Why Did Enterprise End?
We have dueling views on the reasons why Enterprise failed to find a long term audience. First up, Rick Berman believes there is too much Trek on TV, resulting in oversaturation and, thus, a loss of audience. He also believes that the last Trek film, Nemesis, was a ‘fine movie’. Berman also says, ‘And it’s become like a family. It’s a very rare thing in our business, and we’ve spent a lot of time working together and learning together…”. Well, speaking for me, I think that family became inbred and insular and couldn’t, or wouldn’t, reach out for an infusion of new thinking. We kept getting rehashes of previous stories and more technobabble. To me this is what killed Enterprise, the lame stories.
And Jolene Blalock, a lifelong ST fan, agrees with me. Sweet. I’ll let Pete know when I get her phone number. But, in looking at this second article, Manny Coto’s comments also bother me. He says, ‘It’s a genre that appeals to a certain type of individual, and there’s not a lot of them’. I’m sorry Manny, I know you’ve done a decent job making Enterprise a better show in its last season, but you are wrong here. Enterprise pulled in almost 13 millions viewers for its premeir. I believe ST:TNG pulled in more than that on a regular basis. This tells me the audience is there for ST. What wasn’t there was a compelling show. Enterprise could have done a lot with the birth of the Federation, instead we got more time travel, and as a show arc for crying out loud. That’s why people left in droves, crappy stories. As Ms. Blalock says, ‘The audience isn’t stupid’.
Indeed.
Related posts:
- Enterprise Goes Digital
- Does Anyone Watch Enterprise?
- Enterprise Fan Money Refused
- Changes at Enterprise?
- Enterprise Season 3 Finale
Filed under: TV
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Bah, methinks your pants are on fire — no way, someone who looks as good as Jolene would be a “lifelong ST fan!”
Oh by the way, don’t you mean that you agree with her, as opposed to she agreeing with you, unless you got her to post here and I missed the comment…
One thing I think the Enterprise writers forgot is that ST is an ensemble show. While there certainly were plenty of characters in the show, they didn’t act as an ensemble and really gel together. That might be the fault of the actors, but I tend to believe that it was more a problem with scripts that focused on single character or issues with single characters.
The thing is that Berman and Braga are like the Emperor in the Emperor’s New Clothes. They refuse to accept the fact that something is wrong and they it might be their fault. They won’t accept any blame for it. Had it not been for the fact that Coto came in this year and started delivering on the promise of Enteprise (two seasons too late BTW), then I feel sure he (Coto) would be the Fred Frieberger of Enterprise. Frieberger came into TOS season three and many fans blame him for the final season being less than stellar. Not his fault that behind the scenes stuff hampered the show, including the long fuel between Shatner and Nimoy about who the star of the thing really was. I see a lot of this in Berman–he just won’t say, “Hey, we screwed it up that second year and drove away the audience.”
Or that he drove the movie franchise into the ground.
Berman needs to have done with him what they did with Roddenberry toward the end of his life…they need to put him in an office where he can send out memos but he needs to not have any direct involvement in the day to to day running of Star Trek ever again…
My two bits…
I watched the premiere with a friend of mine, and we were both disgusted by their pulling out the transporter that soon – that was premature ejaculation, in my view. They should’ve kept transporting humans in their back pocket until at least mid-season.
The theme. Although the backing montage is pretty cool, that theme is the worst kind of cheesy crap – it’s basically Cheap Trick’s “The Flame” with cookie cutter affirmation lyrics. Things were not improved by the sped-up tape in the second season, or the folky version for 3&4. The theme song, more than anything else, is what turned me off Enterprise.
The crew were alright, overall, except for Archer, Reed, Tucker and Mayweather (I guess four makes it not so much good overall). They were all decent actors and their characters were fairly well-constructed, but look at the crew on TNG: every one of them was instantly recognizable through some kind of immediately notable thing: LaForge’s visor, Troi’s empathic ability, Worf and Data being completely unique looking, etc. That worked, and gave everyone something instant to hang their brains on, and the only plain ol human male was Picard himself. Actually… I guess I’m forgetting Riker, but he sucks, so whatever.
Enterprise, conversely, had FOUR human males with no special dis/abilities on the main crew, and as a result the three besides Archer (who was easily discernable by his position and the fact that he’s Scott Bakula, and thus recognizable to SF tv fans) kind of blurred together. It took me half of season one to get straight that Oooohk, Reed is Worf’s counterpart, Tucker is Scotty, and Mayweather is… a fag.
Seriously, am I the only one who sees that Mayweather is a total closet case? I’m not saying this as a bad thing, at least, it doesn’t make Mayweather bad – it makes the producers bad, in that apparently having an openly gay character is still a little too crazy for the Star Trek universe. I guess we still need to keep those old gay stereotypes in the holster so that we have one thing to hate the gymnastically-inclined Suliban for. And wouldn’t that have been a great secondary plot for the episode where Mayweather goes back to his family’s ship? Instead of facing his father’s death, he could’ve faced his father himself and said he’s here, he’s queer… you get the idea. Maybe that’s why he left to join starfleet. But I digress.
So yeah, too many human males on the crew.
All that being said, I disagree about the writing. One thing I really like about the show is that in season three, they finally took a cue from Babylon 5 and developed a long story arc. Even if it wasn’t that well done (I do admit that I was not a habitual watcher of DS9 or Voyager, so perhaps what I’m seeing for for the first time is actually being done for the third), the effort alone is worthy of commendation, and even if time travel is old news, I still thought it was put together pretty well, for the most part. The spheres were a pretty cool idea, I thought. I’m really glad that whole nazis/Bobby Baccala thing only lasted two eps though. I’m about halfway through season four now, and I wish it could keep going. It seems to me that Enterprise was just hitting its stride when it got killed, and that’s a damn shame.
A guy with a British accent means you’re gay? My friends from the UK will be fascinated to know this!
:O
oh fuck! best is tng and vopyager
I must have missed “Star Trek: vopyager”.
:O
In my humble opinion I think Star Trek Enterprise was a fantastic show and was really getting going. If seasons 5-7 had been allowed to be made we would most likely of seen the Romulan wars and that would of been awesome.
I think the charaters could of been ‘opened up’ and we (as the audience) could of learned alot more about them individually as they did in the other Trek series.
It seems that Mr Berman and his staff thaught that Star Trek was becoming ‘over saturated’!!? Well since the beginning back in the 1960′s Star Trek has overcome this factor and with a few exceptions has produced quality television and movies.
I guess it all boils down to one thing – MONEY! Whilst Star Trek – The Motion Picture was’nt a particularly good movie it did make heaps of dosh. This then allowed ‘the suits’ to commission a sequel that was fantastic and this situation was enjoyed right up to 1987/8 when Star Trek- The Next Generation premiered and allowed the tv side of the franchise to flourish. This did not occur however in the movie aspect when Trek V – The Final Frontier did badly at the box office.
It was (the movie franchise) was again re-invigorated with Trek VI – The Undiscovered Country and slightly less so with Generations in 1994. A change of style with First Contact then allowed another success in all disciplines thus allowing a further production to go ahead with Insurrection whilst tv audiences were enjoying Deep Space Nine (which really took off after season 3) and Voyager.
The Next Generation crew were doing well on the big screen after 7 seasons of television and it seemed Star Trek was as formidable as ever.
Then came the new millenium and it seems that’s where the problems really started.
Star Trek- Nemesis was (again in my humble opinion) a brilliant film, fast paced and exciting. It would seem I am in the minority as it was panned by both critics and fans alike. This spelled termination of the voyages of the Enterprise-E on the silver screen and with the launch of the NX-01 Enterprise in 2001 it seems the curse had hit the tv franchise side too.
Enterprise was a good show and should of gone on but…..ratings plummeting and so on and so forth allowed the show to be cancelled in 2005 and a legacy that had spun nearly 40 years was in dire danger – followed by termination.
It is terrible that this occured and I for one miss regular new tv offerings from the world that Gene Roddenberry created and I just hope Paramount can get their respective act together and pull another ‘rabbit out the hat’ and resurrect Star Trek in whatever form on tv.
JJ Abrams’ 2009 film was good and I hoped it would re-stimulate Star Trek to the level once enjoyed by all but that has come and gone and frankly left very little impact. Ok – it made money, so what has transpired from that? We are all looking forward to a sequel some time in 2012 (hopefully) but as avid Trekker – I need more Star Trek!
We need another Bjo Trimble to rally the fans to demand more Trek! We need this fantastic legacy to boldy continue.
Quite simply we need something tangible to look forward to – lets hope by 2016 when Star Trek has it’s official 50th anniversary we are back on track with full phasers and photon torpedoes firing!!!
The motto ‘Live Long and Prosper’ has never been needed so much!
After watching the entire season back-to-back, I can say that I am truly disapointed that it was canned. I beleive it to be the best ST series. I hope they bring it back some day.
Prequels.
There’s the problem.
Screwing with the timeline, introducing things that weren’t discovered until later on…
Playing around with what we already know to be ‘history’, even if it is future-history.
I don’t mind a prequel movie if it is done well and ties in with the previous things we’ve seen without upsetting them.
I was expecting to get another TV series set after Voyager, but no, what did I get, some prequel to Kirk. Someone to replace him as the first captain of the Enterprise. I’m sorry that was the first BAD thing they did to turn me off.
The second was the theme song. Strike 2.
Don’t misunderstand, our Quantum Leap captain is a great actor, certainly would have liked to have seen him step up to fly the Enterprise-F in a century where Voyager has returned to Earth safely, but they threw him back in to the past, before Kirk, ruined a timeline, gave Klingons a full face and then tried to explain it away quickly, made contact with Ferengi before Picard and so on and so on to the point that I just couldn’t stand it.
Space… is big right?
Why are we seeing all the old things we’ve seen before?
And if we see something new and big that we haven’t seen before, then you’re going to screw with the timeline since no other captain has mentioned how big a threat to the forming of the federation these newly introduced species were…
All in all, BAD IDEA to do a prequel TV series. PERIOD.
Great actors, bad concept and use of them.
The other MAJOR problem with any TV series these days is not so much fans, if you play it and they like it they’ll tune in to it and watch it. The problem is the network and changing the day something is played, the time it is played, the order the episodes are played. This has been such a huge problem from the 2000′s until now that I personally can’t be bothered to follow shows around and instead just go out and buy the DVD series.
This also happened to Enterprise here. Besides the previously mentioned bad elements, not putting the show on in a consistant time slot on the same day each week also contributed to loss of ratiings.
JJ’s prequel movie ”re-launch” was tollerable since he literally destroy everything we knew about the timeline and spun the show off into another timeline so everything after that is going to differ to what we know in some way or another but at the end of the day, it’s still a prequel and instead of blending itself in to what we know, it went in the opposite direction. Sure if there’s another released I’ll probably end up buying it and adding it to my collection, but it doesn’t have the same feel that Star Trek once had.
I think they need to leave the past alone. Get over their Kirk interpretations or prequels to it and return to the present…. that being where we left off after DS9 and Voyager.
You know, to be totally honest, when I heard Star Trek Nemesis was coming, my first thought before any write ups were released was that it was going to be the Romulans.
I thought this is absolutely brilliantly titled… and a way to bring Sisko to the Movies to continue the franchise on the big screen.
I thought, the Romulans have discovered that the were TRICKED in to the war with the dominion and now they are back for vengence.
I thought, Nemesis, they actually could work a real good story in bringing in Nemesis’ of various series… we got Lore, we got mr Transporter accident Riker, god knows Janeway’s made a few enemies, so any number of these elements could make it in to a large motion picture revolving around the new Romulan war (I say new and it is relative yes)… Let’s face it, Star Trek Nemesis could have been HUGE and could have had Picard in as well as handing the reigns over to Sisko for the next movies to come as well as that movie…
But alas, none of my preconcieved thoughts came to fruition… and we got an ‘ok’ movie, a ‘good’ movie, but not a ‘great’ movie.
So what are Trekkies to do nowadays for their Trek shot?
Besides owning all the series, animated or otherwise and rewatch them as I have done, what else is there to come?
More of JJ’s blinding reflections and timeline altered trek universe (which to me I watch but I think of it as the Mirrorverse or an alternate universe).
We can’t rely on the guys who have been giving us Trek for so long now… after handing us an NX1…
Or can we?
If they are reading, please for the love of Trek continue where you left Voyager… from that stardate…. this will also make it easier to do cameos from Picard, Sisko, or Janeway…. without having to resort to time travel episodes.
Please for the love of Trekkies, STOP doing prequels and meeting aliens that weren’t even discovered until later treks.
If you guys do another prequel, oh the NX01 wasn’t the first ship, Acher nor Pike nor Kirk were the first captains, it was captain Bilbo on the BilboExpress Enterprise BB01 and it was on a PreWarp ship…. argh….!!!
You get the point.
THE ENTERPRISE tv series, shouldn’t have been created. There were some nice elements, far and few… but mostly it was just PAINFUL to see what we know being raped in front of our eyes on the big screen or just seeing the same old episodes that we have already seen, many times, re-done again.
RISA? really? Risa? We needed NX1 to go to Risa? That was your big finish for season one? >_<
Sorry I am currently re-watching Enterprise NX1 as when it first aired I was so horrified that I couldn’t watch it.
But I’m running out of Trek to watch so went and bought all four seasons of Enterprise NX1 thing and am forcing myself through them…
I’m still shocked and I bet Gene is spinning in his grave.
“Rick Berman believes there is too much Trek on TV”
Rick, there’s not enough Sci-Fi period on TV.
All we have here in Australia are either REALITY TV SHOWS, stupid TALENT QUEST SINGING SHOWS, or CSI, CSI: THIS, CSI: THAT, CSI: THISTOO, CSI: THATTOO, NCSI: THIS, NSCI: THAT, and every other acronym under the sun police drama/law and order type show. It’s not that they’re bad, but there’s like four hundred of them…
I don’t know what it is like in other countries but TV here in Australia is pretty pittiful right now.
If we don’t see Fat people trying to lose weight, then we see people trying to dance. If not that, then people trying to sing. Hell they even tried to blend them and get fat people to dance to lose weight. It’s getting beyond a joke with all the reality shows and talent things. No offence intended to fat people, just telling you that that is what they were airing for us here.
We
Need
TREK
Or at least some other Sci-Fi show.
They killed Sarah Connor Chronicles which was fairly good.
There’s literally no reason for me to turn on my tv right now other than to watch something I had bought myself.