Trek Returning to TV in 2017!

[Campe]

Enterprise was cancelled just as it was getting good. Ratings had dropped, and they weren't generating enough interest to keep it going. Frankly, a new series should not take 3 seasons to "get good" - there were a lot of poor episodes in the earlier seasons, and it simply wasn't enough to keep going.

Continuity porn a good episode does not make. Season 4 had some decent story arcs but the majority was just reference after reference after reference to Trek past.

 

[Kor]

Enterprise was cancelled just as it was getting good. Ratings had dropped, and they weren't generating enough interest to keep it going. Frankly, a new series should not take 3 seasons to "get good" - there were a lot of poor episodes in the earlier seasons, and it simply wasn't enough to keep going.

Continuity porn a good episode does not make. Season 4 had some decent story arcs but the majority was just reference after reference after reference to Trek past.

I agree with this completely.

I found the stories in season four to be more compelling than those of previous seasons, but the constant callbacks got a little nauseating. Surely there must be a way to tell good, exciting stories that don't rely on an encyclopedic knowledge of the whole Trek canon in order to understand.

Kor

 

[The Overlord]

I think at this point, I would prefer if this series was set in the recent rebooted universe.

I think the Prime Universe was starting to collapse under its own weight, the continuity was starting to get convoluted and contradict itself and I really don't want yet another reboot.

I think the rebooted universe can streamline certain ideas from the Prime Universe, like the Borg as they were originally conceived without the Borg Queen. I also thinking to trying to reference things from shows that ended decades ago is not the best way to bring in new fans.

 

[JWPlatt]

What is forgotten is new again.

On Enterprise, I wish they had stayed on Earth for the entire first year to show the remnants of struggle to become one civilization, deal with the Vulcans, refine warp drive through failures to get the Enterprise ready for launch, and educate themselves about what was known of what lay ahead...

 

[bbailey861]

Only if you're a U.S. citizen.

But if you're not in the US it will be available on TV, as has already been stated, so no problem.

Oh, okay, good. I just hope that here in Canada it'll be available on a network like CTV, Global, CityTV, and not a cable channel like Space (which is now just as shitty as SyFy.)

Well, clearly, it'll go to whoever pays the most for it. I just wonder how long it'll be before negotiations start and we find out who that'll be?

 

[Noname Given]

Ugh...God!

You Trek fans sound like a bunch of old nagging women.

Support the show and quit complaining, because if you don't support it you will be the ones to blame for it being killed.

Agreed. That was what killed the Stargate franchise.

It was bullshit when Enterprise apologists were saying it and it's bullshit now.

Fans are under no obligation to support shitty shows out of brand loyalty.

IDK the first two season of TNG were god-awful. And fan support in the hope it would get better was the only thing that kept TNG going to start to improve by its third season.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Zombie Cheerleader: IT is hardly fair to hold a show produced half a century ago to the standards of today. TV back then was far more episodic than today. You saw a show once, maybe again in "summer reruns".

If you had told the folks making and starring in TOS that their work would still be being watched, not to mention analyzed, fifty years down the road, they would have proclaimed you fit for commitment.

As an example, "The Fugitive", a rough contemporary of TOS was widely regarded as one of, if not the, best drama of the time. They had three different actors play the main characters brother-in-law over the course of the series run. No way that would fly today.

That's a pretty long response to a one line joke

 

[Amaris]

I liked the first two seasons of TNG, and they still have many episodes that are among my favorites.

 

[BillJ]

I liked the first two seasons of TNG, and they still have many episodes that are among my favorites.

Same here. If I had to make a choice between seasons one and two of TNG vs. the later seasons, I'd pick one and two everytime. The ideas, characters and universe felt fresh. There was a sense of anything could happen.

 

[drt]

What is forgotten is new again.

On Enterprise, I wish they had stayed on Earth for the entire first year to show the remnants of struggle to become one civilization, deal with the Vulcans, refine warp drive through failures to get the Enterprise ready for launch, and educate themselves about what was known of what lay ahead...

You may have been referring to this, but this was the original plan, but the network vetoed it.

 

[Greg Cox]

I liked the first two seasons of TNG, and they still have many episodes that are among my favorites.

Same here. If I had to make a choice between seasons one and two of TNG vs. the later seasons, I'd pick one and two everytime. The ideas, characters and universe felt fresh. There was a sense of anything could happen.

Gotta disagree there. To my mind, TNG didn't get consistently good until "Measure of a Man."

I actually remember being startled by how good that one was, compared to the first season or so.

 

[Squiggy]

Enterprise is not remembered as a failure.

Nope.

It get more popular all the time.

Also nope.

 

[eyeresist]

The hyperactivity-- the non stop action and the gimmicks, all design to appeal to the summer movie crowd.

And if that's probably what's worrying some fans. Are they going to be stuck with that version of Trek if turns out that way.

Purely from a budget perspective, they won't be able to do that. And from a TV series perspective, what they need (according to the current model) is ongoing plot development. (Unless they decided to make it a procedural show with basically self-contained episodes - but I think most would agree that would be crazy, and not what most people want.)

They did a terrible (i.e. non-existent) job of explaining the lack of progress between Kirk's time and Janeway's time. Just awful. You can't just improve the sets and call it progress. Star Trek was on the verge of becoming a comedy about mankind's lack of advancement with each passing decade.

Showing cultural advancement is almost impossible. If you look at it realistically, the future will involve post-humans and automagic technologies which a contemporary audience could not relate to. For this reason TNG was in a way a mistake, due to the impossibility of its premise. But that's only if you expect Trek to be a basically realistic depiction of the future, which I would say is impossible from a technical POV and undesirable from a dramatic and commercial POV.

Ultimately, execution is key. The details are relatively unimportant, as long as they aren't self-contradictory.

BSG's formatting and story telling may have been more engaging, but I would not go so far to say it was "better." Obviously, the popularity speaks a different story, but for me, the characters are just awful. I have tried to watch it recently and the tone is so depressed and morose that I stopped after half-hour, I felt so jaded and cynical.

For all ENT's faults, I at least could enjoy it and have fun with a lot of it.

Yeah, I watched the first couple of eps of NuBSG and found it a dreary experience. SO self-important and largely humourless, whereas ENT had more variety and a bit of a sense of fun, even if quality was all over the place. It wasn't a Whedon-style quip-fest, but there was a sense that the characters were able to recognise the ironic side of their various adventures. (Also, ENT did try to be more like BSG in season 3. As usual the fans are divided on the results.)

 

[Shaka Zulu]

BSG was lightyears better than Enterprise, and was a clear illustration of what Voyager should of been.

Yeah the show went slightly off the rails towards the end, but that understandable. The point is they raised the bar and then some.

Too bad it's rating were worse than 'Enterprise's'

...and it fell off the frakin bridge, not just the rails... and the closer was worse than DS9's.

The only thing they raised was the mindless glorification of those that think sex and character assassination is good writing and sci-fi.

If you've ever read any sci-fi literature (including any and all of the non-space opera works), you'd know that events and characterization like what was on the current BSG are a part of a lot of sci-fi novels. Heck, that's part of a lot of non-sci-fi literature, too. And a lot of sci-fi authors praised the current BSG highly, from what I hear (the most prominent of these being Harlan Ellison.)

 

[Warped9]

I liked the first two seasons of TNG, and they still have many episodes that are among my favorites.

Same here. If I had to make a choice between seasons one and two of TNG vs. the later seasons, I'd pick one and two everytime. The ideas, characters and universe felt fresh. There was a sense of anything could happen.

Ditto.

 

[Amaris]

I liked the first two seasons of TNG, and they still have many episodes that are among my favorites.

Same here. If I had to make a choice between seasons one and two of TNG vs. the later seasons, I'd pick one and two everytime. The ideas, characters and universe felt fresh. There was a sense of anything could happen.

I think part of it is that I'm a big Pulaski fan, and I always enjoyed her moments in S2. Also, I liked the background music much more in the first two seasons than later on. Plus, I think the stories took a little more risk. That also meant they failed more often than not, but I liked what I saw.

I liked the first two seasons of TNG, and they still have many episodes that are among my favorites.

Same here. If I had to make a choice between seasons one and two of TNG vs. the later seasons, I'd pick one and two everytime. The ideas, characters and universe felt fresh. There was a sense of anything could happen.

Gotta disagree there. To my mind, TNG didn't get consistently good until "Measure of a Man."

I actually remember being startled by how good that one was, compared to the first season or so.

"Measure of a Man" is a certainly a standout episode, but I also like "Where No Man Has Gone Before," "Pen Pals," "The Big Goodbye," "11001001," "The Arsenal of Freedom," "Unnatural Selection," and "The Royale," are all favorite S1 & S2 TNG episodes.

I realize tastes vary, but there's still a great deal for me to love in the first two seasons.

 

[BillJ]

"Measure of a Man" is a certainly a standout episode, but I also like "Where No Man Has Gone Before," "Pen Pals," "The Big Goodbye," "11001001," "The Arsenal of Freedom," "Unnatural Selection," and "The Royale," are all favorite S1 & S2 TNG episodes.

Also "Heart of Glory", "Conspiracy", "Skin of Evil", "Contagion", "Time Squared" and "Q, Who" are all excellent episodes.

 

[Tim Walker]

The Royale demonstrates that Trek can have plots out of the Twilight Zone.

 

[CRM-114]

I thought "Into Darkness" had plenty to say about terrorism, foreign policy, pre-emptive strikes, militarism, etc.

But maybe we're so used to such issues in real life that we don't notice them when they appear in fiction.

To me, ST09 was about aspiring to be more. So many people are content with mediocrity. You certainly know plenty of people like this in real life, branded as "losers" (whether deserved or not).

Pike: 'Cause I looked up your file while you were drooling on the floor. Your aptitude tests are off the charts, so what is it? You like being the only genius-level repeat offender in the Mid-west?
Kirk: Maybe I love it.
Pike: Look, so your dad dies. You can settle for less than an ordinary life. Or do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special?

TNG's perfect people lectured ad nauseum about human betterment, advancement, enlightenment, etc.
But ST09 showed an actual human being working toward something better.

Kor

I think a lot of the "social commentary" thing has become a little passe and a lot of people don't seem to realize it.

The prevalence of the internet has allowed everyone to have a social commentary largely unfettered and they can do it in real time.

I agree with you, STID did a great job of addressing these topics in the form of it's fictional story. But everyone had already talked those things to death on forums, twitter, and facebook years before this movie existed. Do you think this could be why people fail to see social commentary in the new films?

I remember when I went to see Into Darkness, and one of the previews was for the movie The Internship with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. My first thought was, "If they wanted to make a movie about Google, they should've made it about six or seven years ago." Thinking about it sometime later, I realized that the trailer was something of a sign of what I should've expected from Into Darkness: something that should've been made six or seven years prior if they really wanted the story to be relevant.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I wonder if this means the future films are in doubt? Last I heard, Trek 4 (14) was in the pipeline with the same cast, Kirk n Spock.

Given the star power in the cast and the fact that they have failed in the long term to generate interest in the larger franchise, I'd say it's inevitable their days are numbered, even if they do a fourth or even fifth picture.

How do you know this?