Did Enterprise fandom dissipate exceptionally thoroughly?

[Sumire]

As I noted in my introduction, I have recently started poking around Enterprise fandom and it feels… strange.

Whenever my interest in a particular past Star Trek series has ignited, I could easily find active fans on a number of platforms; Discord, Tumblr, AO3 and the like. (I know, I’m old, I’m not up on all the hottest current platforms but I’m also not trawling LiveJournal and MySpace.) I have had much more difficulty finding active Enterprise fans. They’re out there but I feel like a good 75% of what I find has been mothballed. The date of the mothballing changes, sometimes it’s 2007, sometimes 2011, sometimes 2016, but it’s like a ghost town now either way.

My thought is that there are two main causes for this:

1) Unhappy fans — this seems to be divided very distinctly between fans who were unhappy with the show and left long before the end and fans who were unhappy with the ending (both the infamous final episode and the show being cancelled before it could complete its intended run)

2) Bad timing — Enterprise ended just as YouTube was starting, Facebook was becoming available to the general population, LiveJournal was being sold and Tumblr was starting. By the time the major platforms found their user-base, nostalgia was in full swing for DS9, TNG and Voyager. People took the time to create a new fandom community for these shows on these new platforms. Enterprise was still grappling with the bitterness left in its wake and wasn’t really old enough to evoke nostalgia, so there wasn’t as big a push to create new fandom communities on these new platforms.

Does this ring true to anyone? Am I just an inept internet archeologist? Am I way too old and looking in all the wrong places? Or is there a marked lack of active Enterprise fans?

 

[Whizkid]

Did/Does (since we're at the end of a year and the almost beginning of a new one ... HAPPY NEW YEAR Trekkies! Lotsa love) Enterprise ever have a fandom?

 

[Whizkid]

As I noted in my introduction, I have recently started poking around Enterprise fandom and it feels… strange.

Whenever my interest in a particular past Star Trek series has ignited, I could easily find active fans on a number of platforms; Discord, Tumblr, AO3 and the like. (I know, I’m old, I’m not up on all the hottest current platforms but I’m also not trawling LiveJournal and MySpace.) I have had much more difficulty finding active Enterprise fans. They’re out there but I feel like a good 75% of what I find has been mothballed. The date of the mothballing changes, sometimes it’s 2007, sometimes 2011, sometimes 2016, but it’s like a ghost town now either way.

My thought is that there are two main causes for this:

1) Unhappy fans — this seems to be divided very distinctly between fans who were unhappy with the show and left long before the end and fans who were unhappy with the ending (both the infamous final episode and the show being cancelled before it could complete its intended run)

2) Bad timing — Enterprise ended just as YouTube was starting, Facebook was becoming available to the general population, LiveJournal was being sold and Tumblr was starting. By the time the major platforms found their user-base, nostalgia was in full swing for DS9, TNG and Voyager. People took the time to create a new fandom community for these shows on these new platforms. Enterprise was still grappling with the bitterness left in its wake and wasn’t really old enough to evoke nostalgia, so there wasn’t as big a push to create new fandom communities on these new platforms.

Does this ring true to anyone? Am I just an inept internet archeologist? Am I way too old and looking in all the wrong places? Or is there a marked lack of active Enterprise fans?

Sumire, I think you missed one crucial point. When was Enterprise staged?

After 9/11.

I think people just stopped caring about the "final frontier."

I'm an anthropologist. So I implicitly respect your views.

 

[Sumire]

Did Enterprise ever have a fandom?

I was living in Japan while Enterprise was airing in the USA. As far as I know, it never aired in Japan. So, I have zero insight into what the fandom was like while it was being broadcast. I assumed a fandom existed because TNG, DS9 and Voyager previously had online fandoms, at least Usenet newsgroups and the like. Also someone built these places I stumble upon in my excavations before they apparently locked the doors and walked into the sea.

 

[FederationHistorian]

When was Enterprise staged?

After 9/11.

I think people just stopped caring about the "final frontier."

More like airing after 9/11 + it only got 4 seasons + no new ENT content (no comics, no video games, and the novelverse has been discontinued). Even acquiring the Enterprise soundtracks to listen to is difficult to do because they are amazingly expensive ($170 – $200+ for both volumes). I know because I had looked for it recently.

Yes, TOS got three seasons. But it was a different time, as no one had seen anything like TOS before. So it got popular in syndication.

Then TNG/DS9/VOY was 21 seasons (and four movies) in the 24th century.

Everyone was familiar with Trek by the time of ENT, and there were other sci fi shows to get into that were also doing new and exciting things. It pretty much took the passage of time and the current era of Trek to rehab the reputation of ENT.

There was a renewed interest in ENT in 2021, on Reddit at least. Though that too seems to have dissipated. I’m not saying there aren’t any ENT posts there, but not as many as there were in 2021. And the Enterprise subreddit is a lot less active than say, the DS9 subreddit.

There needs to be more ENT content in order for there to be a larger fanbase.

 

[1001001]

There are ENT fans around here, me being one of them.

But yes, I think between the new shows and the ongoing stories related to TNG and VOY, ENT is more...finite? Is that the word I'm looking for? Self-contained, maybe?

It occupies an odd place in the timeline, has no real follow-up (maybe books, I don't know), and was the first Star Trek to be cancelled since TOS.

So, it is what it is.

 

[XCV330]

I would count myself an ENT fan, now, though I admit I gave up on it after season 1 and only returned much later.

I enjoy ENT very much, and if I am feeling like watching a rerun, I find myself generally returning to Enterprise. It's a flawed show, and in that regard it reminds me of Discovery: lots of peaks and valleys, not a lot of medium. I love the aesthetic of the show, the infilling of the early time period. It's a show that really needed a couple more seasons.

 

[Sumire]

Thank you everyone! I truly appreciate getting more viewpoints.

Soundtracks going for $170 – $200+? Wow, @FederationHistorian, that really paints a picture!

Looking at the fandom that once was, leaves me feeling like a Dickensian street urchin pressing my nose against the glass pane of a bakery window but at least I can rest assured there isn’t some secret Enterprise fandom speak-easy tucked behind an inconspicuous bookshelf and I just don’t know the password.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

Thank you everyone! I truly appreciate getting more viewpoints.

Soundtracks going for $170 – $200+? Wow, @FederationHistorian, that really paints a picture!

Looking at the fandom that once was, leaves me feeling like a Dickensian street urchin pressing my nose against the glass pane of a bakery window but at least I can rest assured there isn’t some secret Enterprise fandom speak-easy tucked behind an inconspicuous bookshelf and I just don’t know the password.

That has to be one of the most elegantly written posts in the history of this board.

 

[1001001]

I am one of the fans who really liked Season 3. I know not everyone did.

I actually had a conversation with Billingsley about it a couple of years ago. He wasn’t sure the tonal shift toward a 9/11 military thing was the best way to go. I told him the thing I liked most about it was how the Xindi and Starfleet learned they were being manipulated by a third party and learned to work together.

Billingsley said he “didn’t remember that”.

Actors…

 

[Sumire]

Billingsley said he “didn’t remember that”.

Color me flabbergasted! That was the most integral part to my mind! Really makes you see that behind all the glamor we mythologize acting with, it’s still a job. Guess I might not recall details of my work back in 2004 either…

Still, this isn’t like me not recalling what grade I was singing English songs with on any particular day, it seems more like forgetting the day the kids sang my favorite Japanese group’s number one hit for me. I must have put more emotional significance on it than he did but hey, that means the actors acted very well indeed!

 

[David cgc]

Soundtracks going for $170 – $200+? Wow, @FederationHistorian, that really paints a picture!

I think part of that is actually a function of Enterprise's relative unpopularity. The series soundtracks released by La La Land are fairly short-run, so they sell out, and then demand on the secondary market gets pretty wild because there are only a handful to go around, and because they're so hard to get, the handful of people who want them are unusually motivated.

I actually had a conversation with Billingsley about it a couple of years ago. He wasn’t sure the tonal shift toward a 9/11 military thing was the best way to go. I told him the thing I liked most about it was how the Xindi and Starfleet learned they were being manipulated by a third party and learned to work together.

Billingsley said he “didn’t remember that”.

Heck, I know fans who watched the whole season and talk about how it's all war-on-terror propaganda, forgetting that by the end of the season, the lead Xindi villian was quoting George W. Bush (like every other pop-culture villain between 2003 and 2008. "With us or against us!" "Bring it on!").

 

[fireproof78]

Color me flabbergasted! That was the most integral part to my mind! Really makes you see that behind all the glamor we mythologize acting with, it’s still a job. Guess I might not recall details of my work back in 2004 either…

Still, this isn’t like me not recalling what grade I was singing English songs with on any particular day, it seems more like forgetting the day the kids sang my favorite Japanese group’s number one hit for me. I must have put more emotional significance on it than he did but hey, that means the actors acted very well indeed!

Part of the other side of it is that they don't see the finished and polished product. Production is just one step and then post production edits and assembles it and releases it. So, the deep emotional moment might be the 5th time they read the line with no music or support FX behind it.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Aside from the reasons given here, I seem to recall some fans being disappointed that there wouldn't be a fourth show which took place in the 24th century. That was one strike against the show before it even started. Then as we got a look at the NX-01 and other visuals, other fans complained that everything looked too advanced to exist in the same universe as TOS. So that was another strike. The final strike was the lack of anything really exciting about the show. Despite the change in time period, the first two seasons felt like something that could have been done in the TNG era. The show went through a retooling with seasons 3 and 4, but by that point it was too little to late. To be honest, I stopped watching for the show after the first couple of episodes, and only returned mid-season because that first season felt really directionless. Not just from a real world standpoint, but from an in-universe perspective, where it seemed the ship was just warping to random points of interest without following any real flight plan. Second season had the same problem as well.

 

[Sumire]

So, the deep emotional moment might be the 5th time they read the line with no music or support FX behind it.

Very true. This is why I’m fairly adamant about not getting into how the proverbial sausage is made. Give me the puff pieces of Hollywood yore (minus, you know, every awful thing that was being swept under the aesthetically pleasing rug), just enough behind the scenes detail to augment the shared illusion and not a drop more. Please and thank you.

 

[fireproof78]

Very true. This is why I’m fairly adamant about not getting into how the proverbial sausage is made. Give me the puff pieces of Hollywood yore (minus, you know, every awful thing that was being swept under the aesthetically pleasing rug), just enough behind the scenes detail to augment the shared illusion and not a drop more. Please and thank you.

Ah, I'm the opposite. I love knowing how things are made, mostly because when I'm watching it I forget it all.

 

[Sumire]

I love knowing how things are made, mostly because when I'm watching it I forget it all.

I think that must be an enjoyable way to be. It’s like a two-for-one, entertainment from the media itself plus delight in the crafting of it.

I am one of those people who can become teary over a lamp left by a dumpster in the rain if you set it to the right soundtrack. If I find out someone was uncomfortable or upset filming something? It takes a massive amount of concentration to filter that knowledge out and enjoy the finished product so I just try to avoid the insight if I can.

 

[fireproof78]

I think that must be an enjoyable way to be. It’s like a two-for-one, entertainment from the media itself plus delight in the crafting of it.

I am one of those people who can become teary over a lamp left by a dumpster in the rain if you set it to the right soundtrack. If I find out someone was uncomfortable or upset filming something? It takes a massive amount of concentration to filter that knowledge out and enjoy the finished product so I just try to avoid the insight if I can.

I can understand that and I'm not perfect at it (who is?). But, my friends used to be studying filmmaking and so I picked up a lot and learned a lot more than what I assumed was the process. It helps that I limit the amount of things I watch because I know my limits in what are less than ideal filmmaking situations or emotional moments that will get to me. But, I do benefit from now having a viewing partner where we are able to redirect each other if we start down the more technical path

 

[1001001]

If I find out someone was uncomfortable or upset filming something? It takes a massive amount of concentration to filter that knowledge out and enjoy the finished product so I just try to avoid the insight if I can.

Unless you’re Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts, you read the script you’re given and say your lines as written. Many actors will say “I’m not a writer” when asked about giving feedback on a particular project.

John certainly enjoyed being on the show, I don’t mean to imply anything different. That doesn’t mean he agreed with everything they did (he was not a fan of Dear Doctor, either).

Somewhere in this forum there’s a link to an interview he gave us a while back, answering questions from board members. If you’re interested in what he thought, you should check it out.

 

[Sumire]

John certainly enjoyed being on the show, I don’t mean to imply anything different.

Oh! I hope I didn’t imply otherwise myself! I apologize, I was speaking more in generalities than in Enterprise specifics. Not the topic I begin with so it’s entirely my fault if my comments were taken the wrong way.

I am fairly certain that applying prosthetics and makeup was not an enjoyable experience and that there were, doubtless, choices made by higher-ups that did not reflect his personal inclinations but I do hope and believe that, in the aggregate, John had a positive experience playing Dr. Phlox.