Boy bands in space!

[Michael]

I would bet good money that the "she" was Dawn Ostroff, president of UPN at the time.

Ah yes, this seems likely. From what I’ve read of her it really did seem like the show as it was just didn't fit into what she wanted to do with the network.

However, I think @Tosk has is right when he says that …

There's enough blame to go around.

I don't think there’s any one person or circumstance to point to for Enterprise’s demise. The TV landscape had changed significantly by the early 2000s, and as much as I came to love the show despite its shortcomings, it always seemed obvious to me that it just wasn't the right kind of approach to a successful show anymore. There’s so many aspects that played into that, not the least of which was probably that the producers seemed kind of creatively burned out after all the TV Trek they had already made at this point. And I don't think it helped that it was airing on a network that seemed to strive for a different demographic with a roster of completely different kind of shows.

This all makes me realize how much I miss having some sort of authoritative behind-the-scenes book chronicling the making of the show. It’s a shame we never got a tome like Terry J. Erdmann’s excellent Deep Space Nine Companion for the production histories of both Voyager and Enterprise. There’s bound to be SO many stories left untold and too many rumors and half-truths going around where it would be cool to have more contemporaneous interviews on.

 

[F. King Daniel]

So, my husband and I were discussing Enterprise one evening at home, as one does, and I was regaling him on the topic of the crazy idea UPN had to entice viewers into watching Enterprise by having different guest boy bands on every week. I was really lambasting the idea, beyond the actual unwanted suggestion itself and on into the logistics of the whole thing. Where we these new crew members supposed to come from? Where were they supposed to go? How were they supposed to arrive and leave a ship that was faster than any other ship in Earth‘s fleet travelling farther afield than any Earth ship had ever traveled? And where were they supposed to fit a stage big enough for four or five young men (to dance?) in the mess hall while providing room for the audience?

My husband lovingly and patiently weathered my tirade and then, smilingly (smirkingly?) suggested an option covering all but my final question which I had not considered. An absolutely absurd option, yes, but an option I had not considered. According to my husband’s proposal, there would be a group of shape shifting aliens on board the Enterprise, observing the crew of Earth’s first warp five capable starship. They would use their superior skills at masking their presence to blend into the background until they ran that week’s experiment (exposing the crew to a boy band performance), wipe their memory of said experiment, transform into different people, integrate back into the lower decks crew and then await the chance to run the experiment again (as all good scientists must).

Absurd, I know. Very glad my husband was not able to run his tongue-in-cheek thought experiment by UPN executives back in 2000. I’m running it by you though, dearest fellow Enterprise fans because, well, I had to share. What do you think of the flotsam floating about in my husband’s brain?

Have a version of 10-forward with a holographic stage. Boy Band of the week gets played because 2000's pop culture has become huge again in the future.

They could do it on Strange New Worlds or Starfleet Academy now and it could work.

 

[Sumire]

This all makes me realize how much I miss having some sort of authoritative behind-the-scenes book chronicling the making of the show. It’s a shame we never got a tome like Terry J. Erdmann’s excellent Deep Space Nine Companion for the production histories of both Voyager and Enterprise. There’s bound to be SO many stories left untold and too many rumors and half-truths going around where it would be cool to have more contemporaneous interviews on.

This is why I enjoyed The Delta Flyers podcast so much, especially since they brought on so many guests to talk about their memories of making Voyager. It was interesting to hear how and why things played out as they did (even if enough time has passed to leave some things unclear). I had such high hopes for The Shuttlepod Show but that tight focus on Enterprise did not coalesce and as I rather doubt a documentary of my beloved little overlooked show will ever be made… well, we may never have a definitive answer for many of our questions.

@Ragitsu, that film still makes me think Trinneer, in particular, looks like he could be in a boy band… Now there’s an idea… They wanted to tantalize viewers so much and, say what you will about Enterprise, they did have a very attractive crew compliment… you see where I’m going with this?

Yes! Why didn’t they create a boy band out of Scott Bakula, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery and Connor Trinneer?! (Sorry John Billingsley, I think you’re cute as the dickens, but signs point to production not viewing you as beefcake — you did escape gratuitous sexualization by and large though so, some solace?) Sure, they have varying ability levels but don’t all boy bands? (I, by the way, am a card carrying SMAP fan club member and have seen New Kids on the Block in concert more than once, no disrespect to boy bands. ♥) Slap some Auto-Tune on them and we’ll be right as rain! Forget importing random boy bands from hither and yon, we have our own homegrown one right here! They could have performed the theme song!

Admittedly, I am matching my husband at tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery but… Imagine if they had to fund some of their training themselves. We don’t know when precisely funds stopped being a thing, right? So they halfheartedly threw together this group. (Sorry Travis, they did nothing with you being a Boomer, I’m stealing you back to Earth, you can have a childhood and early adolescence in space that is very rarely referenced, okay?) Just to make ends meet. Very embarrassing. Ends up taking off much more than they planned but now it’s been years, these fads come and go, they’ll just never mention it again. But then! Someone on the Enterprise gets ahold of the recordings! You just have to share that bounty with the whole crew, right?

Let’s go all in here! This random careening through space in the first two seasons is costing a lot. Why not have a reunion of (insert boy band name here) in space?!? Beam their performances back to earth for all their nostalgic fans! Now we have serious scientists in space who for in universe reasons have to pause every once in a while and pose with a tool and an artistically placed oil smudge on their face. You know what? I’m recruiting T’Pol, Hoshi and Phlox here, just to round it out. T’Pol, in particular, being absolutely flummoxed by the idea but stoically and doggedly learning about fill lighting and where on the ship one can find the best acoustics (it’s, surprisingly, Travis’s sweet spot, tight fit but the recordings do sound amazing). Phlox finding the whole catering to human sexuality highly entertaining and pitching in wherever he can. Hoshi, we’ll make you a very gifted albeit thus far amateur photographer/videographer. It’s all coming together!

 

[Dukhat]

I don't think there’s any one person or circumstance to point to for Enterprise’s demise. The TV landscape had changed significantly by the early 2000s, and as much as I came to love the show despite its shortcomings, it always seemed obvious to me that it just wasn't the right kind of approach to a successful show anymore. There’s so many aspects that played into that, not the least of which was probably that the producers seemed kind of creatively burned out after all the TV Trek they had already made at this point. And I don't think it helped that it was airing on a network that seemed to strive for a different demographic with a roster of completely different kind of shows.

Oh, I agree completely. The premise was a bad idea, the decision to just make the show TNG/VGR Jr. was a bad idea, and making a show like that at all on a network like UPN was a bad idea. Nobody, whether it be B&B or the UPN suits, even knew what the show was even supposed to be about. They had no idea what to do with it other than just make it more of the same, and UPN was not willing to take risks and do anything other than keep the status quo, which was obviously not working and getting stale. Instead of changing the show's format, they instead tried to make it 'sexier' to pander to the lowest common denominator of fans. (Of course I realize that there are people here who loved the show. I am honestly not trying to insult anyone who enjoyed it, but let's face it: some of the decisions were just outright ridiculous. Decon gel lathering? T'Pol as masseuse? C'mon, UPN, give me a break.)

Have a version of 10-forward with a holographic stage. Boy Band of the week gets played because 2000's pop culture has become huge again in the future.

They could do it on Strange New Worlds or Starfleet Academy now and it could work.

No it wouldn't. It would be the stupidest thing ever and no one would take the show seriously with boy bands playing every week. @Tosk is correct. Unless it was meant to add to the plot of the story in some way, it would be nothing but filler to promote a bunch of shitty bands that the show's audience isn't tuning in to see.

 

[Summer Solstice]

So, my husband and I were discussing Enterprise one evening at home, as one does, and I was regaling him on the topic of the crazy idea UPN had to entice viewers into watching Enterprise by having different guest boy bands on every week. I was really lambasting the idea, beyond the actual unwanted suggestion itself and on into the logistics of the whole thing. Where were these new crew members supposed to come from? Where were they supposed to go? How were they supposed to arrive and leave a ship that was faster than any other ship in Earth‘s fleet travelling farther afield than any Earth ship had ever traveled? And where were they supposed to fit a stage big enough for four or five young men (to dance?) in the mess hall while providing room for the audience?

My husband lovingly and patiently weathered my tirade and then, smilingly (smirkingly?) suggested an option covering all but my final question which I had not considered. An absolutely absurd option, yes, but an option I had not considered. According to my husband’s proposal, there would be a group of shape shifting aliens on board the Enterprise, observing the crew of Earth’s first warp five capable starship. They would use their superior skills at masking their presence to blend into the background until they ran that week’s experiment (exposing the crew to a boy band performance), wipe their memory of said experiment, transform into different people, integrate back into the lower decks crew and then await the chance to run the experiment again (as all good scientists must).

Absurd, I know. Very glad my husband was not able to run his tongue-in-cheek thought experiment by UPN executives back in 2000. I’m running it by you though, dearest fellow Enterprise fans because, well, I had to share. What do you think of the flotsam floating about in my husband’s brain?

I think your husband's idea could have worked for about a season before there would be an episode where the crew discovered they were being experimented on.

Yes! Why didn’t they create a boy band out of Scott Bakula, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery and Connor Trinneer?! (Sorry John Billingsley, I think you’re cute as the dickens, but signs point to production not viewing you as beefcake — you did escape gratuitous sexualization by and large though so, some solace?) Sure, they have varying ability levels but don’t all boy bands? (I, by the way, am a card carrying SMAP fan club member and have seen New Kids on the Block in concert more than once, no disrespect to boy bands. ♥) Slap some Auto-Tune on them and we’ll be right as rain! Forget importing random boy bands from hither and yon, we have our own homegrown one right here! They could have performed the theme song!

Admittedly, I am matching my husband at tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery but… Imagine if they had to fund some of their training themselves. We don’t know when precisely funds stopped being a thing, right? So they halfheartedly threw together this group. (Sorry Travis, they did nothing with you being a Boomer, I’m stealing you back to Earth, you can have a childhood and early adolescence in space that is very rarely referenced, okay?) Just to make ends meet. Very embarrassing. Ends up taking off much more than they planned but now it’s been years, these fads come and go, they’ll just never mention it again. But then! Someone on the Enterprise gets ahold of the recordings! You just have to share that bounty with the whole crew, right?

Let’s go all in here! This random careening through space in the first two seasons is costing a lot. Why not have a reunion of (insert boy band name here) in space?!? Beam their performances back to earth for all their nostalgic fans! Now we have serious scientists in space who for in universe reasons have to pause every once in a while and pose with a tool and an artistically placed oil smudge on their face. You know what? I’m recruiting T’Pol, Hoshi and Phlox here, just to round it out. T’Pol, in particular, being absolutely flummoxed by the idea but stoically and doggedly learning about fill lighting and where on the ship one can find the best acoustics (it’s, surprisingly, Travis’s sweet spot, tight fit but the recordings do sound amazing). Phlox finding the whole catering to human sexuality highly entertaining and pitching in wherever he can. Hoshi, we’ll make you a very gifted albeit thus far amateur photographer/videographer. It’s all coming together!

This would be hilarious, I would totally watch it.

Perhaps the galaxy is very musical: every time the crew arrives on the planet of the week, they have to listen to the best boy band on the planet perform their latest hit song. It's just a normal part of first contact.

 

[Sumire]

Perhaps the galaxy is very musical: every time the crew arrives on the planet of the week, they have to listen to the best boy band on the planet perform their latest hit song. It's just a normal part of first contact.

This is giving me shades of Macross… and I’m loving it! Subspace Rhapsody shows that it can be done. I want to hear an Andorian boy band! A Vulcan boy band! A Tellarite boy band (would their love songs consist of nothing but negging?)! Do the different Xindi species each have their own best boy band? One has to think that they must. Boy bands are supposed to be appealing to look at and that would vary wildly between say the Xindi-Arboreal and the Xindi-Aquatic, right? And a Xindi-Insectoid boy band couldn’t sing a Xindi-Reptilian song, for example. So we’d get five performances right there! And imagine the pathos of listening to a recording of the best Xindi-Avian boy band! Haunting!

 

[Dukhat]

This is giving me shades of Macross…

Have you seen Macross 7? That entire series was just a paper-thin excuse to show off J-Pop music. It was utter shite. And that's what ENT would have been had Ostroff gotten her way.

 

[Sumire]

I have not watched Macross 7. I’m a Macross Plus girlie all the way.

I’m sorry if my silliness is upsetting you @Dukhat. Since I do not have the ability to time travel, Enterprise is in no danger from me and my foolishness but I will desist if my imaginings are troubling you.

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

I think these boy band riffs are hilarious. The horrid idea works much better as parody. Or experimentation! At least Bakula would do a good job with the singing and dancing.

 

[Tosk]

 

[Dukhat]

I have not watched Macross 7. I’m a Macross Plus girlie all the way.

I’m sorry if my silliness is upsetting you @Dukhat. Since I do not have the ability to time travel, Enterprise is in no danger from me and my foolishness but I will desist if my imaginings are troubling you.

I think you misunderstand. Nothing you have said has upset me in any way. I am simply pointing out the ridiculousness of the idea of ENT having boy bands on the show, in a thread about it in which you started and asked for other people’s opinions about. And because it never happened, we are all free to act silly about it.

 

[Sumire]

I apologize @Dukhat, I mistook your distaste for the topic as distaste for talking about the topic.

 

[Reanok]

Trek fm warp 5 podcast has interviews with the script writers and other people who worked on the Enterprise show you may want to listen to the back catalog of interviews, there's alot of good stuff to go through. They have them up on their You tube page and on their website on Facebook.

 

[Michael]

Trek fm warp 5 podcast has interviews with the script writers and other people who worked on the Enterprise show you may want to listen to the back catalog of interviews, there's alot of good stuff to go through. They have them up on their You tube page and on their website on Facebook.

So, is there something about the boy band thing in there?

 

[Takeru]

Do we even know under what circumstances the boy band idea came up? It might have been a brainstorming session on how to improve ratings where people were encouraged to blurt out random ideas. Throwing workable and unworkable stuff alike at the wall is the entire point, the idea is to not miss a great idea because the person having the idea questioned themselves too much and never brought it up.

 

[Tosk]

It was the new "big bosses" who sent the note. It wasn't some underling in the writer's room who meekly put up their hand.

I would bet good money that the "she" was Dawn Ostroff, president of UPN at the time.

[Edited to remove one note that made it blatantly clear I didn't read correctly.

Dominic Keating also heavily implies the idea came from Ostroff (very, very close to outright saying it), as well as the question/suggestion, "Does Jolene have to wear the pointy ears? She’d be so much cuter without them."

 

[Sumire]

Well, that’s plain silly! T’Pol/Jolene is adorable with pointy ears! (The wigs however? Um… Sometimes not so cute.)

 

[Dukhat]

It was the new "big bosses" who sent the note. It wasn't some underling in the writer's room who meekly put up their hand.

[Edited to remove one note that made it blatantly clear I didn't read correctly.

Dominic Keating also heavily implies the idea came from Ostroff (very, very close to outright saying it), as well as the question/suggestion, "Does Jolene have to wear the pointy ears? She’d be so much cuter without them."

Yep, because that's what the show was about, Dawn. Cute Vulcans without pointy ears. Just like it was about boy bands in outer space.

(Although, to be fair, it was Braga's fault that there was a 'cute' Vulcan in the cast to begin with, just like it was his fault there was a 'cute' Borg in his previous show.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

"Boy band of the week on ENT"?!?

That would not be a mere case of jumping the shark. That would be jumping Bruce the Shark!

 

[Reanok]

Yes it's mentioned in more than one of their interviews. The Shuttlepod show did a 2 part interview with Rick Berman and he talks about in great detail.