15 minutes battles in space!
miniskirts for female crew!,like the original
replace the captain,or he dies on episode clifhanger!
more close up`s of t`pol,yeah!
another female on the crew!
Posted on 02/25/2003 11:14:23 AM PST by pabianice
After launching at warp speed in the fall of 2001, Enterprise, the UPN prequel series designed to reenergize the aging Star Trek franchise by attracting younger viewers, is limping along on impulse power. Midway through its second season, ratings are down 24 percent from last year. "What can you say?" executive producer Brannon Braga says. "We're bummed." And in clear violation of the series's prime directive, viewership is actually skewing older.
The news is even worse at the box office. Despite good reviews and generally enthusiastic fan response, Star Trek Nemesis, the most recent — and likely final — adventure to exclusively feature the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast (more about that in a moment), took in just over $40 million, making it the lowest-grossing Trek movie by far (translation: with production costs of $ 113 million, "Nemesis" was a financial disaster).
After five live-action series, 10 feature films, stacks of book titles and Q knows how many mass-produced trinkets, has the multibillion-dollar sci-fi franchise founded by the late Gene Roddenberry lived too long to prosper?
Corporate executives maintain that a warp core breach is far from imminent. Despite its ratings woes, Enterprise is still the top-rated drama on perennially struggling UPN and is in no danger of being canceled, says network president Dawn Ostroff. "Hit shows often take years," she says.
As for Nemesis, Paramount Pictures vice-chairman and chief operating officer Rob Friedman attributes the movie's flameout to tough competition from other holiday films. "I think we probably got 'Lord of the Ring'-ed," he says of the blockbuster Two Towers sequel that opened the following week. "Would we have preferred to have another $20 million at the box office? Sure. But that doesn't foretell any concerns about the future of Trek."
Maybe not. But it doesn't take a positronic brain to recognize that droves of fans have deserted in recent years. Movie ticket sales have declined from about 21 million for First Contact (1996) to 15 million for Insurrection (1998) to less than 8 million for Nemesis. On TV, the Trek audience has been shrinking since Next Generation's peak 11 years ago, when it averaged 17.7 million viewers a week in Season 5. Today, 4.3 million people watch Enterprise.
The series may be going where no man has gone before, but some Trek fans say the producers forgot the "boldly" part — those steamy decontamination-chamber scenes with Archer (Scott Bakula) and T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) notwithstanding.
"Enterprise has potential," says Jamahl Epsicokhan, a 27-year-old Web designer who has posted Trek episode reviews at Star Trek Hypertext Online since 1994. "But it doesn't take risks." Steve Krutzler, editor of TrekWeb.com, an Internet site that gets 150,000 visitors a month, says the series "was being hyped as a radical departure, [yet] everything feels like the same Star Trek we've gotten for 15 years."
Although Braga is not ready to divulge details, he says "epic challenges... that better exploit the sense of awe and danger" are ahead for the crew. "Let's just say there will be a slight revision in our mission, and a slight revision in the part of space that Enterprise is heading into," says executive producer Rick Berman, who has overseen the franchise since Roddenberry's death in 1991.
As to where the movies are headed, Berman is less certain. "I doubt because our box office fell off on Nemesis that it's going to be the end of Star Trek films," the producer says. "I can't imagine numerous other movies won't occur."
Though there have been no discussions as yet, Berman hints at one tempting scenario: combining characters from the various series in one grand adventure. "There are a lot of interesting possibilities," he says.
Berman's remarks suggest Trek is in an adjustment period; some fine-tuning is needed. "I don't think that there's any television franchise that people love to take potshots at as much," Berman says. In fact, he refuses to concede that Trek will ever run its course entirely. "Would anybody have guessed when the original series went off the air in 1969 that 34 years later it would still be part of the American mythos?" Berman says. "It's part of our lexicon."
Adds Braga: "You've got to keep an optimistic viewpoint. It's come this far, and it ain't goin' anywhere."
HOW TO FIX TREK
1. MAKE IT OBVIOUS It's cold and dark in space. Enterprise needs real peril, dread and fear so that characters are tested to within an inch of their lives. Introduce a chilling, powerful, wholly original threat that can't be vanquished in an hour. The Suliban aren't bad, but they're no Borg.
2 MAKE IT MORE REAL Let the crew make grave mistakes. Let them argue and be driven by less-than-moral impulses. Let the phaser beams rip through metal and bone. And let there be dangling emotional threads that weave through the lives of these otherwise bland characters.
3 LET CAPTAIN ARCHER BE HEROIC As written, Scott Bakula has as much commanding presence as Cap'n Crunch. Archer, like his beagle, is benign and a little too cute. He has an annoying tendency to second-guess, which trickles down to the rest of his whiny crew. Either light a fire under this laconic guy or kill him in a blaze of glory that explains why starships, planets and star systems should one day be named Archer. (And while you're at it, take out that annoying Ensign Hoshi with him.)
4 OPEN FIRE AND CLOSE THOSE PIE HOLES Enterprise should expand our belief about what is possible and transport us to realms unimagined with its ideas. But if it can't also be packed with action and adventure, move it to Lifetime. We're weary of the endless Trek babble on the bridge, the shuttlecraft, the crew quarters. Enough!
5 GET US ON THE EDGE OF OUR SEATS You shouldn't be able to figure out what the general direction and ending of any given episode is by the first 12 minutes. "Oh, here's where Hoshi overcomes her fear of failure..." "Well, it looks like Trip and that belligerent alien are going to work together to save both their hides..." Why not try some longer, unpredictable story arcs? Cliff-hangers, big and small, give a series purpose, poignancy and punch. Make us miss you this summer.
And at the movies...
It's no secret why Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the whale tale) was a fan favorite. It had humor, nostalgia and intelligent cast interplay. Why did Nemesis leave us wanting? It zipped through the Riker-Troi wedding, a payoff fans had long awaited. Worse, the film didn't include a farewell scene for Picard and his crush, Beverly. The heart of Trek is heart, and Trek's best films tap into relationships.
You're a guy after my own heart. This has definitely been the problem of all the StarTreks after the original.
I always characterize the differences like this:
Captain Kirk would go down to a planet and find some kind of benevolent power which provides everything for the people. Kirk immediately shouts, "Men are supposed to work, and struggle and claw their way through life." And then would set about trying to neutralize said benevolent power.
But Picard had a totally different perspective. He would say, "Oh no. People shouldn't have to work and struggle. Eventhing you need should be provided. Personal property? He scoffs. We abandonded that outmoded idea long ago. We're all good little Socialist now. And fight? Somebody might get hurt. I'm sure we can talk our way out of any situation. I guess his French was showing.
TNG made me sick!
And finally, the magicical interplay between the Kirk, Spock, Bones, and all the other characters was unparalleled. This was partly because all of the characters were characatures. They were simple enough so that you knew everything about them. Deeper characters are for dramas, not SciFi action.
Title: Regeneration
Production Number: 149 | < Prev Next >
Airdate: 5/???/03
Written By: Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong
Directed By: ???
Guest Cast:
??? as Foster
??? as Researcher
??? as Rooney
??? as Doctor Moniger
??? as Drake
Vaughn Armstrong as Admiral Forrest
??? as Commander Williams
Notes:
2/19/03: After nearly two seasons, ENTERPRISE will go down the path many TREK series have traveled with "Regeneration," the first Borg episode of the prequel-era series, likely to air during May Sweeps. According to plot information provided TrekWeb this morning, the twenty-third episode of the season will open in Earth's Arctic Circle, where the fragments of a crashed Borg Sphere are uncovered by three human scientists.
Doctors Drake, Rooney and Moninger recover two Borg drones from the debris and begin examining them at their lab after informing Starfleet of the find. As they study the corpses, a metallurgical scan reveals that the crash occurred nearly a century earlier--could the fragment be a remnant of the sphere shot down in FIRST CONTACT? Further study leads to the revelation of the Borg's ability to regenerate with nanotechnology, which we learn only the Denobulans have experimented with in this time period.
As they continue to research the site, their curiosity gets the better of them when the drone they're studying comes to life and assimilates Doctor Moninger. Starfleet loses contact with the team and orders an armed shuttle to investigate... later, the NX-01 comes face to face with a borgified vessel...
This information is based on early and incomplete fragments of the episode's script. Much is likely to change before the show airs in May. The story and characters are © 2003 TrekWeb.com.
Title, story, characters, synopsis are all copyright © by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.
Bakula has little or no range as an actor.
In short, he sucks!:-)
But they shouldn't have killed-off Data. That was a huge mistake, imho.
It is fiction. I think the future universe that the show presented was very plausable. Huge multinational defense contractors with less than pure motives, Soldiers who fought for a world that treated them as less than human, story lines that incorporated legends from wars as far back as the ancient Greeks. The show had excellent writing and character development.
So to speak ....
I'm with you! The series was pretty good - nowhere near B5 caliber - but could have been better. They got off on unnecessary gross-ness, as well as the occasional utter disregard of physical laws which any intelligent grade-schooler would know. (Crichton surviving minutes outside in the total vacuum and absolute zero of space is the one I have in mind.)
I also think that Crichton was a pu**y WAY too many times! There were SO many instances when I had to grit my teeth in frustration, as he let yet another enemy live, who later came back to haunt him. ARGH! To get by, I pictured what Garibaldi, Delenn, Sheridan, Ivanova, or almost any major B5 a**-kicker would have done in the same situation. SPLAT!
Delenn at the helm of a warship was a fearsome sight. Remember the stem-to-stern hosing of that alien "zoo" prisoner ship early on in the series? Or her simple order to Lennier on another occasion: "End this!" My kind of woman!
As for Farscape, sadly, these last few episodes of Farscape have been among the best, and I am very sorry to see the series go.
15 minutes battles in space!
miniskirts for female crew!,like the original
replace the captain,or he dies on episode clifhanger!
more close up`s of t`pol,yeah!
another female on the crew!
Much better than "Voyager" and I loved Voyager! I realize capt Archer is the ambassador of Earth and still just forming up the federation, but I agree with another poster...he gets pushed around way too much. Start shooting first and ask questions later (ala Kirk).
I hope the show survives...can't live without my Star Trek fix.
It would be great if the show would take your suggestions but I don't think they have the fortitude or creativity to do so. It would be so alien, no pun intended, to their current mindset.
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