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Enterprise Fans Buy Full-Page Ad In LA Times
jangobongo writes "SciFiWire.com reports that fans of Star Trek Enterprise have succeeded in placing a full-page ad in the LA Times. The ad will urge someone to pick up the show for a fifth season. According to the official fan site, a Star Trek Enterprise fan working for the LA Times has arranged a special deal for a discounted ad. Donations collected to date have covered the cost of the ad which will be located in the "A" section of the paper on Feb. 21."
I hope it goes through! Go fans go!
Let it die already!
I like Star Wars because it has excellent acting and dealt with good versus evil. Star Wars is essentially a medieval tale (of knights and a princess) shrouded in sci-fi props: lasers, spaceships, etc.
The problem with Enterprise is the bad acting. and bad casting. Captain Archer needs to be replaced. We need a swashbuckler like Harrison Ford to be captain. Also, the "sexy role" should be assigned to the communications officer. Being sexy is more than being endowed with breasts; being sexy requires emotion, which is absent from the Vulcan, T'Pol.
We also need a new set of writers. We need to go back to the roots of ST-TOS. Deal with the social issues head on. Remember the old episode with the 2 aliens, each being half white and half black. At the end of the show, you realize that they hate each other because they are white on different sides. Wow. That was an excellent metaphore for race relations.
Enterprise should take homosexuality or Tibet and frame those issues in a big metaphor and give the punch line at the end.
If this ad in the "LA Times" succeeds, I hope that they revamp Enterprise in the way that I suggested. Gene Roddenbery had a great idea when he started ST-TOS. I just hope that it does not end in this horrible way: Enterprise and ST-Voyager.
By the way, another thing that I really like about ST-TOS and Star Wars is the following. Life is full of evil people. Yet, the 2 sci-fi stories say that sometimes, just sometimes, the good people win. I like that idea.
...have long gone.
Paramount owns Star Trek, and will not let the show continue on anything but UPN, and they've probably already filled Enterprise's time slot with some crud on Friday nights at UPN.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
...Enterprise Fans Waste Money On Full-Page Ad In LA Times
While I respect the fact that some want it to continue, it's a truly futile effort which is not going to go anywhere. Save your money to pay for the service to watch whatever Star Trek incarnation comes along next.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
the problem with enterprise isn't the show, its ha da great 3rd and 4th series that tie the episodes together. (unlike TNG where enterprise just flew around the galaxy doing whatever and none of the episodes tied anything together)
Anyway, getting back to my point, the problem is that its shown on UPN. who watches UPN? nobody, look at their ratings on every show. If enterprise was on Fox the ratings would be through the roof. Heck where I live, there is no local UPN station (so I can't get with with my satalite subscriber or on a antenna) so I have to download the copy from usenet the morning after the new episode airs.
but here we do have local fox, abc, cbs, nbc, and wb (bleh) affiliates. for gods sake, show enterprise on anything other then UPN and you'd have great ratings. The problem isn't enterprise, the problem is that nobody watches UPN, no matter what UPN has on tv.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Let's look at this story another way. Enterprise fans (who are among the most rabid bit torrent users, many because of UPN's limited audience) don't believe they're spending enough money on the show through eyeballs (commercials) and uploading. They feel the need to tell the studios that they're willing to pay more, so they took out an ad.
Do we need more evidence that current copyright law is hindering the progress of science and useful arts?
Studios, the Internet is there for more than just commercials served as web pages. We're willing to pay for content. We're ready for you. You will lose money if you stand in the way of progress, just like the US Constitution foretold 200 years ago. You can either help with something like iTunes or sue dead grandmothers until teenagers teach their parents how to take care of this themselves.
We have the technology to allow the market to directly tell you what they want. We want Firefly (just count those DVD sales). We want Family guy. Yet the studios count the millions who watch the Superbowl just for the commercials the same as a rabid fan base who will pay through the nose for a series on commercial free DVD. (Here's a tip, I don't like menus or "special features", I just want to use my DVD player like a CD player hooked up to the TV.)
[karma whore]Wait, this is Slashdot. Nobody likes Enterprise. How much did both Enterprise fans have to contribute for the full page ad?[/karma whore]
Actually I have seen BSG; and frankly I find it a far superior series in many ways.
However--BSG isn't looking for a timeslot, it already has one. My point was that no matter what new show they come up with it's probably just going to be something that already has 10 variations currently airing on other networks. If they fill it with reruns of some other show...same deal.
A crappy Trek series is a better use of the timeslot it was in because I seriously doubt anything truly unique and creative will take its place, and reruns are just that...reruns, I'd rather watch new episodes of a mediocre series.
You sir are the sorry one.
I don't care what the "horrible disaster of the day" is, it doesn't make spending money on anything but charity an evil selfish act.
Apparently some people believe that Enterprise is a good enough TV show that it is worth their money to try to save it. I'm not sure that a newspaper ad is the correct way to spend that money, but supporting something you enjoy is a perfectly reasonable and appropriate thing to do.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
(No, not "suck and die") but attract non star trek fans. I know many trek lovers at work. All of them hate Enterprise. Then there's the dedicated non SF crowd, like my wife, who actually likes Enterprise. She likes the characters more. Likes the lower tech "high tech." And she's not alone. The other Enterprise watchers I know didn't really like Trek before Enterprise. Enterprise's downfall? It isn't really working as a gateway drug. I don't know people who have moved off of enterprise onto harder SF. (Unlike firefly, which began soft and smooth, but I know people who live their social lives in the social equivalent of an abandoned building, straining shows like Andromeda through bread to get a SF high). Enterprise hasn't built a following of people who would watch another show from the same series. Contrast TNG, which made so many addicts that they were willing to watch a show about a space station that boldly sat in one place year after year.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
I love the articles here, but any time I venture into the comments section, I wind up irritated and depressed at humanity's future prospects.
Slashdot commentators seem to combine the arrogance and incivility of your average adolescent with the cantankerous anger of a bitter old man. Most of you don't seem to love anything, and if you do stumble across someone expressing appreciation or admiration for anything, you just DUMP ALL OVER IT.
That's my general statement. Now about this topic in particular:
I LIKE Enterprise. Yes, it has taken a few years to hit its stride. This seems to be the pattern for these Berman-produced Trek vehicles. They get better as they go along. I thought this one would be particularly challenging for them to pull off, because writing a past history for any established storyline is just hard. You have to work within the strictures of what has already been plotted, not violate any rules already laid down, but still keep things fresh and unpredictable. Furthermore, since they are working in a reality that is lacking quite a few of the standard Star Trek devices (meaning both technology and plot devices), they can't just fall back on old storylines like holodecks (not invented yet), Q continuum (won't meet them for centuries), the Borg (likewise), or even original Trek conventions like the Klingon War or the Romulan Neutral Zone (yet to happen/be established.)
I wasn't wild about the Temporal Cold War plotlines, but there is an ongoing theme, well established during Voyager, that Temporal violations are possible and certain organizations work hard to prevent that from happening. The TCW plots at least establish some of the "history" (slippery word when you're talking about time travel) that led to that sort of management.
And this season, I think they are really getting to the meat of the plots, the establishment of much of what we first came to like about Star Trek: The Federation (and Humans central role in bringing it about), the battles with the Romulans that will lead to the Zone, the roots of the Klingon/Terran conflict, the moral dilemmas that necessitate the Prime Directive, reliable Transporter technology, and so on. Between the First Contact movie and Enterprise, the Zefram Cochrane/Warp Drive/Vulcan first contact plot line has really been fleshed out, and now seems like a genuine part of Trek history.
Those are reasons why I like it. I don't demand that YOU do. But why do so many people around here WANT it to die? This isn't 1975, with just three big TV networks and very limited programming space. It's 2005, there are dozens of networks and hundreds of channels. There's plenty of room for both Trek and Battlestar Galactica, and whatever else. If you don't like Trek, don't watch it. I'll admit that plenty of people have made that choice, and that's why the show is in peril. But ferchrisakes, don't demand that it be taken off just because it doesn't appeal to YOU. And if those of us who do enjoy it make some effort to keep it on, please try not to savage us, or disparage the attempt. I'm much more turned off by apathy than by people earnestly trying to do something, even something a little silly.
Better to tilt at windmills than to just sit home in your underwear and type snide comments at people you haven't (and probably never will) meet.
Unless the geniuses behind this idea can come up with ((($13 * 3MilViewers) + n) * 22) where 'n' is an obscene amount of money equal to the maximum amount UPN can expect to make in advertising for the time slot then there's no chance whatsoever that UPN would re-up the show. Of course, if the fans did come up with the per-show costs + advertising revenue for a full 22 episode season then they'd want a full 60 minutes of show per week (since they paid for the advertising slots). That ups the per show costs and then their lump sum falls short.
Enterprise got cancelled because it can't draw advertising revenue due to its low viewer numbers. UPN can slot something else on Friday nights with a much higher profit margin owed to advertising.
Oh, wait, you sometimes spend your time and money in ways that benefit you and not others? Hypocrite.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Think about it, the three incarnations that have aired as part of a network lineup have either sucked, been cancelled early, or both. The ultimate reason is ratings. Network suits care only about ratings, because they are in a brutal competition to be the first to the bottom of the barrel. The two incarnations that aired in syndication, though, were actually quite good (or at least respectable). Because it's airing as filler for a station (yes it sounds bad, but bear with me) they aren't as worried about ratings, so there's less meddling by suits in order to get a short-term ratings boost.
To illustrate, TOS was simply killed because it wasn't getting enough ratings. NBC had other stuff to work with, so no stupid stunts (and it was the '60s, we were much closer to the top of the barrel). Voyager wasn't too bad, but it was UPN's only show that was worth anything at the time, so they wanted to boost it's ratings (and cross-promote its other shows) any way they could to make the network look good. Unfortunately that led to the travesty of an episode guest starring the Rock and the "hey, CBS is doing a miniseries about an asteroid hitting earth this week, how quickly can we air an asteroid episode too?" insult that was the episode "Rise". Then, with Enterprise, they continued the ratings boost shenanigans from the beginning, alienating fans and leading to a horrible show. This time, because of the WWE deal, UPN can afford to abandon the ST franchise. Anyone else notice that when they put it in the Friday night deathwatch slot, the show got a far sight better?
Having Jolene Blalock in a shower once per episode is Puratin?
They're pretty much already doing that, and it's not working.
These guys put their ad in the wrong paper. I live in LA and my wife works in the entertainment industry. The only thing that matters is Variety.. Everyone reads Variety. From wannabes to studio heads. Therefore, everyone in the biz advertises in Variety.
The LA Times is a newspaper, not a trade rag. No one will the Enterprise ad. It was a waste of money and effort.
That is absolutely wonderful. However, I'm sure there are a couple dozen equally-worthy charities out there that you haven't spent five minutes or a dollar on. You have no right to dictate where others put their energies.
Re money: I loved the Clerks animated series, for example. I'd dearly love to see a return to our screens. However, I'd rather donate towards a worthwhile cause, than a full page newspaper ad requesting this.
Did you buy Clerks on DVD? Or have you ever bought anything on DVD? Couldn't that money have been better spent on the tsunami victims, or whoever had suffered a disaster that year?
Yes, we're talking about different magnitudes of money here. But how do you know that those people don't regularly give much more to charity than what they spent on the ad?
Sorry, but one of my pet peeves is people who get on a high horse and think that they are the arbiters of what is a worthwhile cause and where others should spend their time and money. Most people donate either time or money to charity. Everyone chooses different causes, and chooses to allocate different percentages of their time and money to those causes. Until you are living a completely luxury-free life and donating equally to all charities, you're in a glass house.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.