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Paramount Says Enterprise Cancellation Is Final
Kethinov writes "The Save Enterprise campaigns appear to have been for naught. Paramount has declared that they will not be accepting any amount of money from fans to continue to produce Star Trek Enterprise. With the decision final, Star Trek Enterprise will be the first Star Trek show since the original series not to run a full seven seasons." From the letter: "Paramount Network Television and the producers of Star Trek: Enterprise are very flattered and impressed by the fans' passionate outpouring of attention for the show and their efforts to raise funds to continue the show's production." Commentary also available from TrekToday.
B5 isn't really a good example. B5 ran it's full story arc. The sequel series was cancelled, but it really wasn't very good.
... now there's a great show struck down before it could get going. As much as I'm enjoying Battlestar Galactica I'd trade it for a new Firefly tv series in a heartbeat.
Firefly
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
"Paramount has declared that they will not be accepting *any amount of money* from fans to continue to produce Star Trek Enterprise."
This should tell you something important.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
B5 was a reasonably entertaining show, but IMO it was critically flawed because of the extreme "cringe factor" that worked its way in, especially in the later episodes.
C'mon, we're talking about a series where two advanced races spend thousands of years and unimaginable amounts of effort to influence the evolution of the galaxy only to suddenly pack up and leave because, at the denoumont of the entire serious, Bruce Boxleitner yells "Get the hell out of our galaxy!". The cheese was too thick to get past. "As my grandfather used to say, 'cool!'"...
B5 was better than Enterprise and Voyager and, IMO, it was the reason that DS9 was forced to become watchible in its last couple of seasons. But overall (and still, obviously, in my opinion), it was still a flawed show in a way that BSG is not (at least, not yet).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
the one surprise about this is that they didn't let the series go for a full five seasons. common wisdom has it that in order to successfully syndicate a series you have to have at least five seasons (about 130 episodes) of a series for it to be really profitable.
syndicated series are typically stripped - one episode a day five days a week. one season, 26 episodes is enough for just over five weeks. 2 seasons is ten weeks (two and a half months). 4 seasons is five or six months of programming. maybe a little more. it's kind of iffy for a 3 or 4 season series to be successful in syndication. classic trek was exceptionally successful with only 3 seasons. other series aren't always so successful.
perhaps the dynamics of syndication on cable, sales of dvd box sets, and the reduced profitablity of conventional teevee and cable broadcasts are changing how expensive series like 'enterprise' are financed. but i always thought that it was with the fifth season that the accountants could finally throw away the bottle of red ink.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
earmarked to keep the voyager probes up and running.
That way you'd be funding real space stuff and it still has Star Trek relevance.
No, he's talking about the original Star Trek series from the '60s. And he's right -- it started out fairly good, but the third season wasn't all that great, e.g. Abraham Lincoln flying through space.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Are the fans just less hard core?
Uh...no. I consider myself a hardcore Trek fan. I've never once gone to a con or even put on rubber ears. I kinda pride myself on that fact. But the shows...I know my Trek. I recently decided to download all the episodes and watch the full series. I hadn't watched any shows before, because of all the bad press other fans had given it. But I wanted to give it a chance before making a final decision.
And my final decision is this: let it die. As much as I hate saying that, I believe it's the right thing to do. It was a good concept, but poorly executed. The first problem I found was that there was too much emphasis on "filling in the gaps." They tried to explain away everything that the other shows introduced. The most glaring offence was the Borg episode. For god's sake...BORG?!? This says that the Enterprise-E crew were stupid enough to leave a whole crapload of future technology laying on Earth, potentially polluting their own timeline. AND that the Temporal Police or whatever they want to call themselves didn't do their jobs. For what? To explain away why the Borg invade the Alpha Quadrent 200 years later? Wasn't that already explained in TNG? The whole episode should have been killed in writing.
Besides that was the over-sexual use of T'Pol. You saw this happen with Voyager when Seven was brought in. They decided to start off with some hot babe in skintight uniforms on this one, killing the show's credibility in the process. Then there was the sterile acting of Reed and Archer in the first 2 season. Most of the cast was guilty of this actually. This I think was more caused by letting nearly every actor in previous shows have a chance to direct on Enterprise. And speaking of previous actors, there was far too many actors from previous shows playing in Enterprise. Part of the joy I got out of watching the show was spotting recycled actors. I've seen the guy who played General Martok on DS9 play at least 3 other characters in other Treks, including playing a Klingon on Enterprise. And they should have NEVER let Ethan Philips play a Ferengi, since he was the easiest to spot from playing one on Voyager. I didn't really like them bringing in Ferengi in the first place, but it sorta fit with the Star Trek Universe laid down by TNG. Storyline-wise, I wasn't impressed with the Temporal Cold War, and it really didn't do anything except introduce even more inconsistances in the Star Trek Universe. But at least they wrapped that up. The fourth season was picking up steam, and I would have liked to see that have been the first season. But it's too late. The damage is done. This is a hardcore Star Trek fan saying: Let It Die...
you do realize that for all the hoopla over BSG Enterprise still beats it in the ratings.
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