UPN

[Michael]

Does anyone remember Nowhere Man? I liked that first episode. Don't remember it lasting long though.

Remember it? I love it! It lasted for one season (with 25 episodes). It was a series that took its main character seriously, and even though the quality of the episodes was hit and miss, and it kind of got bogged down in its own mythology towards the end, it worked mainly because of a stellar performance by Bruce Greenwood.

His portrayal of Tom Veil is very emotional and introspective; you very much feel with him on his journey. It also helps that he is a rather likeable guy.

The theme of identity loss is very dear to me, so this series really struck a nerve with me. To me it's up there with some of the great episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. It's also cool that it's not one of those series that didn't get a chance to really end its storyline. The writers knew in time that the show would be cancelled, so they wrapped it all up in the last episodes.

 

[Christopher]

It's also cool that it's not one of those series that didn't get a chance to really end its storyline. The writers knew in time that the show would be cancelled, so they wrapped it all up in the last episodes.

That's not how I remember it. In the Nowhere Man finale, they basically decided to upend their whole mythology and replace it at the last minute with a totally different conspiracy than one we'd thought we were following, and it sure felt like a cliffhanger ending to me, something designed to set up a changed status quo for a second season. And it didn't feel like the retcon made any sense whatsoever in the context of what had been established before. I always figured it was a desperation move to retool a failing show in hopes of getting a renewal -- which, of course, did not succeed. It felt like anything but a satisfactory resolution to me.

I agree about Greenwood, though. He was the only really good thing about that show.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Does anyone remember Nowhere Man? I liked that first episode. Don't remember it lasting long though.

Remember it? I love it! It lasted for one season (with 25 episodes). It was a series that took its main character seriously, and even though the quality of the episodes was hit and miss, and it kind of got bogged down in its own mythology towards the end, it worked mainly because of a stellar performance by Bruce Greenwood.

I thought the opposite -- it expanded it, barely. It would have been a pretty empty show had it just been a small group of some kind of people hunting one guy just for some photo negatives. It wouldn't have made sense either over a long season, or more had the show gone further.

It's also cool that it's not one of those series that didn't get a chance to really end its storyline. The writers knew in time that the show would be cancelled, so they wrapped it all up in the last episodes.

That's not how I remember it. In the Nowhere Man finale, they basically decided to upend their whole mythology and replace it at the last minute with a totally different conspiracy than one we'd thought we were following, and it sure felt like a cliffhanger ending to me, something designed to set up a changed status quo for a second season. And it didn't feel like the retcon made any sense whatsoever in the context of what had been established before. I always figured it was a desperation move to retool a failing show in hopes of getting a renewal -- which, of course, did not succeed. It felt like anything but a satisfactory resolution to me.

Oh, no -- I think we the viewer falsely assumed it was some dumb case of hunting a guy just for a negative. In my opinion the show beautifully started unfolding the larger scale of things and just how wrong we were about the photo throughout the show and especially around the end.

Like "The X-Files", it became more and developed.

I'm not sure they knew 100% the show had been cancelled and were probably setting things up in case it would come back for a second season.

I think the beauty of this show is, you could bring it back all these years later -- things could be picked back up.

 

[Turbo]

Never had a problem watching Voyager - one of our local independent stations (with a pretty good signal) was a charter affiliate of UPN. However, in the summer of 2002, our CBS affiliate elected to go independent (which has been a good move for them in the long run, apparently) and the UPN station picked up the CBS affiliation. We had a couple low-power independents at the time but nobody wanted to pick up UPN or start a new station, so the CBS's sister station, a FOX affiliate, ended up airing UPN's prime-time programming on tape delay from 11pm-1am for the rest of UPN's life. Consequently, I saw almost none of Enterprise S2-S4 first-run.

...along with 1995's Legend ('95), a superb steampunk Western from Trek's Michael Piller, starring Richard Dean Anderson and John DeLancie. It was basically "Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla become steampunk crimefighters in the Old West," and with a premise like that, it's amazing that it wasn't a huge hit. And Anderson was fantastic as the dissolute, completely un-MacGyverish antihero Ernest Pratt.

When RDA was at DragonCon a couple years ago, he said that shooting Legend was the most fun he'd ever had working on any project, more than either MacGyver or Stargate SG-1, and that as much as he liked SG-1, he wished that Legend had continued.

 

[tharpdevenport]

The problems wikth "Legend" were that it wasn't particularly well written, it lacked a certain polish overall, and DeLance just couldn't act (and his attempt at a foreign accent was terrible).

Aisde from that and his anti-gun crap he carried over on the show, the show could have lasted longer. It needed some fixing, that was all.

It was also nice to have "MacGyver" composer Ken Harrison scoring all the episodes.

 

[E-DUB]

Another thumbs-up for Nowhere Man. My wife liked the show and she hates tv as a medium in general.

 

[HGN2001]

STAR TREK's history in first-run syndication had a semi-stable route in Philly. THE NEXT GENERATION started and ended its run on Philly's channel 29, the FOX affiliate. It aired steadily on Saturdays at 7 - but the weakness was that this station was one of the last in the country to add multiplex-stereo sound. So one of the big technical improvements to STAR TREK - the addition of stereo sound - was lost on those of us in Philly.

This channel 29 also followed suit with DEEP SPACE NINE. I've forgotten how they shoehorned DS9 into their FOX schedule, but after TNG ended, they moved DS9 to the Saturdays at 7 slot. Still no stereo!

When UPN came along, they affiliated with Philly's channel 57, up until then a straight independent with nightly movies and reruns all over the place. Channel 57 had great technical qualities, a solid over-the-air signal, and stereo sound, so VOYAGER sounded great to us. After a short time, 29 dropped the STAR TREK show it was airing (DS9) when 57 picked it up, so for the final years of DS9, we got to hear in stereo.

Channel 57 continued with UPN all through its ENTERPRISE years, but toward the end it had begun to shuffle it around the schedule as they aired Flyers hockey games. For a time, they even added the old TOS series and aired the remastered episodes.

One of my regrets in life is that we got an HDTV the very week aftert ENTERPRISE had already aired its last episode, so I never got to see an HDTV broadcast of a STAR TREK show over-the-air.

NOWHERE MAN was an amazing series and I'm happy I picked up the now-rare DVD set of the entire series. This is the "Hidden Agenda" photograph that Thomas Veil had taken and put on display that seem to cause his erasure from society:

Harry

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

I remember when Voyager started that we didn't have a UPN station but it was "syndicated/allowed to run" late night on the NBC station...for the first year. the 2nd season a new station appeared that was ABC-affiliated but it also carried UPN programming during late night hours. Unfortunately, it was a low-powered station that didn't broadcast over the air more than 20 miles--so goodbye Voyager until the station could afford to boost their power.

 

[BillJ]

One of my regrets in life is that we got an HDTV the very week aftert ENTERPRISE had already aired its last episode, so I never got to see an HDTV broadcast of a STAR TREK show over-the-air.

They didn't broadcast TOS-R in HD?

 

[HGN2001]

They didn't broadcast TOS-R in HD?

Not my local affiliate. They only had HD capability as a network feed at the time.

 

[Reanok]

I saw Enterprise on My local CBS station on Saturdays at 6:00p.m. if the show wasn't interrupted by local College football games. I was glad I got to see the shows the first 3 seasons. I did like Jake 2.0 and watched it when it was shown before Enterprise. came on. I watched season 4 of Enterprise on my Local fox station on Friday night they were shown in full without being interrupted for football.I was glad to get to see the last season.

 

[eyeresist]

I did like Jake 2.0

For a second I thought you were talking about Travis.

 

[Who1]

With all this talk of a new series being used to launch a network I thought I'd look back at the sad story of UPN. The wiki is pretty interesting, it says quite clearly that the pilot of Voyager was the largest ratings the network ever had, by a mile. It also looks like it didn't have affiliates in a lot of cities

Does anyone remember not being able to watch Voyager or Enterprise when they were on, but wanting to? Someone lived where UPN wasn't available, even if they were willing to get cable? People are citing the streaming cost at $6 for CBS All Access as a reason why they might not watch the new show. I'm curious if we've already had this problem.

Thanks!

From 1995-1997 my local ABC affiliate aired Voyager as a syndicated first run in various time slots. They even tried to syndicate The Sentinel I believe. In the middle of all the run up to season 4 and the excitement of more Borg and Seven of Nine, their arrangement was cancelled and I was forced to beg a friend with cable to record it every week on VHS. This miraculously lasted until season 6 when we finally got cable.
Had torrents existed then... it would have been a very different story.

 

[ian128K]

Because of a job, I was living in Orem, UT during the first air of season 1. Our cable provider (I can't remember anymore who it was) didn't carry UPN at all, so the only way I was able to watch it was by downloading episodes on Kazaa. The quality of the files I was able to find generally wasn't spectacular, and I had to learn a lot about how to do things like fix keyframes and sync audio tracks with video tracks just to be able to watch the episodes, but I was dedicated! Loved the show from episode 1. Once I moved back to Seattle in 2002, I was able to watch it on TV (and in HD!) and that was much much better.