Here's the livejournal entry I haven't posted yet.
Last Thoughts on Star Trek Enterprise
After twenty five seasons in eighteen years, Star Trek has ended. Allow me a moment to be maudlin solely for sorrow's sake: I watched the first episodes of Next Generation as a boy and I have grown up alongside modern Star Trek. My earliest memories are of my father introducing me to the original series. The idea that no matter what is wrong with myself, no matter what is wrong with the world there would always be another new space adventure in the near future has always been comforting. At its worst, Star Trek was enjoyable televison -- at its best, it changed the world.
Beyond this nostalgia, however, I'm pretty angry.
The world in general is partly to blame; my generation is no longer interested in what Star Trek offers. I do not mean of this the popular claim that Star Trek proposes an impossible vision of future society. This idea has never been anything more than a visual trapping, wholly invalid in practice; an actual utopia would make for very uninteresting storytelling.
Rather, Star Trek offers a number of things which no longer pique our attention: episodic drama, heroic characters and a subtle social commentary. During the last two hours of Enterprise, UPN taunted its few remaining viewers with commercial after commercial for a TV show of Britney Spears' home movies. The dramas we choose over Star Trek are insipid, based wholly on how many dark turns a week their characters can be forced through and on how directly the networks can imply things about sex. When they are socially conscious, it is in a way that is so mind bogglingly obvious - characters literally stating their generic political and moral opinions and walkinng off stage. These things are transitory; we crave them because they are different and because they offer an immediate rush... they will not last.
Star Trek has always been a product of its times, and I believe that Enterprise more than any other recent incarnation will be looked back upon in this manner. We often look back on the original series and talk about all the things it tried to say. We like to point out how things like Let This Be Your Last Battlefield discussed racism in a manner nothing else on TV could at the time. A Private Little War is probably still the single fairest commentary on the Vietnam War, bar none. While the rest of the world still does little more than demonize the opposing sides over the war, Star Trek literally forced its beloved heroes to come to odds over the same questions. We will someday remember Enterprise for doing this as well. Following September 11th every television show in the world forced their opinions on us: from flag waving patriotism to scolding everyone in no uncertain terms for being flag waving patriots. Enterprise did it differently, forcing the parallel issue on the crew in a very obvious manner with the Xindi attacks... and then under the guise of a "war arc", dealing with it in an ultimately fair manner over a season. Given the chance to sit down with all of these episodes at once, people will better recognize this.
More than that, though, it was fun -- adventures in space with ray guns and monsters and sailing ships. Star Trek's nominal successor, Battlestar Galactica, is "edgy"... and edgy is defined as sex-and-drugs plots stolen from the likes of 90210 and launched into space. For all the ratings stunts it might have pulled, Enterprise never stooped so low as to stop believing in larger than life, heroic characters. Captain Archer, Commander Tucker and the rest never wavered from the very basic idea that they were all good people at heart; unfortunately, that just isn't cool anymore.
Moreover, I am angry at the modern Star Trek fan. The internet has twisted and crushed the spirit and the mind of Star Trek fandom; Enterprise would appear to have had no bigger detractor than the average fan.
Our little global community somehow did Star Trek wrong -- instead of bringing together the truly incredible, diverse and intelligent fan base that endured for thirty years it put together an unlikely band of incredibly vocal rubberneckers.
Compare them to the Star Wars fans. They are a group of people who are legitimately excited whenever a new Star Wars mass market novel shows up. These novels have nothing to do with George Lucas' supposed "vision", and they are literarily identical to the cheesy Star Trek paperbacks that wind up on my night table each month. The Star Wars novels are loved and waited for each monnth -- the Star Trek novels are not discussed, as they are not considered 'canon'. Never mind that this distinction applies practically only to the people who write future Star Trek adventures (which, of course, without Enterprise airing is now no one). We have no Star Trek comics, Star Trek video games or similar diversions anymore because the market does not support them. Why?
Star Trek fans on the internet today legitimately believe elaborate 'reverse cult of personality' about the production of the series. Not a week goes by in my little corner of the universe, #WingNut, when some casual WingNut mentions how much he hates Star Trek producer Rick Berman. "Do you know what a producer does?", I ask. No. "Have you ever seen an interview with Mr. Berman?" No. "Did you enjoy any Star Trek in the last fourteen years, when he was in charge?" Yes, but -- and here's the kicker -- whichever series I liked he was secretly not involved with, despite writing and producing credits.
Star Trek fandom has legitimately convinced the average fan that the people running the show are part of an elaborate conspiracy, and that everything they do must be wrong before it even happens. What's more, they have done this based on nothing more than the names they see in the credits of the episodes. It is really, really easy to pick a name out of a hat, or off of a screen, and blame everything wrong on that person. Heck, in the case of Rick Berman, taking the blame for such things is literally his job. It's just bizarre to see an entire fan base sure that they have an enemy who's twirling his moustache and plotting to create continuity errors.
In 1993 we would say "Hah! What a goof! Klingon ships don't have rear firing weapons!" and we'd laugh like the nerds that we are and pat eachother on the back for being familiar enough with the lore to notice such a thing.
In 2005 the average fan would say "Hah! Klingon ships don't have rear firing weapons! This proves that Rick Berman is trying to secretly ruin Star Trek, and because of this nothing in this episode can be appreciated at all!". They believe this. Instead of loving a show the fans decided beforehand to tear it down. Case in point, finally, is last nights finale: knowing the "surprise" premise beforehand - as this great web of ours allows us to do, now months in advance - the episode was critically dead before it aired.
If I had tuned in to an all new Next Generation episode in the early nineties and found that it had a guest star from the original series I would have been absolutely stunned. We were amazed when they so much as mentioned Spock in Sarek. So the conceit behind the Enterprise finale -- the Star Trek plural finale, as far as we know -- was amazing to me. For the first time ever, let me put on my English Major hat: the idea that the Enterprise finale had a framing story along the lines of Frankenstein is about as literary as a TV show can get these days. Not only that, but now putting back on my Star Trek geek hat, it did exactly what I have wanted to see more of on Enterprise for four years -- tie the new show to the old one. What's more, it was emotional and a fitting end for our beloved characters.
So what is the fan reaction? It was all a holodeck adventure, so it didn't really happen - it wasn't 'canon'! What an awful 'trick' for those evil producers to ruin the show. Etc., etc. They're not crying for the dead hero or lamenting the end of the very thing they feed on for their vitriol. The lampreys have eaten the shark and have I most sincerely hope doomed themselves. Good riddance to bad eels.
ance to bad eels.