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Is Enterprise Heading To Canada?
Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that the TrekUnited fan campaign a few weeks ago partnered with a group of Canadian production companies to pitch a co-production deal for 'Star Trek: Enterprise' to Paramount. As part of this deal, production would be moved up to Canada, and TrekUnited and the Canadian group would share the costs of a fifth season with Paramount. Apparently Viacom executives are considering the proposal, despite another branch of Paramount saying the cancellation was final just a few days ago."
Trek needs to take a break, and come back in a year or two or three with fresh blood. I rather like the idea of J. Michael Straczynski - he did a great job with Babylon 5, and Jeremiah, and The Real Ghostbusters ;-}
Thank you for another canned response. This is getting right up there with all the other slashdot puke. Get your own thoughts and opinions. Shit like this is very cliche.
Good riddance! Star Trek should have died with the original series!
American TV is really quite low quality. You have your sit-coms, where a heavy storyline is when one of the characters is in the hospital for 2 episodes, your cop dramas which exaggerate and glamorize the work of cops/investigators, and then you have your "reality TV" which often bears less resemblance to reality than the other two categories of shows. Sci-fi doesn't seem to have a place in the US because people there can't seem to relate to it. I'm shocked as hell a "fantasy" show like Joan of Arcadia has lasted this long, but that's probably the God-angle.
Sci-Fi traditionally makes you think (although much American sci-fi isn't even about thinking, any more than just trying to break outside of yourself and into the future/past/whatever) and that's not what most Americans want when they get home from the daily grind.
So you've got this money.
And you've got all this energy.
And what are you doing with it?
Trying to save a TV show that even its defenders rarely describe in terms nicer than "it wasn't THAT bad", and whose plot is going to be wrapped up at the end of the season whatever you do.
While you've got all this excitement and energy and potential funding, why not direct it into more potentially productive efforts-- like, trying to get Paramount or some other production company to put together a new, GOOD show? (Preferably maybe even one Rick Berman is not associated with!)
There were rumors about William Shatner trying to go over Berman's head and pitch a series set at StarFleet; I think that would be pretty damn cool. Heck, there's a lot of potentially cool ideas within the Star Trek universe, continuity-error-ridden as it is, you could set a show around. You don't necessarily need Enterprise. And even without Star Trek (though I realize that's what the people pushing for enterprise to continue really want) I'm sure there's no shortage of directors, actors etc who would jump at the chance to do a sci fi tv show, if only some people could talk some studio into greenlighting it.
Television is allegedly a passive medium. Yet for once, for this moment, you've got a huge number of television viewers to stand up and decide that they want to participate. I think that has the potential to be pretty cool, if that were directed toward some productive end. But that potential is currently being wasted on lost causes.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
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This is a continuation of my posting in the most recent Star Trek Enterprise thread (see the end of this post for reference to the earlier post).
In response to my previous posting, people have pointed out that there are a lot of aliens on the Star Trek series that would have contributed to the diversity. However, I was talking about the HUMAN diversity in the Star Trek world. The diversity offered by NON-HUMAN aliens is a wash because by default and by definition, non-human aliens ARE different from the humans and are supposed to look or even act different from humans. And don't get me started on the supposed "aliens" who look more like farm people from Iowa with weird markings on their faces than real aliens (the mole on Robert DeNiro's cheek alone would qualify him as an "alien" under Star Trek standards).
Saying that Worf is a black dude dressed up as a Klingon and saying that Klingons add diversity to the cast is irrelevant because the focus of the argument is on HUMAN DIVERSITY. In the current Trek world, humans are mostly white or American-centric.
If, for the moment, we leave out the aliens and focus only on the humans on the ships, you will notice that maybe 99% of the cast is either white or American-centric. The exceptions are:
Geordi LaForge (allegedly African or Haitian)
Chakotay (clearly a South American. But did he have to be in the guise of a Native American which Americans could easily identify with rather than a Brazilian or a Venezeulean?)
B'Elenna Torres does NOT add diversity on the account of her Klingon looks (remember, the diversity I am talking about is the HUMAN diversity); however she does score some diversity points by having a human Hispanic background (although, apparently with an American-centric twist).
Travis Mayweather and Benjamin Sisko do NOT add diversity to the human cast because they are black AMERICANS. Please remember that in Gene Roddenberry's world, human diversity does not only refer to skin color but also CULTURE and LANGUAGE. Despite Chekov's twisted Russian accent, the TOS at least tried its best to make him act and talk like a real Russian person rather than an American person of Russian descent. Ditto for Uhura who is probably the best casting decision Roddenberry made in the promotion of human diversity in the Star Trek world (a black African woman!!! who would have thought??).
Just for your reference, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia make up nearly half of the whole population of the world. In the Trek world, American/British/French people make up nearly 99% of the human cast (with a token black American person thrown in for good measure).
So the question to the loyal Trek fans are:
Are you even remotely interested in having future Star Trek franchises conform closely to Roddenberry's vision of a Star Trek world with human diversity that closely tracks the diversity in today's and tomorrow's Earth??
For your reference, here is the first part posted in the earlier thread:
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
The reason why the whole Star Trek universe (besides Enterprise) was fairly successfull was due to the fact that the Star Trek Universe was re-imagined 75 years into the future. The difference was fresh and COMPLETELY different from the old series.
I think they should do it again...jump into the future...but this time, don't jump 75 years...jump 750 years! or maybe even a couple thousand years!
It would give the writers the latitude to imagine how the federation (and the Star Trek Universe) would evolve far into the future and create some REALLY interesting storylines.