According to a report I saw on CNBC this afternoon, an official word has been sent out that Paramount has no plans to save Star Trek:Enterprise. So I guess that's it. I guess we can fill our time with such rivetting and thought-provoking programs like The Parkers or America's Next Top Model. :rolleyes:

What about all the donations ? :freak:

According to a report I saw on CNBC this afternoon, an official word has been sent out that Paramount has no plans to save Star Trek:Enterprise. So I guess that's it. I guess we can fill our time with such rivetting and thought-provoking programs like The Parkers or America's Next Top Model. :rolleyes:

Don't commit suicide or anything guy...
but the Parkers have been canceled too! :cry:

I'll miss Monique almost as much as B & B...

Maybe this was breaking news at CNBC but this is way, way old news and was a foregone conclusion quite some time ago. Notwithstanding the money pledged (pledged, not raised), the campaign to save the show barely mustered enough cash for a single episode, let alone an entire season. It was impressive as a symbolic gesture and shows people are still passionate about Star Trek, but this show has been shut down, the sets are struck and the cast and crew is gone and onto other projects. It's not gonna be a movie and I see very very little chance of it coming back in any incarnation other than a few Pocket Books. Hopefully there'll be another, better Trek series on in a few years...

"Better" would be a great change of pace.

Agreed. Hopefully with someone like Coto at the helm.

Well, I'll miss the show. Like it a lot. :)

I have fond memories of several of the episodes. Coto has shown what it could have been, had it been handled much better...

The only thing I will miss is the certain Vulcan Female in the Catsuits lol

A little more than a year ago,I bought my first big Polar Lights NX-01 and they were sold out and a hot item according to my dealer.How ironic that a year later the show would end.I'll miss it,Guy Schlicter.

I guess this proves that you don't piss off the fans.

I got hooked on ENT at the beginning of the third season. But since BSG started, I find myself totally drifting away from ENT. IMHO, BSG is one of the best Sci-Fi series to come out in a long time. Way better than that Firefly crap that came out couple years ago!

I guess this proves that you don't piss off the fans.

But the future will show that you can't please them either.

^^^It is possible to please most fans. Most of TNG was good. The first couple of seasons of Voyager was okay as well but by the fourth season it was going downhill fast.

DS9 had a few great writers and many great episodes, but all too often fell victim to being almost some "New Age" religous cult gobbly gook - constantly making references to the supernatural and spiritual issues.

I often wanted to scream at DS9's writers the way I want to scream when I see a comedy show try to tackle stuff like murder death and cancer - it was just plain stupid and dumb and depressing every time they tried to make Cisco and others into visionary saints or whatever the crap they used to shovel our way every sixth episode or so...

Stop trying to make Trek something it's not! Trek writers.
Stop using gimmicks!

Stay away from time-travel crutches, metaphysical mumbo jumbo, and please don't ever create another single episode where the last two minutes make the first 58 minutes you spent watching totally pointless!!!

If I want to see that kind of frustrating nonsense I'll go rent Jacob's Ladder!

Hopefully Paramount has learned it's lesson and wont just shovel anything it wants our way and assume we'll eat it up because it has a Star Trek label slapped on it! :(

^^Excellent comments, ChuckPR! I agree fully with your criticisms.

There aren't that many "Star Trek" fans in existence any more -- not enough to support a television series.

There were a lot of TNG fans, in the same sense that there were once a lot of "M*A*S*H" fans -- ie, someone who likes and watches a particular tv series and when it's cancelled moves on to something else.

The folks who hung around for the beginning of DS9 lost interest in Trek little by little, over a period of ten years, and it's vanishingly unlikely that they'll show up for the next version no matter what it is.

Paramount can (almost) always hype up a series premiere or movie opening enough to arouse a week's worth of curiosity and a little repeat business from the faithful -- and that's it. So it's been since the early 1990s, and so it is likely to remain.

Well at least we have Battlestar Galactica to fall back on. Barring that some "genius" writer screws it up by renamimg the show Galactica 2006 and having them on Earth already. Having Adama take advice and orders from some pre-teen twerp who looks life a young retarded looking Andy Warhol and having that Van Dyke guy or somebody make the show barely watchable. :mad:

There aren't that many "Star Trek" fans in existence any more -- not enough to support a television series.

Ah, but there lies the misunderstanding. "Enterprise" didn't get cancelled because there weren't enough Star Trek fans, it got cancelled because it wasn't interesting and not enough regular people stuck around to watch it.

I'm a big Star Trek fan and, frankly, I like "Enterprise" - especially this season. However, I just gave up on "Voyager" and stopped watching it because it was dumb. I'm afraid (heresy alert!) I did the same in the third season of "Farscape."

Jim

There aren't that many "Star Trek" fans in existence any more -- not enough to support a television series.

There were a lot of TNG fans, in the same sense that there were once a lot of "M*A*S*H" fans -- ie, someone who likes and watches a particular tv series and when it's cancelled moves on to something else.

The folks who hung around for the beginning of DS9 lost interest in Trek little by little, over a period of ten years, and it's vanishingly unlikely that they'll show up for the next version no matter what it is.

Paramount can (almost) always hype up a series premiere or movie opening enough to arouse a week's worth of curiosity and a little repeat business from the faithful -- and that's it. So it's been since the early 1990s, and so it is likely to remain.

I'm not so sure, Dennis.
When the writing is good, even the ficklest fans respond positively.
The key phrase here is - when the writing is good.

B & B imposed an over-the-top style of writing and themes to Enterprise.
They were the reason Voyager got worse and worse.

Coto has shown that well written stories that are faithfull to Trek history are not only possible, but popular.

The problem is that it's just too late for Enterprise. B & B only gave up control after they had already ran it into the ground.

It's really sad. Had Coto been in charge from the beginning, Enterprise would probably have lasted twice as long or more.

But those are the cards B & B dealt us.

Here, F'ing HERE!!!!

I agree.

I don't blame the actors, set designers or the FX artists. They all did a great job in trying to make the series the best it could be. I really don't blame Paramount either in as much as they let it continue as long as it made money for them. Paramount doesn't hate Star Trek ... They love money!!

First and foremost, I blame B&B and the writers (for the first and second seasons) for obvious reasons , and to some small extent I blame the fans.

Granted, we shouldn't have to take such obvious plot lines, gimicks and a lack of continuity on a continual basis. One of the only things B&B did right from the beginning was the Andorians. They (for the most part) FUBAR'ed everything else. The only "crutch" they didn't fall back on was the "Q" crutch.

However, if you have been to the BB's on the official site lately you'd see that just about everyone there just complains on and on and on. They fall in to three basic camps:

1) The "This sucks cause it's too different therefore not Trek" camp
2) The "This sucks cause it's the same old thing over and over" camp
3) The "I love (insert character name here) cause he/she is just gorgeous so I'll watch whatever drivel you throw at me" camp

Constructive criticism is one thing ... but Gimme a Break! They bash Paramount. They bash B&B (somewhat justifiably I'll admit ... they are, after all, two thirds of the team that killed James T. Kirk). They bash the actors. They bash the musicians. They bash the costume designers. You name it ... They've bashed it. 99% of it is outright bashing with no constructive value at all. To top it all off ... they continually flame each other. I'll be very surprised if those boards aren't shut down soon. I think that we (Star Trek fans) have become too hard to please.

To summarize ... B&B and the writers lost the majority of the viewers, and of the viewers that were left, most of them complained incessantly.

Given that scenario ... I'd cancel the show too.

Ah, but there lies the misunderstanding. "Enterprise" didn't get cancelled because there weren't enough Star Trek fans, it got cancelled because it wasn't interesting and not enough regular people stuck around to watch it.


It's not a "misunderstanding" -- it's just a matter of looking at the numbers. Starting around 1994, "Star Trek" in all its varieties bled viewers at the rate of millions per year. It never gained viewership for more than an odd week here or there (usually series premieres). Didn't matter whether the show in question was DS9, "Voyager" or "Enterprise".

When that happens, eventually the show will hit bottom. This series wasn't dropping any faster than any previous series.

Here's the chart, again:
http://www.subspacebbs.com/images/ratings_graph.gif

With a little bit of background and explanation here. (http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=109352&page=2&pp=15)


I'm not so sure, Dennis.
When the writing is good, even the ficklest fans respond positively.

When the few million folks still paying attention to "Star Trek" like an episode or film, they praise it. When they don't, they complain. There's absolutely no evidence, however, that their enthusiasm has any positive effect on the number of people watching the show; the numbers go down every year. Whether "Star Trek" fans are pleased has no demonstrable effect on whether enough people will watch "Star Trek" or pay money to see it to make it successful -- not at any time in the last decade or more.

Sometimes numbers can be deceiving, though, Dennis.

You can sustain a franchise on the lowest numbers TNG had.
B & B would kill to have had 8.5 million viewers this year. The series would not have been canceled had the viewership QUADRUPLED!

8.5 million is a decent viewership.

But you can't sustain a series on a viewership of less then 2 million. :(

While every series eventually declines, that doesn't mean they are equal in quality to one another.

There is a big difference between a viewership low of 8.5 million and 2 million!!!(added font size for emphasis, not yelling :) )

The problem isn't that all Trek series will eventually decline.

The problem is that the last few have had incompetent people not only running the franchise, but interfering with the good writers and writing terrible scripts.

That was the problem with DS9. You can start to see the decline in the quality of Voyager exactly paralleling B & B's control and script writing interference.

Trek is still viable.

The real issue is that most Trek fans have come to refuse to accept the crappy writing, scripts, and nonsensical story arcs that have been handed down by B & B.

Trek disinterest is not the problem.
Disinterest in the crap B & B has been dishing out is the problem.

Sometimes numbers can be deceiving, though, Dennis.

While every series eventually declines, that doesn't mean they are equal in quality to one another...

The problem isn't that all Trek series will eventually decline...

Trek is still viable...

The real issue is that most Trek fans have come to refuse to accept the crappy writing, scripts, and nonsensical story arcs that have been handed down by B & B...
Trek disinterest is not the problem.




Again, there's absolutely no evidence to support any of that.

Sure you can sustain a franchise on the lowest numbers that TNG had. What of it? Trek hasn't had those numbers in a decade.

And those viewers just didn't vanish two years ago, or four years ago...people started turning off "Star Trek" a long time ago, a few million more every year, regardless of which post-TNG television series it was and regardless of who was writing it and regardless of whether vocal Trek fans considered it to be any good at all. "Deep Space Nine" is highly praised by a lot of Trek fans as well as by the mainstream media -- but its ratings declined for seven years.

The actual numbers of viewers (at least as recorded in the only form we have, the Nielsen ratings) demonstrate that. No one has ever produced evidence that if "Star Trek" were written to the tastes of those Trek fans who dislike DS9 or "Voyager" or "Enterprise" that viewership would rise substantially. To the contrary -- as several people have already pointed out, Trek fans have praised "Star Trek" on those occasions when it's pleased them over the last decade -- and this has done nada to stop the ratings slide.

It would take data a great deal more specific than fannish opinion to convince someone responsible for spending Viacom's money that it's worthwhile to invest in more "Star Trek" now or in the foreseeable future. Someone, somewhere would have to come up with some hard evidence to show a sliver of light somewhere in that dreadful, continually sinking curve.

"Numbers can be deceiving"? That's a familiar aphorism, but not a useful or applicable one unless one can point to what the "deceit" is in a given case or else produce contrary or counterbalancing measurable hard evidence and analysis. There's none to suggest that in this case the numbers are at all deceiving.

Again, there's absolutely no evidence to support any of that.

Sure you can sustain a franchise on the lowest numbers that TNG had. What of it? Trek hasn't had those numbers in a decade.

And those viewers just didn't vanish two years ago, or four years ago...people started turning off "Star Trek" a long time ago, a few million more every year, regardless of which post-TNG television series it was and regardless of who was writing it and regardless of whether vocal Trek fans considered it to be any good at all. "Deep Space Nine" is highly praised by a lot of Trek fans as well as by the mainstream media -- but its ratings declined for seven years.

The actual numbers of viewers (at least as recorded in the only form we have, the Nielsen ratings) demonstrate that. No one has ever produced evidence that if "Star Trek" were written to the tastes of those Trek fans who dislike DS9 or "Voyager" or "Enterprise" that viewership would rise substantially. To the contrary -- as several people have already pointed out, Trek fans have praised "Star Trek" on those occasions when it's pleased them over the last decade -- and this has done nada to stop the ratings slide.

It would take data a great deal more specific than fannish opinion to convince someone responsible for spending Viacom's money that it's worthwhile to invest in more "Star Trek" now or in the foreseeable future. Someone, somewhere would have to come up with some hard evidence to show a sliver of light somewhere in that dreadful, continually sinking curve.

Data without meaningful understanding is pointless, Dennis.

No one has proposed, as you claim, that a majority of Star Trek fans liking a series can cause a series to be maintained in and of itself, though the reverse is definitely true.

Anymore then you can claim that a wagging tail causes the dog attached to be happy.

Both are indicators. They cause nothing to occur.

But do they mean nothing?

Of course not!!!

Step back from the tree for a moment and consider the forest.

If Star Trek fans don't like a series, it's because it is VERY poorly done.

If a series is very poorly done it is likely to fail.

We can smell crap just as easily as the next guy can.

Enterprise has failed because it was poorly done.

To suggest that Star Trek fans liking or disliking a show has no effect on it's success or failure is downright silly!

When people don't like a show, what do many, many of them do?

They turn it off!!!

People(Star Trek fans and anyone else) stopped watching the show because it had become crappy.

When people stop watching a show it gets canceled.

I'd say that is your direct correlation.

I'm afraid (heresy alert!) I did the same in the third season of "Farscape."

Jim

I'm curious what turned you off the third season? While Farscape had a few dog episodes (the one with Chiana and the extreme druggie bungee-jumpers comes to mind) I don't ever remember a bad season.....

Stay away from time-travel crutches, metaphysical mumbo jumbo, and please don't ever create another single episode where the last two minutes make the first 58 minutes you spent watching totally pointless!!!

Yeah, it got to be irritating watching the TNG/Voyager/Enterprise crew "solve" the near impossible, universe-threatening, timeline-collapsing, ship-destroying situation by sending out an inverse tachyon beam. It was like, please STOP!...

Though I agree with Chuck that there is a small correlation between the fans' fondness for the show with the overall ratings. The fans are the ones who put out a good word of mouth. If they like what they're seeing, they invite causal viewers to keep watching. If fans themselves think a show's crap, they'll bad mouth it and prevent casual viewers from tuning in. It's like that old "Life" cereal commercial:

Viewer 1: "I'm not going to try this new Star Trek show. You try it" [pushes TV towards Viewer 2]

Viewer 2: "I'm not going to try it, you try it" [pushes TV back towards Viewer 1]

Viewer 1: "Hey! Let's get Trekkie! He'll try it! He'll watch anything Trek" [pushes TV to Trekkie and sits it right in front of him]

Viewers 1 and 2 watch Trekkie for his reaction.

José

It would take data a great deal more specific than fannish opinion to convince someone responsible for spending Viacom's money that it's worthwhile to invest in more "Star Trek" now or in the foreseeable future. Someone, somewhere would have to come up with some hard evidence to show a sliver of light somewhere in that dreadful, continually sinking curve.

Clearly the “Star Trek” franchise has grown creatively stale and its financial returns have waned. This is the result of many disparate factors, not the least of which being the sheer amount of dramatic ground that's been covered by the series' various incarnations over the last forty years. Nevertheless, “Star Trek” remains one of the most recognizable brands in the history of filmed entertainment, and I wouldn't be too quick to write it off entirely. Sure the numbers are in the toilet now, but with the right creative team at the helm there's no reason why the franchise couldn't experience a reversal of fortune, both dramatically and financially.

Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but I can’t help but hope that Paramount will eventually stumble upon a show runner with the vision, passion and determination to revive "Trek" in one form or another. The challenges are huge, but if someone can make a hit out of "Battlestar Galactica" anything is possible.

Data without meaningful understanding is pointless, Dennis.

And opinions without hard data to support them are meaningless as well. I understand all of this just fine, thanks, and I do have the data to refer to for support.


If Star Trek fans don't like a series, it's because it is VERY poorly done.


Not a given at all.

A show that offends their biases or simply explores areas that don't interest them is as likely to turn them off as any question of quality. "Star Trek" appears to be comfort food to a lot of fans -- when they want macaroni-and-cheese they'll reject sushi no matter how it's prepared.

Non-Trek fans could as easily say -- and have - that "Star Trek" fans have liked a lot of poorly-done stuff, and show no particular preference for quality work.


If a series is very poorly done it is likely to fail.


Not provable by reference to the Nielsens, I'm afraid. The corollary would be "if a series is very well done it is likely to succeed", and that's pretty hard to prove by what succeeds or fails as well.


Enterprise has failed because it was poorly done.

That's an unsupported statement of opinion. "Enterprise's" ratings declined at the same rate as every Trek series post-TNG. You know, you can get thirty miles to the gallon when your tank is full, and get the same thirty miles out of the last gallon in the tank -- but you're gonna run out of gas.


To suggest that Star Trek fans liking or disliking a show has no effect on it's success or failure is downright silly!

If someone said that, it might be. What I said instead was: there are not enough "Star Trek" fans left to make a "Star Trek" series a success. "Star Trek" fans can like the hell out of a series, and there might well not be enough of them to keep it on the air. Viewing patterns of the last ten years pretty much point to this.


People(Star Trek fans and anyone else) stopped watching the show because it had become crappy.


People stopped watching DS9 at the rate of about a million a year. People stopped watching "Voyager" at the rate of about a million a year. People stopped watching "Enterprise" at the rate of about a million a year.

Thus, the Franchise ran out of gas.

It's not at all hard to understand that after two or three hundred hours of "Star Trek" a lot of people had had enough and moved on. And after every episode of every show, a few more had enough, and moved on. That's pretty much what the viewership numbers suggest happened, and it makes perfect sense.

The folks who hang out on the net and identify themselves as "Star Trek" fans and insist that this-Trek-is-better-than-that-Trek can do so until the cows come home, but the fascinating truth is that if one just looks at how many people watched a given "Star Trek" series and how many drifted off each year there's no way to tell the difference between one series and another. There's every reason to think that for the majority of people who once watched Trek the only big difference was between TNG and Everything Else. TNG, after all, was the only Trek series that gained viewers after its first or second season -- every other Trek series started losing viewers after its premiere and kept losing them throughout its run.

There's no evidence that there are eight million, or six million, or five million viewers who would set aside an hour a week to watch a "Star Trek" series -- after all, they haven't done it for years regardless of the series or writing or "quality". The "Star Trek" name itself may in fact be reason enough for people who grew tired of Trek (after five or six hundred hours!) to avoid it -- "been there, bored now."

Anecdotal observations along the lines of "everyone knows 'Star Trek'; all my friends say they like 'Star Trek'; I saw a survey once that said that there are fifty million people identifying themselves as 'Trek fans' in the U.S." mean nothing. What has to be measured is how many of those people will actually watch an hour of it every week? The evidence is that every year since 1994 there are fewer and fewer.

I'm just glad to have another six weeks of "Star Trek" to enjoy before it's gone. Next time out the studio will almost certainly change everything about it in an attempt to intrigue people who know that they don't like "Star Trek" or lost interest in it because it never changed. Here's hoping that when such occurs they do as good a job of it as the new "Battlestar Galactica" people.

People stopped watching DS9 at the rate of about a million a year. People stopped watching "Voyager" at the rate of about a million a year. People stopped watching "Enterprise" at the rate of about a million a year.



Not according to your graph up there ^^^.

Also let's not forget how many viewers each started off with.

But again, all the "data" in the world, and everything quoted above proves nothing about the viability of Star Trek as a genre.

What it does show quite clearly is that when B & B got control of Voyager it went south quickly. At the same point DS9 got worse and worse.

It also shows that enough Trek fans knew B & B well enough to know the crap that they have a knack for churning out, and there was never as large a viewership for Enterprise from the beginning.

What you call "bias" I call taste, preference, and the common sense to know what one likes and doesn't like.

It's not at all accurate, especially considering the success of TNG, to make blanket statements about Trek as a genre based on three failed series that were screwed up because of a glaringly obvious reason - the people who took over and ran the shows were incompetent hacks.

The 007 series of movies is a more apt example. Some of the more recent ones have sucked. Doesn't mean that all of them have or that a good 007 movie cannot be made.

It goes to join TAS in a better place. :)

...when B & B got control of Voyager it went south quickly. At the same point DS9 got worse and worse.


It's funny what people can read into numbers that isn't there.

It can't show that, because DS9 and "Voyager" both "went south" in ratings terms beginning with their second episodes -- steady, ongoing decline -- and...well, "B & B" didn't exist until the fourth or fifth year of "Voyager". There was only one "B" -- Berman -- involved in DS9 from beginning to end; Braga never worked a day on it. Braga didn't head up the writing staff at "Voyager" until later in its run, when he replaced Jeri Taylor. Berman -- the "one B" -- effectively ran TNG from about the midpoint of its third season onward, BTW. Roddenberry came into the office or participated very rarely; he was extremely sick by that time. I'm sorry to say that while spending a fair amount of time around there in those days I never had the opportunity to meet him; everyone in the Hart Building referred to Berman as "the Boss". That period of time there, where you see TNG's ratings continue to rise into its fourth and fifth seasons? The "Berman era", baby. :)

Another beautiful theory shot to Hell.


What you call "bias" I call taste, preference, and the common sense to know what one likes and doesn't like.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. I call my biases taste and preference as well, and I know which versions of "Star Trek" I like the best. ;)

Dennis do you work for Paramount?It seems that you like to take up for them a lot ! You sure take the company line ,"it is not our fault that Star Trek movies and show are failing ,it is that the fan are no longer there and no longer support us"I listened to that crap with every interview of the cast of Nemeses after that POS failed at the box office!Look it is plain and simple it is all about the writing ,we the fans want good stories.Most of the stories in the newer shows and movies have been crap ,and that is the reason for the decline in viewers .The heart of all Science Fiction is in the stories.

It's funny what people can read into numbers that isn't there.

It's not so funny when the number-crunchers ignore common sense and base their decisions on nothing but the numbers (or lack thereof). That's why we have 3 space shuttle orbiters now instead of 4.

As far as the Berman-Braga connection for the decline of Trek is concerned, consider this. During TNG, Ron Moore and Brannon Braga were part of the same writing staff, after TNG ended co-wrote 2 Trek Movies. They then split up, Moore going to DS9, Braga to Voyager.

When DS9 ended, Moore does one episode of Voyager, then is shown the door - by Berman and Braga. When Voyager approached its end, and the next series is being conceptualized, Moore is told he is going to participate, then finds out that meetings have gone on without his knowledge - held by Berman and Braga.

Of the 2 post TNG series, Voyager is the one that is infamous for the repetitive and/or nonsensical plots and the inclusion of Jeri Ryan in a catsuit into the cast.

Berman and Braga didn't drive the Star Trek franchise into the ground by themselves, but Paramount's desire to have Star Trek generate financial returns like a conservative money market fund gave them (especially Berman) the enviroment in which to perfect the formula where x investment of money in an series or movie would generate guaranteed Y return. And in Hollywood, if you have a property that can do that, why change it? If you put more money into it once, the fan base will expect that more should be spent on the next one, and that will seriously cut into the profits. Nemesis could have been great, had Paramount spent the the money to make it great, but it used the Berman formula instead.

As far as Enterprise is concerned, it is the Hollywood version of the most classic marketing debacle in history - the introduction of "New Coke."
Coca-Cola is the one of the most successful products in history, yet they made the titanically stupid move of changing the formula to make it taste more like Pepsi. Fans of Classic Coke demanded the return of the original formula, and told the folks at Coke that if they wanted to drink something that tasted more like Pepsi, they would buy Pepsi.

Instead of starting out as being a true prequel series, Enterprise was concieved as the pre-Trek series that did its best to avoid referring to Star Trek. Eventually they realized their mistake and made Enterprise the true prequel series it should have been.

You point out the numbers, the fans that have been supporting Paramount with viewership and buying the merchandise are pointing out the big hole in the RCC panel that your numbers don't show.

I'm curious if all of the people bashing the spin-off shows have actually taken the time to watch the episodes, or is they are forming a general impression based on lame "stunt shows" ("the Rock guest stars" "The Borg are back!")
I myself was guilty of this when the shows were on the air. When they brought Jeri Ryan onto Voyager and Michael Dorn onto DS9, I tuned out of both shows... the various stunts seemed like the shows were more interested in stunt casting than storytelling to boost their ratings.
Thanks to the modern marvel that is DVD box sets, I decided to revisit each show. What I discovered is that while my tuning out may have (in an infinitesimal way) hurt their ratings, I missed out on some truly entertaining shows. They had some great episodes, on par with anything done in TOS or TNG. Three that come to mind are Voyager episodes "Real Life", "Nothing Human" and "Lineage".
Sure, Voyager and DS9 had some really lame and/or mediocre episodes now and then. But can anyone say that the ratio of good:crap was any different than is was with TOS? For every "City on the Edge of Forever", we were given "Catspaw", "Spectre of the Gun", and "Turnabout Intruder". I'm afraid TNG doesn't fare much better. Sure, there was "Best of Both Worlds", but there was also fluff like "A Fistful of Datas", "Masks", and the one where the whole crew devolves (into different species, no less)... that one was so bad I can't even remember the name. For that matter, most of season 7 was a waste.

So, what killed Enterprise? I don't think it's just one of the theories stated, it's a combination of factors... all of which have become more potent over the years.
1) Most people have less and less private time. And for that private time, there is more and more competition to provide entertainment.

2) The TV landscape has changed dramatically since TNG was on the air. TNG was syndicated, and not shackled the the albatross that is UPN. It was not foolishly put up against other networks it had no chance of beating, it was put on when people would watch it (like most successful syndicated shows, Saturday afternoons). But also, there were fewer cable networks and shows competing for attention. As cable and satellite became more and more affordable, you dilute the amount of people watching broadcast TV.

3) Network pressure to make the show something it's not. Each subsequent series has been put under more and more preesure to follow formula and get the ratings up. Unfortunately, this is the antithesis of what any Star Trek show should be.
All of the best Trek episodes have been the ones that tackle philosophical, moral, and political issues. After you watch them, you find yourself wondering "what would I have done in that situation?" This goes against every TV formula the hacks have ever come up with.

4) I'll say it again. UPN is a lead weight around the ankles. For good or ill, if you ask the average person what kind of shows they will find on UPN, you are unlikely to hear the words "science fiction".

The Star Trek franchise is not beyond redemption, but it is in jeopardy because of the varios pressures being exerted on it. The show does not need a Battlestar Galactica type 'reimagining'... the Paramount suits have done that already. I would cite season 3 (Xindi arc) of Enterprise as evidence of this.

The franchise needs to return to its roots. It needs episodes that ask questions about society and the human condition. It needs to tell stories that force us to question ourselves.

Quite simply, it needs to be an alternative to all of the other hackneyed network crap that is on the air.

... That period of time there, where you see TNG's ratings continue to rise into its fourth and fifth seasons? The "Berman era", baby. :)



Actually it was more of a "Moore was still there era."

It's funny what people can read into numbers that isn't there.


Yes. Quite funny. Like trying to use graphs to say that shows being canceled have nothing to do with them being poorly written and incompetently produced.





All your graphs really show is that three series were led by Berman and Braga into the toilet. Those are the facts. The numbers are simply a reflection of those facts.

Both of their writing sucks.
Plain and simple.

They have zero skill at character development.
They are "big picture" writers who never in their life came up with an idea that seemed too grandiose and convoluted to deserve a re-write.
Hell, I even doubt either of them own pencils with erasers on them.

Ever notice the best episodes are often written by guest writers;
people who aren't being hovered over by a pair of guys who are unqualified to edit the work of most of the writers on staff?
That's not a coincidence.

Not only are they addicted to grandiose and convoluted plot and story ideas, even worse they never met a gimmick they didn't like and use over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over....

Did I mention they like to use plot gimmicks quite a lot?

The key B & B gimmick that killed Enterprise was the Temporal Cold War three year plus long series story arc.

Enterprise, in the form it was originally proposed, had tremendous potential.
Anyone remember what the two key selling points B&B proposed were?

1) This would be a history of how the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants pioneers from Earth's starfleet bravely created the federation of planets.

and 2)this prequel would be written in a way that no-one would have to know anything at all about the previous series to understand, follow and enjoy it.
As a result of that Trek fandom would be expanded.

Both selling points 1 and 2 were abandoned by episode two.

So much for promises from and the attention span of Enterprise's handlers.
Let me take the second part first.

The Temporal Cold War arc was established by the second episode. That totally wiped out the possibility of Enterprise being understandable to new Trek fans. By the end of the first season when the time-hoping nonesense had been played over and over with no end in sight, any new Trek fans who might have believed the TV guide and other Entertainment interviews of B&B promising this was going to be Trek series everyone could understand, follow, and enjoy with knowing anything about previous series, surely realized they had been either lied to or B&B had given up on the idea from almost the very beginning.

Click. There goes that potential! Another empty promise to expand Trek's fan base unfulfilled.

During and after first season tons of otherwise die-hard Trek fans started tuning out. When you are doing that poorly, something needs to change.

Did much change? Nope.

Let me be clear, adding more FX space battles like the Enterprise being virtually destroyed is not "turning around" a series.

The biggest problem with Enterprise as a series was the one key element that persisted through over three of the four years of the series, the Temporal Cold War time jumping story arc ruined over three years worth of episodes.

Enterprise was never been about "a history of how the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants pioneers from Earth's starfleet bravely created the federation of planets."


The Temporal Cold War arc has told us the exact opposite. Starfleet's pioneers weren't the pioneers who were adapting and braving the dangers of space as they went along. Not at all.

The B & B painted a Trek universe in which they told us they were NEVER alone. They were NEVER really pioneers. At every point Starfleet was watched over by Big Brother Federation of the Future!

In effect, B & B used Enterprise to paint a Trek universe in which it's obvious there were no true Trek pioneers, they were always being watched over carefully. All this revisionist crap because they were addicted to and couldn't help themselves from using their TNG and later storylines and FX styles - not to mention a pure unadulterated lack of imagination.

B & B have painted a picture of early Starfleet in which they were NOT brave pioneers boldly going anywhere, they were instead being watched over all that time!

Not only did they not deliver on providing an admirable view of Trek history, they did far worse: they turned a series that was supposed to be about that history into a series that is instead about whether or not a staid, boring, bureaucratic Federation of the future was going to survive.

Even in the episodes in which the TCWar arc wasn't included it hung over the entire series, making you wonder when you would be pulled out of any appreciation of true history by the Federation Future Dweebs.

Not only haven't they created a convincing, admirable Trek history. They have damaged our view of it. Enterprise has done perhaps irreparable damage to pre-TOS history. We'll always have the coddled, mama's boy image of early Starfleet that Enterprise's first three years worth of B & B's Future Dweeb interference showed us.

^^Very good points, Chuck! I couldn't agree more.

BTW, Spacecraft Guy: "That's why we have 3 space shuttle orbiters now instead of 4." should read:
"That's why we have 3 space shuttle orbiters now instead of 5." It was a bureaucratic mindset that resulted in the Challenger being flown under cold conditions where it was already known the O-rings were a safety problem just as they knew beforehand the insulation was a problem on the Columbia.

Not only haven't they created a convincing, admirable Trek history. They have damaged our view of it. Enterprise has done perhaps irreparable damage to pre-TOS history. We'll always have the coddled, mama's boy image of early Starfleet that Enterprise's first three years worth of B & B's Future Dweeb interference showed us.
Well put. I've had to quarantine "Enterprise" ,in my mind, from the real Star Trek. I feel the show is a rouge series that has harmed the Star Trek universe. If the Riker story does indeed dismiss the last four years as a holodeck program, then the damage can be contained.

Perhaps. But if that is what happens it will be yet another example of a B & B plot twist where in the last minute you are made to realize that everything you were watching was just made pointless by a last second gimmick.

Might be for the best, but we'll have to wait and see what actually happens.

Remember on Dallas when Pam dreamed a whole season.Bobby was dead then back.In fairness to Enterprise,its not a bad show,but way to advanced,and hardly beliavable its 100 years before Kirk technology wise.They have it made on Enterprise,its more advanced than the Old Enterprise!If they use the holodeck program,it will be a silly way to explain Enterprises existence,Guy Schlicter.

I understand your concerns about the "Wizard of Oz" type ending but with out some radical twist like that "Enterprise" will just have to be pruned from the Trek tree. I like the show but if they had put Willy Wonka as the captain of the Akiraprise it wouldn't have been any worst than the mess that the first three seasons were. Well season four started with a wimper as well, time travel and alien nazi's. :rolleyes:

I just had a wonderful dream, and it seemed so real, and you were there, and you, and you, ...but not you.

It would seem that it is up to the fans themselves to resurrect "Star Trek" like the amazing folks at "Starship Exeter" and "New Voyages" are already doing. These people are just amazing and their products get better with each outing.

Screw "Paraflounder"!

Lets support the people who really know what "Trek" is; US! Thanks to the overwhelming power of todays home computers, we fans have the opportunity like never before to take matters into our own hands (as the aforementioned groups have demonstrated). I think it will be up to us to make the kinds shows we want to see ourselves, either computer animated or live action or both. I'd rather watch a home made Trek episode put together by people that love the show any day instead of the multi-million dollar garbage turned out by the money-grubbers at Paramount. Lets not forget that there is a hundred times more un-tapped talent among the fans right now than there will be walking through the studio doors for the next hundred years.

When it comes to Trek, its just a question of how badly we want it.

Stepping off soap box now.

I found this at Americablog... interesting insights on the end of the show from Dominic Keating:

"As you now know, I met Dominic Keating of Star Trek: Enterprise last night in New York. Yeah, I stopped him as he was walking by and asked if he was him. He was. And man he was a nice guy. We talked a good ten to 15 minutes. As you may know, the show was just canceled, and Keating had a number of interesting observations, including:

- The show was canceled because of politics. The people on high kept telling the shows producers to do inane things to make it more interesting, like "add a tamborine to the theme music" (they did), and, my favorite, "add a boy band to one of the mess hall scenes, entertaining the crew" (I'm not kidding). They didn't take that last advice. Suffice it to say, I'm told, that all this meddling caused some bad will between the show's producers and the upper brass and that killed the show, even though Dominic says it's the #2 rated show at UPN."

^^Very good points, Chuck! I couldn't agree more.

BTW, Spacecraft Guy: "That's why we have 3 space shuttle orbiters now instead of 4." should read:
"That's why we have 3 space shuttle orbiters now instead of 5." It was a bureaucratic mindset that resulted in the Challenger being flown under cold conditions where it was already known the O-rings were a safety problem just as they knew beforehand the insulation was a problem on the Columbia.

Unfortunately, all true.

I used the example of Coulmbia's fateful flight because of the particulars - instead of having the crew go EVA and actually look at the wing, or having the various reconnaissance/surveillance assets available to photograph Columbia in orbit, the flight managers decided to base their decision about what to do about the foam debris strike from the ET on the orbiter's port wing RCC panel on ascent from data on a computer program that Boeing devised called CRATER, that related to hits on the tiles on the belly of the orbiter, but not on the reinforced carbon-carbon panels on the leading edge of the orbiter's wings. And so instead of looking for the obvious, the decision to bring Columbia back home with a hole in the leading edge of the port wing was based on data from a computer program that didn't relate to what the actual problem was. The people who knew what the problem was could not get their voices heard, and/or were ignored. We all know the rest.

In January of 1986, Roger Boisjoly from Morton Thiokol was the guy who was trying to get his company and NASA to pay attention to the fact that SRB
O-rings were being burned through, usually through the primary but a lot of times through both the primary and the secondary rings, and the problem got a lot worse when the outside temperature was low. Thiokol management and NASA management "took off their engineering hats and put on their management hats (their words, as stated in the Challenger Accident Report)," and decided to ignore Roger and the obvious. Challenger launched, and again, you know the rest.

Ignoring the obvious and basing decisions on irrelevant or badly interpreted data - make your own comparisons and come to your own conclusions.

BTW PerfesserCoffee, I had the chance to visit the Orbiter Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy Center very recently. There were very few people in the museum that day, and I got to spend a whole lot of quality time with old girl. She still wasn't wearing the simulated RCC panels that were removed for the impact tests conducted for the CAIB Report, and you could see the front of the wing box. You could see that it was a flat panel, not corrugated like the ones on her sister orbiters are, and colored zinc chromate green. You could see and where the holes for the brackets that attached the RCC panels to the wing were. Both OMS pods were also missing, being refurbished and restored.
The main engines were medium gray replicas, though a real SSME was displayed nearby, with a basic description of what the power head was, and how the low pressure turbopumps fed the high pressure turbopumps, and how the main engines burn a hydrogen rich gas when it finally reaches the SSME combustion chambers.

Believe me, I know about the Space Shuttle program - history, technology, politics and all. I was one of those who wrote to NASA and President Ford in in 1976 to get OV-101 named Enterprise.

It would seem that it is up to the fans themselves to resurrect "Star Trek" like the amazing folks at "Starship Exeter" and "New Voyages" are already doing. These people are just amazing and their products get better with each outing.

Screw "Paraflounder"!

Lets support the people who really know what "Trek" is; US! Thanks to the overwhelming power of todays home computers, we fans have the opportunity like never before to take matters into our own hands (as the aforementioned groups have demonstrated). I think it will be up to us to make the kinds shows we want to see ourselves, either computer animated or live action or both. I'd rather watch a home made Trek episode put together by people that love the show any day instead of the multi-million dollar garbage turned out by the money-grubbers at Paramount. Lets not forget that there is a hundred times more un-tapped talent among the fans right now than there will be walking through the studio doors for the next hundred years.

When it comes to Trek, its just a question of how badly we want it.

Stepping off soap box now.

Which makes Paramount's decision to cancel Enterprise all the more ridiculous. Now that we have the technology available and affordable enough to do it better ourselves - and the some of the people involved in TOS also recognize this and are helping us, you would think that Paramount would see the implications and decide to actually take our advice and produce a Trek show that with the quality we deserve.

While Paramount rests Star Trek for 2-5 years, CGI and video production technology is going to get cheaper, easier to use and more affordable, and Internet distribution is going to get faster. That is why the Original Star Wars Trilogy was released on DVD last year - George Lucas realized that if he waited for Revenge of the Sith to be released on DVD before the OT was, the market for it would probably be gone. Rent it from NetFlix, copy the DVD, send the disc back. Why spend the money to buy it?

In 2 to 5 years, we could give a polite "no thanks" to anything that Paramount decides to churn out, and just watch our own productions - with production values that rival anything they could do - and Paramount won't make any money from it.

Roger Boisjoly from Morton Thiokol

"Pretty Woods" in French :freak:

***

About fans knowing what we like - one problem with that is fans don't always like what's GOOD. Witness all the fans who actually liked Voyager, and thought Enterprise was the best Trek ever. Okay, opinions are subjective, and different strokes for different Trekkies, but let's face it, they're WRONG!!! :lol:

Starship Exter's first ep was wonderful, captured that TOS feel, and I look forward to their next ep.

Hidden Frontier is doing amazing work, scripts are of varying quality but mostly good, but they do feel like TNG episodes.

New Voyages have so far produced rampant fanboy wetdreams that use every annoying cliche of post-TNG Trek that just doesn't work in a TOS setting. I DARE them to make one episode that doesn't involve time travel, Q, Borg, or references to the movies and later series.

I found this at Americablog... interesting insights on the end of the show from Dominic Keating:

"As you now know, I met Dominic Keating of Star Trek: Enterprise last night in New York. Yeah, I stopped him as he was walking by and asked if he was him. He was. And man he was a nice guy. We talked a good ten to 15 minutes. As you may know, the show was just canceled, and Keating had a number of interesting observations, including:

- The show was canceled because of politics. The people on high kept telling the shows producers to do inane things to make it more interesting, like "add a tamborine to the theme music" (they did), and, my favorite, "add a boy band to one of the mess hall scenes, entertaining the crew" (I'm not kidding). They didn't take that last advice. Suffice it to say, I'm told, that all this meddling caused some bad will between the show's producers and the upper brass and that killed the show, even though Dominic says it's the #2 rated show at UPN."

So basicly TPTB wanted Star Trek killed......

Thiokol management and NASA management "took off their engineering hats and put on their management hats (their words, as stated in the Challenger Accident Report)," and decided to ignore Roger and the obvious.

That's it in a nutshell! :thumbsup: What hurts NASA the most is its own (ridiculously huge in order to dilute blame to the nth degree) bureaucracy.

BTW PerfesserCoffee, I had the chance to visit the Orbiter Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy Center very recently.

Cool stuff! I'm hoping they hurry and retire the shuttle and let space travel become truly inexpensive and routine. [cough, cough]SSX![cough, cough]

Believe me, I know about the Space Shuttle program - history, technology, politics and all. I was one of those who wrote to NASA and President Ford in in 1976 to get OV-101 named Enterprise.

Thanks for your successful effort! :thumbsup: I remember those days. I wish I'd known about the letter writing campaign I'd have done it, too.

... I remember those days. I wish I'd known about the letter writing campaign I'd have done it, too. Same here! I just wish the Enterprise would have made it in to orbit at least once ... I know she was never designed or equipped to do so, and she's too heavy to carry anything ... but still, it would have been nice.