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Trek Producers Will Provide World A Break
David Crumpton writes "Star Trek Producers have finally agreed that Star Trek fans are oversaturated with the show, and are planning to provide a break. This does not mean they wont bring something new to the screen; they will just wait a few years. They are convinced the ratings dropped due to the show competing against other Trek re-runs."
Fans are tired of Star Trek. Fans are tired of THEIR Star Trek. And, this choice was hardly theirs to make.
>They are convinced the ratings dropped due to the show competing against other Trek re-runs."
That, and the stupid Enterprise theme song they would never apolgize for.
Mr. Bermann, I am looking in your direction.....
Won't all new star trek series compete against reruns? They'll probably still have reruns of old Star Trek in a few years.
:) /Erik
I'm hoping the break won't be too long. I'm not "saturated" with Star Trek
Erik Dalén
I am tired of hearing this "trek needs a break" comment from the producers of Star Trek. Trek does NOT need a break for the reasons the producers say! What it needs is good writing. It needs to break itself away from being a action-oriented series where every episode is predictable. All of those episodes are nothing more than an old western gunfight redressed with new technology. Its all been done before.
The reason why nobody was watching Enterprise was that there was real reason to watch it. The writing was okay at best. It seemed like there were too many episodes that were created to titilate, and not enough episodes to provoke thought. We need to have some depth in the characters. In Enterprise, there is only depth in T'pol and Tucker. I have found their relationship to be one of the hilights of the series. OTOH, there is the pilot Mayweather who is still on the opening credits, but hasnt had any significant development since the first season. Why do you have a character in the spotlight, yet give us nothing intriguing about him?
What we need is another DS9. That series was great in that it had continuity. The characters actually *gasp* changed over the few years! I find it sad that we know more about Garak, a plain simple tailor, than we do Jonathan Archer. Or Will Riker.
I will welcome a new Trek series with open arms, IF they can provide character development worthy of my time.
Being on UPN probably didn't help much either.
Leave it to the producers to blame anything or anyone but themselves! If they had some original IDEAS and good WRITING, Enterprise would be an enduring hit, and people would prefer it to reruns of the other series. They need people in charge who will think outside the cookie-cutter.
They have it wrong. The ratings didn't drop because Enterprise was competing with Trek reruns. They dropped because it couldn't compete with Trek reruns.
From the NY Times article:
As Jolene Blalock, who played the Vulcan officer T'Pol on "Enterprise," explained: "The stories lacked intriguing content. They were boring." A lifelong "Star Trek" fan, Ms. Blalock said she was dismayed by early "Enterprise" scripts that seemed to ignore basic tenets of the franchise's chronology, and that offered revealing costumes instead of character development. "The audience isn't stupid," she said.
Bingo. That is exactly what is wrong with Enterprise. I'm personally a fan of it, new to the trek series (always liked the movies), but I knew that this was different from the theme of the previous shows and movies. I never really liked the any of the series but Enterprise was an exception. Maybe it is because of the unusuality of it that cought my attention. Still, the lack of character development and cheesy scripts in the begining seasons (those that I really didn't watch) was enough to drive almost anyone away. I really didn't get into it until it's fourth season. Oh well, sad to see it go but maybe a break will bring in new creativity. Or, perhaps they'll just finally let Star Trek die after 30? years.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
TOS, TNG, and DS9 had great writing.
TOS: Yes lots of the writing was kitchy and the humor as mostly slapstick, fine but mostly it was well placed. The plots were not new, they in many was resembled westerns or adventure stories. Still they managed to ask some questions and do things that were not possible in those more conventional genres at the time. When they did use kitch and slapstick it was not over done, except in a few episodes, "Trouble with Tribbles" anyone?
TNG: Largely continued the traditon of TOS. There was a little more character development which gave the show a little more dimention but the writers did a great job of not over doing to th point where the show had to become serial. They also took the kitch down an notch. All and all the show was very inteligent like what had come before it and felt like it had some more depth. They still had an incredible freedome of plot to do anything they wanted and keep the show mostly fresh for its entire seven years.
DS9: Ok, I felt this was a radical departure from the TNG and TOS. It had a much stonger focus on charater development and relations ships then the others, and it was a serial prime time soap, lets just face it. Still there was plenty of chance for variety. It was a busy port where different charater could resonably come and go. The writing never felt streched or unnatural it was consistant with the timelines the other shows had established and played by the rules created in the other series. The new format allowed them to expolre some political issues that could not be address in the episodal format of the other series.
VOY: Holly crap! Lets write ourselves into a corner with the very first episode, the flog the plotline out for seven years. Yes the show had its moments but there was really only one goal they could have from day one. The first seasons had long streches of "What clever trick to advance our homecomeing will we find and fail at this week?" it got old real fast. The writing was miserable the dialog was not even kitchy more just bad. Then they started introducing plot arcs like the borg and breaking all the rules. Come on the Borg were supposed to be this highly adaptive and terrible enemy which nearly vanquished the entire starfleet. In TNG every tangle the enterprise had it incurred serious damage and often needed repairs at space dock. The Enterprise, a bigger more war-ship inspired vessal usually had help too. Where exactly did Voyager a science ship all alone refit, how did they survice the attacks with no backup? Sure they did it in the writing but it seemed so far feched and generally inconsistant. I think that had to irritate lots of true fans.
Enterprise: Personally its a step up form Voyager I don't care what anyone says. It still suffers terribly for consistancy problems regarding the transporter, the state of technology at the time and lots of other stuff. Archer's character is irratic at best, wholly inconsistant at worst. The relationship with the vulcans is entirely to close, in TOS we get the impression humans and vulcans have peaceful relations some exchange of goods and technology but little real cultural connection, to the point that they barely understand each other. Yet on Enterprise years earlier then TOS humans and vulcans are in constant meetings and already serving together. It feels like they are at least trying to get it write unlike VOY which it felt like they were throwing the story to the wind.
We don't need a break we just need someone besides UPN sheparding the writers. UPN is trying to go for cool or sexy as the shows cake when that has in the past been the icing. Past Treks worked because they were philisophical stories and often played with some actual science even in their world of fantasy and embelishment. These things were just not present in VOY and ENTERPRISE.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
However, I think Berman needs to understand that, by and large, fans think that the last few years of Star Trek have been pure, utter crap. Only the most rabid Trek fans have enjoyed anything from DS9 on. DS9 was a soap opera (much more so than the last two seasons of TNG; at least TNG had some compelling story lines) and Voyager and Enterprise just plain old sucked. This from a guy who can more or less recite lines while watching Wrath of Khan.
Berman, Braga, just think about this: I hear more sci-fi fans talk about Andromeda than Enterprise. In that case I think it's more due to the fact that Andromeda is in syndication and local channels use it to fill out their lineup, as well as Sci-Fi and WGN, among others, carrying it. I mean, c'mon, guys, you're being beaten out by something that carries Gene's name! I'd much rather watch one of the Stargate shows or the modern Battlestar Galactica than watch that dreck you call Enterprise. Why? Well, it may not be the best acting, but the shows are just better. And that's sad, because compared to old Trek, all of them suck.
No, Rick, it's not merely oversaturation; if oversaturation was the only key problem, sitcoms would have died out years ago. No, Rick, it's you and Paramont. Craptacular story lines, craptacular acting, and no offense to LeVar, but craptacular directing too. Add to that that the show is stuck on the least-popular network in the U.S., and it's not hard to figure out why Trek is dead.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
The article you mention is a joke. Not once does it mention Enterprise airing only on UPN, unlike previous Star Trek successes.
Further, the article mentions that when Enterprise first aired, it had over 12 million viewers, then dwindled quickly. Then it goes on to hypothesize things like saturation and a poor matchup with UPN content. If that was the problem, Enterprise wouldn't have started out with 12 million viewers.
In the world of science, if something fails when it had always succeeded, we identify the differences, and hypothesize that the differences cause the failure. In the world of Star Trek, the genuises at UPN find bizarre reasoning, rather than identify the obvious. Sad really.
I stopped watching all trek shows back a few weeks after Deep Space Nine started.
;-)
I was a huge fan of Deep Space Nine, I thought it was an utterly fantastic show. Granted, it had too many plot themes based around Quark and the like that nobody really cared about, and also stands guilty for having one of the biggest deus ex machinas in history by having the Prophets make the enemy war-fleet disappear into thin air, but it had some very good moments, especially in the later series when the Dominion plot arc really panned out - if you really did stop watching Trek altogether just a few weeks into DS9, you missed out on a very good show once they worked out the right balance between Space-Opera and Sci-Fi action, something TNG had from almost the very beginning and Voyager/Enterprise never quite managed to find.
For the record, while I'd call myself a huge fan of Deep Space Nine, I'm only a casual fan of Trek in general - I couldn't recite facts about Dilithium crystals, but I could probably look them up in my DS9 Technical Manual that someone once bought for me
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Don't underestimate a good opening sequence. A good opening sequence in Anime can estabilish much of the plotline and cast of chartacters while giving a sampler of the animation as well (consider the Sakura Wars TV opening sequence). A great opening sequence will close the deal without having seen anyting else (consider Coboy Bebop or Noir)
>> ...I liked Star Trek: TNG for the ethical dilemmas, the hints at mankind's potential, goodness, discovery, and the general sense of something bigger than our own petty modern squabbles...
To each their own, but conflict and combat have aways been key components of Star Trek, and every other drama. Shows depicting a bunch of ethically mature humans displaying their wholesome goodness while they unobtrusively research the galaxy would be thundersously boring.
When one of the Trek series, like TNG, had the budget we'd see conflict and war as grand battles between starships. This has the effect of depersonalizing the conflict. On series with smaller budgets, like TNG and Enterprise, conflict and combat were often depicted as phaser and disruptor fights between a few actors on a set. Or, worse yet, between Trek heroes and a Monster of the Week.
I'm not sure what "payback" you've seen as a theme in Enterprise. The Zindi arc was the most combative and it was about preventing an attack on Earth, not payback. The long Dominion War dominated DS9; Klingon culture made its debut in TOS; and the Borg wreaked havoc in TNG.
In the end, Enterprise and the last few movies were brought down because they weren't telling good stories. Tell a good story and people will watch.
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Then, DS9 came out. The first few episodes were interesting, because it was a "different" kind of Star Trek, but taking place in the same time period as TNG. Unfortunately, there were only a few really innovative episodes. DS9 got old fast because it degenerated into a political show based in a science fiction environment, but with hardly any good wholesome science fiction. Seemingly, every episode was about some political problem with the Cardassians and how it was going to be solved with various political maneuvering. If I had wanted to watch politics, I could have switch to Fox News and seen it there. Those politics get me worked up enough; why should I get any more worked up over nonexistant politics in a nonexistant place, with nonexistant people?
Nearly all TOS and TNG episodes had this interesting quality that no show was about one specific thing. In other words, there was always some overall plot, and then there were other things happening concurrently that complicated things. This was good because the overall plot was usually solved by pushing some button or reprogramming the scanner array or something, but the other things made the episode interesting and thought provoking. DS9 episodes didn't have that quality. There was usually just one thing going on, and personally, it didn't provoke any thought.
When Voyager came out, it once again seemed interesting. Here was yet another show taking place in about the same time period as TNG. Unfortunately, it quickly became quite boring as well. Here they are, 70 years from home, assuming they travel nonstop at maximum warp speed, right? How come everybody there speaks English? Am I supposed to believe that some universal translator exists that can immediately translate languages it never heard? Even the Klingons had their own language, for crying out loud, and they were much closer to home! Then, the question arised of why in the heck they would make so many stops if it will take so long to get home anyway? At this rate, they'll get there in 140 years! Once again, most episodes lacked that quality present in TOS and TNG episodes. It quickly lost its luster.
When Enterprise came out, I only saw the first episode, and I came to the conclusion that I just didn't care anymore. It didn't seem right for some reason. I had grown to know Star Trek as being a show with Kirk's crew or with Picard's crew. Those crews gave the shows some kind of feeling that all these other crews just tried to hard to mimic.
I hope they release a DVD boxed set of all TOS and TNG episodes; I'd buy it in a minute.
TOS = The Original Series
TNG = The Next Generation
DS9 = Deep Space Nine
That's because, in the Mirror Universe, Bergman & Braga got killed before they ruined the series.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.