Would a series set after voyager have been more of a success

Than Enterprise?

As much as I liked enterprise, it didn't resonate with the casual audience as much as the other Treks seemed to.

We hadn't had a "traditional" trek show set in the alpha quadrant since TNG ended in 1994. With DS9 being set on a space station, and more concerned with War, politics and religion than exploration and discovery, and Voyager being well... voyager.

What I think they should have done, is gone back to what worked best, have a ship of exploration, and it could have dealt with the aftermath of the dominion war, as well as using new technology that voyager had discovered.

you could have brought back classic trek villains like the tholians and the gorn, maybe pushed out into the beta quadrent.

I would have moved with the times too, cast an attractive younger actor as the captain, someone in the vein of a michael fassbender.

 

A series with better writing in it's first two seasons would have been more successful. The TV world had moved on, and cripplingly slow starts and ultra-bland recycled plots weren't going to cut it anymore.

A prequel series was a great idea, it's just a shame it barely mattered that it was a prequel until the final series.

 

As the only "improvements," in and of themselves, not likely.

As demonstrated there, the downward slope of the dwindling ratings transcended each series individually. During those years, the whole TV part of the franchise was subject to the same overall trend, and it was down, down, down. Viewers were being shed all along in every series since TNG, at a steady, almost clock-like, rate.

There were shows in that time period that did have much more stable ratings (just look at any of the successful long-running shows), so it's not completely out of the question that doing enough things differently in a prospective new series could have recaptured some or all of the audience shed since TNG. As to whether Fassbender alone could have stopped the bleeding, I sincerely doubt that. The changes required to stop the bleeding were likely numerous, and at an even more fundamental level than you're contemplating, I think.

 

What Star Trek needed back then, was a fresh new concept. The original plan for Enterprise (having most of season 1 set on Earth, with the ship launching at the end and us actually seeing this brave new world we humans we're trying to build) was a great concept.

Sadly, the studio's execs thought different. Braga and Berman got a lot of shit for Enterprise, but a lot of the things they did were forced on to them by the studios, because they wanted the more 'traditional' Trek, with technology people could recognize from earlier shows and connect with. Sadly, that gave the hardcore fans something that actually didn't like. Meaning that, the 'traditional' Trek appereantly didn't work that well anymore.

So, short answer... no. A series set straight after Voyager and basicly giving us more of the same would have died a quicker death than Firefly.

 

Enterprise's premise sounded great on paper. Pre-TOS, more limits, no familiar races, no transporters, no phasers, blablabla. And what did we get? A KLINGON in the first 5 minutes of the show, a Vulcan Seven-of-Nine, phase pistols, and Archer getting BEAMED out to safety in the last 5 minutes. Woo-fucking-hoo. How different.

 

At least they didn't use the Ferengi, Borg, Romulans.... Oh wait

 

With the same people behind it, no. IMO, Berman didn't want to go any further after VOY because he thought that and the TNG movies was as far as Trek could go. Going backward (in time) was the only viable choice he probably could see.

I think it would have required someone else behind the wheel who could imagine Trek continuing forward--while at the same time making it both accessible and interesting to a wide audience--even if it meant getting rid of the tried and true concept of a Starfleet crew (Series V could still had a diverse crew of humans and aliens, but perhaps more casual and rougher than a Starfleet one, and with different motivations). Not so much "Star Trek meets Firefly" as "Star Trek: When Starfleet Ain't Here" I guess...

 

UPN wanted another TNG clone. The world did not. A new 24th century series would have faced the same issues of a studio going to the well too many times, changing network and studio leadership, producers struggling to find a fresh connection with audiences, and an exhausted writing staff.

 

But, again, both Berman and Braga have stated that a lot of that was forced on them by the studios, to make it more recognizable.

 

As true as that is, Berman and Braga still mishandled things with Enterprise. Studio-mandated or not, the TCW was what the pilot episode was essentially about and should have gotten more attention throughout the series than it got. Instead, there's only a handful of episodes and in the end nothing is resolved.

At least with Enterprise's first season it seemed as though some effort was being put into the show. The TCW was featured in something like four episodes and we had a couple developing a conflict between the Vulcans and Andorians. Unfortunately that all gets essentially ignored in the second, with the TCW and Vulcan/Andorian stories each only getting one episode and the rest of the season was meaningless standalones until the finale introduced the Xindi, and that was another story mandated by the studio.

I normally say that Berman and Braga are unfairly vilified by fandom, and for the most part I do believe that. However, Enterprise is a show they really dropped the ball on and it can't be a coincidence that the best season is the one where they handed the reins over to another writer.

And no, I don't think another 24th century show would have done better. As much as Berman's "franchise fatigue" comment upset fandom, there is truth to it. Star Trek had been running continuously for nearly 20 years on TV and in movies. It needed a rest. Berman and Braga have since said that if Enterprise had the kind of writing in the first two seasons that it did in the last two it might have done better, but I don't know. The last season in particular only really appealed to hardcore Trek fans, and I really don't see the ratings being any different for Enterprise's early seasons had the been handled likewise.

 

Well, there's no question that people were tired of watching the Star Trek that was airing, but I don't think that that's the same thing as there having been "franchise fatigue." Berman fatigue, maybe.

 

Nothing can go on indefinitely. Clearly Star Trek was reaching the limits of its endurance. If anything, they should have just called it quits when Voyager ended. The franchise was already losing steam, but at least they would have the dignity of ending on their own terms as opposed to running things into the ground with a new TV series that completely failed. Hell, we could very well have a new TV series either on the air now or in development. Maybe even one set in the Prime Universe.

 

Enterprise had lame stories and lame characters wrapped in lame execution, that's it. The stuff I mentioned here isn't a reason for failure, only from a Trekkie's perspective.

There is no such thing as a "franchise fatigue".

 

That's certainly true. The only characters that really had any kind of thought put into them were Archer, Trip, T'Pol and Dr. Phlox. And of those, the only one who really stood out was Phlox.

Hell, everyone else on the show seemed to just be

-Filling bridge positions.
-Tokens (minorities, foreigners)

 

Very good points, and ofcourse there is blame for Braga and Berman as well. I just believe that their original premise had more potential then what it ultimaty became.

 

It certainly had potential, but I'm not sure if Berman and Braga could have captured that potential, even without studio interference. The two of them were essentially burnt out on Trek by the time Enterprise came around, after all and there wasn't really very much interest outside fandom's inner circle of hardcores.

 

I disagree with this, and IMHO, will say that Enterprise was wrecked by UPN dying like it did (I'm sorry, but a group of fans almost being successful at raising money to keep the show going and a prominent U.S. Senator loving the show, plus also wanting it to come back, as well as great ratings while being rerun on SyFy [plus fans now liking it better than the current movies] is not a big failure by any stretch.) I'd also say that fans wanting it to be like BSG and going gonzo over BSG (despite its flaws) wasn't much of a help.

As for its bad episodes, these weren't any worse than the bad episodes of other TV shows, except for the fact that Trekfans can be hyper critical.

 

While I'm sure there are groups that do feel this way, I don't believe it's more than a small minority.

 

Point taken. However, the media focus on those fans at the convention in San Fran saying that STID was the worst Star Trek movie ever seems to suggest that these fans are in the majority more than anything else. For myself, something I saw at Fan Expo this summer made me take pause; a young teenage girl dressed up in the 24th century Starfleet uniform as seen on Star Trek TNG, which also suggests that younger people-the ones that the new movies were made to appeal to-still like the prime universe somewhat. Make of that what you will.

 

That is one of the best points made in years really, and we all now it but have never wanted to admit it. I mean, a bad episode is just that really, but fans have this way of going critical-mass when their high doesn't deliver. Perhaps I'm a minority, but if I don't an episode or movie, I just move on and watch what I did like.