Star Trek: Enterprise has been canceled

[Welverin]

I kid you not. Combs is awesome.

I just had another idea: A Garak spin-off. It would work. Seriously.

Star Trek: Tailor Assassin

Someone needs to start working on this immediately!

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

 

[Terath Ninir]

Actually, pretty much *everyone* involved might muck up a storyline. Even the actors, if they have some clout. Sure, some actors have good ideas and do come up with good additions to the story. Not all do. And when you get to producers, pray for mercy. The ideas *they* have can be truly painful to behold...

So, yeah, writers do get an unfair share of the rap for bad TV shows.

 

[Staffan]

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.

Other than the compression of the story arc in season 4 due to the possibility of not getting a fifth season, B5 was remarkably free from meddling. JMS has mentioned that the last note he got from his bosses about the show was some time in early season 2.

Now, Crusade... that's another story.

 

[Umbran]

Other than the compression of the story arc in season 4 due to the possibility of not getting a fifth season, B5 was remarkably free from meddling.

Yes, but that "remarkably free" did a number on the last two seasons of the show. As I've heard it told, in order to get the show to a good stopping place, they had to compress season 4 by about 25% - meaning that we lost something like five episodes, which is a lot for a plot-heavy show like B5. And that meant that season 5 was notably thin. While JMS made it work, it would have been notably better if he'd been allowed to run his course properly.

 

[Ranger REG]

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.

Not all writers but writers in collusion with non-writers: For example, Brannon Braga and Rick Berman.

Brannon Braga is a good writer if he had someone editing his work, but when he moved up to executive producer position, no one check up on his work. Any episode that have "Story By Brannon Braga" credit always end up as the crappy episode in VOY and ENT.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

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.

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.

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.

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. Which very definitely is covered by your phrase of 'meddling'. I agree that there are few good genre writers, but many shows, including STtNG deliberately avoided using the ones that are out there. I honestly could not enjoy Next Degradation because of the technobabble. At least most of the terms in B5 meant something close to what they were trying to say. (And I say that I didn't enjoy STtNG despite the fact that I thought that the actors were largely superior to those in the original series.)

I have not seen Battlestar Galactica, but as a child I remember really not liking that show either...

The Auld Grump

 

[Umbran]

I have not seen Battlestar Galactica, but as a child I remember really not liking that show either...

Well, don't let the old show dissuade you. The new show uses the same basic premise, and a few of the character concepts. But the concepts are given far more plausible background support, and the people are, imho, far more real than in the original show.

 

[Orius]

The first season wasn't decent, IMNSHO. The moment they showed a Klingon on Earth in the "Broken Bow" episode, I knew this is Braga's signature way of killing the show. You know what makes it worse for me personally? I gave him a second chance to prove me wrong after the VOY fiasco he made.

See, that never really bothered me. The TCW plot element was more lame than the Klingon by far. I know fans thought putting the Klingons in Enterprise was a bad idea, but I don't really think it was. Klingons are one of the most well known species in Trek, even the mundanes have heard of Klingons. So I don't think it was unreasonable.

 

[Orius]

IMO putting it back in time removed a lot of "magic wand" scenarios that I hated about TNG, DS9 and Voyager, but of course it caused continuity problems. The biggest one being the Vulcans... I simply couldn't stand them, especially T'pol. I would love to know why they chose such a good-looking woman to be a Vulcan series lead. They came up with all kinds of goofy ways to have her show off flesh and seduce Trip (in really stupid ways, too).

I never had a problem with Enterprise Vulcans being somewhat hypocritical. The Vulcan storyline from earlier this season also cleaned it up pretty well, though the plot twist at the end wasn't really what I was expecting. Personally, I thought Vulcans were better with some flaws than the more "perfect" Vulcans from classic Trek. However, all the TNA with T'Pol just because B&B thought she was hot, and because Moonves thinks sex = ratings was stupid. It's so obviously out of character, it's not really all that shocking that Blalock bitched about it (not helping that she's supposedly a Trek fan to begin with, and knows it's OOC).

 

[Orius]

This just goes to show how greatly tastes vary. When I think of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I think of:

Picard being tortured by Cardassians. "There. Are. FOUR. Lights!"

Picard returning to his brother's vinyard in France after being mentally raped by the Borg, and crawling in the mud, crying, at what they'd done to him.

Data creating a daughter for himself, only to watch her die when he is unable to save her from a critical malfunction.

And there are many more episodes besides those I've listed which were incredibly well-done. The writing on TNG has always been top-notch. And so has the acting.

TNG had its share of good episodes. 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.

In contrast, I've found SG-1 to be nothing short of a hack-job. Jack O'Neill doesn't have the leadership skills to guide a group of cub scouts through the service line at McDonalds, let alone command an "elite" expeditionary force across alien worlds, with the fate of the Earth on the line.

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.