Well audiances have been showing a downward trend for years, as ore and ore channel optios becae available. AS well as new tech such as DVR's
DS9 = WORST Star Trek Series EVER
- Thread starter Tidus79001
- Start date
Well audiances have been showing a downward trend for years, as ore and ore channel optios becae available. AS well as new tech such as DVR's
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Trek really was at a burnout stage, being in the hands of the same people and producers.
But I don't think Enterprise was ever 'intelligent'. It was okay, but it really couldn't compare to what was available that was 'intelligent' in television during its run. Remember, some of what was on network tv during Enterprise's run included:
- Sorkin's The West Wing (on til 2006)
- Whedon's Buffy (on til 2003), Angel (on til 2004) and Firefly (2002)
- CSI (started the same year)
- Alias (started the same year)
- Arrested Development (2003-6)
- Lost (which began 2004)
or what was on cable 2001-5:
- Farscape (finished 2003)
- Oz (fininshed 2003)
- Sopranos (on throughout)
- The Shield (began 2002)
- The Wire (began 2002)
- BSG (began 2003)
- Deadwood (began 2004)
When people remember intelligent television, whether of the 2000s or in general, it could never be there. Perhaps it could be 'smart', on occasion, whatever that means. It may even have been in that nebulous zone of 'good' (though I would disagree), but it certainly was not an intelligently produced or written programme.
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Jar, if you are going to talk about intelligent television and then put up as examples "The West Wing" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", well, you have defeated your own assertion with just your first two selections.
Lol, they are not stacked out of importance, just chronologically. But your retort is not good argumentation, although it underlines the subjectivity of a phrase like 'intelligent', since I think you would agree that most of my list constitutes intelligent, memorable and well-made examples of serialised and episodic television. I do not even like everything I listed - for example CSI or Alias - but I propose that they were very well made, and put the thought (since we are talking about intelligence here) that was put into the writing, direction and overall ambition of Enterprise to shame.
And to return to the two you picked out.
Arguably Buffy was 'intelligent' for, among other things: skilfully deconstructing many tradiitonal teenage drama and horror-fantasy tropes; having excellently written characters, both good and bad; its use of feminist subject matter to explore traditional patriarchal assumptions; & being well plotted across its seasons (perhaps not s6). Arguably Enterprise displayed none of these markers in its run, in relation to its own genre - whereas it could, and should have.
And The West Wing, regardless of one's political persuasions, was television magic - beautifully shot, beautifully written, excellent long-form television. Its attempts to be 'intelligent' in almost every episode, be it in the characterisaton, the many issues of US democratic process, the direction of each episode, the attempt to not dumb down issues like ethics & religion that are usually done so on TV (particularly through the Bartlett's Catholicism and Toby's Judiasm). It indeed had its blunders and suffered particularly after Schlame and Sorkin left. Yet still it was well made under Wells' sole tenure, and intelligent particularly once the elections came round again.
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The problem is that they are both subscription cable shows (and more so, HBO), and therefore were created in very different contexts than network or basic cable television programmes. Hence my differentiated list above, in which sterling network shows are mentioned, and are ultimately better comparisons with Enterprise. Some of which could arguably be on such a 'greatest' list.
The reason I made the list - intelligence - really, Enterprise is s invalid to be described thus, if the marker of intelligence is set by The Wire and The Sopranos. Hence the use of well-written, well-made network shows, including genre examples like Firefly and BSG. But still the comparison is, for me, very poor.
Trek really needs to up its game. I said elsewhere it is very notably lacking in sexiness and this is exactly what I mean. Every one of those shows listed has an adult quality to it, a cleverness and a naturalness about relationships that Trek just couldn't figure out how to do. Yes I know it's a "family show" but plenty of those shows were not considered "adult" and had wide audiences. Most of the sexiness you get on Trek is subtext fans suck out of it. It seems almost against Trek ethos to be clever in conversations. Now yes some of that kind of thing goes too far, some people flinch at Whedon for just that.. but it's the complete absence of it in Trek which makes Trek a dinosaur for a lot of people.
Nope. There are lots of reasons to criticize Voyager. Now, I kind of liked the show, but it was the least of all Trek shows, IMNSHO.
I don't consider them the measuring stick its simply not fair but good reasons for your list. They are the Platinum Standard.
No, he didn't. Those are two VERY intelligent television series.
Oh Trek and sex(iness). Voyager's staff tried to add sexiness to the show by putting a woman in a skin-tight outfit on the show, which pandered to a certain demographic, but damn was it silly! I love this complaint by RDM about Voyager:
All that said, that outfit has to go! I just don’t know how else to put it. How can you really take her seriously in this getup? If you want to posit a future where we wear our sexuality on our sleeves, where it’s very open, and no one is put off by people being very sexual, that’s great. That’s very much in tune with how Gene saw the future. The rest of Voyager is not like that. Nobody walks around with an outfit like that on the ship. You don’t go down the corridor and see some woman strolling by in a bikini on her way to the holodeck, which would be perfectly plausible. If you are really going to have the holodeck, and you are going to have beach parties down there, every once in awhile you should see somebody just strolling to the beach, doing their thing, guys in Speedo’s, or whatever. If you want to play that, play it, but to just have Jeri Ryan do it because Jeri Ryan is voluptuous and gorgeous and appeals to a certain demographic, is ludicrous! Nobody really wants to touch that. You bring it up in a meeting, ‘She’s a beautiful woman; we’ll let her look beautiful.’ Yes, she is a beautiful woman. I don’t object to that. But walk her onto the bridge, and tell me that the audience’s eyes aren’t watching her walk onto the bridge. The original series did it all the time, but that was of a piece; it was of its time; it made sense in context. Uhura [Nichelle Nichols] could walk around the bridge in a miniskirt, and in the ‘60s nobody thought that was completely insane. That was just part of the era that show was produced, and people accepted it. Seven of Nine, what are you thinking? It kills me, and it was always just vaguely embarrassing when you would have to do serious scenes with her in the room. You are just sitting there thinking, ‘Well, you essentially have this naked woman at the table.’
And of course Enterprise did much the same with Jolene Blalock, and added (weird) naked-gel scenes.
I think you mean “serialized”. But no, I wouldn’t.
Star Trek depicted man as serving a cause recognized as greater than the individual. In other words, a man not typified by petty, vile, and murderous thugs like Tony Soprano, or a bunch of liberal ideologues populating a world as much a fantasy as Middle-earth, or a vampire hunter as metaphor for an angry feminist. As for “Deadwood”, apparently the only word the writers were fond of was a four letter metaphor for sex, and the dialogue was saturated with it. “Oz” glorified the very worst traits of man-kind in a morally relativistic manner and expected its audience to simply cheer for the last man standing.
You seem unable or unwilling to separate production values from the actual stories told. That a particular show may “look good” says little or nothing about what message that show is attempting to convey, it is simply eye-candy to keep the viewer placated. And most viewers are easily placated, as is evidenced by the abundance of absolute crap which has been and is on television. If this is what you champion as “intelligent” television, then that says much more about you than it does about me.
"Serialised" is the correct English spelling of the word, Serialized would be the American English spelling of the word.
Thank you for explaining more what you are thinking, that is generous. I can see that your view of intelligence is that it is measurable by producing a correct or healthy world-view?
Hence why a program like The West Wing, which you find insufferable for presenting a left-wing world-picture, is not intelligent? (Despite in depicting characters who were 'serving a cause recognized as greater than the individual', that is the greater liberty, equality and brotherhood of the American people?)
Or where the use of language, as in Deadwood, contravenes some kind of societal code about correct behaviour? Deadwood is a narrative about the political formation of the US, about the accretion of territory into the Union for good and bad reasons. But to be able to understand its grand narrative, its critique of traditional historiography of the 'wild west' and its depiction of the west through more historically correct figures than prior westerns, you have to hear that cursed language (which is standing in for now-comedic but once just as vocally violent religious-themed swearing).
The display of intelligence is not about presenting the correct value-system; in fact intelligence is divorced from adherence to an ethical system. Intelligence is - in very general terms - about the ability to understanding the formal rules of given media, subject or sciences, and either building upon those rules well, or subvert them in new directions. Intelligence is sophistic, not ethical. Intelligence is displayed in the making of a given object, formula or example, which 'proves' the intelligence to others.
You may notice my signature. Do you read poetry? This is an example of a highly intelligent genre of late medieval Scottish poetry, called flyting. In this, two poets would spontaneously insult one another, within conventional poetic rules, but through brilliant use of imagery, sound and allusion. This was recorded, and fortunately kept in manuscripts or even published so as to be widely read and performed, and the poets more acclaimed for their talent. Flyting is an amazing form of drama and poetry, requiring highly intelligent poets. Yet, it is all about insulting one another visciously, building up to crescendos of language that when done well, are as well-executed as the drama of a symphony or the building tension of a tragedy. The two poets played on, variosuly, the other person's background, their moral failures, their sexual prowess, their ugliness. Whatever fit the stanza as composed on the spot. Flyting is has the propensity to be totally amoral, as with the Flyting of Kennedy and Dunbar, or to be highly moral, as in the Flyting of James V and David Lyndsey, where the latter told the king 'Ay fukkand like ane furious Fornicatour', describing James and a maid steeped in the silt of a beer barrel from their exertions, to forcefully galvanise the king from creating yet more bastards and to be a better husband after his impending nuptials. Yet neither flyting is less or more intelligent than the other, from their ethical content, but rather the superior craftsmanship of Kennedy and Dunbar's racial competition with one another.
You see, ugliness in drama, in poetry, in art, can serve important artistic and intelligent ends. It does not always, and I do not think I would enjoy Oz like I did in the past (maybe it was just pulp, though I think it was the first program in America to depict complex Muslims). However, the depiction of Tony Soprano was never meant to be a sterling example; he was a monster, though he was a human, sometimes heroic, but usually misogynistic, violent and self-doubting monster. The meta-narrative of The Sopranos was a commentary on certain attitudes and circumstances within contemporary society, and how the failings of social classes and criminality can be incredibly corruptive and destructive.
Formally, the Sopranos was very well made, and many elements, including the none-conclusion of its final hour, were examples of the craftsmanship of the showrunners' continual ability to sidestep dramatic convention and audience expectation.
Anyway, as noted already, I spell correctly. In fact, when I submit, I would fail my doctorate if I included "z's" rather than "s's". If I were studying your side of the pond, I would spell conversely.
Personally, I don't think becoming what amounts to nuBsG is the direction Star Trek needs to go. I liked nuBsG for what it is, but I also think there's a misconception out there that the only thing "intelligent" is nihilistic, full of swearing and explicit sex, and violence. Frankly, I am sick of anti-heroes you want to kick the daylights out of even worse than the villains. I am not interested in a show driven by schadenfreude, where you tune in simply to enjoy other people being more miserable than you.
If that becomes Star Trek--no thanks.
If that becomes Star Trek--no thanks.
