Fate of Star Trek: Enterprise uncertain

[Mark Holtz]

From SciFi Wire (http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2004-02/13/10.20.tv), it appears that the fate of Star Trek: Enterprise is up in the air at the moment. They are now considering either moving the series to Friday nights or cancelling the series outright.

[scooper]

Friday nights would kill Enterprise...

[invaliduser88]

And replaced with......

You guessed it, more annoy reality shows!!! :P

[Ray_Clum]

Move it to Friday. Move it to Sunday at 2:00 am. Who cares. My TiVo will catch it for me and I'll watch it when I want. BWA HA HA HA.

[JBKing]

Yeah, but if fewer people watch Enterprise due to a bad time period, none of us will be watching for much longer. :(

Actually, I'm really enjoying this season, and hope the ratings improve.

[dfergie]

I have only watched a couple this season, but would hate to see it go as I will probably archive the re-runs. I think friday would probably kill it. UPN has had several shows that followed Voyager that I liked that were killed. 7days... the show that had mini-me(vern) on it with jake busey among others.

[retiredTech]

NO say it ain't so! This is about the only "series TV" I watch.
I love this show. Who do we contact to show our support of this show? UPN?

found these links:

http://www.enterpriseproject.org (trying to save the show)


http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/ENT/index.html
(they have message boards as well as info)

[Mike D-CO5]

Star Trek is the only show I watch on UPN since they cancelled Buffy and I guess Jake 2.0. It's funny they original reason I went with Dish in 97 was because they had the superstations and the local cable company didn't.

[BobMurdoch]

It would be a bad omen to go to Fridays. That was the move NBC made to send the ORIGINAL series for its third season. They killed the series after that season when(surprise!!!) it dropped in the ratings. Most young viewers go out Friday and Saturdays and the only people watching TV are the older demographics (Think The Love Boat and The District for the only shows that have seemed to flourish there).

[homeskillet]

I just got a DVR because of that show... Wed. at 7:00 is a bad time for me, so I've been catching the re-runs on my local CBS station at 12:30 AM on Saturdays.

Star Trek always has had bad times/channels in history, but it still is a cult classic and has a huge following. If they cancel it, I'm sure a new series would be launched. I mean, the Star Trek empire is a pretty big thing.

[TNGTony]

The Enterprise ratings are DISMAL! A few of us die-hards watch it. But face it, if it didn't have the Star Trek franchise behind it, it would have folded two years ago. Ever since Branon and Barga corrupted Gene's vision, the ratings have been on a steady decline.

Season.......................average audience
Fall 1987 - Spring 1988: 8.55 Million (TNG begins in syndication)
Fall 1988 - Spring 1989: 9.14 Million
Fall 1989 - Spring 1990: 9.77 Million
Fall 1990 - Spring 1991: 10.58 Million
Fall 1991 - Spring 1992: 11.50 Million (Gene Roddenbery dies 10/24/91)
Fall 1992 - Spring 1993: 10.83 Million (DS9 comes on January 1993)
Fall 1993 - Spring 1994: 9.78 Million (TNG Ends as planned spring 1994)
Fall 1994 - Spring 1995: 7.05 Million (Voyager starts on UPN Fall 1995)
Fall 1995 - Spring 1996: 6.42 Million ("Dominion" storyline begins)
Fall 1996 - Spring 1997: 5.03 Million
Fall 1997 - Spring 1998: 4.53 Million
Fall 1998 - Spring 1999: 4.00 Million (DS9 ends)
Fall 1999 - Spring 2000: 3.90 Million
Fall 2000 - Spring 2001: 3.85 Million (Voyager comes to a merciful planned end on UPN May 2001)
Fall 2001 - Spring 2002: 3.20 Million (Enterprise begins on UPN Fall 2001)
Fall 2002 - Spring 2003: 2.90 Million
Fall 2003 - Feb 2004 2.55 Million

Notice where the slide started? Coincidence?

The Enterprise numbers are really deceiving. The season one average rating is artificially high because it had a phenomenal (for UPN) premier rating. Immediately after that the ratings dropped like a rock. They have been hovering between a 4.0 and a 2.2. The trend is downward, but when so few people are watching little bit helps.

Get off the "Earth is in peril" stories and go back to what Trek is about and you will see a boost in ratings!

I know I say it all the time but trek is NOT about wars, shoot-em-ups, things exploding or even crew falling for each other and endless intermural love stories! It is a vehicle for exploring social, cultural and political issues in a "safe" venue. THAT is what made the original and TNG hits. That is what Gene saw. The problem is that these fools saw ratings blips for shows like Yesterday's Enterprise and The Best of Both Worlds and though that it was the things blowing up and conflicts that made people watch. Yes...for the short term. That audience won't last long. And history proves that. What Brannon and Barga have done to Trek is nothing short of putting a wooden stake through its heart!

See ya
Tony

[SamC]

Everything Tony said. Dead right.

But I do not think that the will ever cancel Enterprise for two reasons.

One is that w/o Enterprise, UPN has nothing to recomed it. It is the signature series of UPN the way the Simpsons was for early Fox.

Two is that Enterprise is going to be making money for Viacom long after we are all dead. A typical show makes $X from the original showing, $Y from one or maybe two go-rounds through the rerun syndicators, and $Z from a few English speaking foreign countries. And then its is forgotten.

Star Trek shows are evergreen. Star Trek shows will be on forever all around the world. The shows will be shown, and represent a cash asset, for the company decades from now. As long as the original US network showing covers something close to production costs, they will never end it before seven years when the next copy is trotted out.

[HappyGoLucky]

The Enterprise ratings are DISMAL! A few of us die-hards watch it. But face it, if it didn't have the Star Trek franchise behind it, it would have folded two years ago. Ever since Branon and Barga corrupted Gene's vision, the ratings have been on a steady decline.


I have to agree there. TOS was a landmark, setting the bar. TNG raised that bar considerably. To me there has been nothing since TNG that captured me completely. "Enterprise" just doesn't seem... real? I know it's all fiction, of course, but the TOS and TNG seemed like they could be real, they brought you in to their world. The rest have just seemed like "fake TV" in various degrees. It also seems that "Enterprise" has completely altered the timelines of the previous series, which is a huge StarTrek no-no, or at least was. Trekkies see that stuff and are turned off by it.

[waydwolf]

I disagree about what Trek should be about.

In the future, racism, sexism, etc., are supposed to be extinct yet TOS examined them into the ground and beat the dead horse into glue. They redid that on a much less grand basis with TNG and homosexuality with that girl-girl kiss thing. Whoopie! Oh yeah, they threw her in with TNG for no readily apparent reason.

DS9 furthered the nonsense by doing that late in the series ep with the holodeck and Sisko's latent anger towards 20th century racism which shouldn't have mattered as it was four hundred years earlier and he's a starfleet officer who should know the difference between history of centuries past and the present.

In fact, DS9 ramped up racism concerns by going into mind-numbing and excrutiating stories detailing not how we have things in common, but how different Klingons, Ferengi, Gem H'dar, and Cardassians are. We had diversity training shoved down our throats every step of the way.

We also had today's popular theme that our own people are more dangerous and evil than the bad guys trying to tear down all of civilization and the accompanying paranoia. At times it was almost like the X-Files.

Voyager didn't do much better and they rubbed in that the captain had a vagina every chance they got. WHO CARES? In the future, that isn't supposed to matter.

Escapist adventure is what we have left when we get compassion fatigue and sick of having today's problems shoved in our faces through a futuristic storyline. Roddenberry's vision of how much better the future should be was turned into a nonstop vision of much the future will positively suck for four straight series. Should we really repeat that?

The cardinal sin of Enterprise is that it upends decades of established and mutually accepted fictional history and in doing undoes an established setting and turns it into freeflowing fiction on all levels.

Let it die.

[Mark Holtz]

Besides, Babylon 5 is able to tell a better story with a smaller budget.

Oh, yeah, it's run is over also.

[TNGTony]

I disagree about what Trek should be about.

You are in the minority and the ratings show that. The more they get away from real stories and toward blowing things up, the more people get bored switch the channels eventually.

Escapist adventure is what we have left when we get compassion fatigue and sick of having today's problems shoved in our faces through a futuristic storyline. Roddenberry's vision of how much better the future should be was turned into a nonstop vision of much the future will positively suck for four straight series. Should we really repeat that?

My point was that Gene's vision was currupted the instant Deep Space Nine was conceived right after his death!

Let it die.

I say KILL B&B!!!! (for the humor impared, that is a jaded joke). Then get a production team of people who remember what Roddenberry wanted the shows to be about!

See ya
Tony

[BobMurdoch]

It will be an also ran because there are many in the heartland without the ability to get UPN. When TNG and DS9 were on, they were syndicated so ANY broadcaster could claim the show. How many would watch it if they could, but they can't?

Enterprise is also the weakest because it takes place in the "past". It's hard to get excited about ONE ship stranded in the middle of nowhere. Remember the big climactic battle with the Dominion at the end of DS9? Dozens of ships, intrigue, real drama, and a big gotcha when the Cardassians flipped sides at the end.

Voyager was one ship, Enterprise is one ship.... They need to get back to a Star Trek Universe that has a fleet. Maybe jump another generation past TNG. Tinker with the Romulons becoming the good guys on a more regular basis (you could have whole episodes devoted to strained Vulcan/Romulan interaction within the crew.) Get Roddenberry's family involved to get some of the purists back in the fold. Get the show off UPN so people can actually see it (OK, this last one won't happen, but we can hope. The rest of the network is targeting the urban market, and then you have one night where they are chasing the nerds like us.... it doesn't fit. (as shown by the dismal performance of every sci fi show they put on after Enterprise).

[SamC]

Bob makes a valid point. You could put the Super Bowl on UPN and it would be the least rated Super Bowl, because a significant number of people just can't get it. Further Star Trek is so at odds with everything else on the network that it gets no effective promotion at all.

As to B&B, they just don't get the concept. Shoot 'em ups, alternating with complex "dark" political thematics, alternating with outright current political/social preaching (not examination in a "safe" cloud of futuristic fiction). It just doesn't work.

The thing to do is to return to what made TOS and TNG great. An appropriate amount of action, clear "us vs. them" politics, and non-preaching examination of social problems behind a fictional cloud.

[Mike123abc]

It seems like "Enterprise" was doomed from the start. The problem with doing stories in the past is that so much of the history in the ST universe is already set.

The only story lines that have been good are with races like the Andorians which were seen only cursory in the other series, but can now be flushed out. Also along the lines of how did earth and vulcan get to be such close allies.

[Stosh]

Move it to Friday. Move it to Sunday at 2:00 am. Who cares. My TiVo will catch it for me and I'll watch it when I want. BWA HA HA HA.

Really? You are willing to watch it in SD instead of high definition? How sad.

[zztzed]

Really? You are willing to watch it in SD instead of high definition? How sad.
It's just TV, man.

[Ray_Clum]

No HD in my household, yet...

[waydwolf]

It seems like "Enterprise" was doomed from the start. The problem with doing stories in the past is that so much of the history in the ST universe is already set.

The only story lines that have been good are with races like the Andorians which were seen only cursory in the other series, but can now be flushed out. Also along the lines of how did earth and vulcan get to be such close allies.
I know you meant "fleshed out" but "flushed out" is ironically apt considering the Andorians were never a species one could really take a lot of interest in and flushing them out is probably a good idea.

They had so much going at the end of DS9 with finally achieving peace with the Dominion. At the start of their contact with the Gamme Quadrant natives, we got some interesting and quirky people. The hunters, the game players, and so on.

They might have done some examination of what happens to the Dominion with Odo's influence among the Founders. The Gem H'dar have been essentially freed from total mental and emotion slavery to the founders and can have their own ways. We never got to explore that. We never got to explore an entire quadrant.

And the Ferengi come from Beta Quadrant which has been much overlooked in the Trek and we don't know what their influence deep into the Beta Quadrant has done. How many hate them and are their enemies? How many cultures did they infect with their aquisition fever? Is it a technological free-trade zone?

We could have done soooo much with where we already were in Trek. Going back in time is like doing a Western series today. A bit out of place, well trod ground, beaten to death.

Trek isn't losing viewers due to Roddenberry's death or too many SFX episodes. It's losing viewers because it isn't remotely as adventurous as it could be. The whole contemplating their navels thing might be a draw to some, but the mass market gets enough of that from politicians, news media, and sappy WB shows that have reduced Superman of all people into a whiny angsty drip(and if Superman's got emotional problems and can't exactly cope with the expected bravado, how much better can mere mortals like us do? How depressing.). We don't need Trek to do it unless anyone thinks that the writers channeling Leo Buscaglia would be a bang-up draw.

In the episode of Stargate: SG1 where O'Neil was taken over by alien intelligence and first went to the Asgard world and met them in person, he made an excellent point that Trek once made to the rest of the universe: we're here, we're inquisitive, we ain't perfect, and we're not going away so deal with it or face the music for letting us go on our merry way.

That's the kind of thing Trek should be about. HUMANS, who are the only intelligent life WE know of here in real life, are what we are concerned with. Aliens in Trek are props,. story tools. They're not real. We use them to reflect human conditions to varying degrees. Trek should be about the human adventure of exploration it once was to some degree. But without the heavy-handed preachy crap that makes people go, "not again...".

[invaliduser88]

The Xindi story line + HD broadcast has me watching again. Even though last week episode sucked, it seems to setup something interesting for later.

Also, the two episodes before were great.

[dfergie]

The only episode ive seen this season was the one where archers short term memory was gone. I really liked it. Maybe since frasier is going off the air they could do a star trek with him playing the charecter introduced in the ng. The captain of a starfleet ship from the ng past in their present.

[Bogy]

Trek should be about the human adventure of exploration it once was to some degree. But without the heavy-handed preachy crap that makes people go, "not again...".
Wolf, ST:TOS was nothing if not full of heavy-handed preachy crap. :D Mixed in with the adventure of exploration.

[FTA Michael]

My two cents:

Rick Berman, who took over as ST's guiding force when Gene passed on, has said (I'm paraphrasing my memories here, so apologies if this isn't 100% accurate) that one of Gene's failings was that the crew always got along. In Rick's eye, little disagreement equaled little drama. So with each new post-Gene installment, we've got crew members with different agendas and divided loyalties.

As you can guess, I think this is a primary reason for the franchise's fade. It might take a little more work to introduce an external conflict to solve every episode, but it's quite doable. The main point is that ST is like comics -- wish fulfillment. We viewers project ourselves into a bridge officer's chair, and we want to be part of a friendly family team. We don't want to see two other officers whom we both like argue to the point where we have to emotionally side with one or the other.

I really enjoy Scott Bakula's Archer, although I'm annoyed at the character's inconsistencies from week to week, and his unrelenting driven "We gotta save humanity NOW" theme is wearing thin after over half a season. The real treat is John Billingley's Dr. Phlox, wonderfully quirky and warm while staying alien.

I gave up on DS9 once I was unable to follow the episodes (miss two weeks and you're toast). I gave up on Voyager earlier because (ahem) the whole dang premise was created by Janeway's screwup (Prime Directive, okay? Just go freakin' home, okay? But noooo...). But I've been watching Enterprise hoping it doesn't get too stupid. If it got canceled, I'd miss it. A little.

[Kevin G]

When DS9 was on, I was more interested in Babylon 5, a better space station show. When Voyager was on, I'd watch it when I could, but didn't care for Captain Janeway (her voice, her over-the-top toughness, etc.). I actually like this season of Enterprise.

The main problems with the francise are the utter lack of surprise and PC. In TOS they were always shocked with what was out there, and space seemed vast and mysterious where life was rare. In DS9 and on, even Enterprise, there are just so many races and nothing shocks them. This is especially bad on Enterprise - this is supposed to be their first real exploration into deep space and nothing fazes, pun intended, them. Plus, the whole PC garbage really is out of touch with TOS roots.

They also don't do conflict very well. You want crew conflict - Firefly was much better. Moral delimas? Stargate was pretty good at this.
They need to show different points of view, but not tell us which is the better opinion.

[BobMurdoch]

Here's the solution.... UPN should move Enterprise to Tuesdays at 8pm, and call Joss Whedon to keep Angel alive on UPN and air Angel right after it at 9. Boom, better ratings for both. Frasier is going away, and the American Idol contingent are not their demographic anyway and would be a good counterprogramming move.

[buzzdalf]

I'd much rather see a move instead of canceling it.
Get it away from Smallville.

[waydwolf]

Wolf, ST:TOS was nothing if not full of heavy-handed preachy crap. :D Mixed in with the adventure of exploration.
And it WASN'T the preaching people were tuning in for. They got that all the way through the sixties from all and sundry.

People don't want to be taught by writers who think they know better than the viewers. They want a fantastic escape from their own lives. It's gotten to the point that reality TV is all over because people find the REAL LIVES of OTHER PEOPLE more interesting than their own.

Star Trek and other sci-fi will take off again when it stops contemplating humanity's navel and starts going and doing things that everyday people don't and won't ever.

[TNGTony]

The ratings of the show say differently. When they started to get away from that type of story line is when the ratings started to go south.

See ya
Tony

[DChristmann]

Maybe it's just me, but I gotta think that the reason why Enterprise's ratings are so much less than any other Trek is because it's only like the 17th Star Trek series out there.

Yeah, TNG got good ratings, but there was 20 years' worth of pent-up demand for a new Star Trek series. I was two years away from being born when the original series was canned, so yeah, I was pretty jazzed about TNG. But in the past 15 years, there has not been a single season in which there has not been one Star Trek show or another. And that's on top of the 10 movies. The mere presence of a Star Trek series on TV is about as exciting as another season of Friends. It's old hat and it's not exactly going to thrill the masses, especially when you've got reruns of the original series on Sci-Fi, TNG on Spike, and DS9 and Voyager in syndication all at the same time.

Frankly, I think that Enterprise has been pretty refreshing, all things considered. It's more interesting to see a Star Trek series that really does take place on "the final frontier" for a change. Aside from Patrick Stewart's voiceover in the opening credits of TNG, there was nothing remotely "frontier" about that show. And it's more interesting to see a Star Trek show where the crew often has to say "we don't know how to do that," where in every other Star Trek show in the last 15 years, the resolution to every problem lied in reconfiguring the polarity of the tachyon flow or some other piece of treknobabble.

Finally, I think that to a certain extent, there's a certain cultish adherance to Gene Roddenberry's "vision" for Star Trek, and it tends to blind people to the fact that the list of episodes under Gene Roddenberry had more dogs on it than the Westminster Dog Show. A lot of the criticism of the newer series, no matter how good or bad the episodes' storylines are, pretty much boils down to "That's not how Gene would've done it," as if that were inherently a bad thing.