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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LightPhoenix" data-source="post: 1229269" data-attributes="member: 115">Well, if it is their strategy, it isn't working.  Ratings for last week's episode were some of the lowest of the season (source <a href="http://www.trekweb.com" target="_blank">TrekWeb</a>).  I agree about the "old guard" factor, which I've found is true of most any community you'll find. However, I disagree on the rest of it.  The optimum for any show is to be gaining viewers as time passes.  Realistically this barely ever happens except on a small scale - over the length of the individual shows.  Even then, it's not frequent.  Keeping viewers is only one side of the equation, which amounts to nothing more than holding steady in ratings.  The reason focusing on this doesn't work is because almost universally all shows lose viewers as a season and entire run progresses. The more important part of doing this is attracting new viewers, which you address below and I'll likewise comment on below.  Well, as nice as that is to say, I think that it's much more complicated than that. For one, you have the social stigma on science fiction in general.  Sure, you have your Star Wars, and your Matrix, and so on, but those are the exception rather than the rule. For another, it's unrealistic to expect Star Trek fans to mellow out, any more than it is to expect Yankees fans to mellow out.  Fans are fans, and part of that is being inflexible and opinionated, no matter what you're talking about. And again on another level, you have a social prejudice against intelligence.  Now, I'm not saying all ST fans are intelligent - far from it.  But science-fiction has always been a genre associated with a certain degree of intelligence, and very unfortunately as a society we just do not strive for that.  I would say more, but that would be getting quasi-political.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Finally, you have a general level of cynicism in the Star Trek fanbase.  A lot of this can be attributed to TPTB over there are Paramount.  There are a fair degree of fans not satisfied with DS9 (myself not included), a large number not satisfied with Voyager, and then a good number that aren't too happy with Enterprise either.  There's a sour taste in the fans' mouths - perhaps because they aren't getting what they want.  I would like to think what they want would be solid stories and solid writing, and a level of sophistication and intelligence that I at least feel have been lacking. There's a lot more I could say on the topic, had I the time and motivation.  Suffice to say that simply saying the fan base needs to mellow out is a gross over-simplification of the factors which lead to the difficulty of Enterprise to pick up new viewers.  I think there's a lot more to it than that - some under their control, and some not. To end this little tirade, obviously I am one of the ST fan base too, otherwise I wouldn't be discussing this with any care what-so-ever. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I too am holding out some hope for tomorrow's episode.  At least for me though, it's reached the point where I expect the worst, and when I get something decent, that's great.  Which is a really sad outlook for anyone to have about anything - settling for decent when you should expect and demand the best.</blockquote>

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