Continuity between series helped Enterprise fail?

[Neutral Zone]

One of the let downs with Enterprise was in its continuty with other series of ST. Today I watched 'The Last Outpost' from TNG. Here we meet the Ferengi for the first time. But there is an episode in Ent where Archer and the crew come across the Ferengi? What happened there? How come they were forgotten so quickly?

 

[Gaith]

IIRC, the official rationalization was that the crew never heard the word "Ferengi", though they do in "Dear Doctor".

Minor continuity blips such as this, however, isn't why ENT failed. Blandness, a dearth of serialization (and the suckiness of the TCW), and franchise overload did that.

Although, in retrospect, declaring the series as set in an alternate universe from the one we knew from the get-go probably couldn't have hurt. As botched as the Star Wars prequels were, at least it was only six hours of content, with a supposedly strong dramatic hook in the fall of Anakin Skywalker. ENT, on the other hand, had an open-ended run, without so much as a major series mission statement of showing the birth of the Federation, which didn't seem destined to be all that dramatic anyway.

 

[F. King Daniel]

If anyone other than the most anal of continuity freaks really cared about that kind of stuff, Star Trek (2009) would have been a collosal failure. Ditto X-Men: First Class.

I'm a die hard fan. I spot all this stuff a mile off, but it doesn't ruin it for me. Star Trek's fiction, it can be rewritten and retold again and again. Once you realize that a "real" Gorn is a fearsome lizard monster and not a guy in an obvious rubber suit, you realize that some contradicted throwaway lines don't really matter.

 

[Nerys Myk]

One of the let downs with Enterprise was in its continuty with other series of ST. Today I watched 'The Last Outpost' from TNG. Here we meet the Ferengi for the first time. But there is an episode in Ent where Archer and the crew come across the Ferengi? What happened there? How come they were forgotten so quickly?

So 200 years between face to face meetings is quickly?

As Gaith pointed out the NX-01 crew had no idea the species they met was called the Ferengi. Or that the Ferengi mentioned by another race was also that species.

Remember, that even prior to "The Last Outpost" the Federation knew of the Ferengi. Picard mentions them in "Encounter At Farpoint" and Riker knew what their ships looked like and their basic philosophies in "The Last Outpost." Now that the UFP knows what the Ferengi look like, any number of encounters with "unknown aliens" can be updated to an encounter with the Ferengi. Including the NX-01's encounter in the 22nd Century and the Stargazer's in the mid 24th Century.

ETA: Both "The Last Outpost" and "The Battle" establish the Ferengi are not ones to give out the name of their species freely. Which is consistent with "Acquisition".

 

[T'Girl]

of showing the birth of the Federation

A entire season long arc of the creation of the Federation? Subcommittees, speeches, power brokering, back room arm twisting. Perhaps the season closer could consist of forty-five straight minute of people signing important documents?

Oh baby, there's some sexy television.

 

[Nerys Myk]

of showing the birth of the Federation

A entire season long arc of the creation of the Federation? Subcommittees, speeches, power brokering, back room arm twisting. Perhaps the season closer could consist of forty-five straight minute of people signing important documents?

Oh baby, there's some sexy television.

C-Span....IN SPACE!!!!!!!!

 

[Gaith]

A entire season long arc of the creation of the Federation? Subcommittees, speeches, power brokering, back room arm twisting. Perhaps the season closer could consist of forty-five straight minute of people signing important documents?

Oh baby, there's some sexy television.

Maybe you've heard of a little show called The West Wing, which began before and ended after ENT? For several seasons, it was one of the top ten shows in the country.

Besides, the birth of the Federation wouldn't have to be peaceful, necessarily. The UN was pretty much born out of WW2. But noooooo, Paramount/B+B, whichever, had to demand its crappy-ass TCW.

 

[Anna Yolei]

IIRC, the official rationalization was that the crew never heard the word "Ferengi", though they do in "Dear Doctor".

IIRC, that time the Ferengi was brought up was in Phlox's correspondence with Dr. Lucas. A very thin sticking point, I ralize, but the crew itself never heard the name.

Minor continuity blips such as this, however, isn't why ENT failed. Blandness, a dearth of serialization (and the suckiness of the TCW), and franchise overload did that.

This.

 

[Yevetha]

The fail had everything to do with bad scripts and episodes in the first 2 seasons.

 

[Mage]

Continuity would mostly ruin it for the most obsessed Trekkies. Which it probably did, just like Trek09 was ruined to these people because that's all they can see.

Enterprise's biggest failure was bad writing, terrible character development and less then stellar acting. Weird plots about a Temporal Cold War got in the way of what the show should have been about; the birth of the UFP. And it seems as if the writers only realized during season 3 that this big event would happen in a few years, and they needed to set that up. So, even though the stories in season 4 got a lot better, the entire concept that the Coalition which would lead into the UFP was basicly set in up in a matter of weeks because a few humans (a species new to the interstellar comminuty) showed up and told the other races to stop squabling like children.

I mean, humanity has only just realized it's own potential and is now telling others races that have been united on a global scale longer then we have to play nice?

Feels like that meme: Y U NO MAKE SENSE????

 

[SFRabid]

of showing the birth of the Federation

A entire season long arc of the creation of the Federation? Subcommittees, speeches, power brokering, back room arm twisting. Perhaps the season closer could consist of forty-five straight minute of people signing important documents?

Oh baby, there's some sexy television.

LOL.

Besides, when did Star Trek ever worry about continuity?

 

[Yevetha]

The episodes are more or less consistent with eachother.

 

[GemHaters]

If anyone other than the most anal of continuity freaks really cared about that kind of stuff, Star Trek (2009) would have been a collosal failure. Ditto X-Men: First Class.

I'm a die hard fan. I spot all this stuff a mile off, but it doesn't ruin it for me. Star Trek's fiction, it can be rewritten and retold again and again. Once you realize that a "real" Gorn is a fearsome lizard monster and not a guy in an obvious rubber suit, you realize that some contradicted throwaway lines don't really matter.

^THIS! Thank you, couldn't agree more!

And let's be real people, Enterprise failed because it was on the same time as The Apprentice. It had a poor time slot, and nothing else. It's a fantastic show, I'm sick of hearing all this crap about "continuity". I don't buy it. So what if little details here and there changed? I certainly couldn't care less. I think it's almost the best series, and it got the same stupid treatment as TOS, shut down long before it's time.

 

[Dukhat]

And let's be real people, Enterprise failed because it was on the same time as The Apprentice.

Sorry, but that's not why Enterprise failed (although you are correct in stating that continuity issues were also not why it failed.)

Simply put, Enterprise failed because it was on a shitty network, and fans had grown tired of Trek as envisioned by Berman, Braga, and UPN. The formula was old and stale, and people simply lost interest, which is why most television series get cancelled. Enterprise was no different.

 

[Yevetha]

Lets not talk bad storylines and bad acting.

 

[Sci]

of showing the birth of the Federation

A entire season long arc of the creation of the Federation? Subcommittees, speeches, power brokering, back room arm twisting. Perhaps the season closer could consist of forty-five straight minute of people signing important documents?

Oh baby, there's some sexy television.

I would think something more along the lines of the HBO miniseries John Adams, m'self.

 

[Dukhat]

Lets not talk bad storylines and bad acting.

Whether one believes that about ENT or not, that's still not why the show was cancelled. The first two seasons of TNG had atrocious acting and nonsensical scripts, and look what happened there.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Lets not talk bad storylines and bad acting.

Whether one believes that about ENT or not, that's still not why the show was cancelled. The first two seasons of TNG had atrocious acting and nonsensical scripts, and look what happened there.

The climate was different. Completely different.

TNG was literally a pioneering milestone in television history: the resurrection of Star Trek. After TNG, DS9, and VOY, the market had been there and done that three times already.

Plus, by the time of ENT, the syndication landscape was just different generally in a lot of ways, and the Internet was arriving.

What might have been forgivable for TNG just did not necessarily slide for ENT.

ETA: Plus, and most critically, all that other stuff aside, TNG's ratings did not go ever downward. After a correction at the beginning of the third season, when ratings actually were finally in the process of sagging after the first two years, the producers managed to get the ratings of TNG to go up [http://www.madmind.de/2009/05/02/all-star-trek-movies-and-episodes-in-two-charts/]. Such a turnaround never happened for ENT, and the ratings trend for ENT was just a continuation of that for DS9 and VOY: ever downward.

 

[Dukhat]

The climate was different. Completely different.

TNG was literally a pioneering milestone in television history: the resurrection of Star Trek. After TNG, DS9, and VOY, the market had been there and done that three times already.

Plus, by the time of ENT, the syndication landscape was just different generally in a lot of ways, and the Internet was arriving.

What might have been forgivable for TNG just did not necessarily slide for ENT.

ETA: Plus, and most critically, all that other stuff aside, TNG's ratings did not go ever downward. After a correction at the beginning of the third season, when ratings actually were finally in the process of sagging after the first two years, the producers managed to get the ratings of TNG to go up [http://www.madmind.de/2009/05/02/all-star-trek-movies-and-episodes-in-two-charts/]. Such a turnaround never happened for ENT, and the ratings trend for ENT was just a continuation of that for DS9 and VOY: ever downward.

While everything you state is true, the fact remains that TNG got supremely lucky by being syndicated instead of being a "network" series. I have my doubts that it would have survived past the second season had it been produced for, say, ABC or NBC. YMMV.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

While everything you state is true, the fact remains that TNG got supremely lucky by being syndicated instead of being a "network" series. I have my doubts that it would have survived past the second season had it been produced for, say, ABC or NBC. YMMV.

The Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation#Syndication_and_ratings is a fascinating read, assuming it's all accurate. Among other interesting tidbits of info there, the fact that TNG generated a 40% return on investment is truly remarkable.

It does indeed seem true that Paramount leveraged the show extremely creatively and effectively in ways that would not have been possible were it aired on any of the big three networks.

I know I was, shall we say, quite concerned with the quality of the first two seasons, although the second was at least a marginal improvement from the first.

Nevertheless, whatever Paramount did carried the show through its shaky birth and kept it on the air long enough to give it the opportunity to really take off.