So what killed Star Trek?

[ChristopherPike]

So there's this poll over at the Trekmovie.com site which came with this article...

http://trekmovie.com/2011/08/11/connor-trinneer-enterprise-didnt-kill-star-trek-franchise/

Did Enterprise Kill Star Trek franchise on TV?

Yes (16%) 444 votes
Maybe (12%) 327 votes
No (72%) 2007 votes

August 21, 2011 @ 13.01 GMT

Total Votes: 2777

Usual straw poll stuff. But it has the virtue of taking the pulse of fandom, on a fairly neutral ground.


So it prompts an obvious question...




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[Admiral Shran]

I don't think ENT killed televised Trek. IMO, the damage was already done by the time ENT hit the airwaves. Given that it's ratings remained relatively consistent throughout it's run (for a Trek show), I'd say it did pretty good for itself.

Okay, it did lose roughly half of it's viewers, but let's consider a few facts....

1.) It started out with about four million steady viewers and ended with about two million. That's a drop of 50%.

2.) VOY started out with about eight million viewers and ended with about three. That's a drop of 62.5%.

3.) DS9 started out with about thirteen million viewers and ended (IMO inexplicably) with about four million viewers. That's a whooping drop of 69.2%.

4.) TNG was the only spin-off show to end with more viewers than it began with - and then only a climb from eleven million to twelve million.

The worst you can say is that the show was incapable of saving televised Trek. But killed it? No, Trek's "death" was a long, slow process. ENT only happened to witness the end of it.

 

[ChristopherPike]

I've added a poll.

Maybe we should bite the bullet and have a mod move it to General Trek Discussion?

 

[Admiral Shran]

If given the choices in the poll, I'd go with #1, Franchise Fatigue.

However, the unavailability no doubt played a part, just as with VOY. Not to mention the fact that ENT suffered from people using Tivo-style recording devices and watching it later, the numbers of which weren't included in the ratings at the time.

ENT, and televised Trek in general, had a lot of things going against it which led to it's "death."

 

[Aquarius]

This is a question that has no simple answer. Many things contributed to televised Trek's death, not just one of the above options. I think franchise fatigue had quite a bit to do with it, but also UPN/availability issues. We had UPN in my area, but our UPN affiliate was also the official station for all the Detroit Red Wings games. The Wings were hot during that time, so ENT was always getting preempted, and it's alternate airing time was never the same, nor was it always at a sane hour (2am on a Tuesday morning, anyone?). I confess, I was one of those people who quit watching sometime during the second season, but it just got too hard to keep up with while having two jobs at any given time.

UPN also failed to promote ENT as well as it could have. It's been suggested by Chris at Trek.fm that Enterprise fans are better at promoting the show than the network ever was. If you watch the twitter feeds, the polls at Trek.fm, and a small surge in membership at the Delphic Expanse, there seems to be a new infusion of love for the show. Has it finally stopped being fashionable to hate ENT? Are former haters so hungry for new Trek that they're willing to give it a chance? Has the Abrams movie drawn new fans in who had nothing to do with the politics of treating ENT like the red-headed stepchild of the franchise and don't care about all that?

Again, no easy answers, and likely a combination of many factors.

 

[Honeybee]

Aquarius knows I agree with her on this point, but I'm going to back it up. It was a perfect storm of fatigue, UPN incompetence, fan negativity (which was both mean and uncalled for) and I think the lack of success of the films to give the franchise momentum. Also, the proliferation of cable channels gave so many more options that ratings were never going to be what they were in the 80s and 90s - especially on a small network. The CW now considers 3 million viewers a monster hit.

Most Enterprise fans also admit there were some hiccups early on - but by season three and four - the series had found its voice, which is about the time DS9 and TNG really did their best work as well.

But you know, I'm just happy for the four seasons we have and that a lot of the negativity seems to be dissipating. I'm hopeful that liking it for all its flaws is becoming more fashionable than hating despite what was strong.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I voted for franchise fatigue, but it was more fatigue of substandard material, i.e., folks weren't tired of Star Trek, they were tired of BAD Star Trek.

 

[Kemaiku]

A long drawn out saturation of Trek that wained in quality and rehashed far too much material. It ran out of steam and ideas, basically.

 

[Skywalker]

I think it was a combination of the first two choices, combined with a few other factors. I think franchise fatigue definitely played a large role, but I think it was more on the creators' side than it was on the viewers'. There will always be viewers there if the show's good enough. But ENT, at least in its first two seasons (the most important ones for every show), was very samey and run-of-the-mill, and rehashed a lot of stories and concepts from other Trek shows. I think TPTB failed to recognize the changing landscape of television and so failed to adapt until it was too late.

ENT probably should have been darker and grittier than other Treks from the very beginning. People weren't as impressed by lighter fare anymore. By 2001 serialized shows were also becoming more popular than they had been in the past. ENT had no clear arc other than a haphazardly thrown together Temporal Cold War, which seems to have been universally unpopular.

But ultimately it came down to the network ENT was airing on. In the late '90s, while VOY was airing, UPN primarily aired shows with a sci-fi/action theme, aiming for the young male audience, but while ENT was airing, UPN was shifting its efforts toward the young female demographic. ENT just didn't fit in with those plans.

ENT was also canceled before online viewing and time shifting began to be taken into account by the networks. IIRC, if you took time shifting into account, ENT had a much larger audience than it looked like on paper. I believe a lot of people also watched the weekend rerun rather than the Wednesday night airing, and plus in many markets the show was often preempted by sporting events, which damaged its ratings in many big markets.

 

[SFRabid]

In central and Eastern Kentucky, Star Trek fans began to think the station that was buying the franchise rights to Star Trek shows was purposely trying to antagonize the fan base. It started with TNG. In the beginning TNG was on a regular Saturday schedule though it was frequently preempted by ballgames. By the third season things started going downhill. One Saturday it would be on at 3 PM. The next Saturday it would be on at 2 AM, after auto dealer shows trying to sell used cars. The next weekend it might not be on at all. Back then you did not have Tivo or internet listings to let you know when to catch the show. With DS9 and Voyager it got worse. The same company bought the franchise rights for those shows in the area. They could be on any day of the week, any time of the night. It was pure luck to catch Star Trek on air.

You did not think it could be any worse when Enterprise came out, but it was. There was no station in central or eastern Kentucky to carry the show. While TBS, TNT, etc... was carrying B5, Xena, and other shows during decent hours and on a regular schedule, Enterprise was no where to be found until it hit cable as reruns.

So for my area fans did not get tired of Star Trek, they got tired of trying to FIND Star Trek.

 

[Middleman]

... fan negativity (which was both mean and uncalled for) ...

I wouldn't underestimate the effect this had on the management of CBS. The "less than thoughtful" commentary on the internet, instant feedback that the other series really didn't have to endure, caught the attention of Les Moonves. Much of this hate was spewed right on the official site. Even John Billingsley said "that we were taken off the air because we were perceived as 'the show that was killing the franchise'" I personally don't agree with Mr. Billingsley, I feel it was the decline in ratings caused by "Franchise Fatigue". Mr. Moonves is going to make us wait unti 2015 before Trek returns to TV, assuming it comes back at all.

there seems to be a new infusion of love for the show. Has it finally stopped being fashionable to hate ENT?

I've noticed the same thing but I thought I was being too much of a Fan Boy.

Are former haters so hungry for new Trek that they're willing to give it a chance?

From my readings of postings here, on the official site and elsewhere I can confirm this. Either everyone is getting desperate for Trek or the former haters are "maturing".

Has the Abrams movie drawn new fans in who had nothing to do with the politics of treating ENT like the red-headed stepchild of the franchise and don't care about all that?

I can only hope that this is the case; a positive coming out of Abrams Trek. Besides, I like redheads.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Thanks for responding everyone. Even those 3 who do find Enterprise culpable!

I'm sorry I don't have anything constructive to add myself. Except maybe...

The theme song. A glib answer perhaps. But it ties into the level of optimism in humanity after 9/11. A Star Trek series possibly coming off as being a little more Americana than the others. One change too many. An opening song chosen weeks before world events took over, which suddenly just rang hollow and unnecessarily treacly. While true to Star Trek's philosophy, it compounded the problem. As the show shifted to reflect the times we were living in, so should the titles. But instead, "Faith of the Heart" stayed and became all the more chirpier and unbeat. Even jarring badly with some of the horrors those pre-title teasers showed us. In "Twilight", the Earth has just been destroyed and they cut to inspirational images of mankind's achievements. In "Impulse", T'Pol is rushed in sickbay screaming her lungs out and it switches to Russell Watson singing that song again.

Simon Pegg shares a hatred of it with many others I have no doubt. In fact back in 2002, at the place I was then working, I remember a collegue voicing a negative opinion on the show that might've been coloured entirely by that one thing they didn't expect from Star Trek. It's not rational, but people are like that. Make a bad first impression and show the slightest weakness, then they'll look for other flaws too, to help them decide whether to stay or go. Whereas get in their good books first and maybe the quality can go up and down after that.

 

[Skywalker]

I did understand the message they were trying to convey with that theme song, but I agree that it probably put a lot of people off, too. I remember watching the "Broken Bow" premiere ten years ago (holy crap! ) and, after a cool teaser, I was suddenly taken out of the episode by this cheesy theme song. I loved the montage the song played over, just not the song itself.

And then in Season Three, when the show took a darker turn, they sped up the song and made it sound more upbeat.

 

[Aquarius]

I am not a huge fan of the theme song myself. Whether or not it's a big enough factor to contribute to the show's demise, I'm not sure. I always wondered if that was a network-influenced thing, an attempt to draw in a "younger, hipper" audience by using something poppy instead of classical -- you know, because shows like Dawson's Creek, etc. used so much pop music in their shows. It was definitely a trend that was starting in the late 90s/early 00s.

And yes, I like the uptempo version even less.

I do, however, think that this could've contributed to viewer decline in that as open-minded as we like to think we are, Trekkies don't seem to like change all that much. Any time a new series came out, there was some kind of uproar--my captain can beat up your captain or whatever. Whether the Enterprise theme song was good or bad is subjective; that it was a pop song vs. orchestral music like the other four shows made it stand out, and in my conversations with other fans, "different" often = "wrong."

But then, that's reflective of much of the negative fan reaction to Enterprise in general. "These Vulcans are different. They got it wrong." Or whatever. Yeah. Because, you know, even our society was exactly the same 100 years ago as it is right now. (Not.)

 

[Mach5]

And then in Season Three, when the show took a darker turn, they sped up the song and made it sound more upbeat.

Yeah, that always bothered me. One of the most ridiculous creative choices in modern television history.

I guess they sped it up because the original version felt way too long (even if it were a mere minute and a half or whatever).

To answer the original question, It was DS9 that gave Trek "cancer", because it simply wasn't something most people wanted to watch. Personally, I loved the hell out of it, it was darker, grittier, more character driven... Actually, of all the Trek incarnations, DS9's characters felt like the "real people" the most. You could really relate to these guys.

Then the cancer metastasized into Voyager. I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it when I first saw it (at age 12!), but compared to the rest of Trek, VOY is nothing more than "fake TNG", and it really doesn't age well.

I caught some reruns on Croatian TV a few years ago, and those earlier seasons looked simply awful, borderline unwatchable. If a show like that premiered in 2011, it wouldn't even get a full season, I think.

Did ENT kill Trek? HELL NO! Its only sin is not being the cure for the cancer that killed it.

 

[SFRabid]

There are worse theme songs out there. I cannot imagine not watching a show because I don't like the theme song. I watch all of Trek but there are only two series theme songs that I remember, TOS and ENT.

 

[Admiral Shran]

The theme song was indeed off-putting for me, especially the new more upbeat version. However, it has grown on me over time.

If someone is going to judge a show based solely on it's theme song, I'd say that person has already decided not to like show before they even watch it.

 

[Honeybee]

I never cared for the theme song, but darn it if the opening credits sequence is made of awesome. When the show aired, I used to turn down the song and watch the old footage.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

I like the song, but even if I didn't, it wouldn't make me not watch a show, if the show is worth watching.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Did ENT kill Trek? HELL NO! Its only sin is not being the cure for the cancer that killed it.

I like that...