Star Trek: Enterprise in Danger of Being Cancelled

jkcity writes "According to Cinscape.com The Star Trek Enterprise set is awash with rumour that it will not be renewed for a 4th season, It was previous told it was safe by UPN but so was Enteprise's lead-out show Jake 2.0 which was just Cancelled. Star Trek: Enterprise has also been reduced to 24 episodes this season by UPN, things don't look good for the Star Trek Television Franchise and after the flop of Star Trek: Nemesis it could be many years before we ever see any new Star Trek outside of books."

Re:its interesting

[fruey]

I am surprised, because most of the other countries in the world do end up watching a lot of american shows

Most of the shows are made just for the American market, perhaps you can make an exception for Friends, but it's still got a lot of in US jokes which we don't get until we hear the audience laugh.

The sad fact is that it's cheaper to buy US rejects or old US shows (you'd be surprised at what's still running on African TV stations) so they get shown instead of locally produced content, or newer European content...

Re:Fire the Producers Instead

[TheRealFixer]

I have to disagree about DS9. The first few seasons, yes, it was very weak. But, Berman and crew went to go concentrate on Voyager and pretty much abandoned DS9 around the 4th season, and let them do whatever they wanted. From that point on, the show went to new hights. Some fantastic writing, a serial storyline, and some great acting took DS9 to places that Trek hadn't been before. I'd say that the last 3 seasons of DS9 were some of the best sci-fi on TV, except no one was watching anymore.

Re:Can't say I'll miss it...

[Tony Hoyle]

Actually Star Trek has always been a mirror of our own lives... The original series was locked in a battle with the Klingons (=Communists), in TNG we'd made friends with them (We're friends with the russians now!) but we had other enemies (=The middle east).

In Enterprise everyone is seemingly at peace then a large terrorist act devastates earth.... See the parallels?

Re:What's Wrong with Enterprise

[kalidasa]

To have the discovery of the Romulan's link with the Vulcans in Enterprise would be an unforgivable continuity breach: it was a major plot element in the original series episode "Balance of Terror," which was such a popular episode that they brought back the actor who played the doomed Romulan commander to play Spock's father in 1 TOS episode, 2 movies, 2 TNG episodes, and as a Klingon in the first movie.

Re:Can't say I'll miss it...

[10Ghz]

And don't even get me STARTED on Star Trek timeline continuity.

I remember hearing that historical events were changed in Star Trek: First Contact in such way that the events in Enterprise are not events that took place in TNG's past. That is, TNG and Enterprise are in two different timelines. That is a convenient way to not be restrained by TNG's past events. They can now do pretty much whatever they want to with the series.

Re:Wil Wheaton-read if you are out there on slashd

[Tassach]

If you know Wil's history with Berman, you'd know he'd be the last (or maybe the second-to-last) person in the ST machine Wil would want to talk to.

Re:Are you really surprised?

[Shakrai]

then talk about their feelings with Counselor Troi.

And that was a bad thing? IMHO Troi's role added to TNG (after they got over the first season "I sense a very strong presence here" bullshit) rather then detracting from it.

At least after Picard was mercilessly tortured by the Cardassians or assimilated by the Borg and used to kill tens of thousands of people it had impact at the end of the episode and wasn't forgotten about in the following ones. Part of this impact was the aforementioned scenes with Troi. There's a reason why Troi had a place on the Enterprise -- and a reason why the modern-day military employs counselors -- and police departments for that matter. In those lines of work you are going to see bad things and it's foolish to pretend that it won't have an effect on you.

Cut to Voyager -- they could be turned in frogs, assimilated, body snatched, etc and at the end of the episode the magic reset button would fix everything. That's one of many reasons I quit watching Voyager. TNG was a character-driven show. Even my friends who didn't like Sci-Fi or Trek liked it. I doubt it will ever be topped or even equaled.

Re:Jake 2.0

[cgenman]

The network that it ran on over in Japan has a history of cancelling shows while they're hot.

Actually, many shows in japan are canceled while they are hot. Evangelion, anyone? They achieve a pinnacle of success, and everyone moves on to create something else great. Franchises generally aren't milked until they bleed like Star Trek has been.

Re:Star Trek: Enterprise to be cancelled?

[gowen]

Yes, they were virtual unknowns.

Patrick Stewart was a virtual unknown, if you conflate being on US television with being an actor. He'd done little US TV or film work, but he'd been in a number of *extremely* well known BBC series in Britain: "I, Claudius"; "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"; "Smiley's People"; and been with the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years before Star Trek, as well as working with the National Theatre.

Support enterprise

[Golthar]

Please go here and read.
We should all send a card to them to let the producers know we care about the show and want them to continue

http://www.enterpriseproject.org/

Re:Good

[bluethundr]

DS9 also did really well when it had to compete against Babylon 5.

Urban legend has it that J. Michael Straczynski went to Paramount trying to sell his idea for this innovate new space opera [warnerbros.com] whose central focus was life aboard a space station. The way I've heard it told, the studio brass sat there nodding silently and appreciatively during the pitch session but ultimately said "Thanks, but No Thanks".

Then, mysteriously, a new show appeared [startrek.com] featuring Star Trek themes and ...whaddya know! many spacefaring races mingling in intrigue and commerce on a space station! Go figure, what were the odds of something like that happening? Two shows with nearly identical scenarios hitting the air at roughly the same time? ;)

But to tell the truth the Star Trek folk were just doling out a bit of what they got back in the 60s (okay a bit of a stretch, but bear with me here). According to William Shatner in his book about the making of 60's series [barnesandnoble.com] he told of how Roddenberry approached (I think it was CBS) trying to sell his "wagon train to the stars" (making an attempt to appeal the success of a show called Gunsmoke [tvland.com]) to the execs there. One major selling point was how cheaply the show could be made because of his "similar worlds theory". The theory in question states that given the enormity of the universe there is a mathematically possibility that other worlds could have evolved similarly to the earth. That being the case, depictions of allien races could be achieved cheaply through inexpensive costuming techniques and alien landscapes could be achieved through location shoots. Like their Paramount counterparts of the 1990's, they sat there and said "Interesting, good, but ultimatly no thanks". Then...lo and behold look what hits the air [barnesandnoble.com] before Roddenberry can get the okay to do Star Trek...

Re:Why a weekly series?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem may be finding a cast willing to commit themselves to a 2 to 3 month time table. Obvious many actors want to work more than a few months of the year. Cast members would likely run into serious scheduling conflicts if they persue other productions (outside of ST)

The bottom line is that the script materials for ST:E suck. Had the focus been less on character building and making the stories more realistic, this series would be doing very well.

For instance, When the Enterprise is taking over by a bunch of religious fantactics is totally unrealistic. Engineering and other critical areas of the ship would be off limits to non-crew members. Second the captain could has simply ordered the oxygen levels to be reduced or to induce unconscious by releasing a sleep agent/depressant into the air.

Time after time, the crew and the captain do something really stupid to put themselves and the ship at risk. If the Enterprise mission is to stop Earth from distruction, the ships captain would never bother answer distress calls or put the ship in any unneccessary risk! Are they trying to save the Universe or just Earth?

What Enterprise needs is an advicer on Naval warfare to de-stupify the ridiculous story lines.

Re:Jake 2.0

[Politburo]

Iron chef was in something like its 8th season when it was cancelled. It really had had its run. And, as another poster noted, Japanese production companies are not like American production companies. They tend to go out while the show is big, instead of making you cringe when you hear the cast of friends has signed on for their 26th season at 30 million an epsiode.

Great research!

[Snaller]

Wow, journalism is getting better all the time... an anonymous person writes a note to cinescape telling them he's heard the people on the set are worried about getting cancled... wow - that's some cool research right there!

Re:Why a weekly series?

[tim1724]

The real money in a Star Trek show comes from selling old shows in syndication ... which requires having a certain magic number of episodes (100, I think)

A miniseries is a one-time "promote it heavily, charge the advertisers a fortune" type of thing which will rarely be shown again. (Although these days you can add "sell it on DVD" to the list of ways to make quick cash if it does well, or "sell it on DVD to the rabid fans who can't believe no one else appreciates it " if it doesn't. :-)