One of the problems with this debate is that people automatically assume that quality of Trek from Voyager forward and the demise of Trek from Voyager on go hand in hand and they do not. They're mutually exclusive issues. What I mean is that whether or not Trek got bad has nothing to do with why it has failed so miserably lately (
see: Enterprise, Nemesis).
I can sum up VOY's problem as a series and as Trek very simply: far too many episodes that either should have been 2 parters, 2 hour episodes or multiple story arcs. Instead, all too often, they crammed what started out as a really good story into 41 minutes.
Threshold is widely considered the worst episode of VOY but it really starts out pretty good. It only falls apart in the last 7 minutes. I think
Timeless should have been a 2 hour episode and there are numerous others like that that just died at the end. I also think that 7 of 9 was probably one of the best additions to the show and I think Jeri Ryan gets a bad rap as she's a very good actor and did brilliant work on that show. The criticism over bringing her on as "eye candy" was unwarranted.
ENT's failings during the first two seasons are more complex, however. The first mistake made was to not call the show
Star Trek: Enterprise. This may seem insignificant, but I believe it hurt the show's credibility among Trek fans right off the bat and fans were predispositioned to be skeptical of it (not to mention that the average viewer didn't know what the hell it was).
The next problem the show had to overcome was the tech factor. There was absolutely no way in hell that the producers were going to make ENT tech look more prehistoric than 1966 TOS tech. They had the difficult task of trying to keep the tech 100 years more primitive yet still look 2001-cool to make it believable. The problem is that they failed to do this completely. Now, 8 years ago, some of the fools on this board actually thought that a
Daedalus Class or that Matt Jefferies concept ship was the most appropriate ship for the new series. I nearly pissed myself reading that, the same way I almost piss myself on a daily by TOS fans who are going to boycott the new film if the Enterprise doesn't look exactly as it did in 1966. That being said, although I expected the new ship to look retro yet contemporary, I didn't expect the flippin'
Akira Class with the nacelles flipped up. And that literally was my first reaction as I saw the thing from the top view shown on the logo patch and it looks exactly like the the damned
Akira Class,which I do love, by the way, but it was completely inappropriate for a series set 225 years before ST:FC. And that was the problem with all of the tech on this show. It all seemed not only more advanced than not only TOS but quite often 24th century Trek as well. I'll give you 2 prime examples: the hyposparay and the communicator. 'Nuff said.
Now these tech issues may not seem that significant in the scope of the big picture but they really were when you consider what the biggest issues of the storylines for the first two seasons were. The biggest issues were that they were recycling the living crap out of plotlines from all 4 prior Trek incarnations and the rest of the episodes were generally speaking all filler, focused far too much on tech and special effects with the occasional fleeting reference to a temporal cold war. These plot issues together, more importantly painted a bigger picture that wasn't resolved until season 4 and that is the deliberate attempt by TPTB to take this prequel and turn it into a reboot as if TOS never existed. Other than the one time Romulan episode and the couple of Klingon episodes, there was hardly anything connecting TOS to ENT and that was a mistake in the long run and to be quite honest, Season 4 of ENT is one of the best seasons of Trek ever.
Even with all of the failings of the two series, and I've been saying this for 10 years, even the worst Trek is better than most of the garbage that's on in primetime on a nightly basis. So, with that, I've always liked Trek, even at the points where some fans would consider their worst.
So why did VOY barely survive and ENT fail? It had nothing to do with any of the problems of the shows. The fact is that a show doesn't have to be of any quality to stay on the air (
see: Law and Order and
CSI and of course every piece of crap show on MTV). Unfortunately, more really good shows get cancelled than actually last and all things considered, a four year run for ENT should really be considered successful. One of the best shows of the lat 10 years,
Boomtown, was cancelled after just one full season and a couple of episodes. The highly acclaimed series
Deadwood lasted just 3 seasons.
The first problem these latter incarnations had was the fact that they were on UPN, a network that was available in approximately 50% of the markets in the U.S. and even less cable providers. This network eventually failed and folded at the end of ENT's last season merging with the WB, another failing network. Both of these networks had tried unsuccesfully for nearly their entire 10 years existence to try to promote a primetime lineup that was focused on the youth demographic and after 1998 in UPN's case a decidely youth/urban demographic. By 2000, Trek was the redheaded stepchild of the UPN network as they had eliminated all of their unsuccessful (although really good) scifi shows and every time they tried to throw scifi back in it would fail miserably. So the reason Trek failed can easily be in part blamed on being on UPN.
But if ENT was on another major network, I submit that it still would have failed and would probably lasted 2 seasons instead of 4. The only way I see Trek surviving on TV in the future is if it is on a niche network like SciFi, Spike, G4, etc. People constantly talk about how successful new BSG is but it's numbers would be considered crap on a major network. The truth is that niche programming needs to go on a niche network.
Star Trek's biggest problem is that it's format is 20 years old. Every episode of Trek made since TNG:EAF has had exactly the same format and it's tired. It was tired in 1995, nevertheless 2005 when ENT was cancelled. All of the plotlines follow the exact same route and you can set your watch to the commercial breaks. I love all Trek but I'm a realist and I know that in order for Trek to be successful it needs to appeal to more than just the die-hards like us. The fact is that people like us make up a scant 2% of the Trek viewing audience (and for those of you deficient in the math department that means in the end of ENT's run we made up approximately 50,000 of the weekly viewing audience). The show needs to appeal to the other 98% of the viewers and it hasn't for a long time. Take it for what's it's worth but today's TV viewer doesn't have the attention span for Trek and doesn't have the tolerance for a drama that's using the same format that was used during the end of the Reagan Administration. There's a reason that half of the shows in primetime are reality shows and the sitcom is all but dead. It's the audience and Trek needs a reboot and needs to appeal to the bigger audience again.
So even with all of the problems of VOY and ENT, I still love them both but I want Trek to be accessible to all audiences, not just us as that's the only way it will be successful. I'm looking forward to the new vision of Abrams and I'm confident based on what I heard directly from Zachary Quinto's mouth last week that this reboot will remain faithful to everything we value about Trek. In order for Trek to remain successful, it needs to move forward or it will die.
-Shawn
I just hope this new film vamps Trek back up again and people won't talk trash about the franchise anymore.
