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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."
In the finale, Q takes Riker to the past, present and future to correct the timeline and prevent Enterprise from happening.
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
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....
"Derp de derp."
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.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
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-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
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?
Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaan!!!
the Political Inquirer
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.
... well, the less said about it the better, save that it, too, served to turn off more people.
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"
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.
www.eFax.com are spammers
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.
did you forget to take your meds?
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.
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.
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.
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.