Can Star Trek Be Saved? (lighter topic alert)

TV Guide ^ | 2/03 | Nollinger

[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.

[demosthenes the elder]

You mean "ST: Enterprise"? That of the well-endowed pointy-eared Vulcan bint? Of COURSE I watch it... for the reason just stated.

[discostu]

Well Enterprise isn't a halmark of military intelligence either, but at least they've never discussed it in the series. That's what really killed me with SAAB, they then discussed it and came up with their lousy excuse (which was basically Marines do what they're told, which is true but Marine Commanders don't put obscenely expensive troops in situation where they can die cheap). And remember, Kirk's didn't go down to fight the Gorn voluntarily he got spacenapped (same with Gamesters of Tryscelion, one of my faves).

It was fiction, but SAAB had certain serious problems: the characters were boring, they were consistently portrayed to be fighting a losing battle so the "wins" in every episode didn't matter, the whole "tank bigotry" sub-plot had as much preachie-PC crap as anything in recent Trek, plots that seemed to be primarily taken from Viet Nam movies. The show stank on ice. It did look good though, I really liked the look and feel, but once they killed of R Lee's character nobody in the show said anything worth hearing.

[southern rock]

The Enterprise was supposed to look like a toy at this point in the canon, not this advanced, shiny new thing that would not look out of place next to the Enterprise-J. Robert April, a man's man, was the first captain of the Enterprise, not this slack-jawed twit with his mangy, flea-bitten beagle and range of emotions that run the gamut from A to B.

The original "Star Trek" series was filmed in the 1960's. In order for a prequel ship to fit your strict version of canon, it would have to look like something out of a 1950's "b" scifi flick. Who, in the year 2003, would watch a show set in 2151-2152, that featured a starship that looked like it just came out of "Invaders from Mars" or something. Can't happen. You just have to pretend that the original Trek did, in fact, look like it took place in the 23rd century. Oh yeah, and Klingons ALWAYS had big forheads. Ya gotta deal with it.

[southern rock]

P.S. This IS NO Robert April in (official) Trek canon.

[TheBattman]

Here's a thought (at least in our area)...

If you want to have a show watched by a large audience, make certain it airs on a TV station that actually has a good broadcast area and signal.

What I mean:

Where we live, the cable sucks - most people either just use an antenna or a combination of antenna and DirectTV/Dish Network. As we have a "local" UPN affiliate, no satelite version is accessable. Even better, that same supposedly "local" UPN affiliate has crummy broadcast quality. It is a UHF station, which in many markets is a loosing proposition anyway. combine that with poor tower location and shortage of wattage and that station really has a very limited viewing area (at least with a decent picture). I don't know if UPN stations are typically on the UHF band, but if so, this could be one of many parts to the problem.

[Question_Assumptions]

The other nice thing about Stargate is that it survives on good stories with fairly nice, yet human heroes. Their short excursion into T&A was fortunately short lived.

[discostu]

The look and feel stuff doesn't bug me. They talked about it before we even saw the first episode. I remember they went into great depth on the communicators. Basically they said that TOS failed to predict the real future and they couldn't justify making communicators bigger than they were in TOS while all of the people working on the show owned real working cellphones that were smaller than the original communicators.

It's the weak plots that are dragging the show down, and some very boring characters. All of which is fixable, and it's still better than Voyager, the first two seasons of DSN and most of TNG, so what the heck.

[Frank_Discussion]

Explaination of the Vulcan story arc in Enterprise: The Vulcans in the TOS were epitomized by Spock, or so Spock himself thought. Very lightly it was touched on that Vulcans could be quite conniving and self-serving. Spock wanted to be a "perfect" specimen. The movies brought forth the whole idea that Spock missed the point of life and that logic wasn't enough. The 'Enterprise' Vulcans are much more realistic in that their culture is showing strain from the imposition of raw logic, which always fails. T'Pol's way of looking at the world is changing, hesitatingly, and her contept for the hypocracy of the Vulcan "ideal" is growing.

For me as a viewer, I think it's kind of fun to see the Vulcans taken down a notch or two. To me, this is where the real seeds of Vulcan respect grow for the humans.

[Question_Assumptions]

The self-repairing "borg" repair shop was a pretty interesting idea, though supported by some silly plot twists. That's about as close to "The Borg" as I really want them to go. Sigh.

[FreeInWV]

Enterprise has a good premise. They were supposed to return to the pioneering days of interstellar spaceflight where nobody had ever heard of the "Prime Directive". They were supposed to be dark, ruthless, brutal explorers who lied, cheated or stole to get every technological advantage that they could. The ship was to be a "military" craft that was crude but functional (and armed).

The writers seem to have forgotten that this show is a prequel. They want to transplant starfleet's later morality back into a more savage time. They need to totally abandon this political correctness, morality and politics ideology and write more to the period.

IMHO what they need is new blood, and it needs to be Klingon blood. They need to give the Klingons their own show. It could show fighting between the ruling families, colonial ambitions, and conquest. There would be extortion, exploitation, death, honor and edged weapons. It could still have its moral issues, but all would not to be so tidy in their resolution. The Klingon's coming of age would be far more interesting than Starfleet's.

[freedumb2003]

The Gorn Rocks! More macho than Kirk -- This is what Bush should say to Saddam

[Question_Assumptions]

Why does that galactic stage have to already be full with humans appearing in the Third Act? In the original series, the Federation was about the most advanced conventional group out there and it's twelve starships were a big deal. You can't throw a stone in Enterprise without hitting some starfaring race's spacecraft.

And, regardless, just because humans are new to space doesn't mean we have to act new to life and reality. You'd think they'd send well adjusted adults out on the first expeditions, wouldn't you?

[demosthenes the elder]

The Trek producers have forgotten something: the original series was sort-of a mix of dozens of WWII navy epics and "Forbidden Planet" rolled into one, with a dash of social allegory for spice. They screwed the pooch with TNG, when they lost the ass-kickery and let the social allegory dominate the fun. I never liked that preachy series. DS9 was a pathetic B5 ripoff. Voyager had some gumption, but was a trifle too feminine for my tastes - and those of many SF buffs. I had HIGH HOPES for "Enterprise" - based on the presumption that these early voyages of not-quite-so-socially-evolved earthers would be a bit more ballsy, a bit more fun, a bit raunchier, a bit grubbier, a bit bloodier, a bit more chauvanistic, a bit less relativistic, a bit more... Kirk-ish, basically.
A side note: I think the whole "temporal cold war" is an illogical, unworkable, silly, and BORING premise. A pity it is the core around which the show's long-range unifying story arc is built - it cripples the show, in terms of disbelief-suspension.
Another side-note: what the hell are Ferengi doing showing up this early? And the Tholians, too? The Tholians were first encountered by starfleet by KIRK's enterprise (tholian web) and the Ferengi were first encountered under PICARD. Do these morons not know their own universe's continuity, or simply not care???
Vent off, now that I have exposed myself to be a trekkie nerd.

[southern rock]

Bakula

Nah. Spiner? definately! Backula? I doubt it.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Here's a rare still from the original series pilot.

It took quite a few years to finalize the contracts.

[Houmatt]

Before I get to the subject at hand, let me point out TV Guide is incorrect in stating there was enthusiasm among Trekkers regarding "Nemesis." The film opened at number two, then took a 71% drop for the second week to number eight, and the following week, when "The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers" opened, it was not even on the radar screen.

The reason was quite simple: "Nemesis" was crap. Period. The movie's script (by "Gladiator's" John Logan) betrayed the characters and insulted audiences with a storyline that made "Star Trek V" look like "Star Trek II" in its pomposity and obnoxiousness.

I personally made a point to avoid the film during its brief theatrical release; I may not even see it when it heads to video/DVD.

Now, on to how Star Trek can be saved:

1) Put Berman and Braga on the unemployment line immediately.

2) Cancel "Enterprise" after its season finale.

3) Hire a reliable polling service (like Zogby) to conduct a nationwide poll, to find out, among other things, what the best TV episodes are, the best movies, the best novels, the best comic book stories, the best writers.

4) From this information, develop a new television series that would hit the screen two years down the line: An anthology show that would feature a variety of characters, old and new, from the TOS and TNG universes, from the best damned Star Trek writers in the business.

5) "Nemesis" should be written off as a nightmare from Deanna Troi and the TNG cast given a more proper send off with a film adaptation of Peter David and John DeLancie's "I, Q." (or perhaps David's "Q Squared") Either way, I know for a fact fans wanted a TNG movie featuring Q. Giving them one as a final thank you and farewell would get the butts in the seats, I guarantee it.

Questions? Comments?

[buffer]

Ray Butz, "Semper Fi, Do or Die." "It's as easy as eat'in pancakes." LOL.

[freedumb2003]

>>Captain Kirk would go down to a planet and find...<<

And don't forget the babes ALWAYS fell for Kirk -- a Man in Command of His ship, his life and his destiny. Right or wrong, Kirk made a decision, stuck with it and pledged his honor and his crew.

Picard was a sensitive girly-boy that some women like because his voice is so urbane.

[hattend]

I wonder if his ex-wife, current girlfriend and children know he's gay?

Name: Scott Stewart Bakula
eldest son of Stewart (a corporate lawyer) and Sally Bakula
siblings: Brad, Linda

Born: 9 October 1954

Place of birth: St Louis, Missouri, USA

Educated: Kirkwood High School, St Louis, MO, USA and the Jefferson Junior College, Hillsboro, MO. Attended University of Kansas for a year, reading business, pre-law, followed briefly by theater studies.

Went to New York to start his career in musical theater in 1976. Moved to Los Angeles to launch his TV career in 1986.

Married: Krista Neumann (1981) after they met in the cast of The Baker's Wife, divorced 1995/6. Since then he has been partnered by Chelsea Field.

Children:
Chelsy [who appears in QL: Memphis Melody], born 1984, (female)
Cody, born 1991, (male)
Wil, born 1995/96, (male) to Ms Field
Owen, born July 1999, (male) to Ms Field

He's not gay...sheesh!!

[Cold Heat]

He does not hide it at all. He speaks at gay activist gatherings, wants gay characters on the damn show.

I have had my fill of him.(no pun intended)