They certainly did, long live Empress Sato. This is a great last season. Just like Angel where after they're canceled do they put out the best episodes.
Posted on 05/01/2005 9:58:15 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
May 1, 2005
By DAVE ITZKOFF
IN the sector of planet Earth known as Hollywood, it was business as usual on the Paramount back lot. On a sunny day in early March, green-skinned aliens with zippers embedded in their faces were eating catered lunches, stagehands were disassembling lighting rigs labeled "Thorium Isotope Hazard," and all were doing their best to ignore the fact that the warp engines on the starship Enterprise would soon be shut down, perhaps never to start up again. "Welcome," a security guard said with heavy irony, "to the last days of Pompeii."
On May 13, UPN will broadcast the final two episodes of "Star Trek: Enterprise," the most recent spinoff of the genre-defining science-fiction series created by Gene Roddenberry nearly 40 years ago. The scenes filmed in March will bring closure to the story of a futuristic space vessel and its intrepid crew, but the end of "Enterprise" also casts into doubt the future of a venerable entertainment property that is entering a realm where no franchise has gone before.
Almost from the moment it was canceled by NBC in 1969, the original "Star Trek" set about defying television conventions: a three-season dud in prime time, it became a success in syndication, spawning a series of motion pictures, a merchandising empire, and three television sequels (the syndicated hits "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Star Trek: Voyager," which helped start the UPN network in 1995).
"Enterprise," a prequel devised by the veteran "Trek" producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, was supposed to be the series that would take the franchise into the future by venturing into its past. "We knew that in the 23rd century, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were out exploring the universe, and they were comfortable in space," said Mr. Berman, who was put in charge of the film and television properties after Mr. Roddenberry's death in 1991. "But who were the first people to have to try a transporter? The first people to come into contact with hostile alien species; who were hesitant about taking these first steps into the galaxy?"
Set 100 years before the first "Star Trek" series, aboard an embryonic version of the ship that would later carry Kirk, Spock and company across the cosmos, "Enterprise" made its debut on UPN on Sept. 26, 2001, to over 12.5 million viewers. By the end of its first season, its audience was just half as big, and by the end of its second season, barely a third of those original viewers were still watching. "People never really warmed up to 'Enterprise,' " said Ronald D. Moore, a former staff writer of the syndicated "Trek" television sequels who is now executive producer of the Sci Fi Channel's new "Battlestar Galactica" series. "It never quite grabbed people viscerally and hung on, like the other shows did."
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.
Aware of viewers' disappointment, the producers made significant changes for its third season: a single, yearlong storyline was established, pitting the ship's crew against a malevolent alien race called the Xindi, and Manny Coto, creator of the Showtime series "Odyssey 5," was brought in as a co-executive producer. But while Mr. Coto was widely hailed by colleagues and fans alike for delivering episodes that equaled the quality of previous "Star Trek" series, the show's ratings continued to erode.
When it was time to commit to a new season of "Enterprise," UPN ordered fewer episodes than in the past and shuffled them to yet another time slot. Still, some people clung to hope. "Being the optimists that actors are," said Scott Bakula, who played "Enterprise's" heroic Captain Archer, "you think, 'Maybe if we do a really good job. ...' But basically we were kidding ourselves."
The network says the problem was that most of "Enterprise's" viewers were male, unlike those of its bigger shows, like "America's Next Top Model" and "Veronica Mars." "It didn't really fit into the overall brand, and it was harder to attract the audience for that show, because they weren't sitting here all week," said the UPN president, Dawn Ostroff.
As "Enterprise" prepares for its final voyage, its producers admit that the found it hard to write for both dedicated "Trek" fans and uninitiated viewers. "When it was time to start the writing for Season 4," Mr. Coto said, "we were mostly gearing episodes towards people who knew the 'Star Trek' universe. We were not worried so much about people who didn't. They were gone anyway."
Yet "Enterprise" was also hobbled by competition from the four previous "Star Trek" TV series, which continue on cable and in syndication. "If anything, Paramount has gone to the well too often, because the franchise has been such a huge cash cow for the studio, for decades," said the longtime "Trek" actor and director Jonathan Frakes, who reprises his "Next Generation" character, Commander Riker, in the "Enterprise" finale. "You can go right through the dial and there's always 'Star Trek' on somewhere."
At the same time that "Enterprise" began to sputter, the "Star Trek" film franchise went into a tailspin: the 2002 theatrical release "Star Trek: Nemesis" was the series' first bona fide bomb, grossing just over $40 million. "There became a certain perception that the franchise wasn't something people had to rush out and see in any way, shape or form," said Mr. Moore, who wrote the screenplays for the "Star Trek" films "Generations" and "First Contact." "That perception becomes self-sustaining, and then people drift away from it."
They may have drifted toward Sci Fi's "Battlestar Galactica" (which brought in about 2 million viewers in its first season this winter) and USA's "Dead Zone" (which averaged almost 3.5 million viewers last summer). "It's like there's a certain number of science-fiction fans, and that's it," Mr. Coto said. "It's a genre that appeals to a certain type of individual, and there's not a lot of them."
THIS fall, for the first time in 18 years, there will be no original "Star Trek" series on television; a new film installment is unlikely to materialize before 2007 or 2008. Paramount Network Television confirmed that there was no timetable for the development of a new show, and no creative team in place to develop it. And despite the near-universal praise he earned for keeping "Enterprise" aloft, Mr. Coto said no one had approached him about further involvement with the "Star Trek" franchise. "It is kind of disappointing, frankly," he said. "I don't think a lot of people who are in charge right now are that interested in talking about the next thing."
From his office in the Gary Cooper Building at Paramount Pictures, behind a door with a plaque that reads "Please speak softly, massage in progress," Mr. Berman remained remarkably sanguine for a man so frequently threatened with bodily harm on Internet message boards. He had begun preliminary work on a potential new "Star Trek" film, but, he said, "I'm not certain that I will be involved in creating the next 'Star Trek' series. I have no idea when that's going to happen, and it very well may be someone new who's going to be doing it."
And as he spoke of the optimistic vision that Mr. Roddenberry presented in the original "Star Trek," one in which the most demanding of humanity's earthbound problems have been solved and the infinite wonder of the universe awaits mankind, Mr. Berman expressed a similar hopefulness for the future of "Star Trek" itself. "You can go anywhere in the world and people know what 'Beam me up, Scotty' means or what a Klingon is," Mr Berman said. "They're not going to go away."
But some who are departing the Star Trek universe, like Ms. Blalock, seemed relieved to be free of early-morning makeup calls and prosthetic pointy ears: "The girls on set, we would always joke: 'We're gonna be cute after this all over. After we shake off the haggard.' "
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The captain was the weakest link -- a HORRIBLE actor. Everyone else looked good, even when they weren't.
The entire planet, their stupid faux gods/aliens-in-a-wormhole, their annoying, arrogant women priestesses, their entire condescending attitude towards all males (except, noticeably, male minorities) and their sillier-than-thou ear pieces made the show a real snoozer.
ONLY the Cardasians and shapeshifters saved it for me -- and they were OUTSTANDING. Gull Ducat was a breath of fresh air. Odo was fabulous. The rest? ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz. Its death was predictable. Too bad they HAD to center it on such a bad actor -- a well-spoken token.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Not crazy about a female "Starbuck," either, but:
1. Great physics. Plausible FTL. Great explainations for why human piloted craft and the bridge is a heavy, wired set (cylons invade basic tech).
2. Great war scenes, with no "shields" or ho-ha. Nukes, anti-missles, etc. (Former Army pilot here, like realistic air-to-air combat).
3. Hard choices --- leaving people to die, etc. Very anti-utopian.
4. Deals with some of the oft-unanswered issues --- like currency, barter between crafts for items, etc.
5. Boomer is hot.
6. Seriously flawed personalities --- e.g., xo a drunk, wife a witch, dealing with a communist/terrorist 'cause you have to; etc.
7. Considerable mystery and intrigue.
It is far better than the original BS on so many levels.
That's not what they said. They said UPN's primary demographic is female's, that made it difficult to build Enterprise audience because most of the people that were showing their "free" commercials to (commercial time in other UPN shows) were not in the demographic that watches Star Trek, it also meant no spill over from the previous show, and meant Enterprise didn't provide spill over to the next show. Thus why they kept shifting it in the schedule, add that the previous season really wasn't very good and you've got a major flop situation on your hands.
Really they need to shut down Star Trek for 10 or 15 years, let it rest, let the audience re-juvinate, pick up the next direction of scifi and fit Star Trek into that.
They certainly did, long live Empress Sato. This is a great last season. Just like Angel where after they're canceled do they put out the best episodes.
Don't leave out Garak. Romulans were good, too.
I thought Star Trek was pretty much over when Next Generation ended.
I don't know how they did it, but the Original Series (Kirk, Spock, McCoy) was somehow imbued with that 'Space Race' optimism and "can-do" attitude. Nothing after that felt as compelling, though the Next Generation came close at times.
I couldn't stand Deep Space 9. I mean, I know what a soap opera is. Puttying up noses and claiming it's in space doesn't make it any different.
The two times I tuned into Voyager and Enterprise told me that the staff wasn't capable of assemblinbg even a bad Doctor Who episode.
I tend to agree. Sci-Fi channel.
B & B killed Star Trek. Enterprise never had a chance sadly. Instead of making more Trek, they decided to write a time cops story about somthing which never ever existed in trek before.
A prequel still could be done right - and it can appeal to new viewers. Whether we are talking about the romulan-human war, or getting back to space exploration (the way roddenberry did it in the orginal star trek or even TNG/DS9).
If you ask me, Trek has been in decline since voyager.. essentially since paramount made it to where you could see it on UPN only. Syndication is what MADE Trek viewable. Stations could plug it in where its audience could find it.
anyways..
You and me both, brother. You and me both.
The new BSG is more like BSG: 90210.
The scripts do draw you in more (the conflict is more intense).. but they could do without all the T & A and damning of relegion and the chain of command.
They take the "everyone is flawed" notion too far.
TS
I tried to avoid saying that, but you're right. Next Gen' was rife with it and everything afterward was consumed by it.
People howl about how un- PC Star Wars is, yet a remarkable number of "haters" are already pumped for the next Star Wars movie to come out.
Yep.
I really loved the Borg, Vulcans, Cardasians and Klingons. I really DID love the Druz who killed ALL HUZNAK too. There were some fabulous species, villains and heros.
Everyone in the first two shows seemed to get a fair shake. Star Trek Next Generation was the zenith.
The butthump p.c. of Deep Space 9 was HORRIBLLY bad acting of the Captian Cisco, around whom the show was built. The moronic worm hole aliens, their man-hating priestesses and the stupider-than-thou ear pieces weren't enough to counteract the glorious Cardasians and shape shifter.
Voyager annoyed me from the get-go. I spend weeks sending the series SCATHING letters about Capatin "Bun Alert" Janeway and her IDIOT fisr officer Lietentant "Artichoke personality-Me-Wise-Indian-Who-Can't-Act" Chakote Artichoke.
Lol. They actually made severe changes for the better -- before they succumbed to twit-tit-crotch-butt-o-rama with 7/9. What a farce. Also, they made Paris such a stupid, weak, pathetic white guy moron. Sad, but predictable.
I did love Belana....but then, she was a minority female, playing a mixed-race Klingon -- perfect p.c. crapola which she really did well. I enjoyed her character.
For Voyager, with all its women cast, their "action" was to have all the women screaming at each other and at the men. They couldn't have any knock-down, drag out fights because women don't do that. So they had weekly screaming matches. BORING. There was little real action because there were so few men in the cast and they couldn't have TOO MUCH good stuff, fights, action scences and such, because they would have STOLEN ALL THE SCENES. That was a DEFINITE no-no for Voyager. Better to be bored to death by Janeway's infernal blabbing.
I only watched Enterprise occasionally. Watching young female Vulcan boink everything that wasn't bolted down, in scantier and scantier clothing with blonder and longer hair was the basic immediate channel switch.
They all knew it but didn't care. The fire died. Those in charge thought with their crotches.....a fitting death for them, since that's how they chose to frame their final Star Trek enterprise.
Enterprise was a good franchise for Star Trek. Sorry to see it end.
Trekdom is divided into two groups, for DS9, against DS9. DS9 is a polarizing series. Certainly it does not satisfy wanderlust. Despite some heavy PC set-up, the plot of entire series was quite impressive. It was one epic tale, rather than a collection of episodes with no coherent plot-line over the entire series.
TS
It's almost dead, Jim.
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