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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.
Enterprise never had a chance to grow. The first two seasons of Ent were decent, but still a bit mediocre. The third season was a nice ride, but not the show we really wanted out of the prequel. Manny Coto's 4th season is EXACTLY what the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seasons should have been, but too little too late. I love the show, always will, but TV politics have ruined many a good show. Look at the original Star Trek, or look at Farscape...
In their place, reality TV dominates. Why watch intelligent TV when we can have Growing Up Gotti?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
There should be plenty of room for all 3 fans in my parent's basement
I mean, what could the network possibly be thinking? Don't they understand that they're cancelling the most original, innovative and entertaining Sci Fi show of this generation? How can they cancel a show with such a devoted following? How can they turn their backs on well-developed characters with their flaws and nuances? What about the great staging and the inspired writing? How can they ignore such incredible potential?
What about the tremendous buzz behind the show? What about the devoted legions of fans who are careful to never miss an episode? The ratings on this have to be through the roof -- everyone I know watches it religiously! Christ, I know people who went out and got TiVO just so they could start going out on Friday nights again without chancing setting their cheap VCRs wrong and missing it!
I mean, I'm upset, I'm angry and most of all I'm just plain astonished. I just can't get my head around this. I mean really, it just doesn't compute. I think the SciFi network ought to be ashamed of themselv...
(whispering, pause)
Oh, wait, they cancelled Enterprise?!? Just 100% for sure this time? Pft, well duh! Gee, you really had to be Miss Cleo to see that one coming. All the attention this was getting, I just figured that they must have cancelled Battlestar Galactica! Heh, oh Jesus, don't scare me like that! Heh, my hands are still shaking, man, you freaked me out! Whew...
C'mon, are you serious? You mean there were actually people willing to pay to see more of this crap? Like, real money? C'mon! An online petition with two signatures I might buy, but *pay*? Riiight....
Cancelling Enterprise... Yeah, whatever. Tragedy for all three fans of the series, I'm sure. Heh, pft... "Save Enterprise". Yeah, let me get right on that! What will the galaxy do without the heroics of Captain Archer, inspiration to mildly retarded people everywhere? What about all the memorable characters we know and love, like... er.. You know, hick-sounding white guy! Or british-sounding white guy? Or the chick in with the big boobies? (okay, 100% seriously: I will miss those boobies, but then again there's always the internet). LOL, "Save Enterprise". Ooh! We got to save Enterprise! Because, you know, it's, um, like a TV show with spaceships or something. Heh.
Whew.
Hey, is it July yet? Man, I couldn't believe that cliffhanger -- I tell ya, I haven't been genuinely surprised by a TV show in ages...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
... would perhaps be to try to redirect the money to The Internet Movie Project ...
...
Begin Quote
Our dream is to create a movie with the POV-Ray raytracer,
as a collaborative effort of many people from all over the world,
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very much like POV-Ray itself is developed.
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or a similar instance
Yes, I am daydreaming.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
One down, reality shows, Friends reruns and 60 Minutes to go.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
"I'm sorry son, we'll never allow a hooker in this house, and that's final!"
I don't get it.
Breaking news: Cancelled show cancelled.
Good riddance, if you ask me.
Have you read my blog lately?
KAHHHHHHHHHHN!!!!
Disclaimer: Not a flame, just an observation that a previous version of ST was saved by fans.
How come the legions of fans didn't save Enterprise from the same fate of Star Trek?
Are the fans just less hard core? Or is all that money they sink into merchandice not affecting the bottom line enough?
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Season 3 tried to bring in a good story arc (it was good). Season 4 is pretty good, but it's too little, too late.
Seasons 3 and 4 are what seasons 1 and 2 should have been like. That Cold War temporal thing when NO WHERE.
The first seasons didn't have very gripping episodes. You had the same moral dilemmas and tired clichees and the blatant use of T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) as a sex symbol to attract testosterone-pumped young males. This is something she herself didn't like - Blalock wanted T'Pol to have more depth.
But anyway... Enterprise was interesting at first. It was interesting to see starfleet outmatched against pretty much everyone they met and how they dealt with the situation.
It is certainly sad, but I guess they had their chance. Blame the Diabolical Duo Berman and Bragga. They have the negative Midas effect. Anything they touch turns to crap. Which is why the first few seasons of DS9 were also not that great. It didn't get interesting until Michael Piller took it over and Berman turned his attention to Voyager. The actors in Enterprise, I think, did a decent job.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Paramount might be waiting for Berman's and/or Braga's contracts to expire before they relaunch another ST series again?? Perhaps they want a producer that can create something other than crap? Hellooooo... Coto or Joe??
Maybe they have more neurons then we give them credit for...then again
Well a girl could hope....
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
"Star Trek Enterprise is yet another Star Trek show since the original series to run a full six seasons."
:)
Maybe because it's getting cancelled after the fourth season?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Frankly, what killed Enterprise in the end was that same thing that made Voyager suck. The writers, producers, et al got lazy and sucked the meat off a franchise which had a loyal following for many years. They indulged themselves in the stories and forgot to work at producing a good quality show that would keep the fans wanting more and that put the fans first. In the past they didn't have that much compting with them, but the new battlestar galactica, farcape, the new doctor who and other shows that put Enterprise to shame. Manny Coto helped, but by then the damage was done.
When, if, they resurrect the franchise, they best not do so simply because they take the fans for granted and that they feel a suitable period of star trek starvation has passed.
Finally it's finally final.
Netcraft confirms it!
=D
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"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?
I can just see it now. Sam Beckett going back in time and saving Scott Bakula from making the worst career move of his life (After Major League 3, that is).
All they need to do is go back in time and kill the Nazis that cancelled the show! ...Oh wait, that's why they're being cancelled...
They would like 60 minutes of viewing a fish bowl with one fish in it if it sold advertising. This was not the result of anyone's personal grudge. The show did not draw advertisers because the show had low ratings. That is all there is to it.
If you don't like it then why don't you produce your own show that has all of the qualities you loved about Voyager?
TOS: enjoyed it in reruns as a kid. Thought the first season ruled, the second season was mostly good, the third season was headed downhill fast. Lesson: the quality (read: intelligence level) of the show's producer(s) matters. TNG: first seasons wildly uneven. Cheesy opticals (FX), unclear story lines, characters were thin at best. Season 5 was generally good. In the end, okay, but cut out about half the episodes. Lesson: quantity does not equal quality. DS9: A great idea, indifferently executed. The whole Bajoran gods idea could have been a fantastic bit of sci-fi, but in the end they just were used as deus ex machina. The introduction of the war story arc (although probably a response to Babylon 5) rescued it and made me actually want to tune in. Lesson: go somewhere with your big idea by giving the writers a framework. Voyager: Interesting idea (lost, out of touch), horribly executed. Janeway was in need of serious medication, as she was at a minimum bipolar. I wouldn't follow her as a leader for a month, much less years. The producers introduced ideas and at the end of the episode would use the "magic reset button" of time warp, tech change, or the jargon of the week. The ship acquired technology which gave it advantages, then the next episode it would be gone and might as well have never existed, to say nothing of frequently suffering damage which should have required time in dock. Utterly uncompelling and frustrating. Lesson: there's no point in having a show if it's not going anywhere with the characters, story or even the technology. Enterprise: I knew that when I heard who would produce that it would be garbage. When I heard the theme song, after cleaning up the vomit, I knew my worst suspicions were nowhere near what they should have been. The time-machine reset button, the unbelievable screwing with the canon, the notion that a ship could be remote controlled all the way from the Romulan Empire... Just...let...it...die, folks. The idiots who produce it are incapable of doing good work. It's just a money machine to them. Giving them your money is counterproductive. Find someone talented like Joss Whedon or Strasczinsky (sp?) instead. Don't save Enterprise.
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.
I do get pissed when I see a good TV show cancelled before it has a chance to find an audience. But a proper chance is two or three months, not 3 years.
Even most Trekkies found the early Enterprise scripts rancid. Stand back from your Trekkieness for a minute and consider that from the network's POV. They spend millions of bucks on a TV show, and it can't even inspire enthusiasm among hard core fans who are supposed to be a lock. Any other show that screwed up that badly wouldn't have lasted a full season, never mind getting renewed twice. Didn't get a chance? Spare me.
I'm amazed no one has said it (at least up until the time I started typing this post)!
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.
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... but please fuck off already, you fucking nerds.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
When Gene Roddenberry created the original series, he attempted to make the series as inclusive as possible. The TOS included characters such as Uhura (black African, NOT African-American), Sulu (Asian, not Asian-American), Chekov (Russian), and many other diverse characters. In one eposiode of the TOS, when Kirk was going through some kind of court-martial based on video evidence, the Starfleet judges (admirals, actually) included not only a person of Mongoloid descent but also of Asian Caucasian descent (he looked like a South Asian). That is two out of 5 judges which is quite impressive given that the TOS was made during the 1960s when racial equality was just coming of age.
After the TOS, successive Star Trek shows became more and more white and American-centric. Anyone who looked Asian in those successive shows could not be mistaken as a person who came directly from Asia as their behavior was too American. Ditto for the "blacks". Travis Mayweather is a prime example of this American-centric nature of the successive Trek shows. Why couldn't they just have named him Emekah Olowokandi or something like that??
Where the heck were the Africans, the Indians, the Chinese, the Middle Easterns, the Egyptians, the Brazilians, the Mexicans, and of course, the Australians in the Trek shows after TOS??
Only Trek: Deep Space Nine even tried to come close to Roddenberry's ideal. Dr. Julian Bashir was obviously Middle Eastern. But they could have had a Nigerian or a Kenyan as the black commander instead of Benjamin Sisko from Louisiana.
Unfortunately, Star Trek TOS was and still remains the ONLY Sci-Fi show that attempted to be inclusive of all cultures and individuals around the world. After TOS, nothing came close. Not even Battlestar Galactica.
Thanks I needed a good laugh.
You cannot seriously compare the importance of a gutter crappy shat out star trek show to the serious and grave problems of poverty and disease that exist in the world today which was the actual point. But to look at it from your POV, Star Trek is bad fiction anyway. It is not Shakespear. There is nothing revelatory about it or informative or for most people even entertaining. It's recent endless spin offs are just the usual junk fodder made for a group of fans who can't get on with reality and are upset when it's cancelled.
that could have been a believable story for a /.'er if you hadn't mentioned "wife."
Dude, that show sucked. Talk about beating a dead horse.
Weird aliens that always look like humans, good guys that ALWAYS win at the last possible moment with some crazy technical miracle, magical SciFi gadgets that are backed with ridiculous jargon, doctors with miraculous cures for every insane ailment.... bleh, spare me.
I love SciFi, and there was a point in time when that entertained me, but I need a new story. This one has be rehashed and told too much.
As far as space dramas go, my money is on the new Battlestar Galactica series. No doubt, it's an old title. But at least is has been reworked to avoid tired SciFi cliches.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Battlestar Galactica.
...
There are tons of romantic subplots, and they all have a point.
There's not just Riker/Troi
There's the budding relationship between Dee and the Presidential Butt Boy, two people fiercely loyal to their superiors, and their superiors are sometimes at odds.
There's the Lee/Starbuck/Gaius thing.
The Starbuck/Zach (Lee's dead brother)
There's Gaius/any female character. (Go him for getting some while running for Vice President in the bathroom!)
There's Colonel Tigh and his wife.
Possibly the most important, the two Boomer bangs, Apollo and the Master Chief
Or Gaius and the head-chip Cylon.
All of them have a point. All of them have flaws. All of them have strengths.
Having a show where the romantic plots are actual plots is much better than having a show where they take two pretty people and have the fans try to care about what they're doing.
Because it is not the science part of a sf series that makes a series interesting, it is the character interactions. Sure, it is interesting the first time a new concept comes along, but stretching that concept out as a series basis is doomed to fail. You'll wind up with "particle of the week", or "holodeck malfunction of the week", episodes. Broad story arcs require broad concepts.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Actually, how many sci-fi series haven't ended up being cancelled?
As opposed to all the tv shows that were never cancelled? Almost all tv shows die the same death, declining ratings and cancellation. I can think of about 3 tv shows ever that were simple ended because the all actors were sick of them, and decided to do other things.
Profitability is based off of viewership. The more people who watch, the more the producers can charge to advertise. Sci-fi just isn't that popular on the whole (compared to say crap like friends or reality tv series dujour). Keep in mind though, that there is an opportunity cost of putting a show on the air. When you put a show on, you lose a timeblock. So, while you might make $250,000 profit each time you show an episode of 'Buck Rogers, space manwhore', you may be losing money because another producer at your station has a show ready to go that might make you $1,000,000 per episode. ('Paris Hilton gets nekkid and acts stupid, yet again!')
Profitable shows with small viewership will always get run over in limited bandwidth situations like this.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You heard them...they think the money is in buying books, dvd's and other materials. There is less to be made from producing a viable television show- it costs too much and they don't get the return.
So join me now and stop buying their books, DVD's of past shows, and other materials. There is no sense being a fan of the star trek show when the 'show' doesn't produce any movies or any series. They need to realize that its not the property that generates the book sales, its the movies and tv series.
Make the pledge- don't buy a single star trek item until there is a series worth supporting. Don't make it a property they want to own...make them sell it off to someone who will restore it to its potential and use it for something other than raw financial gains.
Greed has infested the entertainment business and it needs to be shut down. I'm all for pouring money into the movies and shows we love, but I'm also all for cutting them off when its clear that their motivations come only from greed and not from the passion of making art.
Its time to cut off star trek. Those behind it are driven by greed. Its not enough for them to make some money, they'd rather take that money and use it on something that gives them a better return. Its a bunch of bankers... support independant science fiction instead. Spend your money on productions that aren't driven by huge corporations. Give that 3 million or so to some passionate group who is trying to make a good film or series and put and end to greedy franchises.
Last time I checked, The Animated Series is since TOS, and it did not run 7 seasons.
I don't dress up, or go to conventions or nitpick the blueprints of every Federation ship, I am just a fan. I fall deeply into the cores of every show there is almost, and their writing style.
I grew up on Star Trek. From TNG, to DS9 to Voyager and now Enterprise. I expanded my sci fi tastes to Farscape (god I miss it, so much), Firefly, Stargate SG1 and Atlantis, Buffy, Angel (more fantasy on those last two), and I even started to get into Battlestar Galatica despite how I don't like it's politic driven stories.
What is left? Sure Stargate SG1 is around but how long can they keep it going? I love Ben Browder being added to the cast but seriously, it's on its last season or two. Atlantis shows promise but I'm gonna say it lasts maybe 4-5 seasons. I'm not a huge BSG fan, it's good but I can't feed my sci fi craving off of just it alone.
Trek is gone. Paramount has basically said "fuck you" to the fans. I mean how much money has been raised here, for more episodes? Once Enterprise is over I will be removing UPN from my digital cable lineup just like I did "G4TV" after they shafted TechTV.
Even the Sci Fi channel learns from its mistakes. Sure they fucked over Farscape after season 4 but at least they had the balls to make a mini series to AT LEAST TRY and give fans closure. Paramount will finish this season but at what cost? It's a sheer slap in the face saying they won't accept money for new episodes. I mean what other show on earth thats cancelled/going to be cancelled could be run simply by fan donations? I'd pay money every week for Trek. Alot of fans would too.
Am I too far gone to be objectional? I think not. The first few seasons of Enterprise had their lows, I mean they really had their lows. But they had some good episodes too. And even more so I love Enterprise cause it's more human. Alot of themes, ideas, and ways of things are still done in the time period of Enterprise. People still wear hats, watch old movies, have more human forms of recreation. It seems silly but it relates more, you can actually imagine 100 years from now some form of space flight similar to warp drive, you can see how the Trek timeline actually fits in. It's doing what a prequel does, tells the backstory and sets up the future series.
Monday through Thursdays I usually watch dvd's to fill the gaps. Ocasionally I'll tune into Smallville on Wednesdays. Fridays are Trek and Stargate for me. Saturdays maybe the new weekly movie on HBO might be entertaining, and Sundays will always be dominated by The Sopranos and Carnivale.
Prime time tv is owned by sad reality tv. We have become a society of lemmings following whatever is popular and being entertained by the lowest common denominator entertainment. Even Picard would order our extinction, out of fucking mercy.
Aw Frell this
>Star Trek Enterprise will be the first Star Trek
>show since the original series not to run a full
>seven seasons
Not so. That honor would go to Star Trek: The Animated Series.
Bruce
I have seen every episode of TNG, DS9 and Voyager. I would've seen every ep of TOS if they were available on video when I was a Trekkie.
The rot started about half-way through Voyager when 7 of 9 was introduced. Although her character was okay and there were a number of decent episodes, the quality of the show from that point on went downhill.
By going with the "Sexy Borg", the Star Trek people began to appeal to the lowest common denominator. From that moment on, stories seemed to be written to a very precise formula and began to be drab, predictable and uninteresting. Essentially, Star Trek became conservative.
The nadir for me was when Tom Paris and Bellana entered that intergalactic Indy 500 race with that stupid ship of theirs. It was pathetic. When I needed to get up half-way through to go to the bathroom I told my wife not to pause the video.
And the ending to Voyager was insipid and unmemorable. I don't even remember what happened to tell you the truth (whereas I can tell you all the plot-holes in the final episode of TNG).
When Enterprise came on I put off by the sentimentalist crap that passed as a theme song. Then we got Captain Archer and his bunch of Earth people who obviously represented America railing against everyone else for restricting them - obviously the international community. I don't mind allegories but this was very militaristic and indicated a mindset in America that was very amenable to direct military action. Now we had Republicans in space.
Then there was decontamination. That erection convinced me that Trek had died.
My trek books sit on my bookshelf dusty and unread for years. I might throw them in the bin one day. I now hate Star Trek for its mediocrity and its conservativeness. I visit Wil Wheaton Dot Net because I was a closet Wesley hater and realise now that Wil was a victim of the rot which had settled in very early.
Trek couldn've gone out with a bang. Instead it has fizzled out pathetically and embarrassingly for the past 10 years.
Blimey, the knives seem to be out for Enterprise now. It's like some sort of anti-fanboy brigade or something. Do people think it's fashionable to knock Enterprise or something?
Yes the series had plenty of problems. Yes, there were plenty of lost opportunities to explore the implications of the absence of things like the universal translator and teleporter.
But compared to some of the utter shit that infests tv, was it really so bad? Worse than soap operas? Or reality tv? Or those pop idol things?
To those people who seem intent on shouting "good riddance" after it, were you strapped to a chair and forced to watch it or something?
Maybe it could have been better, but as one of the few shows to portray the future in a positive light, it provided me with a good few hours of undemanding light entertainment.
I for one will miss it.
If the fans could have made a deal which somehow involved pushing more merchandise, then this might have worked. Its all about the licensing - the studios make little money on the actual series with the big money coming from ties to the show. That is evidenced by this comment from the article:
"We believe the franchise is still very vital as evidenced by the fans' demand for books, DVDs and all sorts of related merchandise."
If they said they were leaning towards continuing it, I would have started a help kill Enterprise campaign, and I'm sure I would have easily raised billions.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Can you imagine a Federation Starship populated by Australians?
"First streaker in Space maaaaatee!!!"
"I shower in Romulan Ale!"
"Sorry, the captain can't communicate with you Mr Romulan commander, he's watching the State of Origin"
"Spock, what is that person doing in the window of that Australian starship?"
"It appears that his pants have dropped and his buttocks have been glued to the glass Captain"
"Captain, the warp core is nearing criticality!"
"She'll be alright!"
"Starfleet calling USS Drongo! Starfleet calling USS Drongo! We will be engaging the Borg at Wolf 35..."
"Bloody radio! Anyway, me and chas were streaking through engineering..."
(Australian Starfleet officer is confronted with a Klingon weilding a Bat'leth)
"That's not a knife!"
"Why are the Klingon guests so angry sir?"
"They don't like eating Chiko Rolls for lunch - they say they taste terrible!"
"We Romulans demand that you apologise for invading our space!"
"Well... let's just say that we express regret..."
"Attention. This is your captain speaking. We have decided to attack and invade this planet because scans from other ships have revealed that they are armed with weapons of mass intergalactic destruction. Even though our contribution to this invasion goes against Federation law, we must show the galaxy that we can lick arse with the best of them!"
"Sir! If we fire the photon torpedoes now, we'll destroy the USS New Zealand!!"
"Good!"
"Sir, the leader of this planet is a black man who wears a skirt"
"Geez... you getter ask him to take his shoes off in case he has a bomb in them!"
Lightly rehased(?) western set in space?
What's unoriginal about that? What was repetitive about it?
BTW, the original Star Trek was just a lightly rehased(?) cop show set in space. You may not have liked the western themes (and who could like those ridiculous gingham dresses and the humongous sun bonnets?) but the ideas made sense and the plots were great. The lethal blow was Fox's idiocy. The demographics on the show were virtually identical to the demographics for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which was on WB. Different networks, same ratings; one got what, 11 seasons? while the other got 13 episodes. The difference? Idiots in charge. Same thing that fucks up everything.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
The actual post
Your points are all excellent AFAIK. I didn't watch hardly any Enterprise, because I can smell a stinker a mile away. Notice how the Trek topic immediately got suborned by people talking about good SF: B5 and Firefly.
The Blalock head above is the wrong icon for this story; it should have the foot! Get a life you trekkie nerds! Quit watching crap and good stuff will have a better chance.
Trek is dead, and should have a good long fallow period.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Whoa now.... FIrst- most of us record our shows and so Im not sure how the neilson thing works but being there live doesnt always work.Tivo lets us come back and watch a show when we are ready. SO I dont know how someone can say its about viewership since most people who watch sci-fi are techs and most work at hours that dont jive with the 9-5 crowd. 2nd people who watch sci-fi are more of a minority than those who watch 'malcome in the middle' and moronic shows like 'friends' with david schwimmer (gag ! makes me ponder becomming lez as I fear that more and more men like him are becomming the predomant type) Lets face it. Programming on tv is aimed primarily at the main stream mass which happens to be the 9-5 robots. The moron crowd who float through life like a lump of crap. They dont look at shows like enterprise. Most of them can barely understand how to use their cell phone. I do tech support for verizon on the night shift. And believe me most of our customer base should have a play school pc so they can surf because they are so dumb!!! I dont think they couldnt find their azz with both hands. And what do they go to the internet for? not for knowledge- Not for important news or anything...No they want to look at porn till their teeth rot out. If you ask any of these morons what star trek is about they will compare it to a bunch of nerds at a trek convention. Not ever thinking they are weird for going to football games and obsessing about them and as a side note I have never heard of riot at a trek convention. Only sports heads. So I dont know - rattings yea maybe, but look at the time slot. and IMHO BAD WRITTING...
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!'"...
I dunno. I liked that scene. It conveyed a strong sense to me of what power at that level does to your culture. The Vorlons and the Shadows had reasons behind their evolutionary agendas, and those reasons were finally toppled by years of developments culminating in Sheridan's speech. At that level of power, the story seemed to say, it's possible that a rhetorical argument at the right time and from the right source is enough to make you decide "fuck it" and go home.
It wasn't just his speech I was detecting, either; I was seeing that really old alien's influence, all the other Old Races at the battle, the brouhaha over the telepaths, and millenia of implied sophistry between the Vorlons and Shadows.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
So... you watch shows because everybody else (or at least those who decide ratings) watch the show?
Well, don't we all to some degree? I watch it because it's good, but it's a good show that's getting great ratings and has a wave of critical support that supercedes even Farscape or Firefly, and especially Enterprise. As far as not seeing Battlestar, there are other ways of getting it both legally and questionably (the first episode is available on scifi.com).