News Billingsley: Why Star Trek: Enterprise Failed

TNG had as much of a unique identity from Day 1 as Bill Bixby changing the spelling of his last name to blend into a new town and avoid Jack McGee.

 

Picking up on what you said, maybe the Xindi arc might have worked better if it had taken out another planet, with the Xindi not just going after Earth, but rather, the founding members of the Federation. This planet was supposed to be one of those founding members, but the Xindi take it out, and that way there could be the makings of the proto-Federation as each nation sends ships into the Delphi Expanse. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they don't, etc.

And the attack wasn't from a prototype, it was the weapon itself. However, there was a problem so the Xindi need time to figure it out to get it working again.

 

No need to apologize and no contradiction, I was just expanding on my idea of how to change the Xindi attack on Earth and didn't make that clear enough to differentiate it from what actually happened on the series.

 

Great videos thanks for posting them here.

 

I agree with him. This show could have been awesome. Well it was, especially seasons 1 and 2. But it could have stayed on air I think.

 

UPN was a dying network and that didn't help. Trek was a property that was no longer as glamorous as it had been in the '90s, putting ENT on the Sci-Fi Channel was very unlikely as was syndication and the ratings were not good. The deck was stacked against ENT almost from Day One so the fact that it survived for nearly 100 episodes before being cancelled says a lot for Trek's survival skills in a world of rapidly-cancelled one-hour dramas and sitcoms that fail to draw numbers.

 

Billingsley makes sense. I'm pretty sure if it were being made today we'd see the head/ass transporter mix up in all it's glory, if only for a fleeting second, seeing how TV has changed over the years.

Watching a few episodes of Enterprise before re-watching Discovery was great btw, felt like it was connected.

 

The opening score, change the song and it would have gone 6 seasons. Captains need to be confident, giving speeches looking at the floor and unsure of what you want to say lacks conviction that the audience is drawn in by.

 

Apparently he’s done that through rehearsal in front of the director and nobody flagged it... then on the first day of filming it was vetoed.

Probably a good thing.

 

Well, some of those issues that you mentioned here were not so relevant to European Markt. That's why Enterprise hat a noticeable fan community here and not too many haters (except die hard fans of TOS novels and nitpicking Trekkies )

Maybe it is me, but I never heard personally someone had issues with tthe title song, oh I know only a person who didn't like Scott Bakula as the first captain. I think he wouldn't have issues, if the captain written consequently in a developing process, learned his lessons and not so often went meanlingless throw backs and has better skills at diplomacy.

First of all, we don't have UPN here, so the networks did their jobs, what they have to be, and I think it was well known, it is a Trek franchise/prequel from the very beginning.
Second, we didn't have traumatas like you about 9/11. It was clear that was a big thing and people felt sympathy with victims and their relatives, but (I don't want to get political and open a discusion which clearly not belongs here) what had happened after attacks and statements/reactions of some US politicians perceived here very very mildly said "irritating and irresponsible". So, with this, perceiving of ENT is also very different in this context. For me the message of 3rd season is not "kill everyone and destroy anything without reason and mercy that you(!) think they are your enemies" , but " even it is hard and calls for victims, it is worth to fight for peace" So, at least for me 3rd season is not heroic epic or bland patriotic propaganda, crew is not perfectly working killing machine, they are all challenging with their selves.

What Billingsley said as insider how the things went with BB and overly caution of studios I cannot judge, but add my two cents:
Writing Trek for whole two seasons fast all alone is madness, and it is not surprising coming with old stories which has done already done, not even adopted, already done before (see Precious Cargo or Dawn or Judgment or ..) Plus, many already known but not used stories from other franchises (Unexpected or later Twilight).
If I am thinking about the reactions of some Trekkies, I can understand why the studios acted so cautiously, remember the reactions to Decon Chambers scenes or cry over sexed Trek (this Trekkies maybe never watched TOS or never realised who Troi or Kira or Seven were and or never watched how Crusher masturbated or Riker enjoyed to become sex slave or..) I remember how people react to "Dear Doctor", after all years we discuss here regularly, if Archer was mass murder. I can imagine how some fans react, if ENT showed a pile of human tissue after a crew member beamed. I don't remember anyone from my Trek people who was so real upset about Picard and Riker melting the skull of Remmick's at Conspiracy but later some of them went mad as Archer -not so graphically- tortured the prisoner at Anomaly. I don't know, if it is something to do with "Zeitgeist" but it is one of the mysteries about ENT, that I still couldn't solve.

 

I'm from Europe as well and I agree, I didn't hear about any, or at least much, hate for the show. Nobody I know had issues with the themesong, loads of shows from the 90s early 00s had popsongs as themesong. If anything the show did alright here. There were people who would have preferred a more traditional star trek opening theme, but nobody in my circle of friends hated it.

 

UPN generally sucked at promoting anything after 2001 that wasn't an idiotic reality show or stupid sitcom.

 

Little, I'd say. UPN was never a ratings juggernaut to begin with and Trek on TV had been in more or less a steady decline in the Nielsens since DS9 and VOY were still on the air. If you didn't know UPN even existed or your local area didn't have an affiliate it didn't much matter if the network ran lots of good promos or none at all. It was a badly-run network with largely ineffectual programming that never took off.

 

ENT is the most underrated Trek series by a mile. Aired on a failing network, got probably the lowest ratings of any series in the franchise and plagued by the early years of an Internet fanbase that tore it apart for being a prequel. It was never going to win at the time.

 

Someone mentioned in another thread thst the deck was stacked against ENTERPRISE from day one. They were 100 percent right.

It's frankly amazing we got 4 years and 98 episodes of the show given the 'network' it was on, the fact the president of that 'network' did not like STAR TREK, the internet blasting, the starting of shifting away from networks by the viewing audience... the list goes on and on.

A tribute to the STAR TREK franchise itself given the uphill walk on glass shards with no shoes while carrying 100 pounds of water at night with no flashlight.

 

I spent SO much time writing about Enterprise during its run on various forums. It had, still to this day, the most amazing pilot episode of any Trek show. Unfortunately it went immediately downhill. Jolene was in the shower by episode TWO!!! The temporal whatever guy they couldn't write for. The episodes just felt like constant rehashes of the prior shows, particularly Voyager. Each alien race was lamer than the previous one. The "birth of the Federation" stuff was boring; and the cout de grat was, you guessed it, Nazi's. Though this time they were also alien Nazi's. It was all too much. I'm not really sure what kind of actor most of these people were, as they did little after the show. Bakula was miscast, he simply was. The others were dull, immovable, and predictable. Was there a more typical and vapid villain than The Xindi? I mean, I LOVE Jeffrey Combs, and they managed to make me LOATHE his character. How was this mpossible?

Finally, after wishing for the series' merciful cancellation, Rick Berman woke up. He gave Manny Coto, Sussman, and even the Reaves-Stevens a shot at it. The result was season 4, which was finally watchable. Was it good? Ehhh, it was Star Trek. Sure it was fan service with all the TOS pre-history arcs, but so what? We got to see Mars, and the Klingon virus arc was great. Brent Spiner was a God send for this season. By the time it seemed they were moving in the right direction, the show was canceled. Ironically I was part of the very impassioned and vocal effort to save the show. Sadly, UPN was unmoved. They were an awful network, it's true, but the fact was the ratings weren't going in the right direction. In the end, it was sad to see it go. However, I don't think I can rewatch the first 3 seasons, and it's easily my least favorite series.