hehe! :)
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.' "
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 thought Next Generation was the zenith of the series. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were such bad actors. It was often PAINFUL to watch.
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.
Amen to that.
The problem with this series and the Voyager series are the captain's. Bakula acted like a homo acting like a tough guy and Janeway acted the part like a dock worker but with less class.
Actors acting. And folks not liking that. Hmm...
Yep. That's a new one! :-D
To me, Law & Order is always some kind of Yuppie heroics, laden with guilt conscience, and soul searching. Even though sometimes it has good episodes, I hated the overall tone. It reeks too much of New York Yuppies.
True enough, espeically the last three Star Trek -- Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Next Generation started doing it and was very annoying.
Hollywood simply CANNOT resist putting in its own warped (Pun intended.) social agenda--100% butthump.
She is "starf**k," not starbuck." THAT'S the whole idea behind Hollywood's continuing and ongoing mission of the emasculation of American men, especially those straight Christian Euro-males. Lol.
How could I forget ole weasel Garak? He was fantastic.
Lol. Ah, the Romulans. They were wonderful. That whole connection to the Vulcans and Spock's part in their, um, evolution, was outstanding.
For me the last sparkle of interest I had in ST ended with "The Undiscovered Country." I couldn't get onboard with the awful stiff acting of TNG. Worse than that, it seemed like every spin off copied TNG school of non-acting. Woopie Goldberg giving sage-like advice? The Captain whining week after week to an empathic consuelor? Frakes' Al Gore impression? It just flat out didn't work, there was too little chemistry and way too much BS jargon.
Ah, but there is always the movies...
from what I have heard about it from people who have seen it... Serenity will be the greatest Science Fiction movie... ever. It blows away the original Star Wars.
Why not just buy the DVDs?
I think DS9 has the best overall secondary recurring characters of all the ST series.
I really enjoy Enterprise.
If you do too give a visit to http://www.TrekUnited.com/
Star Trek has always been special. It is an optimisitic vision of the future. It shows we what can accomplish one day if we put aside our differences and work together. ALl the major prolbems on Earth have been solved and we are pressing out into the stars. Some here think it is left wing. I do not. I see it showing the best of all our values left or right. Of humanity as a whole. The politics of 300 years from now will be just as different as they were 300 years ago from us.
Star Trek does one thing different from much of the dominant reality garbage on TV today and other sit-com junk.
Star Trek inspires people. Astronauts, pilots, engineers, computer scientists, physicists, on and on. And it does so in an entertaining fun way. It's not shakespeare, But there are reasons why it has international appeal.
Astronaut Mike Fincke
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/fincke .html
was in orbit aboard the International Space Station when he had this
conversation with Scott Bakula (Captain Archer)
http://www.saveenterprise.com/spacestation.htm
Mike: One of the favorite things I’ve seen in a long time is the start of the Enterprise show you guys really did a really nice job of capturing the spirit of human exploration I thought. Of course everyone’s you know, there’s some controversy about the song, but I
really like it. And I really like the beginning of the Enterprise show. In fact there was a period there where my flight assignment
kept looking further away and after the Colombia tragedy I would watch the beginning of the show over and over, just to get me motivated again. So you guys have really captured what we do really nicely.
Mike: ..............But uh I did convince them, and in fact I even gave them some suggestions how to…and they up linked a couple of enterprise episodes. In fact in their last cargo ship they even sent up a DVD with a few Enterprise episodes on it. And I tell you what,
that made me…when I unloaded the last cargo ship, that made me really happy to know that I could go back to my cabin and watch an episode of Enterprise because I hadn’t seen it in months."
Astronaut Michael Anderson lost on board Columbia...
"As a kid growing up, I was always fascinated by science-fiction shows, shows like 'Star Trek' and 'Lost in Space,' and just watching those television shows just kind of captured my imagination, and it just kind of made me think, these people have the best job in the world," he said. "They're traveling in space and beginning to do all these very exciting things."
I find great value in this. We are obligated ot give optimistic visions to kids. TO show them, this is the direction we want things to go. Leonardo da Vinci, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gene Roddenberry are all part of that. Sure its just a show in most of the conventional sense. But there is something symbiotic between the dreams we imagine and making those dreams become fact.
Carl Sagan........
"The visions we present to our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps. Our children long for realistic maps of a future they (and we) can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?"
All the crew on Enterprise are professionals doing the best job they can, all for the sake of exploration and advancing humankind.
I think we need Treks message out there more then ever.
Enterprise is just as much a part of that as any of the others shows were.
Flawed captains: Cisco and Janeway were the worst.
Piccard was the best.
Kirk got away with his horrible acting because he was the first.
Bakula is better than both Cisco and Janeway put together. He just doesn't have any story or lines to counteract the female Vulcan boinking everthing that isn't bolted down.
Besides, none of the guys are watching anything but HER ever-shrinking wardrobe, ever-lenthening, ever-blonding hair and her ever-more-kinky boinking. What was she going to boink next? Female Borgs? Ah yes, THAT would have been next for a really, yawn, good show.
Who had a chance to see what the captain could do? What captain?
Call it STAR CRAP! "To timidly and unimaginely go and do what we've already done several times before!"
I pretty much agree.
--worth buying the series on DVD--
ST:TNG - Overall great (a few mediocre and a few just plain bad episodes)
ST (TOS) - Overall very good (ditto)
--Huge drop in quality. Not worth buying, except for a few select episodes--
ST: Voyager - Mediocre (some good episodes in each season, 1-2 very good episodes each season, mostly mediocre or bad episodes)
--unrateable as I stopped watcing, and I'm not going to buy any DVDs--
ST: DS9 - too boring for words, for me. Stopped watching after season 1.
ST: Enterpise - ditto. Stopped watching after season 1.
I think they need to rest the franchise for a few years (a la ST:TOS).
hehe! :)
Having Poopie Goldburg on the Enterprise was disgusting. The ship had to be sent to the Vr'gus system for a thorough delousing.
Their message was THAT in the first two Star Trek shows. After Next Generation (and during some of its later agenda-ridden shows) the message was sex, women are better than men, any minority is better than nasty straight, Christian Euro-males and homosexuality is okay, even good if there's "love" of some sort.
The shows DRIPPED that agenda, glorifying it.
I watched them all and loved the Borg, Romulans, Klingons, Cardasians, all the villains, aliens, heros and stories. When it was good, it was FABULOUS, but I was old enough and smart enough to see "agenda" when it was there.
Hollywood COULD NOT afford to be subtle with its agenda laden stories. If it were, those targets of their agenda would never have "gotten" it.
Finally, sex became the ultimate agenda -- selling smut and calling it entertainment. Smut sells -- and that's just show biz. It's a sleazy business that allowed its sleaze into a fabulous series.
I will really miss it.
Live long and prosper!
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