chicks sell anything,
Branding strength - but no soul,
Finally the Nielsens break me,
I can sell - any script...
I've got faith... (I've got faith...)
Faith without art...

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.

how many...

[ultramk]

Q. How many "Enterprise" fans does it take to save a TV series?

A. Both of them.

Thanks, I'll be here all week.

m-

Damn them.

[BrookHarty]

While the show started out as poor, its gotten better and it now upto TNG in quality. The problem they have, is some people tuned out, and lost viewers.

Instead of working on it, and keeping the show going, they cancel. Where are the 2 hour specials to bring back viewers? They havnt tried shit, other than canceling. The whole idea of a gritter time is great, thats what made Firefly kick ass.

Really tired of all the networks canceling shows and putting reality crap, or fucking with good content. SciFi at least has Stargate and Atlantis. G4 fucked over TechTV, its a poor shell of the show it once was. B5 had many spinoffs, and possible

Last week episode showed how much the show improved. The plot worked, good inship fighting, little drama, and a few ship battles. Everything you want in a good episode.

So before all the posts "Its Crap, Let it DIE", are wrong, its a good now, now that the time war crap is over. I wish they would shoot the writers who are ruining such a good series.

Is it me, or is becoming popular to buy something and run it into the ground?

Side note, wtf is shows like "Blind Justice" a cop who is blinded on duty goes back to work, and now has super powers? Are we in a time warp going back to 80's crap?

Where are the fucking smart tv producers and network directors, they all quit?

Hmm

[Staplerh]

the people at EnterpriseFans.com are still trying to raise money for a fan campaign to save the show.

Resistance is futile.

Seriously, in this case.

ONE TWO THREE GO

[genrader]

Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaan!!!

Re:Rescue

[ePhil_One]

Isn't it a Sci-Fi rule that every series that lasts more than 3 seasons needs an Alien Nazi? The Original Series definately had them...

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..

[JamieF]

If only the Star Trek story universe had the benefit of a... huge library of novels that they could just pick and choose tidbits from, that'd make it so easy to maintain continuity. All they'd have to do is look at them, and extract an hour-long screenplay.

Or maybe if they had a bookshelf's worth of commercially available reference books containing detailed information on virtually every aspect of their story universe... that would make it so much easier.

Or... maybe they could recruit an elite force of fanboys who, for the sheer bragging rights alone, would be tasked with consistency checking any new story idea or script with the rest of the Star Trek universe.

Oh well... *sigh*

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.

And there was much rejoicing

[snuf23]

Seriously, I'm kind of bummed that they haven't completely pulled out all the stops to get any remaining Trek fans to watch.
Where is the show I want to see. You know the one where Scott Bakula and that guy from Texas fight a whole truckload of Gorn to save the green skinned Orion women from being forced into the green alien sex trade while Q causes a time and dimensional, universal shift bringing the entire cast of TNG racing into battle - only get this - it's the MIRROR UNIVERSE TNG, with Evil Picard and even Evil Wesley showing up.
Oh yeah and of course the Vulcan chick and Seven of Nine find out that, yes, they are in fact space lesbians.

WTF?!?

[Bulln-Bulln]

They aired the crappy Voyager series for 7 (too) long seasons without killing it and now they kill not-so-bad Enterprise?!?
I hope there will be at least some movies based on Enterprise - So the birth of the Federation can happen.

But....

[T-Ranger]

So UPN cancels "Enterprise". UPN isn't the only station that buys Enterprise. In Canada, the Space network show it, as does CityTV. (who, while both are owned by CHUM, may not be paying exactly twice, but paying more then once) Im sure there are both "normal" and speciality networks all over the world buying and showing it.

Besides that, Enterprise is almost gaurenteed to have a long syndication run. STTOS is still being aired; outside of a marathon, when was the last time you saw Leave it to Beaver? Isn't Viacom all but gaurenteed infinite future syndication sales?

I remember one of those "behind the sceens" show on TNG. Each episode cost about as much to make as an average feature film. They had a bunch of production staff working full time, 52 weeks a year. (a 30 minute comedy could likey be shot in <2 days, 8 weeks for the season, not much post-production) So while expensive, I would think it would also be easy to manage at the executive level... Keep a regular, full time, cardre of ST production staff and all but forget about it on the executive level. No toss of the dice every season with new shows. No worrying about getting good writers or crew. ST just churns out stuff like clockwork. Quality is important, but many people will watch it regardless today, and tomorrow.

For that matter, with a full time ST cadre, movies could almost be done for free. Well, thats a streach.. But all your pre and post production stuff can be done here and there by the TV staff (or the opposit, the TV stuff could be done here and there by your movie crew). Farm out major work, and get a special crew to do the principal photography, but all the "glue" stuff could be done inhouse. At the very least, you will maintain a skill set, ST props, ST makup, ST sets and what not that, if you diddnt have full time staff, may or may not carry over from movie to movie.

People are saying that ST needs a break. Writers need a break, fans need a break. Is the opposite not true? Airing new shows keeps the interest up, even in the syndicated series. One might not tune in to watch a TNG episode, but if a TNG episode airs just before or just after Enterprise, the viewers might stick around for both.

This is really sad.

[StarKruzr]

This just goes to show you that when television gets better, less people watch it.

Enterprise has been getting more and more interesting this season, and they choose now to can it.

Morons.

Re:This is really sad.

[dgatwood]

It wasn't that bad. I mean, yeah, roughly half the episodes were direct rip-offs from either a TNG, Voyager, DS9, or TOS episode (and often were rip-offs of a Voyager ep that was a ripoff of a TNG ep), but at least we always got a good laugh out of it all.

And yeah, last season and this season were a lot better. They actually had something of a story arc, heaven forbid.... Of course, it got weird again at the season finale... (wait a second... alien Nazis? Isn't that an invocation of Godwin's Law?), but for the most part it is getting better.

Now that I think about it, I'm suddenly very confused.

Re:This is really sad.

[soren42]

I know this is flamebait, but I can't resist.

I love it when someone with the nick "CrocketAndTubbs" says something like, "It just goes to show that some people will watch anything no matter how bad it is."

I really laughed my ass off after reading that post.


Oh, and to stay on topic, I agree with the grandparent. Just like every "new" Star Trek show, it started out slow and cheesy. Once the characters were well defined and the show found it's legs, it's really improved. This season Enterprise has started to come into its own with good writing, relatable characters, and good acting. If TNG, DS9, and Voyager showed us anything, it was that the next two or three seasons of Enterprise would have been some really good "living room" SciFi.

Too bad Paramount can't stand by one of their own shows.

Maybe they'll put Miami Vice in Enterprise's time slot. lol

Fundamental problems

[almaden]

In general, why did Enterprise fail?

*Writing*
Pacing: In many of the early episodes, the pacing of the stories was terrible, often slowing to the point of boredom. Remember the episode where the Ferengi were stealing parts of the Enterprise (yawn)? Or how about "A Night in Sickbay" (yawn^2)?

Continuity: Initially, there were problems with continuity with the ST universe. Many episodes only paid lip service to previous ST material by mentioning it, and then went promptly went nowhere. Only when the ratings began to slip did the producers make an intelligent effort to tie into the old school.

Also, it was cool at the beginning of the series when Enterprise didn't have all of the tech that Picard et. al. were supposed to have. I liked the feeling of a small, weak Earth ship that didn't have all the answers. Bit by bit though, the same level of technology has crept back, to where except for the occasional shuttle pod, the tech is equivalent.

*Stories*
How did that temporal war arc get resolved? Did they make it up as they went along? Why did it seem so clumsy and difficult to follow? How about the Xindi/Star Wars/Death Star arc? Why did it take 4 years to start seeing elements of the ST universe we were yearning for from the start?

*Characters*
Viewers relating to Characters: Did the show ever get the viewers to really care about the characters? Maybe you could care about "Trip", but the rest of the cast could get blown out the airlock, and no one would protest.

Erratic Character Development: Why did so many of the episodes have the cast acting out of character? This was a problem with Voyager too, where each week a character would act differently, and negate or forget their development to that point in the series. Viewers watch the show and think "he wouldn't do or say that".

Crummy casting: Why is Scott Bakula so unbelievable and unconvincing in the role of Archer? Why can't he be taken seriously like Patrick Stewart was? This is an anchoring role for a Star Trek series - you can't miss-cast the role, and then expect the series to succeed. Voyager had problems here too, but I could at least stomach Janeway.

Yes it's easy to criticize the series at this point, but these guys have had 4 years, gazillions of dollars, and a lot of fan input to draw from to get the show right. Time to look elsewhere for sci-fi entertainment.

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.

Address to send a support letter

[Jiggily]

I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about this but if your interested here is the address to send your "Please Don't Cancel the Show" Letters :

Mr. Leslie Moonves
Co-President, Co-Chief Operating Officer
Viacom International, Inc.
c/o CBS Television City
7800 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036-2112

The Dying Gasp of 90's Paramount?

[cwolfsheep]

Here's some food for thought: can anyone name a "good" Paramount film or series in recent years? What happened to syndicated TNG? What happened to the old Trek films, or Beverly Hills Cop, or even Beavis & Butthead (remember, "Picard" liked it too)? Why did Nemesis bomb, when it really wasn't as bad as Trek V? I haven't seen "Deep Impact," but saw "The Core:" did anyone see both?

Basically, there seems to have been a large marketing of failure at Paramount. Tie series to UPN, whose affliates share with Fox or pre-empt for sports events? Put movies out in December to compete with "big events," instead of waiting a month when it'd be #1? When you advertise an episode of Trek, make it about sex most of the time, even when it has nothing to do with the story? Where's the sci-fi in their sci-fi?

What we are seeing is a revamp of Paramount, and they consider Trek a part of the problem, not the solution. It should be the other way around: however, it is the last vestige of an experiment, and probably should be put to rest while they clean house. Let us hope there is more Trek one of these days, and preferably syndicated, if not on Sci-Fi or some other network.

sad :-(

[dave1g]

I liked Enterprise, especially this season.

sniff sniff... :-/

Why don't they just do it syndicated, or offer it to the Sci Fi network?

I'm sure some one is willing to put money behind a Star Trek franchise.

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.

Re:Another triumph for the forces of darkness

[ClosedSource]

I recently watched a rerun of a DS9 episode in which Sisko's former mentor was attempting to overthrow the government with the excuse of protecting earth from changelings.

One of the changelings (in the form of O'Brian) taunted Sisko saying that the "solids" were going to defeat themselves.

There was also great commentary on how the Dominion had already won if earth was going to live under martial law.

Given our (USA) current perpetual War on Terror, this resonated with me more than it did the first time I saw it.

Galactica is out rating it.

[jhallum]

Of course it's going to be cancelled, Galactica on Sci-Fi and the rest of the Sci-Fi Friday is getting as good or better ratings than it is, and I believe that UPN has a wider distribution than Sci-Fi does. I've read that Galactica had a 2.5 rating last week, which is higher than the week before. It's weird seeing Galactica succeed and a Trek franchise fail, but Galactica is just That Damn Good. You Galactica haters can scoff now, but wait until the last few episodes, Galactica gets very good. On par with Babylon 5 at its prime, I'd say.