Should Star Trek Die? 703
securitas writes "The New York Times Television reporter William S. Kowinski writes about questions of the Star Trek franchise's viability due to overexposure, audience fatigue and creative exhaustion. Star Trek actor and director LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge) is in favor of a hiatus, and is quoted as saying, 'Star Trek's just not special enough, not anymore.... They need to shut the whole thing down, wait five years, create an interest, an excitement, a hunger for it again.' Also quoted are Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and executive producer Rick Berman. The article is particularly salient given the recent announcement of Star Trek Online, a massively multiplayer online game scheduled to launch in 2007. Remember that Activision sued Viacom over the Star Trek franchise last year, ending the license despite a 10-year licensing agreement that originally expired in 2008. So the question is: Should Star Trek die?"
BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
But a simple hiatus won't fix ST. ST needs better writing, fresher ideas, and to get away from this fixation of techno-babble saving the day. And while I'd be the first to jump into a goo chamber with T'Pol, the "FOX approach" is simply gratuitous and insulting.
ST needs to get back to it's cerebral roots. (yeah the current line in Enterprise is better, but after living through Voyager, it would be hard to get worse.) It needs a rest, but it also needs intelligent direction. coughfirebermancough.
Overexposure?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Trek is "not special anymore" because it's been taken over by people who can't understand what made it special. Bring in some real writers who understand why Threshold and Meridian were terrible stories and why The Inner Light was a great one, and the viewers will follow.
Re:should star trek die? yes (Score:4, Insightful)
yes (Score:1, Insightful)
Western in space. Kinda campy but did have its moments. Very memorable characters. Fanbase: Big enough to get a few movies going after its cancelation. Noteworthy: The fans loved the show and movies enough to get an entire freakin' space shuttle renamed. Nae bad.
Star Trek: The Next Generation:
Pretty deep plots. Much deeper than much of what is shown on TV, which really doesn't say much. Very memorable characters. Very powerful episodes. (Remember the one where the crew find a probe and Picard spends a lifetime on a dieing planet?) Had many people who aren't fans of scifi watching. Noteworthy: Roddenbery died during this series.
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Very deep storyline spanning many seasons. Characters not as memorable as those on TNG, but memorable none the less.
Star Trek: Voyager:
Unmemorable characters, superficial plots, enough gaps in the plot to make Spock have a stroke. The previously immortal and near unbeatable borg were made to look like a bunch of pussies in this. Time travel became more cliche than it previously was. It's crap, Jim.
Star Trek: Enterprise
New 'hip' series that shits on the pre-federation history laid out by the previous series and movies. Superficial. Unmemorable characters. Plots so shallow not even an infant could drown in them. Superficial. Tries to grab your attention with random semi-nudity. Predictable. Superficial. Theme song sucks. Superficial.
As somebody who used to be a HUGE Trek fan 10 years ago - good. The horse is laying in the middle of the field, four broken legs, broken ribs, and is oozing blood out of its ears. Just shoot it and get it over with. I hate seeing my childhood fave raped for ratings.
Five years? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't bother me much... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd agree that there is too much exposure, lack of creativity (it's the same old plots over and over) and way too much trying to be uber-politically-correct and "visionary". It was better when they put the social commentary in without ramming it down your throat.
I love the idea of having a great spacefaring future, but the best new sci-fi / space shows out there were canned (Farscape and Firefly). I don't really care too much for Stargates; too sappy for my tastes.
While it may be sad to have no new Trek, I think it would be best if they just let a good thing go and not risk tarnishing the franchise any further.
Star Trek tech coming true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Point is, Star Trek is highly based on "science", which is how Gene wanted it. Unless they can find a way to move away from the science, and do more morality stuff, then yea they need to pause.
Maybe in a decade or two we can revisit Star Trek, only it'll be the Next Next generation. Ugh, and let's pretend the temperal stuff never happened.
It died years ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's crap, Jim ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, had to.... Now mod me down.
yes, the creativity is gone (Score:5, Insightful)
good things are only good until they get ruined by over-indulgence. They've explored all the angles into a mind-numbing state of mediocrity.
Star Trek = cool
too much Star Trek = boring, repetitive, predictable, stale.
Better to spend their energies creating the next cool thing instead of re-hashing and desecrating the last cool thing.
They should (Score:3, Insightful)
Fox has the rights for 10 years, so no more episodes I guess. Oh well, I'll just wait for the movie.
Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The quality of the writing
2) The quality of the acting
3) The quality of the special effects
Many shows get this backwards (such as the current ST series and the horrendous ST Voyager). The old Dr. Who series with Tom Baker had ultra cheap special effects (the special effects budget must have been about five pounds) - but are still enjoyable when viewed today. The original ST's special effects were not special by today's standards, and Shatner's acting - well 'nough said. But, the quality of the writing created the whole franchise. B5 and Star Gate (though I'm a little worried about the later) were good because of the many excellent scripts. Forget overexposure - get some decent writers that understand science fiction and can write interesting, thought provoking scripts. That will revive the franchise. Anything else, and it's doomed.
Re:Five years? (Score:3, Insightful)
give it a break (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yes (Score:4, Insightful)
The time travel is hokey, the metaplot is mediocre, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Death Before Social Commentary (Score:4, Insightful)
In this article Levar Burton mentions a future episode where they hope to parallel questions and concerns about the war in Iraq to some civil war on Vulcan. I know geeks love this kind of stuff, but most of the non-rabid Trek fans hate it.
Why? Because Trek moralizing is geek moralizing. It's that naive, "I live in an ivory tower mommy and daddy paid for" philosophizing that makes the series so unapproachable. You know the storyline is going to end with a darker hand shaking a lighter hand, and the entire universe commiserating about how stupid and violent we humans are. It's goofy and embarassing - you know, like that stupid poem Data recited about his cat.
Trek needs to get cool again, and it needs to get cool again fast. Why don't people realize that the reason people liked Kirk was because he was a man's man? He took his ladies and he beat up his enemies. He didn't recite Shakepeare at them.
Re:It's crap, Jim ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Social Issues (Score:1, Insightful)
Honestly, even though the acting/stories/sfx of TOS were crappy, Gene knew that non-human races were the best way to explore human issues. I mean look at Spock, a character with no emotions that can blatently comment on the sometimes conflicting nature of human emotions. Or the two aliens with different coloring on each side of the face to demonstrate the sillyness of racism.
ST will be good again when the writers realize that aliens can be used more for introspection that exhibition.
Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, are you going to try to tell me Enterprise is not a better show than Voyager? It's good SF - not GREAT SF, with a few exceptions - but it's well-written and well-acted.
Can you people give me some good reasons why you seem to hate Enterprise so much?
(I mean, hell, I'll give you Voyager
well.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Overexposure?! (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to what T'Pol [allscifi.com] has?
Not that I mind having something to appeal to my baser instincts [sbsonline.nl], as long as you can do it while actually telling a thoughtful SF story. And frankly, Bujold's the only author in SF who's had anything new and thoughtful to say about sex since about 1975. Yes, the repetitive calisthenics are fun, but so what?
Not overexposure, but context. (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the 1960s, in the days of Commies and Sputnik and the Space Race, a show about astronauts warping around space with a dashing captain punching the Evil Empire in the nose was exactly the right formula to grab America's attention. Surround him with beautiful but deadly women, tear his shirt off in a fight over them every so often, and it captured the interest of teens and young men and women all over the country. And since there were three whole networks of TV channels to choose from, competition for attention was scarce.
But now, there are hundreds of channels with thousands of shows. The internet is high speed and in the kids' bedrooms. Soccer moms spend every waking minute taking their kids from activity to activity. Kids just aren't interested in Star Trek. It's now just a show for their dads and moms to watch; there is no excitement for kids, nothing new in these movies and series. There's no evil villain that they could show that these kids haven't already virtually shot a thousand times in their Nintendos.
Star Trek won't die as long as we adults keep hanging on to our memories of Captain Kirk. But we can't expect our kids to hold him in the same "reverence." And no matter how "special" the stories might be to us, they're just another level in a video game to the current generation.
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest problem with the series is that they've pretty much exhausted their ever-redundant plot devices: time travel, super-superior uber hostile aliens that all conveniently have simple secret weaknesses, crew members going bad, intra-crew sexual tension, emotion as an asset/liability, etc. I'm so tired of watching a new episode only to see an old theme played out with different actors.
Wow, look, the Enterprise season finale has them tossed back in time to where? Of course, WWII and Nazi Germany.
Give it a rest Paramount.
Re:yes (Score:4, Insightful)
TOS drew a bit on western plot devices, the romance of WWII submarine warfare, the romance of travel, and with maybe one notable exception, it did this without referencing the 20th century directly and the explosion of the space-race.
The stories addressed complex modern issues, while space was a fantasy backdrop. I say that because the Sci-fi of Trek is quite weak, it's really only there to prop up the fantasy universe.
I think TNG and successors like exist to fill a gap in prime-time television, and primarily uses space and the Trek universe to create PG entertainment suitable for a broad audience.
DS9 did some cool stuff and tried to address contemporary issues, it got back to the roots of the series... including bad episodes amongst good episodes :-)
But what strikes me most about TOS is the link to contemporary issues of the late 1960's, including fairly recent memories of WWII
No ... but the hiatus idea is a good one (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrary to what I'm sure a lot of others will write, I actually like the current direction of Star Trek, particularly Enterprise. I actually think Enterprise is one of the best shows yet, probably on par with Next Generation (feel free to argue below - I can take it). It's been a very inventive and original series, and I've been impressed with the ways they've linked our near-future with the events and concepts of the existing Star Trek universe (Andorians vs. Vulcans, not seeing the Romulans in person, etc.). One of my big complaints about Star Trek before Enterprise was that they rarely revisited old storylines and species. Enterprise is the first series to connect the dots to my satisfaction.
That said, they've made a lot of mistakes recently (not making Captain Sulu on the Exelsior into a series, making Voyager suck for most of its run, and so forth). Their biggest mistake: no hiatus. I actually realized this was a problem a decade ago when Deep Space Nine first aired. I loved the idea of two series airing in parallel, and hoped they'd do some cross-over episodes with TNG (which they failed to do). But after a while it seemed like a lot of work to watch two hours of Star Trek every week, and I realized that one of the things that had driven my interest in the past was the decade of no Trek before the movies, the two years between each film, and so forth. After TNG, they started building on their success a bit too thoroughly. I think Roddenberry wouldn't have treated it as much like a Trek Factory as Berman has.
I hope they keep going in their current direction with Enterprise, and that it becomes more popular. But I also hope that when it ends, they do the smart thing and take a couple years off. No movies, no nothing. The series needs a rest. And the payoff: after a hiatus, a new movie or series will actually excite fans again for the first time in years.
Re:yes (Score:5, Insightful)
The Enterprise or the Federation are menaced by a mysterious and deadly force. Kirk finds a way to destroy it.
Hidden agenda: The electic collection of different writers promote an interesting and occasionally contradictory mixture of left-wing liberalism, American jingoism, and Judeo-Christian egocentrism.
Standard TNG episode:
The Enterprise or the Federation are menaced by a mysterious and deadly force. Captain Picard asks it to please stop. It does.
Hidden agenda: Gene Roddenberry's personal viewpoints (secularism, humanism, collectivism, communism, pacifism, gay rights, sexual equality, atheism, political isolationism, etc). Disclaimer: I am an atheist and a humanist, but not a communist, so I had decidedly mixed feelings about this agenda.
Standard DS9 episode
DS9 or the Federation are menaced by a mysterious and deadly force. Sisko blows it up with cool special effects and lots of technobabble in order to appease the rock 'em, sock 'em crowd, then he turns around and subjects the audience to an agonizingly self-righteous lecture on the evils of violence and the horrors of war, in order to appease the intellectual crowd. If the writers are completely out of ideas, we get to to hear about their weird homegrown Bajoran religion.
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.
Standard Voyager episode
Drop Kirk's military control and aggression. Drop Picard's principled strong leadership. Keep Sisko's self-righteous monologues and dalliances with offbeat spirituality themes. Appease crucial lonely male Trekkie demographic with 7 of 9's large busom. Appease spiritual types with constant references to native American vision quests.
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.
Standard Enterprise episode:
Copy Voyager's modus operandi, but insert different personalities and different large busom. Annoy longtime Trek fans by ignoring continuity with TOS. Lonely male teen demographic is very excited about this new show.
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.
Re:yes (Score:3, Insightful)
1) I think the opening theme is pretty good, when combined with the scenes they show. Sure, it isn't another orchestra piece, but it fits in well to show how we got where we're going.
2) While much of the show is superficial, and they rely on sex way too much (decontamination gel rubdown time! woohoo!), it has it's deep moments.
Like, when T'Pol essentially gets an STD which is looked upon as a stigmata by the Vulcans. She's immediately outcast, and you find that the Vulcans aren't in any hurry to find a cure because it will get rid of the "undesirables."
Some of the tough moral decisions Archer has had to make. Should we clone someone just to save a man's life? Saving this man would save the ship, which would save Earth, but it is right to clone something just to kill it?
Should we give this race a cure to a plague, even though the plague is giving ground to another species becomming the dominant species of a planet? Which species do we favor, as the dying species treats the "younger" species like cr@p and the "younger" species show much promise? Is it our place to interfere with the course of evolution of an entire species or the natural order of another planet?
W'ere screwed. We need an engine part to continue the mission, or Earth is doomed. We can't build another one. But LOOK! There's one, but they won't give it to us! Should we simply take it? It's just a ship of 30 people vs an entire planet, and we'll help them out if we can?
Yeh, at lot of the episodes are pretty horrible, especially the one where it was pretty much a "zombie movie" set on a Vulcana ship. But it has its moments.
The entire show started out centered around a "temporal cold war" for heaven's sake. And now, it's all about saving Earth. But, within the dreck, there are a few little gems that follow the themes of TOS and TNG.
In any case, I think this should be the last season of Enterprise, and another Star Trek show shouldn't come back for years. Then, maybe it'll be "fresh" and "new" again.
Give me FireFly any day.
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you may want to go back and rent some TOS DVDs. Were they all cerebral? Hell no. Some of them were downright awful. But when you put them in the context of the era (late 1960s) they were powerful but subtle. They addressed issues of race, politics, social issues, sexism, and more. It seems a simple space western today, because we don't have the context.
Even the worst episodes of TOS were better than many "better" episodes of later series, because the writers seemed to care.
It'll always exist. Just on a smaller scale (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Death Before Social Commentary (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure Kirk had his butt kicking episodes, but there was often references to (at the time) contemporary or historical issues. Perhaps because they didn't interest you, you've forgotten them, which is fine, I'm just saying the commentary was clearly there.
I think if you do it without going over the top, being too obvious, too black-n-white or simplistic, social commentary can be very interesting and effective. Personally, I'd get tired of a program that just did action all the time with no context or reference point, that's was FPS's are for :)
My 2 cents anyhoo
Not really a meaningful question (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen several Star Trek themed fan fiction pieces, and they are all based in TOS timeline and feature very good writing, excellent special effects, and reasonably good acting. I think this will be where the soul of Star Trek lives on.
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GameDev forums (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you say 'ironic' in Klingon?
Re:yes (Score:3, Insightful)
I look at the Enterprise intro, and I say '35 years and we've never been back', 'two out of five of those have blown up', and 'that will never be finished now'.
Then I just get depressed, and laugh bitterly at the future spaceships depicted.
Re:Not overexposure, but context. (Score:5, Insightful)
> The internet is high speed and in the kids' bedrooms. Soccer moms
> spend every waking minute taking their kids from activity to activity.
> Kids just aren't interested in Star Trek.
Mine thinks of nothing else. I'm lucky if I can convince him to go out for a run or a bike ride - he'd rather play starship creator or throw in a DVD and watch episodes. When he flips through the hundred channels, guess where he stops? Trek Uncut. When he's not staring at his SETI@home screen, he's searching google for a Zephram Cochrane birth announcement. His last class project was about his visit to Vegas, and he spent a disproportionate amount of his energy on the side trip to see Trek at the Hilton... in spite of the impact of seeing the strip, GameWorks, In-and-Out, the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, and Zion. It's not just another video game to him. He just gets it.
Trek hasn't really changed. It's always been about flashing some scandalous bits to attract general viewership. The spoils (occasional good bits of sci-fi, ideas, imaginary worlds and histories) go to the geeks. The difference now is that many older geeks have tired of their dependence on the general viewers and want to divorce the real meaty center of star trek from the filler that keeps Joe Sixpack in his seat and, by the way, the shows on the air. Well, I say that the only way you can really ever divorce yourself from the filler is by creating something on your own. Geek kids understand this intuitively. Some start with Trek as a base and some start something new, but by the end, Trek just whets one's appetite and does not sate it. That's why my son isn't happy only to sit and watch episodes or wait idly for the next movie. He's building ships, coming up with his own stories and characters, and looking for signs of trek-like progress in the real world.
There is also the argument that there is too much popular filler and Trek has become diluted, but that's another thread...
It was killed years ago (Score:1, Insightful)
The biggest problem is that when I was young ST was pretty much all there was (along with Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica), but in the interveining years we've been shown better vision.
For my money Babylon 5 was the ultimate space opera. Better acting and effects than ST and far better written. Where Voyager and DS9 meandered for so long, Babylon 5 always stuck to it's story arch. Worse for DS9 (at least from the airing dates in the UK), it followed in B5s foot-steps:
B5 on a station, DS9 ditto
B5 gets the white star, DS9 gets an new ship
B5 has the shadows, DS9 gets the dominion.
In each case B5 was better. Also, B5 had far better characterisation, an infinite range of grays rather than STs almost comic book blacks and whites, with the odd grey thrown in as an after thought.
Maybe it's the curse of the long running franchise. B5 started to slip after the 4th season (which was originally scheduled to be the last) and the longer ST has gone on the worse it seems to get. The only question is would a break of any length reinvigorate ST? Or have all the stories that can be told have been told already? I find that hard to believe, but the current crop producers and writers seem blinkered to anything new or different.
Sleeeeeep! (Score:2, Insightful)
DS9 made a good attempt at dirtying up the Star Trek vision to make it more real, and it had it's good points after the first season, but they lost it when they decided it had to be at the center of a galactic war. And then at the end, all the war heroes just went back to work. No promotions, no space parades. "Let's make it really interesting, but not change anything," say the makers, "like when Riker won awards and honors and proved himself the captain's equal, but never took his own command." They forget that interesting equals change and lack of change equals uninteresting.
So, yeah, I'd say the producers should try to live with the riches they make from the franchise, but go tell a different story. ST is not a religion, for pity's sake; it's just a TV show we all grew up with.
Re:Death Before Social Commentary (Score:3, Insightful)
So here we are decades later, and all you remember is the fluff that was there to appease the masses. Your comment is insightful in that it shows how much people missed the boat on what Star Trek was about.
(Source History of Star Trek [bigpond.net.au])
"It will die." "It's dead already." (Score:3, Insightful)
Then I thought Trek died when every third episode of Voyager was "7 learns to be human thanks to time travel".
Then I thought Trek died when the best example of Enterprise was "Let's find some way to get the Vulcan chick nekkid on camera."
Then I thought Trek died when to improve ratings they ran off to fight the terrorists in the Bermuda Triangle in Space.
Then I thought Trek died when the terrorist plot (Xindii) was word for word predictable based on a thousand scripts before it in a thousand different genres.
Then I thought Trek died when the best they could come up with for the season finale of Enterprise was "We've done aliens and they're bad guys, Nazis aren't cool enough as bad guys, so how about aliens AND Nazis!"
So I figure if Star Trek is a cat, then it has to die three more times under Rick Berman's leadership (and I use the term very loosely) before it will finally be put to bed. Given the rumored plans for Enterprise Season 4, that should be "Shatner returns!", "Spiner returns!", and "Temporal Cold War Part 31!" After that, Trek should be dead by any possible metric.
I grew up on Star Trek, I love Star Trek, I learned a love of science from Star Trek. Berman is not writing Star Trek, he's writing crap. Fire his ass, give it a rest for a few years, then bring in a new staff of professional writers who have a clue. They're out there, Berman just doesn't know how to find them.
Boycott ENTERPRISE .. it's just that bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why?
Well, we don't know why. But we can guess. And the best guess always goes with the money.
Paramount, rather like NBC losing 'Friends', is horrified to learn that their long standing Star Trek franchise is dead. Dead dead. No one cares for the material except a very, very, smelly and small number of Fan boy freaks. You know... the kind who have no life but fetishizing dolls and other 'collectibles'. Forget those who appreciated the intricate and smart stories from the original series 40 years ago... those people are looong gone. Paramount has opted to do what all giant Corps. do when faced with an artistic crisis... they buy more. They market more. They keep it going even if it looses millions simply because they still have no idea what to do. So they keep doing what they are doing.
Notice how popular shows (can we think of one? Hmm... something by that Joss guy) get the shaft while "franchises" get perpetuated as if they deserve too. The lesson being that a brand name is far, far, more important than a good show.
Worse, Enterprise is also the producers sycophantic pro George "Dubya" Bush cream dream. Notice how the protagonist, Capt. Archer, is the son of a "great man" who was held back by the (liberal) Vulcans. As the show progresses, Archer becomes increasingly more angry and with a terrorist attack on Earth by an alien race he agrees to "do what it takes" to
Then, just to undermine the characters rather like on Voyager... soldiers are brought into the show to "solve the problem". Enterprise just failed first year English... sad.
Looking at the original Trek compared to ENTERPRISE one has to wonder why in 1965 they had a multi-racial show that portrayed a ship full of different people while today they can't even give the one black guy on the show lines. The producers lack of giving a shit or even basic morals becomes more apparent. There is an asian girl who is portrayed rather like all women on Enterprise; a weak willed child who's job is so unimportant the stories forgot about her main skill early on. And just when you thought you'd seen the main characters turned into put upon tokens Enterprise will come along with an ep about fundamentalist suicide bombers that deserves an award for being the most racist and ignorant story put on TV in some years.
If this weren't bad enough I can't leave without bringing up the horrifically mysoginistic undertone of Enterprise that is personified by the character T'pol. Even from the first show we see a woman who is attacked by Archer and yet she is drawn to him like a battered wife (and is a psychology T'Pol demonstrates consistantly. I think it's the producers true feelings about women. Scary). Make sense? Only to certain sexually twisted fanboy writers. Anyho', this has continued and is sure to keep on going. Lately, T'Pol has inexplicably decided that wearing a silly cat suit isn't enough to degrade herself so she has become a sort of ships whore by fucking the engineer... again for no apparent reason.
And now for what might be the real reason ENTERPRISE should go away... it's a joke on the Star Trek fans! The producers of this show have, I can only divine, seemingly tried to turn Enterprise into a kind of childish 'Capt. Proton' (if you get me) that takes gleeful joy in ignoring, destroying, or just plain making fun of everything Trek that came before. Noticeably all the good stuff Paramount doe
Do not resuscitate (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it is time we discuss organ donation with the patient's legal guardians. Star Trek, through such altruism, could allow others to have the second chance that we believe Star Trek does not at this stage of illness. We regret that Babylon 5 could have been saved if only the DNR order for Star Trek had been given years ago. Let us not make the same mistake again... *sniff*
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the basis of the series! Do you have this complaint about Doctor Who as well?
"8) Zero character development. For god's sake, even Andromeda has characters that grow and learn, and exist outside of their duty to the ship."
Been watching?
"11) Insistence on tying in every damn thing that the other series did. Let's see, romulans, klingons, borg, Risa, Enterprise E, and a host of others."
Again, that's the point of the show. (Never mind that the Enterprise-E and the Borg are what kicked it all off to begin with.)
I don't care if you like or hate Enterprise, but when the question is asked "Should Trek die", people start pulling things out of their asses to prove their point. Never mind that the question is completely irrelevant if it still commands an audience. "I don't like it, so nobody else should like it either."
You're absolutely right! (Score:3, Insightful)
But somewhere along the line--maybe with Roddenberry's death, maybe a little bit after--people started getting the idea in their heads that Star Trek needed to really be sci-fi, and that's when things blew up. You got ridiculous stories it was impossible to care about. You got endless political arcs with no beginning, middle, or end on Deep Space Nine that provided little entertainment or sense of purpose; all those things were provided, and much more interestingly, on Babylon 5. You got the very concept of Voyager, which only became interesting when they discovered they found a back door into the original point of Star Trek: "To boldly go where no man/one has gone before." As for Enterprise, it's all about ret-conning this and setting up that. There's no real substance to it. That's not what it's about. What it is about, though, I couldn't begin to tell you.
They need to hire actual writers to write Star Trek again. Make it intelligent, literary, provocative, forget all the crap that's started seeping into the very fabric of the franchise, that's forced everything to be so boring and sanitary, and let it be again what it once was. They want to ignore Roddenberry's ideas because he was of the past, and that time is gone. But when he was around, Star Trek worked. It just doesn't anymore.
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
Enterprise has so many other issues. It's supposed to be StarTrek, and yet it's incredibly dark. StarTrek is not dark...that's the whole frigg'n point. StarTrek repesents optimism about the future. When I watch StarTrek I want to feel good...in Enterprise they just kill people and make all these moral compromises.
Also, in Enterprise they never use technological solutions to get out of problems. They always go in phasers blazing. They seldom figure out peaceful ways to accomplish anything.
Another thing that bothers me is that Archer is almost always right. There's really no rhyme or reason to him being right, he just is. Tipol makes a rational observation that fits the facts that they have available at the time, then Archer comes along and makes ridiculous observations that are fairly baseless and they ALWAYS turn out to be right. How many times on the show has someone appeared to be helping them, and Archer out of the blue is like, "We need to watch them, they're evil."?
Finally, what's with the plot lines? That whole Xindi thing was awful. It just dragged and dragged and dragged...hell with DS9 they at least took a break from the war every now and then. Also why don't they address other issues like first contact and the subsequent war with the Klingons?
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some yin in your yang (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I like about 1/6th of Voyager...
The thing is, there are some good episodes and a few rare really good episodes, dilluted in all the "Well, there's 5 minutes left, many people died this week...lets go back in time and forget all bout it" episodes, the "17 Borg Cubes! Yellow alert, shoot them down, I'll be in my office doing my nails, call me when its over" episodes and the "Hi, I'm Chakotay. I'm an american indian from another planet. I'll take this space shuttle to go practice a ritual of earth worship, in space. Oh no, I've blown up the shuttle...meh, its just the 4th, or 6th or something I've blown up in this exact same way. The captain will give me another one next time I feel religious all of a sudden." episodes.
The Year of Hell episode and follow ups were fun, despite being time travel shows. The Doctor had a few good moments. 7 was hot...
I liked the aliens with the space-leprosy, they were creepy...
But, in all honesty, it was mostly bad. Some good, most bad.
I'll also cop to liking Dharma and Greg.
Well, I like watching Dharma. : )
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Voyager
3. TNG
4. Enterprise
5. DS9
With that being out of the way...
I sat down and watched TOS "Bread & Circuses" day before yesterday; I saw it when it originally aired, also (I was only 6, but I remember, it was cool).
It was GOOD. the costumes suck. the extra's suck. some of the acting sucked. The storyline was ridiculous.
Space Opera, in it's purest form; Shatner, who in his old age is just flippin' WEIRD, was a damn good Captain Kirk. And didn't have a moments hesitation screwing the slave girl who was ordered to please him.
Re:yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Why in the world would they *not* destroy the coolness of all that?
Re:Boycott ENTERPRISE .. it's just that bad. (Score:1, Insightful)
I do think that Sato and Mayweather should expand their roles as they happen to be my favorite characters. T'pol was not verbally assaulted by Archer for being a female, it was because she was a Vulcan and he held a tremendous grudge against them for holding Humans back, which he later was able to put aside (for the most part). I think T'pol has come to see Archer as a good friend, rather than someone she is attracted to. I do not in any way see T'pol as a ships whore, just for developing a relationship with Tucker. They are developing a real relationship in the series and i think it will be even more interesting when we see him go to Vulcan with her at the premier of season four.
I think Enterprise is a huge improvement over Voyager because Voyager had far too much emphasis on one ship and one crew alone. Star Trek is about what humans may become, if we attempt to better ourselves. If you had read anything about Gene Roddenberry and why he created the saga, perhaps you would not hold the opinions you do. I think Roddenberry was tired of seeing humans in the position we are. Generalizing we are greedy, self centered, immoral people as a whole, and i think Roddenberry wanted to make a series to inspire people to want to better themselves.
Star Trek is not pro-war, and in the end Archer was able to come to a diplomatic solution with the Xindi. The Xindi attacked because they feared for their survival. They were simply afraid.
I am truly sorry that you are blinded by your own opinions and cannot enjoy Enterprise for what its producers intended it to be.
Best regards,
Tie_defender
Re:What series' did you watch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, gotta go take a cold shower now...