I don't want to see it go, but apparently nothing in the universe can bring it back. And it's a real shame, too. Compared to some of the horrible immoral crap that's shown on TV these days, Star Trek is and always has been a show with a sense of morality, something that a child could watch and get a good idea about right and wrong, and making the correct choices in life. I really hate to think that it will be replaced by some show where people get paid to eat bugs and worms, or marry someone for money.
I've been a Trekkie ever since the original series aired on NBC. I'm finding it hard to believe that we will be without a Star Trek series on TV for the first time since 1987. But I'm not surprised. Things have been going downhill for several years, and I'm not talking about the episodes.
There are people who would hate any Trek series that came on, or at least they would say they hate it (but not miss a single episode). It's become fashionable to find fault with Star Trek, no matter how good it is. I think it started when people got bored with DS9, and they found that when they posted negative comments it brought them lots of attention. When others saw how much attention the bashers were getting, they jumped on the bandwagon too. Now you'll see indiscriminate non-specific Trek-bashing wherever you go. And they think they're "patriotic" trek fans because they say they love the mythology.
When Star Trek: Deep Space 9 first started in 1993, it was unlike the previous two series. It didn't have a rousing theme song, the opening credits were slow and boring, and the concept itself was horrible in the eyes of the fans. They asked "Whatever happened to exploring strange new worlds? How can you have Star Trek without a starship? And why was the Space Station concept copied from this other new series called Babylon 5?" And they were absolutely correct. But other fans started telling them to shut up, that after all, this was a Star Trek series, and any Trek is better than no Trek. And this was heavenly to the Trek-bashers, because many of these people don't relate well to other humans in the real world, so they sit in their parents' basements (with fingers stained yellow from eating too many Cheetos) and bang out their Star Trek opinions to see if anyone will listen. Suddenly, not only were people listening, they were responding, and they were doing so in great numbers. The anti-DS9 folks became minor celebrities and everyone knew who they were. They were famous! Other fans saw this from their darkened basements and wanted some attention too. So it became the "in" thing to start bashing DS9. It didn't matter whether an episode was outstanding or terrible, these folks would talk only about its negative aspects. It got so bad (or at least it sounded so bad) that the Powers That Be weren't certain the series would run for the full seven years. So they started Star Trek: Voyager during DS9's third season. And they did a remake on DS9. They punched up the opening credits, they brought in the starship Defiant, and they started the Dominion War.
Now Voyager was an attempt to rectify the shortcomings of the boring Space Station scenario by getting back to the roots of Star Trek. Suddenly we had an intrepid band of Starfleet officers (along with some aliens), and they were actually exploring strange new worlds again. The ship's Captain was a woman, and once again we had a Vulcan officer on the bridge! But the critics started in from the very beginning of the series. It was hard to bash DS9, because most of the episodes had improved from the previous lot, so the new series with unknown actors was a better target. The critics raved so much against the series that these days people tend to believe that Voyager was a poor series even without watching it.
Star Trek: Enterprise was doomed right from the start. The bashers had become so famous during Voyager that they ripped right into the new show even before it started. Each one of them had a desire to see the new series set in a different part of the Star Trek universe, and in every case a prequel setting was deemed to be a bad choice. From the very first episode, the bashing started. The bashers didn't like Scott Bakula even before he uttered a single line, and they absolutely hated that the theme song had singing in it. Enterprise really never had a chance. The shrill screaming of the bashers spelled its doom.
When I was a kid, my local town managed to get an old Air Force jet installed in the local playground. You could crawl through from front to back because the engine was removed, and you could play on the wings and look down into the cockpit through the canopy. It was the coolest thing ever...for a few months. One day my Mom was driving by the playground and saw some kid on top of the jet, bashing the canopy with a rock. She asked him why he was doing that, and he said "We want a new jet." Well they finally broke the canopy, and since the jet was now too dangerous for the playground, the city removed it. And it was not replaced. This is what the bashers have done to Enterprise. And I hate them for doing it.
J. Michael Straczinski, the creator of Babylon 5, wanted to write the next Star Trek series. I hope they let him do it because that would be fantastic.
Battlestar Galactica is the finest sci-fi series on the air these days.
There are plans for a spinoff series involving the actors of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda:
http://www.saveandromeda.com/dromforum/viewtopic.php?t=51
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