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.
My favorite B5 site is the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5. There you find sysnopses, interviews, plot points, and etc.
-- Kosh
If they brought all the crews back in an alliance to take on Q, and once they finally have him pinned down, discover he's really Wesley, so they feed him to the Gorn, and the Universe is saved.
It was that Crusher kid that drove me away from the series.
They killed Data.
Same here. Star Trek sucks bigtime. Farscape and (Stargate) SG-1 offer a lot of bang. Star Trek is run by a bunch of liberal propagandists pushing their crud in every story. "We can't fire on them, Captain, we need to understand why they hate us so much!". "Okay, Tripp, just nick their defense shield a bit and ask them what supplies we can give them to make them like us better, and then we'll scoot."
Also, no continuity in the plotlines and story. If this took place a hundred years before Kirk's time, why the collective amnesia about Vulcans, time-travel, and the more-advanced gear than Kirk had?
Han Solo .... no way, bring a Darth Vader type HERO onto the bridge and you'll get a good series going.
Point two. Hollywood has no clue what makes a good movie. Directors do; but, Hollywood doesn't. For that reason, anytime anything in hollywood succeeds, they jump on it, repackage it and spin it off twelve times to scrape in all the profit they can suck off a winning idea that they beat into the ground. I'd prefer having ONE star trek show that is good to havin 12 of them that are bland, drab, passe' and utterly predictable. Sometimes it is accutely evident that The franchise knows where it is going, a cliffhanger episode of the Next Generation comes to mind: I still remember vividly and can see Riker's face - his reaction at staring into the view screen somewhat blankly, yet determined and saying "Fire". Two part or not, heller cliffhanger or not, it was good tv- engaging. It challenged you and made you think.
Tv today has enough shallow 'buffy the vampire slayer' shows that are geared to kids and have no depth. As an adult, I don't need to see teenybopper crap, I want Kirk doing a Z+ move up behind Kahn and punching a new decorative hole in Singh's @**! Give me the Columbo story's with the action of Wrath of Kahn. Do the multipart storys that engage us.
SCREW BEING PC. Anyone can be PC. It's a default position for cowards that can't hack it in a world of ideas and competition. Life is gritty. Space is Gritty. And we can be kind and realistic without pandering to Panty wastes! If you're going to give us a good script, it's gone the minute you start playing pc games. The rest is gone the minute we start dumbing down the relationships for shallow teens. Enterprise this far is fairly good. I like the cast overall, though having a hard time still with the captain, the actor is good. I've heard differing opinions, I think he should stay.
Wanna see the ratings climb? Bring wesley crusher into the past for a visit and let the captain accidently blow him out an airlock. Every true trek fan will applaud and probably watch that sequence inumerable times. Wesley was written badly and no one likes the character.
Seriously, think about it. The Borg, Squire Trelaine, Q, Khan, and a little piece of the action. Great stuff, One can't consistently produce that quality; but, the old series produced enough of it to stand on it's own for how many years in syndication.. Star trek isn't a show based on formulas. It's an alternate reality based on believeable technology and good scripts that engage the mind. It's at times Android dreams and others Columbo in a jumpsuit. It's a bit of the Warrior and a bit of the negotiator. It's the parody to some point "Ah, we've come in peace (behind the hand) shoot to kill, men." And it's knowing the difference between doing what's right and what regulations dictate. Want some good Trekking - Stir up a particularly nasty problem that is impossible to solve and solve it. How else does Worf regain his family honor - and who can forget it!
Paramount should look at what has made Star Trek Bold and strong and fire anyone who attempts to make it wimpy and pc. Period. And I don't think of City on the edge of forever as wimpy, btw. On the other hand when it becomes necessary to blow up the enterprise every other movie, It's rather obvious that the writers have lost their way.
Lord of the Rings is a phenomenon that I went to see because it will only be on the big screen once. It's an epic. And most of us fantasy scifi types blew our money on it. I have to work these things into a schedule, Missing Trek on the screen just means I have to buy the DVD that much Quicker to catch up. Star Trek can go on. It's a matter of whether paramount wants to play the hollywood game with it or keep the Roddenberry vision and be on the edge, believeable, engaging and challenging. Half the voting public is Conservative, but most of the actual public is conservative. Remember that, and it should help as well. Warf having honor means something to us.
Now yer talkin'.
People are tired of Star Trek ships being a bunch of pansies and trying to address 'social issues'
And how. At least when the original series slipped us a morality tale or some commentary on a social issue, it was a social issue with some weight to it. This PC crap began with the Picard character and his incessant "talk the problem away" style of leadership. Well, at least the French will be consistent well into the future. ;-)
The busty vulcan chick is a step in the right direction, but they need a cowboy captain that doesn't take any crap from aliens.
Hey, the first series had the cowboy *and* the hot chicks. Often with their slippers under the same bunk.
Here's a thought: The original show takes place several decades after an interstellar war between Earth and the Romulan Empire. If Paramount is looking for an engaging story line that falls before the original series, it's right there under their noses.
To get back to the topic of this thread for a second though, I think the only thing that could save StarTrek would be to shift forward in time past Picard and crew and have a new menace that kicks the federation's ass and forces them to fight for those lofty ideals they go on about without having the fab facilities to build a new starship every time a captain decides to destroy it. The worst thing about the federation is that they have nothing really to strive against. This is they prime reason they are so bland.
"Forgive me, Mr. President, but they hate us with every fiber of their existance. We love freedom, we love independence, to feel, to question, to resist oppression. To them, it's an alien way of existing they will never accept." – [Lorne Greene]
BattleStar Galactica
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