Did TATV show a contempt for the characters and actors?

[M.A.C.O.]

As someone who just finished Enterprise my main issue was it basically just became a episode of TNG, focusing on arc that was finished a long time ago. It felt super rushed and didn't focus on the Enterprise crew. Also Trips death was just awful and no-one in the crew seemed to care apart from Archer and T'Pol.

Congrats on finishing ENT. How do you feel?

It may comfort you to know that EVERYONE (Coto, Berman and Braga) all consider Terra Prime to be the true finale of the series. B&B realized they screwed the pooch years ago and have apologized to the ENT fans and the cast for doing what they did with TATV.

 

[pookha]

Beeman and braga had become disengaged with the show unail the thing. By way which doesnt fit with Pegasus .I put forth a fun theory once that it had been created in revenge for what happenedduring Pegasus as a way to discredit Riker just before he became captain of the titan. A false hologram record.

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

pookha! So happy to see you!

I am still an advocate of one of your other theories for the Thing - Barclay was drunk when he wrote that holodeck program.

Or there were rats in the holodeck machinery chewing on the circuitry.

 

[pookha]

Glad to see you. And All above theories work .. I used have a great avatar showing thing was a conspiracy.

 

[Dukhat]

Even Jonathan Frakes has dissed TATV at convertions. There's a youtube video I saw last year Frakes mentions how unfair the way the Enterprise cast were just hologram characters talking to his chef character and the story with the Pegasus being crammed in the show was silly.

And yet none of that actually stopped him from doing the episode. He and Sirtis knew all about TATV's script. If he had issues he could have voiced them then. But he didn't. Because I'm guessing he really didn't feel that bad about it at the time.

There are no villains here. Enterprise wasn't canceled for reasons of quality, and possibly not even ratings. It was the second highest rated program on UPN behind WWF. It was UPN that was canceled, and Enterprise was too expensive for UPN.

Er, no. ENT was cancelled a year before UPN was shut down. And it was cancelled for two reasons:

1. The show was expensive to produce and was not getting a return on its investment. Whether it was on UPN, CBS, the WB, or whatever, had nothing to do with anything. If ENT was a ratings powerhouse, it would not have been cancelled no matter what happened to UPN.

2. It would have been cancelled at the end of the third season, but there weren't enough episodes for a syndication package. Hence the fourth season. But had there been enough episodes by the end of the third season, it would have been cancelled then.

So the only thing UPN can be blamed for is its stupidity in trying to meddle with the show in the first place. And saying that ENT was the "second-highest rated program on UPN" doesn't mean crap to the bean counters.

 

[Prax]

1. The show was expensive to produce and was not getting a return on its investment.

I believe I said that. Many shows with fewer ratings were saved, some even brought over to CW the next year. They were less expensive to produce. For UPN, Enterprise was their highest rated drama, It even had more viewers than Buffy while it was on UPN. I said "possibly not even ratings" as the whole network was a ratings failure and it was being reconfigured when Enterprise was canceled.

The main thrust of my comment was "Enterprise wasn't canceled for reasons of quality." And that, is true.

 

[Dukhat]

I believe I said that. Many shows with fewer ratings were saved, some even brought over to CW the next year. They were less expensive to produce. For UPN, Enterprise was their highest rated drama, It even had more viewers than Buffy while it was on UPN. I said "possibly not even ratings" as the whole network was a ratings failure and it was being reconfigured when Enterprise was canceled.

The main thrust of my comment was "Enterprise wasn't canceled for reasons of quality." And that, is true.

Sorry, you made it sound like the only reason why ENT was cancelled was because UPN folded, which wasn't true.

 

[pookha]

And yet none of that actually stopped him from doing the episode. He and Sirtis knew all about TATV's script. If he had issues he could have voiced them then. But he didn't. Because I'm guessing he really didn't feel that bad about it at the time.



Er, no. ENT was cancelled a year before UPN was shut down. And it was cancelled for two reasons:

1. The show was expensive to produce and was not getting a return on its investment. Whether it was on UPN, CBS, the WB, or whatever, had nothing to do with anything. If ENT was a ratings powerhouse, it would not have been cancelled no matter what happened to UPN.

2. It would have been cancelled at the end of the third season, but there weren't enough episodes for a syndication package. Hence the fourth season. But had there been enough episodes by the end of the third season, it would have been cancelled then.

So the only thing UPN can be blamed for is its stupidity in trying to meddle with the show in the first place. And saying that ENT was the "second-highest rated program on UPN" doesn't mean crap to the bean counters.

Enterprise was hurt by having split showings and being just before combined ratings of dvr delayed viewing being combined. Thus ratings were far higher than just the one showing indicated. The 2nd showing and delayed often had higher viewership especially with sports often preempting the show.

 

[Sci]

The basic problems with "These Are the Voyages..." were that it was dramatically arbitrary and unconcerned with resolving the emotional arcs that had been built up within ENT itself as a discrete television program.

• Trip's decision to sacrifice himself is dramatically arbitrary; he and Archer had been in much, much tougher spots in much less favorable circumstances before, without his feeling that he had no choice but to sacrifice himself to save Archer. Having it occur in these particular circumstances, with so many obvious potential solutions, makes the character's decision feel irrational, unmotivated, and inconsistent with his earlier characterization.
• After spending two seasons building up to the idea of Trip and T'Pol having a relationship, and it culminating in them mourning the death of their daughter in the prior episode together and holding hands (representing T'Pol's decision to finally emotionally open up to Trip)... we just find out that they broke up under unspecific circumstances, due to unspecified reasons, though T'Pol is apparently re-thinking the decision, thereby going back to a will-they-won't-they dynamic. This creative decision denies the audience any resolution to their emotional investment in the character arcs and is, again, dramatically arbitrary and unmotivated.
• Finally, the connection between the ENT-era story and the TNG-era story was tenuous. Meaningfully, the characters in the ENT-era story weren't faced with a choice that paralleled the choice that faced the characters in the TNG-era story; Archer and Co. weren't faced with a decision to conspire to violate the law and morality and obstruct justice in the name of national security, or to expose a conspiracy and pay the price for crimes they committed in their youth. It was an incredibly tenuous thematic connection -- and the decision to link it to one particular episode of TNG rather than to some broad idea of TNG people thinking about beginnings and endings, means that the ENT-era story gets robbed of its dramatic power and too much thematic energy gets spent on a TNG story that had already reached its resolution over a decade before "These Are the Voyages..." aired.

 

[Takeru]

And yet none of that actually stopped him from doing the episode. He and Sirtis knew all about TATV's script.

I doubt that, they were most likely hired and contracted to appear before the script was finished. You don't finalize a script featuring specific characters without knowing if the actors are actually available.

I recall Marina Sirtis once saying she got a call from Rick Berman and immediately agreed to do it without knowing any specifics and why wouldn't she? She had a good working relationship with Berman for years, she had good guest spots in Voyager, there was probably a level of trust that didn't require her to go into details about the script. The same is true for Frakes I assume.

 

[Dukhat]

I doubt that, they were most likely hired and contracted to appear before the script was finished. You don't finalize a script featuring specific characters without knowing if the actors are actually available.

I recall Marina Sirtis once saying she got a call from Rick Berman and immediately agreed to do it without knowing any specifics and why wouldn't she? She had a good working relationship with Berman for years, she had good guest spots in Voyager, there was probably a level of trust that didn't require her to go into details about the script. The same is true for Frakes I assume.

While I agree that TATV was rushed and the script may or may not have been finalized, that wasn't exactly my point. Frakes and Sirtis were hired to play Riker and Troi in a Trek show that they had nothing whatsoever to do with, that didn't even take place in the same time period as their show did. They obviously knew the plot of ENT as it had been on tv for four years, so it's not like they'd have been surprised about what they were getting into even if they didn't have a finalized script. At any point, they could have said "You know, I think this is probably a bad idea, as this show isn't about us and our scenes are just going to overstep the portrayals of the other actors who actually belong in this show." (which is what Frakes said after the fact.) No, they did it because they had absolutely nothing else going on and needed money. Which in and of itself isn't any crime; it's just annoying to hear Frakes backpedaling when IMHO he knew exactly what he was getting into and did it anyway.

And don't get me started on Sirtis. She will accept any job. I could probably hire her for my kid's birthday party.

 

[Prax]

And don't get me started on Sirtis. She will accept any job. I could probably hire her for my kid's birthday party.

That's funny, and reminds me of Ghostbusters 2.

 

[Willow]

While I agree that TATV was rushed and the script may or may not have been finalized, that wasn't exactly my point. Frakes and Sirtis were hired to play Riker and Troi in a Trek show that they had nothing whatsoever to do with, that didn't even take place in the same time period as their show did. They obviously knew the plot of ENT as it had been on tv for four years, so it's not like they'd have been surprised about what they were getting into even if they didn't have a finalized script. At any point, they could have said "You know, I think this is probably a bad idea, as this show isn't about us and our scenes are just going to overstep the portrayals of the other actors who actually belong in this show." (which is what Frakes said after the fact.) No, they did it because they had absolutely nothing else going on and needed money. Which in and of itself isn't any crime; it's just annoying to hear Frakes backpedaling when IMHO he knew exactly what he was getting into and did it anyway.

And don't get me started on Sirtis. She will accept any job. I could probably hire her for my kid's birthday party.

The backpedalling on Frakes' part is what's most bothersome to me. The fact that he and Sirtis accepted the jobs doesn't bother me at all. They "play pretend" for money, and I'd expect that they would do whatever jobs they could get to make money. Not everyone is a Sir Patrick Stewart, or even a Scott Bakula, who seem to move on to big project after big project and probably have enough leverage to be more picky with their roles.

I also tend to think that TATV is more bothersome to the fans than to the actors. ENT ran for four seasons and ended over a decade ago. All the actors have moved on.