'Star Trek: Enterprise' Ends, Along With an Era

Ap via Space.com ^ | 13 May 2005 | Robert Jablon

[ElkGroveDan]

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- “Star Trek: Enterprise'' is about to go where it has never gone before: off the air, taking the “Star Trek'' franchise with it.

After the two-hour finale airs Friday, this will be the first time in 18 years that no first-run “Trek'' series is on American TV.

“Enterprise'' lasted four seasons. It was the first “Trek'' spinoff to last fewer than seven seasons. Plummeting ratings did what no Klingon battlecruiser or Borg collective could accomplish. And this time, network honchos didn't bow to Trekker pressure to renew the series, as they did in the face of a write-in campaign that gave the original “Star Trek'' a third year on the tube (1966-69).

In fact, many longtime Trekkers stopped watching long ago. There were gripes going back at least as far as the fourth incarnation, “Star Trek: Voyager'' (1995-2001), about lame or retreaded plots, goofy aliens and the weak leadership of “Voyager's'' Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and “Enterprise's'' Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula).

Sadly lacking were the rules-be-damned machismo of James Tiberius Kirk (William Shatner) or the class and thoughtful maturity of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart).

The original “Trek'' was not above a little titilation to jazz up ratings. (Who can forget Yeoman Rand's miniskirt or the green-skinned Orion dancers?) But “Voyager'' may have upped the silliness ante with a Borg who wore skin-tight catsuits and high heels, while “Enterprise'' had a curvaceous Vulcan officer stripping every other episode.

No villain like the unstoppable Borg cropped up for a decade, either.

Supporters say “Enterprise'' had vastly improved in its final season and blame other reasons for the ratings drop: weekend reruns that drew an audience but weren't counted in the Nielsens; ditto for those who taped or TiVo'd the program. And shifting “Enterprise'' to a Friday time slot didn't help.

Producer Rick Berman has cited the problem of “franchise fatigue'' after decades of “Star Trek'' spinoffs.

Perhaps, some Trekkers argue, it was time to take a rest. After all, it was 18 years between the original “Trek'' and “The Next Generation,'' which went on to have a vast following.

In the meantime, there are the reruns, the DVD packages, the video games, the hordes of fans in chat rooms and conventions and the contributions to popular culture that range from Klingon language academies to the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty!''

Things have changed a lot over the years, both within and without the “Trek'' universe, as scholars drew real-world comparisons to the shows.

The original series had a Cold War between the Federation and the Russians, er, Klingons and a cheerfully naive approach to solving racial and political conflicts.

``Next Generation'' (1987-94) had a post-Soviet view in which the Klingons were allies, and a politically correct view that the values of other cultures, no matter how weird or repugnant, deserved respect.

Both also shared a sunny idealism that humans had overcome their own conflicts, lived in peace, and were on voyages of discovery and knowledge for the sheer joy of it.

The optimistic view of a united future humanity that the original “Trek'' offered began to crumble in earnest with “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'' (1993-1999). The earnest morality of the first two series gave way to gray areas in which the good guys dirtied their hands with assassinations and other foul deeds in fighting a war for survival.

Moral relativism had crept into the sparkling “Trek'' universe. Some viewers were dismayed; others enthralled.

By “Enterprise,'' actually a prequel set more than a century before the original series, the plots involved murky machinations and feuds spreading across the galaxy and even through time. Innocence was replaced by a somewhat gloomy view. Even the vaunted Vulcans were portrayed as pompous and dissembling.

But in the meantime, “Trek'' no longer had the TV universe to itself. “Bablyon 5'' (1994-1998) created a world arguably as rich and complex as the Federation's. Nowadays, science fiction fans can choose from a host of syndicated and cable shows, including “Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda'' (named for “Star Trek's'' late creator and produced by his widow) and the new “Battlestar Galactica.''

Maybe there's just too much competition these days, and the audience is too fragmented.

Maybe even Capt. Kirk couldn't save the franchise.

Maybe, as with people, so with “Trek'': the one enemy that always wins is Time.

Or perhaps, someday in the distant future, “Star Trek'' will rise again. Fans can have only one response to that hope:

Make it so.

[TheLion]

Please ping me!

[bill1952]

Seemed to me that the tactical officer was pretty close to acting outright gay, but that's just me.

[Dont Mention the War]

the forth season was really good. The last episode last night was an insult.

The fact that we were watching what was, in essence, a new episode of ST:TNG, and that (in my opinion) the TNG parts were far more interesting than the ST:E parts, pretty much says everything that needs to be said about ST:E as a TV series. Just top-to-bottom awful. Almost every part was miscast; most of the characters were boring anyway, regardless of who played them; Braga and Berman ran out of original ideas sometime around 1994, but refused to let anyone else be part of their little Paramount fiefdom; the very concept wasn't all that interesting ("Hey, let's do a show in a really old starship that's like living on a submarine, and where we can't really come up with any new ideas because we have to stick with the Trek timeline that already exists! Brilliant!"); T&A aren't all that attractive on a someone with the personality of a turnip; etc etc ad infinitum.

I wonder if Bakula gets the same reverential rock-god treatment at Trek conventions that Shatner and Stewart and the others get, or if everyone's just like, "Oh yeah, him."

And now for a visual non-sequitur, because I just came across it and don't have a clue what it's supposed to mean:

[Dont Mention the War]

The show's biggest problem was Berman. He couldn't define what the premise of the show was, and he allowed it to founder. It could have been a worthy successor to the rest of the franchise. But Berman was more of a meddler than Roddenberry was.

But ... but ... alien Nazis! He gave us alien Nazis!

[Hank Rearden]

Actual "adults" watched stupid crap like this?

As in "adults" with a Domino's charge account, still living in Mom's basement at age 43.

[AFPhys]

Kirk still was THE best. You can imagine that I have no PC bones in by body.

[bigdcaldavis]

To me, Star Trek died the day Roddenberry died.

[TheDon]

I really enjoyed 'Enterprise' and am sad it has ended.

[mikegi]

I liked several original trek episodes: Doomsday Machine, the one with the Romulan warbird, the one with Joan Collins, the comedy with the gangsters (Spock-o!).

I could only stomach a few TNG shows. The ones I remember are: the Enterprise is stuck in a time loop crashing into another ship, and the one where they find a ship with people from the past and then confront a Romulan ship (the man from the past knew how to deal with the Romulans - wimpy Picard was clueless).

Didn't see any of the other spinoffs.

[NewCenturions]

" I've always enjoyed reruns of Galaxy Quest"
LOL! My favorite was "Guy"!

[dr_who_2]

I pretty much tuned out long after the putty nose aliens, rehashings of TOS stories, bee-utiful Brady Bunch-like people in unitards (definite Roddenberry influence there), and the "group hug" mentality gave way to soft porn, gritty/complex but agonizingly boring characters, and formulaic scripts. What some people regard as Trek's strong points was that the scripts would often tackle current social problems and all that. In doing so, however, they missed the whole point of science fiction/fantasy. If I wanted to see Hollywood/LA/NY's take on society, I'd tune in to any stupid adult drama/sitcom on television (something I don't do too often anymore). The only thing that compelled me to tune in to the second or third season of TNG was the gratuitous scene where a guy's head was blown off with a phaser. If half of the characters in TNG bought it that way before any of the films arrived, that would have been really cool.

Ok, the head getting blown up... and a few close ups of the Deanna Troi character when the camera was pointed kind of upwards.

[Arioch7]

I hear DS9 is on Spike TV.

For the rest of you, one of my favorite TOS is when they are facing the Romulans for the first time and they have that "sub-duel" in space which I think is a homage to some WW2 movie.

I cant remember the name.

Arioch7 out.

[dr_who_2]

Ah yes, referred to by a friend as "Porno-borg". Interesting face, probably could do some neat movie roles if she was cast in a decent film, but her ST character was just another in a long line of stacked & untouchable ice maiden types that were so prominent in each series.

[Paul_Denton]

I missed that part! However TPol was not the only one to do that. Check out this review of Shockwave Part 2.

[dr_who_2]

Ah, Spike TV. Television for men. Playing reruns of TNG and Raiders of the Lost Ark 24/7 (plus Seinfeld and Home Shopping Network specials if they thought they could get away with it). I wonder if its viewership subscribes to Maxim and GQ.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Never having seen Enterprise I can't comment on it...but for the others,here are my favorite picks:

OS: The City On The Edge Of Forever, Mirror Mirror

TNG: The Best of Both Worlds

DS9: Trials and Tribbilations, and the episode where Sisko becomes a black science fiction writer in the 1950's

[Lord Basil]

I think is was "The Enemy Below" with Robert Mitchum.

[dr_who_2]

The interesting thing is that with as many times as they repeated that show on UHF, there were a number of ones I haven't seen (including that one). They always seem to skip some of the earlier seasons. Or used to. I don't think TOS shows up on cable any more.

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

TOS: "Balance of Terror" and "City on the Edge of Forever"
TNG: "Best of Both Worlds 1&2"
DS9: "The Way of the Warrior 1&2"
Voyager: Don't remember the title, but the crew is trapped in the Holodeck by aliens playing Nazis, and Neelix and some drunken Klingons have to save them. Absolutely hillarious.
Enterprise: Tough to say. I never got a chance to see more than a handful of episodes.

[Lord Basil]

I liked a number of the TOS episodes.

The PC Generation: Yesterday's Enterprise
I chose this one because up till then it was just wimpy stuff.

The others: I just lost interest after a while.