Star Trek: Enterprise has been canceled

[Umbran]

Heh, strange as it sounds I am not blaming the writers (look what I actually wrote) I am blaming the people who chose those writers.

Well, you asked why they couldn't find decent writers for SF shows. I'm saying that in many cases the writers are just fine, but are hamstrung by other forces. Andromeda is perhaps the best example. Sorbo wanted a change in teh show - from that point on, the show was gonna stink no matter who was writing it, because Sorbo's vision is lousy.

 

[Orius]

Well, I think there's a few things going here...

First, really good writers are not the most common things around. You have to hunt them up, and find the right venue for them - a person who is a great writer for a mundane prime-time drama may not be suited for a genre show, and vice versa.

Not to mention that some — err make that most — primetime dramas and sitcoms tend to be rather uninspired in the first place. A lot of them have crappy writing too. Look how many new fall shows are off the air by January. Even shows that manage to survive often recycle the same batches of writers and not all of them are good writers in the first place.

And let's face it how many of the shows are really all that differnet? You might have different locations and different casts and characters but the types of shows are essentially the same, and have been te same since the beginning of television. With dramas you've got cop shows, hospital shows, lawyer shows, action shows, and family shows. Westerns used to be a drama staple, but are basically dead these days. Sitcoms you've got office/workplace sitcoms, the group of friends sitcoms and family sitcoms. Most the fictional television that's on the networks even today fall into one of these categories. After 55 or so years of television, really how much is there left to do?

Then comes the simple fact that the writers are not necessarily at fault for everything. Producers and network execs have a great deal of influence on what goes into a show. And sometimes they don't know what they are talking about.

I have no respect for producers. And I certainly don't think that most of them have any brains. IMO, the only time a Hollywood exec shows anything even remotely resembling cunning is when he's seducing a naive young woman:

Aspiring actress: I don't know, I really don't think I should have sex with you.

Exec: Nonsense, it'll help your career! You want to be famous don't you?

Aspiring actress: Yeah, you're right. Ok, I'll do it.

Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Babylon 5 and B5: Crusade, Farscape and Firefly all showed the figerprints of meddling (in various ways) by non-writers that cost the shows dearly. So, don't lay everything on the writers.

Well, I don't really know about Farscape and Firefly, but I certainly know what you mean in all the other cases. Hell, the original Trek series had problems with NBC meddling, and that was one of the reasons Roddenberry turned his back on the networks in the first place. And i can think of several other examples of promising Sci-Fi shows with good premises that were sunk by networks thinking they knew how to improve ratings. Anyone remember SeaQuest?

 

[John Crichton]

Someone needs to start working on this immediately!

Tough I suggest a name change, something more catchy, say Plain Simple Garek.

Works for me. I just want more of my favorite Trek character ever.

 

[johnsemlak]

Mass market crap. good riddance.

It may have been crap but Enterprise was practically the opposite of mass market, for TV. It was on a channel which many poeple don't get and hardly any people watch (the channel, let alone Enterprise).

 

[Michael Morris]

There was another Trek show?

Seriously - Bragga and his cronies are a symptom of a the much larger illness of Paramount. Can you name their last blockbuster movie? I'm pretty sure it's been nearly 5 years. Unless things are turned around Paramount will be the next studio to either die out or be absorbed by a competitor. Every project - not just Star Trek - that studio has touched in the last 5 or so years has withered and wilted.

 

[Ranger REG]

That assume parent company Viacom want to sell Paramount, Michael Morris.

Unless you hear of a takeover of Viacom by, oh I don't know, Time-Warner?

 

[driver8]

Well.. I too have mixed feelings. However, I really havent enjoyed Trek since DS9 went off the air. I dont know maybe its that familiarity breed contempt, or that the franchise has become too franchisey and formulaic. The actors have seemd to be the same, with too little chemistry. The performances are all good, and the stories technically well done.. but it all seems mostly boring. Theres no tension, or any sense of anything new happening. /shrug

Myself I never liked the prequel idea. I thought it aped too much the Star Wars phenomena and wouldnt pay off- and the shows creators made it worse by totally screwing with "canon" material.

I will miss Jeffrey Combs however. His Shram character is the best thing to come out of the series.

 

[mojo1701]

Well, you asked why they couldn't find decent writers for SF shows. I'm saying that in many cases the writers are just fine, but are hamstrung by other forces. Andromeda is perhaps the best example. Sorbo wanted a change in teh show - from that point on, the show was gonna stink no matter who was writing it, because Sorbo's vision is lousy.

Hercules. In. Space.

Aspiring actress: I don't know, I really don't think I should have sex with you.

Exec: Nonsense, it'll help your career! You want to be famous don't you?

Aspiring actress: Yeah, you're right. Ok, I'll do it.

I KNEW there was a reason why I wanted to go into show business .

 

[Lord Pendragon]

It's had its share of really lame episodes too. I think the worst was the episode from the last season that revealed warp drive was doing bad things to space. While an obvious commentary on environmental issues, it was a stupid episode in the first place because warp drive is a pretty central element to how Star Trek works in the first place.

I agree. It'd have worked much better based around a heretofore unknown world developing a heartofore unknown method of space travel.

I like SG-1 myself. It consistanly produces good episodes, and tends to do a lot of the same storylines that Trek does without seeming overly sappy or saccharine. I do agree that O'Neill can be far too flippant and silly sometimes to take seriously. That's really RDA's fault, although I don't see it as being bad enough to really kill the show.

I'm not attacking people who like the show. I knew a guy who liked the show a lot, and we'd occasionally talk about it. In the end, though, he wound up agreeing that the show isn't really well-written at all. That didn't invalidate him liking it. Personally, I like the show in small doses myself. I think the production design is fantastic. I like the idea of Earth pantheons being based on various alien races / Goa'uld factions, etc.

But to claim that SG-1's writing "raised the bar for sci-fi" strikes me as ludicrous. It does not have that kind of quality in anything other than design.

 

[Ranger REG]

But to claim that SG-1's writing "raised the bar for sci-fi" strikes me as ludicrous. It does not have that kind of quality in anything other than design.

I agree, yet SG-1 managed to entertain me than Enterprise's first 3 seasons. It does not make me feel like I have wasted one hour a week. For some reasons, I can stomach Colonel O'Neill's dry humor.