Enterprise Officially Cancelled
- Thread starter Spien
- Start date
pygmypiranha
Vice Admiral
Berman and Paramount said that there would be future series in the franchise... lets just hope they come sooner than later.
I used to really love star trek.
Star Trek today is just so tired, I dont want to watch the same cookie cutter characters, boring plot reuses, watered down visual style and nonsensical technobable.
Star Trek became so wrapped up within its own mythos to such an extent it became sterile and clichéd.
Come on, as a "prequel" series Ent was doomed from the start. It was still 24th century trek just abit shiner and with more grey. One piece uniforms n' all.
Star trek has needed new creative direction since the end of the last decade. When you have shows like voyager abandoning its central premise as early as its pilot episode in favour of standard tried and tested star trek plotlines and themes. You know theres a lack of imagination and probably a misguided "keeping to gene's vision" which essentially ensured that all that was bad about modern trek would never be properly addressed.
My sympathy to those who enjoyed the show, I never got into it. Just wasn't for me really. The likes of Voyager and the last two Trek movies have all but killed Trek for me
Star Trek today is just so tired, I dont want to watch the same cookie cutter characters, boring plot reuses, watered down visual style and nonsensical technobable.
Star Trek became so wrapped up within its own mythos to such an extent it became sterile and clichéd.
Come on, as a "prequel" series Ent was doomed from the start. It was still 24th century trek just abit shiner and with more grey. One piece uniforms n' all.
Star trek has needed new creative direction since the end of the last decade. When you have shows like voyager abandoning its central premise as early as its pilot episode in favour of standard tried and tested star trek plotlines and themes. You know theres a lack of imagination and probably a misguided "keeping to gene's vision" which essentially ensured that all that was bad about modern trek would never be properly addressed.
My sympathy to those who enjoyed the show, I never got into it. Just wasn't for me really. The likes of Voyager and the last two Trek movies have all but killed Trek for me
I never really got into Voyager, but I didn't think the movies Insurrection or Nemesis were bad, they weren't my favorite but I still enjoyed them.
As for the comment that Star Trek has become too sterile and needs new creative direction. Isn't that what was trying to be done with Enterprise? I thought one of the complaints about the show was that it didn't follow the established trek history.
As for the comment that Star Trek has become too sterile and needs new creative direction. Isn't that what was trying to be done with Enterprise? I thought one of the complaints about the show was that it didn't follow the established trek history.
Sphynx
Commodore
Like I said, for the morst part I've liked Enterprise. I'm sad to see it go, but it's gone.
So, since they have said that this is probably not the end, what direction do you think they should head in if they want to be more sucessful? For example: 1.) What time period? 2.) What premise? etc. What new direction could they take while still appealing to their established audience?
But back to Enterprise. The time slots here in the western U.S. weren't too bad, but you had to have a certain type of cable to get UPN. Also, I know the attempts to include sexual content (with a lot of sophmoric, cheap-shot attempts at that) alienated quite a viewers around here. Personally, I don't think it added anything to the show.
It's a pity. The writing definately got better with time, and I thought that upcoming seasons would definately be worth watching. What a shame.
So, since they have said that this is probably not the end, what direction do you think they should head in if they want to be more sucessful? For example: 1.) What time period? 2.) What premise? etc. What new direction could they take while still appealing to their established audience?
But back to Enterprise. The time slots here in the western U.S. weren't too bad, but you had to have a certain type of cable to get UPN. Also, I know the attempts to include sexual content (with a lot of sophmoric, cheap-shot attempts at that) alienated quite a viewers around here. Personally, I don't think it added anything to the show.
It's a pity. The writing definately got better with time, and I thought that upcoming seasons would definately be worth watching. What a shame.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I don't think issues like "time period" matter to anyone with a say in the franchise at the moment. Creatively, pretty much everything but the first season of Deep Space Nine has been the same show -- you can shoot essentially the same script with any set of characters. It's really only to fans that things like whether or not the Borg are around and what color uniforms Romulans wear matter.
If Paramount isn't interested in paying for the show they've already developed, they're probably not interested in paying to develop an expensive new pilot. "We all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise" is pure PR speak.
Enterprise had great episodes and it had episodes that were only entertaining -- like pretty much any Star Trek. My biggest complaint isn't how the show as written... that's beens essentially unchanged for fifteen years, no matter what people who like one show but not another will insist. It's how the franchise as a whole has been run lately... it's been very much taken for granted.
Take novels. A new Star Wars novel is a huge event. Why is that? Is a book about Luke's Jedi grandson's best friends doctor's high art or fine literature? No -- but LucasVariable makes a big deal about them... they're one of the only series' that bookstores have to follow specific rules about releasing, they build communities of readers around vaugely suggesting that the books are part of their greater Star Wars story (they're almost certainly not). There's two or three Star Trek novels of the same quality as anything the Star Wars franchise puts out each month -- but there's no fanfare, there's nothing to make the people who read them feel special or included in the greater Star Trek mythos.
When I was a kid I could read Star Trek comic books each week -- not any more. The license got more expensive and the cost to produce comic books went up... Paramount wouldn't budge and now there don't exist anymore. Same deal for video games. Same deal for 'universe' type books... they don't publish things like the Encyclopedia or guides to starships or anything anymore. The impression for the last several years has been that there's a huge gap between the show and the fan base, because the show hasn't supported stuff like this.
If Paramount isn't interested in paying for the show they've already developed, they're probably not interested in paying to develop an expensive new pilot. "We all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise" is pure PR speak.
Enterprise had great episodes and it had episodes that were only entertaining -- like pretty much any Star Trek. My biggest complaint isn't how the show as written... that's beens essentially unchanged for fifteen years, no matter what people who like one show but not another will insist. It's how the franchise as a whole has been run lately... it's been very much taken for granted.
Take novels. A new Star Wars novel is a huge event. Why is that? Is a book about Luke's Jedi grandson's best friends doctor's high art or fine literature? No -- but LucasVariable makes a big deal about them... they're one of the only series' that bookstores have to follow specific rules about releasing, they build communities of readers around vaugely suggesting that the books are part of their greater Star Wars story (they're almost certainly not). There's two or three Star Trek novels of the same quality as anything the Star Wars franchise puts out each month -- but there's no fanfare, there's nothing to make the people who read them feel special or included in the greater Star Trek mythos.
When I was a kid I could read Star Trek comic books each week -- not any more. The license got more expensive and the cost to produce comic books went up... Paramount wouldn't budge and now there don't exist anymore. Same deal for video games. Same deal for 'universe' type books... they don't publish things like the Encyclopedia or guides to starships or anything anymore. The impression for the last several years has been that there's a huge gap between the show and the fan base, because the show hasn't supported stuff like this.
I think LOAF makes a good point here. For some reason Star Wars has this following that causes fans to go crazy when new products are released. When a new Star Wars movie hits the theater people line up for hours, some even days in advance, just to see the movie on opening day. That doesn't happen with Star Trek. The Star Wars franchise has been better managed, in hindsight it seems like lately Star Trek has just been milked to get as much money as possible out of the franchise.
I agree with ck. The Star Wars franchise has been better managed. One step that I think really helped sell all the Star Wars merchandise was that all the books, RPG sources, etc. were as canon as the movies themselves. Plus, the market hasn't been as saturated with Star Wars. (I read on one of the Enterprise-cancellation stories that there's been some 620 hours of Star Trek produced in the last eighteen years. Compare that with what...12-15 hours of live action Star Wars films produced in 28 years)
I haven't read many of the Star Trek books, however I would say they're generally on par with the Star Wars books, except for Timothy Zahn's excellent trilogy centered around Grand Admiral Thrawn, who became a lot of people's favorite Star Wars character despite not having an appearance in the films.
I haven't read many of the Star Trek books, however I would say they're generally on par with the Star Wars books, except for Timothy Zahn's excellent trilogy centered around Grand Admiral Thrawn, who became a lot of people's favorite Star Wars character despite not having an appearance in the films.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
But you know, hoo-boy, Star Trek has done a better job of keeping it together. In that time there's been *perhaps* one unwatchable Star Trek episode... but a full one third of the eighteen hours of live action Star Wars stories produced are universally regarded as absolutely worthless.
If Star Trek produced an Ewoks movie or a Holiday Special for every two episodes that aired, we'd never, ever forgive it.
(And that's leaving out the nearly 30 hours of unimpressive animated stuff Star Wars has done...)
Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
Mad Cow said:
Hear hear!!!
Loved the Grand Admiral Thrawn books (all 5 of them) still consider them to be my all time favorite novels. Despit that, I haven't read a new Star Wars book in probably 3 years...I expecially don't care to read about any of them that don't deal primarily with the original characters...(I don't want to read about Leia's kids going through puberty with jedi powers...weak, seriously weak). Anyway, CK, you're right now that I think of it, I think you need digital cable to get UPN. The show used to be rerun on the WB at 6 on Saturday night in the early part and it got great viewing then.ck9791 said:
Yeah i did try and make a point about this. Mainly the hardcore trekies where upset about it messing round with "established cannon"
Ent could and perhaps should have been really different. The boring cast, Evil arrogant vulcans, complete lack of unquie conceptual design (the NX-01, the sets, the costumes, alien starships and appearances), awful time travel plots, for all intents and purposes exactly the same weaponry and technology except when the script writers decide to restrict their capabilities for one reason or another...
"look we have transporters!, but as its 100 odd years before Kirks time we dont like to use them much because they could be dangerous to humans!"
I have watched all of eight maybe nine episodes of ENT, main ones which stick out in my mind is the pilot, the one where they find the klingon "Raptor" in some nebula, The flash back one where they tell the story of the warp five prototype (probably the best episode i've seen, but still a bit lacking for me), and a couple of those horrible Xindi season 3 episodes.
Lets eat mice to show how evil we really are!!!
Voyager ended star trek in its current form for me.
I think the general TV watching public decided that they could do without "watchable" star trek long ago.
"Star Trek will come back," Eugene W. Roddenberry told SyFy Portal. "But right now it needs a break....maybe if they kept it fresh and exciting the whole time, it wouldn't need a break."
Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
Voyager (IMHO) was horrible, I couldn't stand watching it after a few episodes. I tried later on after a while to see if it had gotten any better...it hadn't. Someone had to have been smoking to think Janeway could match the likes of Kirk and Picard...(or even Sisko).
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
See, you just said you wanted it to be different... and complained about how the Vulcans were different in the same sentence.
I'm also not sure why the internet has such a disdain for time travel stories. It's just a setting (and one that's always been part of Star Trek, too... it's like complaining about how many episodes are set in space). It's also hugely popular... the most well recieved movies were time travel stories (Voyage Home, First Contact) as were some of the most famous original shows (City on the Edge of Forever!).
If we were like talking about ER, then, yes, randomly inserting episodes about time travel would be very odd -- but it's such a weird standard that you see *everywhere* for Star Trek. Hoo-boy, if they use time travel more than four times this year, then they aren't telling good stories!
Concepts such as the temporal cold war never engaged me or struck me as being particulary well thought out and depicted on screen.
Yes there are some fantastic time travel stories, the last good one was year of hell on voyager. Which was made what, roughly five to seven years ago? (it was season four)
With reguard to how ENT tried to be different, making the vulcans bad guys on the side seemed an odd choice; I believe that was "fixed" in season four. But again, ENT had a really good start, it had an opening audiance share of around 5.9 did it not?
Surly back then it was imperitive to get it "right" and deliver intersting and fresh stories as quickly as possible. UPN didn't want it and it seemed that the standard star trek fan didn't want it either
"Berman also told Sci Fi Wire that he doesn't understand why Trek ratings always drop after Christmas, but the trend on Enterprise is entirely unusual. He expressed less bafflement with the network's decision to drop the low-rated Enterprise than with the fact that greater numbers of fans had not tuned in this season."
Yes there are some fantastic time travel stories, the last good one was year of hell on voyager. Which was made what, roughly five to seven years ago? (it was season four)
With reguard to how ENT tried to be different, making the vulcans bad guys on the side seemed an odd choice; I believe that was "fixed" in season four. But again, ENT had a really good start, it had an opening audiance share of around 5.9 did it not?
Surly back then it was imperitive to get it "right" and deliver intersting and fresh stories as quickly as possible. UPN didn't want it and it seemed that the standard star trek fan didn't want it either
"Berman also told Sci Fi Wire that he doesn't understand why Trek ratings always drop after Christmas, but the trend on Enterprise is entirely unusual. He expressed less bafflement with the network's decision to drop the low-rated Enterprise than with the fact that greater numbers of fans had not tuned in this season."
The ’60s in America were the perfect time for a kid to become a fan of sci-fi, if just for the optimism it lent that we humans did have a future to look forward to. Bad enough that the cold war was still on, but with the protests and violence over civil rights and Vietnam, America itself was divided over what was right and what was wrong. There were clearly great aspirations–we as a country were working to go to the moon after all–but the man who personified that idealism–and established the challenge to go to the moon–had been killed in the most horrible way. (Some days after Kennedy’s assassination, I remember confronting my parents over whether he was really dead because I had just seen him on television–obviously it must have been some tape of a prior speech–and was positive, absolutely positive, that he was wearing a bandage around his head, and so he had to be okay.)
So when Lost in Space first aired, I was open to it. A whole family, on their own, against the universe! And a year later, when Star Trek came along, that was even better. In fact, I couldn’t imagine anything better. Humans were colonizing the galaxy, system by system; no stopping us now. And the tech was wonderful, as well as “appropriately” mysterious. Yes, there had to be so much more to learn about nature and how to take advantage of it (and how to protect yourself from it). These guys had transporters–energy/matter conversion–and warp drive based on anti-matter. (Yes, why wouldn’t/shouldn’t nuclear energy as we knew it be old hat? That was only “right”.) But how did all that work exactly? No clue.
Ten years later I attended my one and only Star Trek convention, in New York. All the cast members were on hand; the plans to do a movie (the first) were confirmed as a done deal. A mock-up of the Enterprise bridge formed the stage. The cast came out, one by one, to banter with the full house. When Nimoy appeared, he gazed about the auditorium, stone-faced, and finally said, “Yes, you’re an emotional bunch of humans.” (God only knows how many times the poor man has been obliged to say that over the years.) Then of course Shatner came “on deck”. He took his time eyeing the center chair–it was actually rather wobbly on its base–then cheerfully climbed into it. Camera bulbs went wild. (However, the day before, someone had rushed forward at this point and thrown a pie into his face. He begged our crowd in all seriousness never to think about doing such a thing, asking us to appreciate how scary it was for him, since he could never take for granted that a pie would turn out to be just a pie.)
When TNG aired, I had my doubts at first. Wasn’t sure I liked the new Enterprise on the outside, though it was wonderful on the inside. And Picard: didn’t lead away teams, and came across as too reserved, calm, and collected, which while certainly not bad things in and of themselves did not seem to promise metaphysical angst. But the new series quickly won me over–the same old optimism was there, as well as the metaphysical angst. And Data was the perfect “twist” on what Spock had represented.
DS9 also quickly won me over. It was unquestionably different in tone and drama, but the overall storyline–a once-oppressed-now-free culture, greatly inspired by religion, which in turn was derived from the influences (cleverly presented as both intended and unintended) of another, other-worldly, alien race–was too promising not to pay attention to, and the subsequent plot line with the Founders also carried some wonderfully heavy baggage.
Voyager did not hold my interest nearly as well, but I watched pretty faithfully all the same because I thought Janeway was a great character, truly another “Kirk” in terms of her boldness and inner strength.
And then came Enterprise, for which I had high hopes. I watched through the first three seasons pretty regularly, but I was missing “the magic”. Like Voyager, most of the characters did not interest me terribly. I liked Archer, but not as much as Janeway; he seemed to be too unsure of his bearing too much of the time, which could yet have worked quite well if only it had been tied to some sense of the evolving Federation-to-be, and so a key theme. My hopes were renewed, briefly, with the Xindi plot line (with its initially potential thematic relations to 9/11 that turned out to be mostly my own imagination), but it eventually struck me as unimaginative. I’m glad to hear the current season apparently had some of the old “zip”, but sadly for me the local cable company stopped carrying UPN, and so I’ve missed it.
It’s a sad good-bye for me, but if the series has taught me anything, it’s the importance of believing in the future, and in this case that the series itself will always have a future, some way, somehow.
So when Lost in Space first aired, I was open to it. A whole family, on their own, against the universe! And a year later, when Star Trek came along, that was even better. In fact, I couldn’t imagine anything better. Humans were colonizing the galaxy, system by system; no stopping us now. And the tech was wonderful, as well as “appropriately” mysterious. Yes, there had to be so much more to learn about nature and how to take advantage of it (and how to protect yourself from it). These guys had transporters–energy/matter conversion–and warp drive based on anti-matter. (Yes, why wouldn’t/shouldn’t nuclear energy as we knew it be old hat? That was only “right”.) But how did all that work exactly? No clue.
Ten years later I attended my one and only Star Trek convention, in New York. All the cast members were on hand; the plans to do a movie (the first) were confirmed as a done deal. A mock-up of the Enterprise bridge formed the stage. The cast came out, one by one, to banter with the full house. When Nimoy appeared, he gazed about the auditorium, stone-faced, and finally said, “Yes, you’re an emotional bunch of humans.” (God only knows how many times the poor man has been obliged to say that over the years.) Then of course Shatner came “on deck”. He took his time eyeing the center chair–it was actually rather wobbly on its base–then cheerfully climbed into it. Camera bulbs went wild. (However, the day before, someone had rushed forward at this point and thrown a pie into his face. He begged our crowd in all seriousness never to think about doing such a thing, asking us to appreciate how scary it was for him, since he could never take for granted that a pie would turn out to be just a pie.)
When TNG aired, I had my doubts at first. Wasn’t sure I liked the new Enterprise on the outside, though it was wonderful on the inside. And Picard: didn’t lead away teams, and came across as too reserved, calm, and collected, which while certainly not bad things in and of themselves did not seem to promise metaphysical angst. But the new series quickly won me over–the same old optimism was there, as well as the metaphysical angst. And Data was the perfect “twist” on what Spock had represented.
DS9 also quickly won me over. It was unquestionably different in tone and drama, but the overall storyline–a once-oppressed-now-free culture, greatly inspired by religion, which in turn was derived from the influences (cleverly presented as both intended and unintended) of another, other-worldly, alien race–was too promising not to pay attention to, and the subsequent plot line with the Founders also carried some wonderfully heavy baggage.
Voyager did not hold my interest nearly as well, but I watched pretty faithfully all the same because I thought Janeway was a great character, truly another “Kirk” in terms of her boldness and inner strength.
And then came Enterprise, for which I had high hopes. I watched through the first three seasons pretty regularly, but I was missing “the magic”. Like Voyager, most of the characters did not interest me terribly. I liked Archer, but not as much as Janeway; he seemed to be too unsure of his bearing too much of the time, which could yet have worked quite well if only it had been tied to some sense of the evolving Federation-to-be, and so a key theme. My hopes were renewed, briefly, with the Xindi plot line (with its initially potential thematic relations to 9/11 that turned out to be mostly my own imagination), but it eventually struck me as unimaginative. I’m glad to hear the current season apparently had some of the old “zip”, but sadly for me the local cable company stopped carrying UPN, and so I’ve missed it.
It’s a sad good-bye for me, but if the series has taught me anything, it’s the importance of believing in the future, and in this case that the series itself will always have a future, some way, somehow.
D'oh...you got me there. When I made that statement, I forgot about such outstanding productions as the holiday specials and Droids. I will say this, though, I think the Star Wars franchise is headed down the primrose path if the fan base doesn't respond better to Episode III.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
No, they aren't. Nemesis was an awful movie, but it's nowhere the terrible mix of embarassing, boring, terrifying and terrible that the Star Wars Holiday Special brings to the table.