^Okay, I didn't know that. No need to be rude.
Audio books for ENTERPRISE? Likely ever?
- Thread starter ChristopherPike
- Start date
And here I thought all along that the show was cancelled due to poor ratings. You know, like other low-rated shows get kicked to the curb all the time.
If I've given offence, I apologise.
Saying to someone... "Oh, come off it" I personally don't consider an insult, just a way of virtually stamping my foot or tapping the table to make a point.
I've never liked that particular corporate decision to end Star Trek over night and I won't ever pretend that I do either. Simply because it didn't fit in with UPN's demographic and without considering alternate options first, moving to another station, reducing the production down to a few TV or DVD movies like Stargate. After the budget allotted to the last film, it's frankly ridiculous to say they couldn't afford something like that.
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How was it overnight? I seem to recall there was some very real concern the show might not last past its third season.
I liked to think that Star Trek was somehow above those "other" shows... You know, a forty-year legacy, its place in the modern culture with stuff like Klingon being taught at universities, "Trekkies" being mentioned in various dictionaries, presidents giving Vulcan salutes... Stuff like that. Oh, yeah, and every other brilliant geeky engineer at NASA being there because Star Trek made him/her wonder about "strange new world" when he/she was a kid...
Oh shoot, I'm getting emotional again...
The series The Guiding Light was on for more than 75 years, and was also canceled. Would it not be even higher above Star Trek, because of that?
Or would be on equal ground, meaning, low ratings = cancel city.
I mentioned more things than just legacy. But hey, why quote the entire post, when you can take just one bit and take it out of context?
Quite right. Fans wrote letters and sent postcards in the hopes they would relent and allow a fourth season. Turned out, that it had always been on the cards, based on a need for close to a 100 episodes for syndication anyway. Reading the blogs of prominent production staffers like Doug Drexler and John Eaves, the decision on a fifth season could have gone either way... Under the new direction of Manny Coto, who planned to bring Jeffrey Combs' Shran into the cast, ramp up the prequel aspect even more by showing the Romulan War... the more I hear about those plans leaked at conventions and through other former staff writers, the more tragedy goes beyond ENT fans being denied their show, but those who Trekkers who compliment it about Season 4. Another critically acclaimed year and those like myself would have faced less posts from those with an irrational hatred for Enterprise, that's for sure.
In terms of it ending overnight, maybe that's just my emotive recollection... and the wake that followed what was undisputedly the worse send off for any Star Trek series. Sure, the 40th Anniversary was a year and half away, but a series of one-off TV movies over that period (filmed before the sets were struck and destroyed) would have eased the sudden death of a franchise. Something akin to the BBC's handling of Doctor Who this year, with a handful of curtain call specials before the final end. As it turned out, the big occasion was celebrated in a really low fashion with what amounted to a yard clearance sale.
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I don't hate Enterprise. I just think it wasn't very good, for a number of reasons. (Do you allow for the possibility that there are positions between hating something irrationally and loving it?) Nor do I think Manny Coto would have been the guy to save it. The new Doctor Who became a hit by being its own thing, not by constantly revisiting past episodes.
Doctor Who is not coming to any kind of end, final or otherwise. David Tennant's leaving the show. But the show continues.
^ I had a good response to that... spent a good half hour composing it too.
That one time you forget to 'copy', is usually when BBS times out and redirects to a blank screen, after you've signed back in. All that lost effort and nothing on the clipboard to 'paste'...
Back to the drawing board...
That one time you forget to 'copy', is usually when BBS times out and redirects to a blank screen, after you've signed back in. All that lost effort and nothing on the clipboard to 'paste'...
Back to the drawing board...
They already have about a dozen (older) star trek books, and they probably have some pocket books already, so i'm sure they could get a license. But I'm not sure star trek is a big priority.
Also, the Star Trek XI novelization was narrated by Zachary Quinto. They also have some William Shatner narrated novels.
I took it you were saying it was Audible.com intending to create the all-new audios. To do that they would require a ST license, and just having "an objective to convert all books to audio form, so eventually they will" wouldn't be enough.
I'm well aware of the Quinto and Shatner audio novels. There were produced under license, by Simon & Schuster Audioworks.
http://therinofandor.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/i-hear-star-trek.html
When you say Audible.com "could get a license", it's not that easy. Simon & Schuster had/has an exclusive license to create ST abridged audios, and only recently did their first unabridged novel. Recorded Books previously did three unabridged.
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Well, like I said, I'm going on my memories of what people from Pocket have said here -- that the audio group is a separate group within S&S and they make their own decisions.
As for Ordover vs Palmieri... back before the relaunch, the DS9 books just didn't sell very well, or so we were told. That sounds a bit more likely to me than editorial favoritism. The story we got was that the series moved so much faster that the novels were always a couple of seasons behind and as a result they weren't getting a lot of traction with the fanbase. Even with the show off the air, I suspect it took a little while for sales to really pick up.
I'd love to hear Scott Bakula read something. I fancy his odd way of delivery. Jeffrey Combs would do a great job, too.
I must say I was quite surprised at the sparcity of Trek audio books, especially since audio books are so en vogue these days.
I must say I was quite surprised at the sparcity of Trek audio books, especially since audio books are so en vogue these days.
He... actually talks... like the... cliched exaggeration... of how Shatner talks.
I don't think so. 
Those are quite different, distinct ways of saying things. I never minded Shatner's mannerisms, anyway.
Those are quite different, distinct ways of saying things. I never minded Shatner's mannerisms, anyway.
^My point is that Shatner doesn't use all those pauses in his speech the way he's caricatured as doing, that the cliched "Shatner impression" doesn't sound that much like Shatner at all. But Bakula really does have a lot of long, random pauses in his speech, so ironically the bad Shatner impression is closer to Bakula.
If it's negotiated that way. The authors used to be offered first refusal, but audio deadlines became a problem, IIRC. The very early ST audios were not simultaneous releases. But it seems that once a few titles were abridged by George Truett, to be in shops at the same time as the book, and still sold as well as those abridged by the original authors, the process may have become more reliable to "let George do it".
Well, by then the audio sales for DS9 had slipped way down. IIRC. S&S Audioworks were supposedly very disappointed with sales of the audio of "The 34th Rule" (and "Millennium" Vol 1, which - me speculating wildly here - probably would have had two more audio volumes if the first one had sold solidly?), and this made them very wary of later DS9 novels, including the eagerly-awaited hardcover, "Unity", the first Pocket hardcover in a looooooong line of ST hardcovers to miss out on an audio version.
"The 34th Rule" would have informed S&S Audio's marketing decisions re "A Stitch in Time", since both had DS9 actor participation as author (and narrator).
I had an email discussion with John Ordover when the first "New Frontier" audio was announced. I wrote and suggested Suzie Plakson as narrator and he thought it was an excellent idea, but that he could only make suggestions to S&S Audioworks, and they didn't have to listen to him.
They ended up going with Joe Morton, who didn't even have a previous ST connection - the first time that happened, IIRC - and I was very disappointed with Morton's bizarre Calhoun delivery.
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