And They Say B&B Aren't Listening: Warp 5 in the Opposite(?) Direction! (2 Viewers)

[Rex Bachmann]

Time for our weekly Star Trek fix:


SciFiWire: "Enterprise Alters Course? "

dateline: March 4, 2003 12:00 p.m. ET

I assume this comes in lieu of the cancellation anticipated by a few of the wags here. Like I said before, "No way!"

 

[Andrew Grall]

I don't know... With these guys, this probably means more of what annoys us about the show...

 

[Jason Seaver]

You just know this is what they're thinking:

"You know what this show really needs? More of the 'Temporal Cold War', especially if Daniels is involved!"

 

[Jeff Pryor]

This show needs more than a 'slight revision'. Let's see, maybe B&B have in mind a plotline where the Enterprise gets thrown into another quadrant of the galaxy and tries to get home. Yeah, that'd be so original.

Anything stamped B&B will ultimately become worthless. The revision this show needs is new talent across the board.

 

[todd s]

Hey, how about showing how the Federation begins to be created.
Here are a couple of other suggestions:

-Give them shields. Even though the energized deck plating seems to do the same thing. I mean almost every species/ship they encounter has it. Why can't they figure it out or get it from someone.

-Instead of trying to bring species that were first seen in TNG's time (ie-Borg, Ferengi). How about showing the Tellarites.

-If my observations are right. They have never lost a single crewmember. Even when a chunck of the ship was blown away by a Romulan mine.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Wasn't this discussed a few weeks ago in another thread - or am I deja vu'-ing again?

Glenn

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Is Daniels played by Berman or Braga's nephew or something? Why the hell would they keep bringing him back (if they are)?

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Jeff Pryor wrote (post #4):

[excerpt from the full interview, which can be found in issue #143 of Star Trek Communicator]

The audience the networks, studios, and their advertisers want just isn't there, I think, either for a regular Star Trek tv series or a theatrical series. What we have, instead, seen as successful are programs geared to the (ir)"reality"-tv/tabloid-tv generation ("X", "Y", "Z", or whatever it's up (down) to now):

Joe Millionaire, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?, The Bachelor(ette), Meet My Folks---some of the preceding are laughingly referred to as "who'-downs" now on the late-night comedy talkshows---, Survivor, Reel Life, Blind Date, Fear Factor, Are You Hot?, American Idol, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, The Mole, The Osbournes, Cops (with eye-witness "steady cam" constantly rolling), The Amazing Race, The Family, . . . . uh, need I go on with the pukesome parade?

And, yes, some will aver that these are part of a "short-lived trend", like the game-show "craze" of about two years ago. Okay, while that may be true as far as it goes, what it says to me is that this is the audience that meets the demographer-marketeers' and the advertisers' requirements for being worthy to woo and that anything produced these days that wants to attain or claim "big-time" status must shape itself to meet that audience's tastes. And you see what those tastes are ("T & A", game/role-playing, pointless thrill-seeking ("Let's eat a bug!"), etc.). (Such a characterization is going to offend many, but so be it.)

Notably, during the final week of "sweeps" month---February 26th, to be exact, UPN's Twilight Zone-knockoff featured an episode called "How Much Do You Love Your Kid?" ("A twisted television game show with a smarmy host (Wayne Knight) puts the young son of a woman in harm's way with surprisingly unexpected results.") with a highly predictable outcome, despite the network advertising blurb. This episode, which more properly would have appeared, if at all, on the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents or the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, was aimed at exactly that "game/role-playing" (ir)reality-tv audience (the holy "coveted demographic" of the modern American marketing industry). UPN had no such series on offer but, in effect, projected one into its scripted programming, hoping to draw a chunk of that same audience.

The conclusion is almost unavoidable that this---and this alone---is the population that the networks and studios wish to draw their viewership from and will cater to at all costs. It seems to me that the multitudes that find this kind of fare a regular attraction is probably not ever going to be the audiece for "staid" drama that's meant to make you THINK. ("Science fiction" is a fiction of IDEAS, first and foremost.) Paramount, its marketeers, and its advertisers surely know this.

So, Mr. Briggs is correct that there is a huge fan "turn-off" among both the serious and the casual fandom of Star Trek, and, yes, first and foremost, the reason is the quality of the offerings. But more disturbing, and harder to deal with in the long run, is the fact the mass audience for filmed entertainment (small- and big-screen alike) has changed to the point where Star Trek can, in all probability, never again attain anywhere near its former following among succeeding "generations" ("X", "Y", and "Z", that is) of audience pools. The attention spans aren't---or don't seem to be---there. And the expectations of entertainment are so substantially different from what they were even when TNG was launched.

As the quotes above show clearly, retaining the aging---and aren't we all?---fanbase is far less of a priority---I'm tempted to say it is no priority at all in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue---far less of a priority than the seemingly unquenchable thirst for the ever new, ever younger audiences. They and their tastes, not the old "fuddy-duddies", will be catered to, whether it's five years from now or ten years from now. Makes no difference.

In sum, half of "the problem" is Star Trek production (writing, acting, directing, effects, etc.), the other half is the audience. That's something the long-termers ("old-timers"???) like us are just going to have to come to grips with, I think, or else we will be in danger of being "in denial".

 

[Will_B]

On a semi-related note, the declining viewership of Enterprise has has some effect on the action figure line from Art Asylum, too. Though there's been two waves of figures out to the stores thus far (have you seen the recent "Away Team" line with the characters in the copper colored spacesuits? Incredible detail, transparent helmets, the works, truly incredible figures), the remaining characters appear to be destined to be "exclusives" - funded in part by NewForceComics.com and only sold there. That is, New Force is taking the risk of comissioning Art Asylum to go ahead and make enough figures for them to sell, and that's it. (If you're in the UK don't worry, some are headed to the import stores, too.)

But the ToysRUs' and Targets didn't seem to want to risk a third wave of Enterprise figures, not with so much worry about the ratings. Which bites, because unless the New Force exclusives sell well (they're coming one at a time), we may never see the whole crew in plastic form!


Personally, I think the show will become huge sometime. But not if it heads into Voyager's stupid delta quadrant. I can just see them thinking "well, the network is cutting our budget, and we've got all these delta quadrant costumes in the Voyager warehouse... I think I've found a way to save some money!" Hopefully not.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

I think Trek needs to get younger and more dynamic: since Kirk, every captain has gotten older, stodgier, and more conservative and the plots have gone in that same direction - there's no sense of daring any more, of taking things, dare I say "where no man has gone before".

I think they got too comfortable with maintaining a vision rather than forging their own part of it. No one has picked up the slack since Roddenberry passed and, as a result, the vision is dying and taking Trek with it.

Just a thought I have.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Picard was definately older and more conservative than Sisko. I can see a case for Janeway being the real hardliner out of all the series though.

 

[Blu]

They really need to start laying the foundation of the Federation. How did they make the alliances that they had in TOS? When did they start building more star ships?
How did the Klingon war start?
How did the Romulan war start?
When did the first Enterprise style of ship get commissioned?
There are a thousand different directions they could take this if there was a ounce of creativity there!

 

[RickGr]

Its not just Trek folks. All TV/movie space SF is in a down period. Farscape, Firefly, EP II, Trek all have underperformed.

 

[Jack Briggs]

The present regime can either adopt the think-out-of-the-box approach and, as their critics have urged, "take some risks." Or they can dig deep inside the box and try to figure out what made original Star Trek tick. What caused the magic back in 1966? (Part of it, of course, was its uniqueness for the era.) Or they could do both.

But the bigger problem is that the current regime thinks it's thinking outside the box when, in truth, they are not. That's why we get so many of those decontamination-chamber scenes. Proof positive that B&B are unaware that TOS itself made a big deal about being "adult" and "sexy." (When promoting Star Trek during the summer of 1966, NBC kept referring to it being "the first adult science-fiction series." We'll ignore The Outer Limits for now, but that was the tack.)

I keep going back to what I've been saying: The true-blue fans are angry and at the point of giving up, while the casual onlookers think they've seen it all and are no longer interested.

By the way, last week's Enterprise came in dead last in the Neilsens. Yet, as that TV Guide article noted, the series is in no danger of being cancelled. That, of course, opens another line of argument: If B&B think they have job security for the next five years, where's the incentive to improve, declining ratings or no?

They can say all they want to magazine interviewers. They already have said this sort of stuff. And now they can't even fall back on some mediocre holodeck-based plot to mark time.

Prognosis: Trek will be around for a while, but it will look and smell like a corpse.

 

[Adam Nixon]

Its not just Trek folks. All TV/movie space SF is in a down period. Farscape, Firefly, EP II, Trek all have underperformed.

With the exception of Farscape, every one of those franchises had quality control issues. Episode II had pacing problems and a failed love story, Firefly had great dialogue complete with an SF universe that made no logical sense, and Star Trek: Nemesis was an inferior attempt at a remake of The Wrath of Khan.

As for Farscape, there was no decline in the audience. It was a cancellation from a network that didn't feel it had enough of the show's potential profits. A bargain bin reality show is going to take its time slot in April.

But take heart -- Fox may have had success in Joe Millionare, but Married by America flopped the week after. Ironically, CBS, with NO gimmick programming, is the ratings leader. There is a lesson to be learned there, and hopefully other networks will realize that reality programming has zero longevity.

 

[Jason Seaver]

I guess Survivor has lasted long enough not to be considered a gimmick any more, huh, even with the boys vs. girls angle?

 

[Morgan Jolley]

There is a lesson to be learned there, and hopefully other networks will realize that reality programming has zero longevity

Most "reality" TV shows are extreme game shows, like Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Mole, etc. The only true reality shows are things like Joe Millionaire, The Bachelor/ette, etc. because they have real-world ramifications and the people on the show are not vying for some prize of monetary value.

 

[Adam Nixon]

Crap -- I totally forgot about Survivor. My soap box has been smashed.:b Oh well, at least they aren't inflicting anything new on us.

 

[Paul E. Fox II]

Adam,

Actually, you soapbox should still be intact as CBS did not have ANY Ratings Stunt programming. Yes, Survivor is a "reality" show, but it was already on the CBS Schedule to air when and where it did. It's also been on CBS for a few years...right?

All of the other networks, including my own..., had many and varied ratings stunts. CBS did not.

 

[doug zdanivsky]

They really need to start laying the foundation of the Federation. How did they make the alliances that they had in TOS? When did they start building more star ships?... There are a thousand different directions they could take this if there was a ounce of creativity there!

Agreed. Like I say, there was absolutely NO reason to come way out of left feild with this Temporal Cold War garbage. It has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that happens in the original series or the later incarnations. Why God? Why?

I was hoping for a while there that they'd cut their losses and just let it die, but no..