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.
Timeline:
I was born in 1975, so I grew up watching syndicated reruns of the original series on local TV... loved it! I would draw pictures of the Enterprise and Klingon ships. (Aw, heck, I still do sometimes... Here's one I did a few weeks ago using MS Paint, of all things.) I don't remember a time before I was into Star Trek.
Okay, so being born in '75, I was fortunate enough to miss out on the awful Motion Picture, with its interminable shots of the V'ger cloud and the same ominous chord playing over it 40 quadrillion times, interspersed with shots of pastel-pajama-clad (!) Starfleet officers gaping in awe.
The first Trek movie I can actually remember seeing is The Wrath of Khan -- wow, 180 degrees away from that 'Motion Picture' crap. Arguably the most dramatic movie of the franchise. Ricardo Montalban was a cool villain, the uniforms finally looked like something military, and there was everything lacking in the first movie -- tension, suspense, action, humor, and good characterization, consistent with the TV show. All around, outstanding.
The Search for Spock was not so good as 'Khan,' but it still was a creditable effort. Replacing Kirstie Alley's Saavik seemed a little weird, instead of just writing her out, but that can be overlooked. In fact, this movie has grown on me over the years... especially Kirk's devastated reaction to David Marcus's death. It's always cool to see Kirk's human vulnerabilities, because you know he's going to kick some @$$ afterwards, not sit and cry like Picard. :)
The Voyage Home, even with it's PC eco-nut save-the-whales theme, was thoroughly enjoyable, even without the Enterprise. A lot of humor, a lot of character interplay, and the 20th-century fish-out-of-water time travel device that still worked well then but has since been overplayed into predictability. Very well written.
The Final Frontier... from one awkward campfire scene to another... hmmm, well, the less said about this, the better. It was better than ST:TMP, but that ain't saying much.
The Undiscovered Country -- Excellent. Even though it stank as a whodunit, the plotting was very good, the characters were on-target, life on the Enterprise had a cool, dark, edgy quality, it actually presented some new ideas (i.e., detente with the Klingon Empire, even as the Cold War was ending in Real Life). Christopher Plummer as an outstanding villain, possibly better than Khan. My favorite Trek movie, overall.
I guess at this point I should talk about the newer TV incarnations. The Next Generation started off a little poorly, but it really improved in later seasons. A little too PC, but well-executed. It took me years to grudgingly admit it, but TNG ended up being a better series than the original in many ways. As long as you throw out any episode in which Riker is cleanshaven, that is. Best characters: Data, and perhaps Worf. Worst characters: Guinan and especially Weasely Crusher.
Next was Deep Space Nine. I have mixed opinions about this show. I really liked some of the characters (O'Brien, Kira, Bashir and especially Odo) but the stories seemed to fall flat. They tried to shake it up some by adding the Defiant, but it still didn't really click. One big difference introduced in this series was extended, overlapping story arcs -- an admirable goal, and more like real life, but they also made it hard to appreciate individual episodes without having seen the previous ones. Overall, this series was fairly good, and worth watching, but didn't deserve any feature films. I didn't watch it nearly as faithfully as TNG.
Voyager -- what on earth happened? I watched a handful of episodes and never watched again. Maybe they got better later on, but that's not what I've heard from those who did watch. The characters were flat, and the stories were pitiful. Janeway's command style -- if you can even call it that -- was atrocious. Absurd, contrived moral angst over the stupidest things. Tuvok should have arrested Janeway due to gross unfitness for command, & assumed control of the ship.
Enterprise -- beats me, haven't seen it.
Okay, back to the movies...
Generations -- Technically well-executed, but a crappy story with plot holes so gargantuan you could fly a Borg cube through them. The ridiculous plot sequence of events still drives me nuts every time I see it. Otherwise, it would have been a good movie.
First Contact -- much better effort by the Next Generation crew. Tension, action and a better plot. No 'Wrath of Khan' but still worth the price of admission.
Insurrection -- Quite a good movie, this ninth entry broke the old 'odd-bad, even-good' rule for Star Trek films. It was well-acted and the plot was okay. The characters were consistent with what we already knew, although they really were milking that 'Data goes crazy and disobeys Starfleet' thing, since it was in all of the last three movies. Would you let someone this unstable be a commander of a starship?
Nemesis -- don't know, haven't seen it. Honestly, I wanted to, and would have if I had been busy getting married and moving when it came out. I wish it was still in theaters locally. I'll certainly buy the DVD.
I've gone on way too long, so I'll summarize:
The guy is not straight in my book.
Look, I am still pissed about Rock Hudson!
Ok, sports fans. Nemesis tanked somewhat at the cash box (It will make a bundle overseas and in Video-DVD sales) and "Enterprise" has low ratings. What can put the star back in Star Trek?
IMHO: Ashley Judd as Captain Lefler of the USS Enterprise-F with (Jerri Ryan) Seven of Nine as her Number One.
Star power plus acting chops, beauty and two tuff broads leading a new Enterprise would do it for me.
BTW, I always have thought Kirk would kick Picard's hinney-- YET Janeway would bitch slap all the Enterprise's Captains. She's in a class of her own and never sat in the Captain's chair on the Enterprise.
Remember, Janeway showed her steel by not once, not twice, but three times using her death to make things right. Review all the episodes. Janeway would eat Kirk, Picard and Worf for lunch.
Don't confuse Kate the actress (She's anti-war braindead) with her character who would have taken Saddam to the woodpile long ago.
Just because the gay community likes him doesn't make a man homosexual. Maybe they think he's cute.
What was great about Babylon 5 is they weren't afraid to kick butt, either. Take this quote from the end of season two (The Fall of Night) where Sheridan was chastising the Centauri ambassador for putting him in the position of firing on a Centauri warship to protect a Narn one:
"I apologize. I'm... sorry. I'm sorry we had to defend ourselves against an unwarranted attack. I'm sorry that your crew was stupid enough to fire on a station filled with a quarter million civilians, including your own people. And I'm sorry I waited as long as I did before I blew them all straight to hell... As with everything else, it's the thought that counts."
Can you imagine Captain Janeway ever saying anything like that? No way.
screw him, he's DEAD. What's he going to do, SUE??? I prefer a more dystopian universe... gimme B5 any day.
I like that series, too bad it got canceled now that it is starting to get interesting with Criten being able to open wormholes and all.
I DO like Enterprise but would like to see some more of the American Pioneering spirit as portrayed by Rodenberry in the original. Yea cut the PC crap.
I also like Stargate SG-1. Lots of action, character development and interaction is good too. I liked the recently aired episode where the weasel Senator invited other nations ambassadors for a briefing (Disclosure) on the Stargate, trying to screw Gen. Hammond (from Texas) in the process. It failed at the end when Thor, the Supreme Commander of the Asgard (Little Grey Dudes) made a special appearence and stated that although it was not required for continuing relations with Earth that Gen. Hammond and his team remain in place; it was Preferred.
Check and mate on the Senator. I cheered. Good show. Maybe Trek can borrow some of their writers.
The PC crowd has not influenced my thinking as of yet.
Actually, it is of little consequence, but his stage presence is undeniably feminine.
If he is, and has not come out, that is his wifes problem. The reports that I have seen regarding his sexuality were more than rumors.
The story arc with the Andorians is good, they need more like that. The Suliban and the Temporal Cold War will need a final solution in order to explain why it was never mentioned in any other series.
Other story arcs to introduce/play up could include: 1) The Orion Syndicate, 2) the merchant fleet (there were several episodes in TOS where merchant captains -- not good enough for Starfleet -- were involved, 3) the rise of Starfleet (who were the original three races: Earth, Vulcan, and ???), 4) the pig-faced race, etc.
-PJ
Don't tell that to the Marines whose aviators are grunt riflemen first and do pound ground just so they know who it is they're supporting from the air.
BTW: Space Above and Beyond was about MARINES. U.S. MARINES!
Guess we'll have to disagree. I'll take 4 kids by 2 women over a bunch of rumors or inuendo from a bunch of sexual deviants anyday.
Unless you personally have actually seen him pitching or catching, that's all it is, rumors or inuendo.
That was the one with the spores. Kirk was trying to get Spock mad in order to cancel the effect of the spores.
Spock wanted to arrest himself for striking an officer, Kirk said if we're both in the brig, who will save the ship?
-PJ
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