UPN Renews 'Star Trek: Enterprise' 665
Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that 'Enterprise' has been renewed for a fourth season. UPN will make the official announcement on Thursday, but production executives already told the SaveEnterprise.com fan campaign the show will be back, and the show's actors have been ordered back to work. The only snag? It looks like 'Enterprise' might be moved to Fridays next year, and Firefly fans can tell you what a great place that is..."
Good news... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure some people would have revelled in an Enterprise cancellation... to them, I'd like to pose a question which always bugged me: if you don't like a show, you don't watch it, right? If you don't watch it why would it matter to you whether or not it is cancelled? It just seems so mean-spirited to wish for a show's cancellation-- over a hundred people lose their jobs as a result, and I'm not talking about high-paid actors, I'm talking about camera men, editors, janitors-- normal people. It's not fun losing a job, folks.
Anyway... on with the flame fest.
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
ST will continue to sputter along until they replace that ball of ineptitude.
Should have let his wife do it. Majel has produced some really good sci-fi shows since the departure of Roddenberry. IMHO, Berman can't get it done.
Ironic news, more like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I think the mooted Friday-night slot is ironic, the final nail in the coffin. Anyone remember where classic Trek was put by the network for its third season before cancellation?
Yup. Friday night. When its core audience was out doing other things, the sort of things young people, young adults, do... if they'd had demographics back then, the advertisers would've run away in droves. (As it is, they didn't bring in the demographics til much later - and classic Trek proved, in syndication, to be an ideal show for the advertisers to hit certain groups.)
As an ex-Trekkie, all I can say is... roll on those Friday nights, I'm waiting to see the
(Or, admittedly, a clip of Dean Stockwell on the bridge, saying something like, "Uhh, Sam... you're not really a starship captain...")
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, it's always been a profit thing, but once there seemed to be some soul behind it, and watching the juggernaut limping into entropy is just depressing to those of us who had any emotional connection to previous incarnations of the show.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why call for anybody to silence their opinions about anything? I'm not saying the show should be taken off the air by force of arms--I'm just saying I hope it's cancelled soon.
That opinion is no less valid than yours, "man."
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
(Of course, your scenario is more likely, but that's beside the point)
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Interesting)
The following is meant in a general sense, as opposed to talking specifically about this particular case:
- Lots of opinions are from people who either haven't watched the show, or only watched an episode here and there. That, in and of itself, isn't so bad. However, if I were to present the same complaint about a show they really liked, I'd suddenly be the ill-informed jerk.
- A good chunk of the opinions have been discussed ad-nauseum al
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are obviously plenty of people who DO like it
The only people who matter are the advertisers. They're the true customers of T.V.
Viewers control T.V. only through a distant and hardly measurable relationship between network's profits from ad-space, which might, just barely, be influenced by viewer's tendencies to purchase corporate brands when they've seen them on T.V.
So it is entirely possible that nobody likes it, and the advertisers perceive it to be a set of palatable stories to wrap around
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's improving. It's no longer the unmitigated disaster it once was. The episode a few weeks back where T'Pol was wrestling with her addiction was really nicely done, and it was the first one I ever thought that about. (The episodes since have been pretty good as well, for the most part.) I have to say, Jolene Blalock is sure nice to look at, but she's also really excellent as a vulcan, and specifically as a tormented vulcan
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, I'd rather not have to wade through pools of drek and offal when I want to indulge my craving for science fiction. I would rather have a few well crafted diamonds than a mountain of coal.
That mountain of coal exists because there are some people, myself NOT included) who will tolerate anything, no matter how badly made, just because it is science fiction.
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only good thing about Star Trek were the special effects
I strongly disagree with that statement. I wish I could search my history and find the previous lengthy post I made about TNG (it was a gem) but I let my /. subscription expire.
In any case, how can you say the only good thing was the effects when you had moral issue based episodes like these (off the top of my head in 5 minutes at the office):
I'd also point out the good storyline based episodes:
Those are just the TNG episodes that I can name off the top of my head (yes I'm a Geek -- but I don't know the stardates anymore). DS9 had quite a few standout episodes too -- though I think TNG tackled the moral issues more often.
Star Trek under Gene Roddenberry was always about the story. Under Paramount it's about T&A and appealing to the unwashed 16-24 male demographic.
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, naming that many episodes of a show long gone "off the top of my head in 5 minutes at the office", you seriously need to get outside more.
I get outside all the time now. I never got outside when TNG was on. To this day I can tell you the episode name with about 10-15 seconds of footage from anywhere within the episode.
Yes, that's kind of sad but that's how much I loved that show. It was (in my minority opinion I'm sure) the best overall television show ever. I believe that the last episode was t
Re:Good news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Shaaka - When the walls fell!
I loved that episode, too, but I always wondered how a civilization with such a specific form of language (i.e., referencing past historical and mythical events) could have ever developed beyond the stone/bronze age?
How could you teach a course in warp propulsion dynamics, for example?
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Funny)
Shaaka - When he soiled himself.
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Funny)
Bulinko walked together in the den with Linia.
The sons of Bukits stared and they went to the house of Mirkos.
Shizuko - when Tirbuk got Tewerkal in the Sea of Lurkis.
(translation: when the subspace fields takes the shell shape, and their frequency is 16 millicochranes, then the warp factor will surpass the next integer number and the energy intake will stabilize)
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
I loved that episode, too, but I always wondered how a civilization with such a specific form of language (i.e., referencing past historical and mythical events) could have ever developed beyond the stone/bronze age?
How could you teach a course in warp propulsion dynamics, for example?
Answer: You can't. You can't really even have a language/species that works/thinks that way. It just doesn't stand up to any kind of rational thought beyond the episode.
But nevertheless, it wa
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think they were really using standard language semantics - I think that was the Universal Translator recognizing certain language constructs. One can draw a parallel to people with aphasia (... in Wernicke's area? Broca's produces gibberish, wheras Wernicke's produces sentences that have word structure, but no grammatical meaning), with recognizing the form, but not the function.
Their own language semantics would probably have been made highly efficient for describing metaphors (like a suffix for possession, etc.).
If everything is stated in terms of historical reference, then you're recursing infinitely; you have to use a historical reference to say what a wall is, and what the action "to fall" is, and so on.
Not really - what humans do is use functional representation in vocabulary - we create poor representation of thought in words, and use those words to describe things. In other words, we feel the emotion of failure, and create the word "failure" - this isn't a perfect thing, though, because there are an almost uncountable number of variations of the emotion of "failure", and so you'd need an uncountable number of words to represent all of those. Or you just accept that it's a poor representation, to limit it to a finite number. Note that I'm not describing a grammatical structure here - I'm describing a vocabulary.
So, as cultures evolve, their vocabulary grows and grows, far past what's necessary for basic grammatical structure. We use words to expand our vocabulary (English, in particular, has an absolutely huge amount of words that most people never use, but which are very important if you want to express subtle nuances in language) - in that example, they used metaphors. So they still might have some basic grammatical structure, and a very basic language, but the complicated subtleties are expressed metaphorically.
It's not crazy, though some would say that it's unnecessarily complicated, which is probably true. But some could also argue that Kanji - Oriental pictographs - are also unnecessarily complicated compared to an alphabet, but they survived as well.
Clay Aiken!!! (Score:3, Funny)
I KNEW Clay Aiken was a Trekkie!!!!!!
That would explain his apparent asexuality and lack of biceps.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good news... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Interesting)
As for Friday nights, well, that's what TiVo is for, right?
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're attracted by the flashy graphics and dime-a-dozen half naked chicks. Fine. Some of us want that, and a decent storyline too. The fact that people like you are in the majority are the main factor contributing to the suckiness of trek
Re:Good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not. It's far worse than nothing.
With nothing, they might take the time to rethink things, start hiring actual writers instead of using the same two people over and over again, think of fresh new ideas instead of the same tired old time-travel and deus ex machina tripe, and just generally scrape off the freakin' barnacles and come back later with a good show.
Enterprise is crap, but what's worse is it's crap that's preve
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really better than nothing? The fact is, a bad series can have an impact on the entire franchise. The fact that Enterprise has garnered lackluster ratings - at best - and has had very few really good episodes from a creative aspect makes the chances of more Star Trek (whether it be TV or movie) less attractive to both viewers and Hollywood executives.
To pull the argument that cancelling the series puts people out of work is rather pathetic actually. Does that mean that we should keep trash on the air, just because people worked on the series? Imagine a schedule full of shows like "The Mullets" just because people didn't want to cancel the series because it would put people out of work... *shudder*
Re:Conservation of Television (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not quite a zero-sum game.
Re:Good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Theme Song (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Theme Song (Score:2)
Boy do I wish this stupid complaint would finally die.
Re:Theme Song (Score:2)
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Insightful)
Dammit, now Gin and Juice will be the theme for the next series.
DAMN YOU BERMAN!!!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Theme Song (Score:2)
Re:Theme Song (Score:3, Insightful)
What's more strange is that they knew how much people hated it and not only didn't replace it, but somehow made it even *worse* in season 3 by adding a drum track.
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Insightful)
All good art is controversial.
--RJ
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Informative)
I agree it is good, but it wasn't written for the series.
It was on the Patch Adams soundtrack in 1998. (They re-recorded it for Enterprise and I like the re-recording better than the Rod Stewart version).
Re:Theme Song (Score:4, Insightful)
Rod Stewart gets paid for each time his version of the song is played. He costs MUCH more than Russell Watson does...
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll admit I loathe it less than I did when the show first started. However, it's still a dumb song, and it actually got WORSE with season 3. Not because of the "jazzing up" of the music, but because they changed the premise of the show!
The musical style doesn't fit Trek. The video sequence, however, fits perfectly. That's good. The first half or so of the lyrics do sort of fit the idea for the first two seasons. (Vulcans won't stop us from getting out in to space like my daddy wanted me to, yee haw! --John Archer) The second half ("faith of the heart" repeated over and over again) is just plain dumb, and also doesn't fit Trek.
But then Berman decided that exploring and defying the Vulcans by being all exploration-like "wasn't big enough". So instead, let's throw in a terrorist plot (it's the in thing) and then rip off a 1980s computer game (no one will remember it) after wasting a third of season 2 building up the Klingons and doing nothing with it (because it's like, we can say Duras a lot, Trekkies know that name, right?). And then we keep the theme music that no longer is even tangentially related to the overall plot arc of season 3!
That makes about as much sense as anything else Berman has done. That is to say, none. Fire Berman and his team and hire some REAL writers (DC Fontana, Diane Duane, Diane Carey, Peter David, all old Trek hands who "got it"), and maybe Trek will start not-sucking again.
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, the dreadfull theme song does indeed capture the mood of the series perfectly
Re:Theme Song (Score:3, Interesting)
Babylon 5 - Christopher Franke
Battlestar Galactica - Stu Phillips
Buck Rogers - Stu Phillips
Doctor Who - Ron Grainer
Farscape - SubVision
Firefly - Josh Whedon
Futurama - Danny Elfman
Red Dwarf - Howard Goodall
ST:DS9 - Dennis McCarthy
ST:Enterprise - Diane Warren
ST:TOS - Alexander Courage
Stargate - David Arnold & Joel Goldsmith
I Wanna Be a Cowboy Neal - Boys Don't Cry
Re:Theme Song (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an FAQ out there for the cartoon series Transformers. If you read the FAQ, there's a question about an acronym (the term of it escapes me at the moment) that defined an argument that would never disappear. There were two characters that were physically very similar, just different colors. (Rumble and
Every time somebody mentions the Enterprise theme-song, I think of that FAQ. Why? Because the color of that particular Decepticon doesn't mean a damn thing to the show or the comic book. Everybody's right, yet it still goes absolutely nowhere. It's just some point for people to butt heads on.
Re:Theme Song (Score:3, Funny)
Friday night? What are they, crazy? (Score:5, Funny)
What UPN should do is just send small cheap TV sets to every collectible card shop in the country, so fans of the series can watch the show while playing Magic: The Gathering in the back.
While they're at it, they should send some Red Bull and Cheetos, too.
Re:Friday night? What are they, crazy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Friday night? What are they, crazy? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Friday night? What are they, crazy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Friday night is probably about just as bad as any other night on UPN.
Personally I never believed they would cancel it anyway. Lets face it, UPN without Trek would be like Comedy Central without John Stewart. Its their identity (well that and Moesha spin-offs)
I remember when UPN first started braodcasting, they pimped Voyager hard for about 6 months before. I don't remember anything else from that first season lasting more than a year or two. I'm not a trekker by any means but I was watching DS9 at th
Re:Friday night? What are they, crazy? (Score:3, Insightful)
X-Files was on Friday nights for several years and it slowly moved from cult favorite to mainstream hit. If I recall correctly, the reason it was moved to Sunday was to make room for Millenium, and that was 3 or 4 years after X-files debuted.
Woot! (Score:2)
--
New deal processing engine online: http://www.dealsites.net/livedeals.html [dealsites.net]
why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll be the first to admit that Enterprise doesn't live up to the standards of TNG or DS9 but IMHO Season 3 has been much better than the first 2 seasons.
Re:why? (Score:2)
Re:why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who knows--maybe it's just gonna take Enterprise another season to pull out of the tailspin...
Incredibly common with Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Conflicts with the Romulans and the Borg didn't heat up until about season 2 or 3, although Q did have his fair share in the beginning.
DS9 had a more successful start, but didn't get really interesting until Season 3 when The Dominion were introduced.
In every Star Trek series there seems to be a counter-evil they perpetual battle, ie.
Star Trek TOS - Klingons
Star Trek TNG - Romulans
Star Trek DS9 - The Dominion
Star Trek Voyager - The Borg
And with Enterprise it's the Xindi, but you start to feel the redundancy. Trying to out-evil Cardassians or the Borg is going to prove challenging.
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Four Words:
Jadzia Dax
Kira Nerys
(or alternatively)
Terry Farrell
Nana Visitor
Wonderful! (Score:2, Funny)
Friday isn't the worst of their troubles (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Friday isn't the worst of their troubles (Score:3, Informative)
Fridays at 10? (Score:2, Interesting)
UPN has holes on Friday night... (Score:5, Informative)
Boston's WSBK "UPN 38" which airs "Friday Night Baseball" Red Sox Games nearly every Friday night in the season.
Connecticut's WCTX "UPN 8" is part of the Mets broadcast network.
Seattle's KSTW "UPN 11" is the flagship of the Mariners broadcast network.
In short, it's hard to get anything to work on UPN Fridays during the start of the TV station because about a quarter of the network just plain falls apart on any given Friday night due to baseball coverage when its in season.
How am I going to program my VCR now (Score:2)
Re:Forget Andromeda... it's gone now (Score:3, Informative)
Taken from www.andromedatv.com (The official site)
Kevin Sorbo Excited About
Andromeda's Fifth Season
Kevin Sorbo expressed his enthusiasm for the fifth season of Gene Roddenbery's Andromeda Wednesday, saying that he is looking forward to working once again with the program's tremendously talented cast, and fleshing out new adventures as Capt. Dylan Hunt.
"I think the show is going in a great direction, and that the
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
But first, a celebratory all-night Magic: The Gathering game! Bring on the dancing girls! (oh, wait...)
It will still be 11:00 Friday for me (Score:3, Interesting)
So it is shown usually at 11:00 pm Friday, but sometimes the Fox station moves it without telling anyone. Not only that, they replace the "next episode" teaser with ads for their own WWE shows. I hope someday that CBS shuts down UPN and moves the couple/few UPN shows worth saving to the regular CBS schedule.
This Fox affiliate actually showed the UPN show "Dilbert" only at 1:00 AM Sunday morning. I kind of wanted to see that one.
However, in an attempt to "UPN it up..." (Score:5, Funny)
Come join the cerebral fun on UPN!
Re:However, in an attempt to "UPN it up..." (Score:5, Funny)
Re:However, in an attempt to "UPN it up..." (Score:3, Funny)
What choice did UPN have? (Score:3, Insightful)
The real answer is simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sci-fi fans in general... (Score:5, Interesting)
OR
You have them where they go on too long and thus should have been cancelled long ago. Thus you have purists that only recognize seasons 2,3,5, but not 4 where they went to that alternate dimension, what were they thinking!.
I guess this can be said for most shows, but it seems to apply more to scifi for some reasons. I think really only Babylon 5 went out on the perfect note, mainly because thats when it was supposed to happen.
Re:Sci-fi fans in general... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, there are shows which seem to avoid the problem. DS9, for example, was great. It started out ok, got better as it went along, and ended right. It wasn't too early, but it didn't drag on. Farscape was pretty much the same, from what I gather (I stopped watching it regularly around the end of season 2).
Second, since I stopped watching TV, I'm a much happier SF fan. Bad books and movies are much easier to ignore, and much easier to find. Good movies are hard to find, but you can substitute good books until the next Minority Report, or whatever floats your boat, comes along. Neither one has to be, for lack of a better word, subscribed to the way TV shows have to be, so it's a much better experience overall. DS9 and Farscape were good, but the pain of the medium just isn't worth the chance of finding something equally good in the future for me.
Damn (Score:5, Funny)
original Star Trek killed by moving to Fridays (Score:3, Informative)
hey, good timing! (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, plus Enterprise should hire more babes - the babes of those two shows (especially Lexa Doig, the hacker 'Cowgirl' herself!) would certainly improve ratings.
When the 'new Trek' concept was being worked on, it was apparently down to two concepts - the 'pre-Federation' concept (which we got), and a more military-themed one about a Starfleet strike force of some type, with lots of fighting. Let me tell ya - Enterprise got a lot better right after they added more fighting (and a military team aboard Enterprise, which they've totally wasted so far). It seems obvious that they chose the wrong concept.
Though I do like what they've been doing with T'Pol, but they've basically eliminated Hoshi and others this season, which is too bad. I certainly like this collection of characters more than those of any of the other Treks, as a whole. DS9 had a _really_ annoying cast of characters. (Okay, I loved Ezri just too damned much!)
Swell (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it's cool to knock Enterprise, but I've been knocking Berman since long before it was cool.
Enterprise's ratings weren't good enough "just exploring" (and as they were doing a poor job of it I'm not surprised), so instead they spent a third of season 2 building up a relationship with the Klingons only to drop it at the last second to run off on a blatant 9/11-inspired warmed over mini-epic. (And stolen from a 1980s Star Trek computer game for the Commodore 64 called "Star Trek: Rebel Universe".) Everything about it is predictable, from the plot right down to the characters involved. And of course there's no tension, because we all know (since it's a prequel) that Earth isn't going to be destroyed.
Of course, Berman isn't pitching to people who know Star Trek, he's pitching to 20-somethings that the beancounters like to pitch to. Of course, those people don't watch Star Trek BECAUSE it's Star Trek. Don't alienate your existing fan base to go after a new one that doesn't want you.
Of course, after this season's finale, then what? Go back to exploring? Yeah, that will help ratings now that they've said that exploring "isn't big enough". Throw in another huge season-long pseudo-epic plot thread to further destroy the timeline? I don't know what they're going to do.
On the one hand, it's Trek, yay, there will be more. On the other, this isn't the Trek I grew up on (TNG and reruns of TOS), and I wouldn't greatly miss it.
Although moving the show to Friday night means that it won't be lasting much longer. That is how NBC killed the original series, after all.
Re:Swell (Score:3, Insightful)
It worked again in the 1980's with TNG's first few seasons because it had been 20 years since the last time.
However, by the end of TNG and certainly the beginning of DS9, and now with Voyager & Enterprise, Roddenberry's vision is boring. There's only so many times you can rehash the same old morality plays.
Berman suffers from a similar problem. When he and Braga first started writing DS9, they wrote the Dominion storyli
Try merge the storyline with the TOS timeline. (Score:4, Interesting)
In short, try to channel the story to the TOS timeline.
Friday Might be good (Score:3, Insightful)
Not just Firefly fans (Score:5, Interesting)
Today with VCRs and TiVos abounding fans of the show will probably be able to catch it no matter when it airs, but still, couldn't they have found a better time slot? Seems to me it's sort of like being in a half-empty movie theater and choosing to sit in the worst seat possible.
My solution to Fridays... (Score:3, Funny)
PVR
Actually, that's three words... but seriously, it's the only way I get to watch Enterprise as it is...
Not a big problem (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't every self-respecting 'Enterprise' fan just TIVO it anyway?
Why do stations try to cancel good shows? (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefly didn't float my boat either, but I seem to recall it getting good reviews.
Farscape was constantly gaining new fans for its four year run. And I paid really close attention to the events surrounding Farscape. It was the show that pulled SCIFI out of relative obscurity among cable stations, their most popular show, yet they tried like hell to get it canceled. They jerked its time slot around when they stopped liking it, surrounded it with lackluster programming (Invisible Man being an exception), and as far as advertising goes, did their best to pretend it didn't exist.
Looks like the same thing is happening with Enterprise. The devoted fans (basically a captive audience for advertisers, read: A GOOD THING) saved the show it appears, and yet the network is screwing up its time slot to drive its popularity down. If you don't want to air the show, just fsckin' say so and send it to another network.
Is there a petition out there to bring back the NextGen crew for another few movies? ST:TNG was some of the best Trek ever.
renewal (Score:4, Interesting)
I for one am glad that Enterprise will be renewed. I've never owned any ST merchandise much less been to a convention, but I have watched all the Star Trek series and I liked having them around.
I agree that Enterprise is not perfect, but show me a Star Trek series that was?
TOS had more than a few god-awful episodes (e.g. And the Children shall lead, Miri, Charlie X (title?).
TNG started out very shakily IMHO as the actors/writers settled into the characters (e.g. Picard wasn't quite yet his reserved and commanding self, and Worf just snarled at everything); and for the length of the series you had many fans screaming about any episode which Troi or Wesley starred in.
DS9 was pretty good, though I think the situation is somewhat comparable with Enterprise in that the show, IMHO, has a stronger and more interesting supporting cast than the 'starring' captain.
Voyager had a lot of well-known problems.
Perfect shows are rare - enjoy your favorite parts of this one and hope the other parts get better.
Good (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd also like them to take a more X-Files approach, where you mix the continuing storyline with single standalone episodes. I think they've concentrated too much on the Xindi (?). If you don't like that storyline, the whole season's been a wash, and while I like the storyline, it's just been going on too long.
Temporal Cold War? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lack of fan interest (Score:4, Informative)
I think it was lack of fan interest. The Tal..er Suliban did not impress anyone the way they had hoped, so they were pulled. The same thing happend with the Ferengi in ST:TNG. Roddenberry expected them to be the major adversaries of the entire series, but once these snarling barely-sentient Perot's saw the light of day no-one was impressed and they too were pretty much phased out until they were re-tooled for DS9.
The ST series I want to see. (Score:5, Interesting)
My gripe with Enterprise (Score:5, Insightful)
What Enterprise needs to do is hire some of the writers from Farscape and wrest control away from the ideologues who think the show is there so they can propagandize.
Re:My gripe with Enterprise (Score:4, Insightful)
> leftist propaganda.
The two examples you cite aren't left-right issues. Interventionism vs. isolationism is usually polarizing, but liberals and conservatives alternate positions regarding this issue depending on the circumstances. You need only to compare the circumstances surrounding the first world wars and the current nid for expansion of the Pax Americana. In that sense, maybe Enterprise writers are just isolationists, and not necessarily liberals.
On the other hand, things like "righteous" violence, pre-emptive strikes, and torture are routinely used and even glorified on current Trek episodes. I'd say pacifism, opposition to institutional violence and abhorrence of first-strike policies are fundamentally liberal, and Trek tramples on these ideas regularly in favor of a more bloodlusty rhetoric.
The AIDS analog was clearly pro-secularist, but again that doesn't necessarily make it liberal propaganda. Even conservative champ Bill O'Reilly, when talking about his stance as an independent, talks about secularism and liberalism as separate (evil) causes, and I think he's essentially correct regarding their separation. Take Turkey - they have a secularist government that is also pretty conservative (right-wing) on the authoritarian axis.
Re:My gripe with Enterprise (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, we matter when it comes to what goes on in the world. Europe is stuck in this fantasy of their own continued relevance much the same way that many in Britian didn't understand that their empire was gone after WW-II. Europe believes in limp-wristed diplomacy because they live in an artificial bubble created by US military power. the same could be said of much of the first world. If
Re:Enterprise will be back (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enterprise will be back (Score:2)
Those who've been watching this season would disagree with you. I remember similar things being said about DS9 in season 3 as well.
Re:Really has become a great show (Score:3, Insightful)