posted
This is just my opinion, but to be honest, I felt there were many problems with it.
First, the cast. Scott Bakula is a great and does a good job. But except for the doctor, no other characters stood out as important or interesting. Every previous Star Trek series had standout characters, each and every one.
Second, the writing. Scott Bakula did the best with what he had to work with.
Third, the lessening interest in Star Trek.
And that has many factors: (a) Weak series, like DS9. I mean DS9 was OK series, but not enough to draw those who are not hardcore fans. It's saving point was a great cast who like Bakula did the best with what they had to work with.
(b) The last two movies did nothing to feed the fire. I know this might sound harsh but I'd almost say they were weak even.
(c) Along with the decline of the franchise there have been many better things in movies and shows to come along the way.
posted
The upside is maybe Scott Bakula will have a greater oppurtunity to have a more active roll in the new Quantum Leap. I have many qualms about a new series not featuring him, but the original Quantum Leap series is my favorite TV shows of all time.
Posts: 1275 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I didn't like Enterprise. My pop-culture-prof friend, who did his dissertation on Trek, didn't care for it either. Supposedly it got better later on, but by then I no longer had cable.
I found DS9 engrossing. But when it had multiple episodes making one story, it was hard to follow if you didn't schedule your life around it.
posted
I never watched ENterprise. I used to watch The Next Generation when I was a kid, but I think I grew out of Star Trek. I started demanding more out of my science fiction. I watched a couple episodes of DS9 and Voyager but never found anything to compel me to watch them.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I never really got into Enterprise. I like Scott Bakula, the doctor and Tepal (sp?), but the rest of the cast sort fell flat. They have their moments, but I just don't like it enough to feel compelled to watch.
I also didn't like how they portrayed the Klingons. I know this is probably a minor thing, but in the original series, the Klingons looked different. Something happened that changed their appearace after the Original TV series timeline. Since Enterprise comes before the Original, I was disappointed to see post-Original series Klingons.
posted
I only watched one episode of Enterprise. It had Brent Spiner playing some sort of demented geneticist and, since I am a HUGE fan of Spiner, I ended up watching almost the whole thing. It says something about the episode that I didn't.
I'm also a fan of Bakula. I hope he gets something better.
I liked DS9. The interplay between the Bjorns, Cardassians, and the Federation got me hooked. I stopped watching it for the reason wbriggs mentioned. I couldn't schedule my life around it.
TNG started out awful but got better right up until Roddenberry died. Then, in my not-so-humble opinion, it turned hideous.
The original is still my favorite, though I'm not as big a Star Trek fan as I used to be. Watching the original series, I always got the feeling that the actors were just trying to do their best and have fun. Nothing more.
I especially got that feeling during "The Trouble with Tribbles"... one of my favorite episodes.
posted
The Star Trek universe died when Kirk died.
I hate to agree with Christine, but after a while you begin to demand more of your science fiction. Enterprise just didn't deliver.
The concept was great -- a look back at the early days of the Federation and Earth's movement into space. The problem it suffers is the same problem all such attmeps suffer -- we know, ultimately, what comes of this new foray into the unkown, so it's hard to feel any great sense of intrigue. I just don't care of the crew of the Enterprise get killed, because I know that the Federal will still come to be and Kirk will still take over as captain of the future Enterprise, yadda yadda yadda...
Trying to sustain a story out of what is essentially just a history is tough. I mean, look at The Silmarillion -- has anyone actually found that book FUN to read?
What made Star Trek work were the characters. The "magic" between Spok, Kirk, and McCoy is a hard thing to duplicate. DS9 failed. TNG came close, but had to literaly force it to get there, before it finally realized the best thing would be to simply let the characters develop their own way. TNG could have been good, but they forced too many things -- there was the year of Wesley Crusher (gag), the year of Data striving to be human (double-gag), and the year of Troi trying to decide whether she had the hots for Riker or not (final gag). Everything felt foced and contrived.
The only other series I truly enjoyed outside of TOS was Voyager -- at least it had a sense of exploration about it (which is part of what made the original series engaging). The problem with Voyager, however, was that once again the characters became stuffy and almost predictable. But to me it was the best of the rest.
Enterprise was a show I wanted to love. I watched it religiously for one year, then eventually just stopped caring. If I had the time I'd still watch it, but I don't set my clock by it. I think that's why it's going away. To last more than a few seasons, a series has to have real pull. Enterprise just didn't. Maybe it was the characters, maybe it was the writing, maybe it was the actors (I'm afraid I can't join the "Scott Bakula deserves better" crowd.), I don't know.
So I'm sad to see it go, and I have a feeling the whole Star Trek universe is going with it...but like all things, it seems its time has come.
posted
About the Klingons: there was a DS9 about tribbles; they time-traveled back to The Trouble With Tribbles episode. Fascinating to see Kirk & Spock on screen with the DS9 crew; the magic of digital remastering I suppose! Anyway, Mr. Worf was on a station w Klingons who looked like TOS Klingons. They didn't dodge the issue. The DS9 characters asked Worf to explain why the Klingons looked so funny, and he said, "We do not speak of it to outsiders." --!
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
wbriggs, I saw that episode and liked the mystery that it created, but that doesn't explain - to me - why pre-TOS Klingons would look like post-TOS Klingons. At least from an evolutionary POV.
Posts: 1473 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
It's sad, really. Star Trek was my gateway drug into science fiction. And now I can't think of it as anything else than scifi geared to the lowest common denominator.
You might be interested in finding the DVDs of a cancelled show called Firefly. It's a lot of fun.
posted
Firefly rocks; we mentioned it here last summer. I love that show and have the DVD's. The movie is coming out soon, I hope. I'll see it on opening night. Why does all good, original SF get axed? (Rhetorical question, I know this answer...)
Posts: 1520 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
I enjoyed Enterprise for a good while, but eventually got tired of it. I still have a crush on Patrick Sterling. The question is, what will replace it? Posts: 142 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I had high hopes for voyager when it started, but I found it lacked in the same way next generation did. I put some thought into it, and discovered why. The original star trek was about people doing things that affected people. They went to strang places and interacted with strange creatures and races. It all had to do with people. Next generation kept relying on technology to save the day, which was my major problem with voyager. Every week a new technology was pulled out of one of the writers behind to solve whatever needed solving. Enterprise was unfortunate enough to get the writers from voyager...and by the end of season 1 there was...oh no...time travel.
Can't say I watched much of the second season, just found I didn't care. Now, I can say I was a bit ticked when farscape was killed off...and it wasn't because of low ratings. That was a show based on people, ok, they were all insane, but it worked.
posted
Wow! Two comments here made me feel like I'm positively the most ancient cruster hereabouts.
Christine:
quote:I used to watch The Next Generation when I was a kid
I used to watch Star Trek when I was a kid!
Jeraliey:
quote:Star Trek was my gateway drug into science fiction.
My dad's membership in the Science Fiction Book Club was my gateway drug into science fiction. He eventually filled an entire closet, front to rear and floor to ceiling, with stacks of fascinating SF books.
posted
About the old-school Klingons vs. the "later" (and earlier, if the clone of Kaylass is anything to go by), EJS had a great link posted to that at some point. I have no idea where it was, though. Basically, there was a clique that tried to use genetic engineering to improve the Klingon race by using material from other races, the experiment came to a bitter end after years of war against the Federation. Or something like that.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I saw this coming at the end of last season when they moved Enterprise to the death slot on Friday nights and cut its budget. But honestly, it's time. I've watched so much Trek over the last couple of decades that I've gotten sick to my stomach of it. They milked the cash cow dry around the time DS9 ended, and Enterprise should never have come to be. The Trek universe is just worn out, and it doesn't seem to have any fresh stories to tell. Or if it does, the people in charge of it can't find them.
Either way, it's time to take a break. I hope we get more Star Trek again someday--a revival worthy of the one that brought us TNG and DS9--but for now, I'm happy to give it a rest.
posted
I have loved most of the Star trek series(and at least I liked Voyager.) But I have hated Enterprise, I don't know why either. Reading this I think I realize that I never cared about any of the chars. (Though Tpal(sp?) came the Closest.) I'd personally like to see something further in the future, perhaps 200 years after the TNG, DS9, and voyager timeframe.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I was a Voyager fan. Enterprise...not so much. I watched at the beginning of the show, trying to be supportive, hoping it would get better, but when they rescheduled it and put it against Smallville, and later against Stargate, it's like they were asking me not to watch.
On another note...
What's this about a new Quantum Leap? What's going on? What have you heard?
posted
<What's this about a new Quantum Leap? What's going on? What have you heard?>
Don't get too excited. It's a venture by the Sci-fi channel. If I remember correctly it may be a TV movie and then maybe a series.
If I remember the premise, Sam has a daughter he does not know about. His daughter goes leaping in an effort to look for him.
Scott Bakula most likely isn't going to be in it, or if he is, he might just make cameos.
Of course, my information may be stale and misremembered... you might go poking around the scifi.com website for more answers for what few answers there are to be found.
posted
I think that the fundamental problem with the Trek franchise is that they haven't been willing to expand their appeal much beyond techno-utopian futurists.
The original Trek had something for most everyone. STNG lost a lot of that, they over idealized the Federation as the epitome of the ideal society. DS9 flirted with the idea that the Federation itself could be a source of evil, and introduced other competing ideas of "good", even though they were heavily weighted towards the same ideas that formed the core of STNG. Then Voyager tossed the Federation out of the plot-line almost entirely and had the principles of Starfleet as more of an abstraction being implemented by a small crew.
But Enterprise went in the direction of being essentially about the establishment of the Federation. Instead of being something taken for granted the way it was in STNG or examined for flaws like it was in DS9, it is simply held up as the ideal towards which the show is moving and encouraging us to move. In a sense, the show becomes propaganda for the techno-utopian futurists at that point. It sort of crossed a line between being about the future and trying to sell that future.
At least, that's how I felt about it. The show seemed preachy, and even to the extent that I liked the message, it wasn't exactly entertainment anymore. That opening was great, but it wasn't an advisement of incoming excitement, it was an anthem for space exploration.
I think that if they did a Trek about a bunch of mercenaries running around the borders between the various great powers of the Alpha quadrent, it could be really great. But it's probably the last direction that Paramount would be willing to take Trek, which is too bad.
posted
What really makes me mad is that shows that lost their life in the 90s keep being rehashed, and new, fresh shows like Farscape get cancelled just when they get REALLY interesting.
Don't get me wrong, the miniseries was great, but another series would have been MUCH better.
I don't really blame the executives that much. I blame the people. They keep getting dumber and dumber, and keep going towards dumber and dumber shows (Stargate gets a spin-off? WTF?).
posted
I don't care. Go ahead and yell at me for realizing how painfully awful Stargate is.
Well, the painfully part comes from it still being on the air with Farscape cancled, but it's still a crappy show. I mean they had Thor in for Christ's sake! He wouldn't even be called Thor if he really was the guy who inspired the God!
I had no problem with the movie, but could they PLEASE get better writers?
[This message has been edited by ArCHeR (edited February 15, 2005).]
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