Could TNG Stunt Casting Save 'Enterprise'? 785
Tycoon Guy writes "It seems Star Trek: Enterprise isn't about to go down without a fight. TrekToday is reporting that Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis will guest-star on the season finale of Star Trek: Enterprise, to reprise their Next Generation roles of William T. Riker and Deanna Troi. Hello stunt casting! The news has been confirmed on Sirtis' official fan site."
Oh Dear God (Score:2, Insightful)
Stick a fork in it please... (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, IMHO, most science fiction is really science-themed fantasy. I enjoy the Stargate shows most times (with all the light beings and whatnots) but I don't really count it is SciFiction. Trek was true SCIFI but after years and years of prostituting its original ideas for meagre ratings - there is nothing but a shell. I mean how many Borg related episodes did they drag out for sweeps? It's like gay marriage and abortion to republicans - whenever they wanted to get attention they would drag out the Borg! I'm sure the last Enterprise episode will feature a half-vulcan/half-borg Picard with large breasts.
Oh, no more... (Score:5, Insightful)
TNG and DS9 were at the top of their repective games in their later seasons -- they just got better and better, IMHO. Neither shows needed this kind of nonsense to shore them up for another handful of weary episodes. If Enterprise doesn't have enough momentum to propel it after all this time, then it's just plain out of gas, and stunt casting is not going to save it.
Especially when I, as a not-so-fanatical Star Trek watcher, can probably tell you the plot of this episode right now. Picard and Troi, on board the Titan on a diplomatic mission to Head-Ridge VII, run into a subspace anomaly and are transported back in time, and must deal with the cultural and technological gaps while...zzz...
I'd advise letting Enterprise, and Trek, rest in peace for another few years while it still has some dignity, but unfortunately that moment is already long past (for me, the last of TNG's dignity departed with the introduction of Retarded Data in Nemesis). I guess now the best we can hope for is that these sorts of decisions don't bury the franchise altogether.
Fade Away... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee... that'll save 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
So... their strategy to save a show which suffers from incredibly poor casting, is to bring two of the previous generation's casting gaffes.
I can't think of two more expendible characters from TNG (After wesley crusher of course) than Riker and Troi.
Re:Gee... that'll save 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh Dear God (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, give the show a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously
Re:nah.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to see a time travel moratorium in scifi. Unless the writer can improve on the one of the existing time travel stories or invent a new one then maybe they should just stay away.
There is a reason all the good time travel stories are short stories: time travel is destructive to structure, a short story can sustain that weakness and even make it part of the mood, a novel or long story cannot.
Re:Very well put (Score:2, Insightful)
Just let it die already. (Score:2, Insightful)
I watched a coupla episodes here and there...and the damn Vulcan chick was always getting her tits out on the slightest pretext.
Don't get me wrong -- I LOVE TITS.
But I know where to get pr0n when I wanna look at them, thank you very much Star Trek.
When tits and ass becomes a major selling point
of a show it's just demeaning to the viewers and kinda sad.
Some issue with the Battlestar Galactica remake. Having cute girls on the show is cool, but give them better roles than serving as eye candy, damnit.
Re:Oh, no more... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two key differences. First, he was, as you note, a regular character. It wasn't just a guest appearance.
Second, it made sense in terms of the story. One of the things DS9 did much better than both earlier and later ST series is flesh out other races (yes, other ST series had important aliens, but they were isolated...only DS9 made it so the whole alien race was important--compare, for example, the Ferengi on DS9 and TNG). The Klingons were an important part of the ongoing story. Even if there had been no Worf from TNG, it would have made sense for them to invent the character for DS9.
Re:Stick a fork in it please... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, let me say, I thoroughly enjoy Battlestar Galactica. But I take offense to the idea that just because BSG discovered that handheld style camera movements makes for a more dramatic show makes it worthy of being presented as "reinventing" science fiction. Take away the handheld camera style and you're still left with your traditional sci-fi drama. BSG is just lucky in that it doesn't have to respect canon and can kill off or change characters however it sees fit.
So give Trek a break, it's doing a lot better this season story-wise with Manny Coto, and if there is a season 5 I'm sure we can expect a whole lot from him.
Re:Battlestar Galactica better than Star Trek (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that B5 (and Farscape to a lesser extent) really showed that season-long story arcs work much better than the classic Trek planet-of-the-week format.
Re:nah.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean honestly, what sort of weird story involves two women working together on a project learning the secrets of a buried device (which later is the time travel device), and the main character finds out the other woman who has been lost in time with her was actually herself attempting to break the loop? I tried it, and it worked for the story, but the story wasn't all about time travel and its effects on humanity, but rather the possibility of uncertainity in reality one person in particular faces when confronted with it.
well duh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:nah.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh no, you mean Farscape got CANCELED ?
Damn you, Salazaaaar !
[/sarcasm]
Now, seriously, if you want to compare acting between Enterprise, Stargate and Farscape - please, DO NOT make the mistake of comparing the acting skills of the cast with the contents of the script. The Berman&Braga team surely spelled "doom" all over the Gene R. legacy...
Or heck, compare the acting in 1st season of TNG with the last season of TNG - you can surely see a drastic improvement.
Anyway, Scott Bakula has had his acting "skills" brushed up significantly in "Quantum Leap" (he kind of first but got better), and is pretty convincing as Captain of the Enterprise, even much earlier "into the show" as Patrick Stewart was able to do it in TNG (it took him almost 2 seasons to stop acting "Gurney Hallecky" - and don't get me started on "Life Force").
However, I don't get how you can claim the acting in Farscape could have been ahead of the acting in Stargate ? Again, we're back to the "script contents" vs "acting quality" dilemma... although the scripts in Farscape didn't strike me as revolutionary either.
Re:Just let it die already. (Score:3, Insightful)
Eye candy? You have Starbuck in almost every episode being a pivotal part of the action (and she is way too butch to be eye candy). You have Boomer driving major parts of the plot as Cylon saboteur head case. And the blonde Cylon babe is only eye candy? (I count at least twice she's driving the plot.) Hell, they even have a middle aged heifer as a major character. How many freaking shows do you see that?!?! What does BSG have to do, make their female characters recite Shakespeare??? Twit.
Re:nah.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That single instance of time travel was an essential element to the entire mythology of Babylon 5. StarTrek, of course, uses it as a cheap plot gimic.
Re:Oh Dear God (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a Star Trek fan nor have I seen all of the movies.
I don't know all of the character names in any of the shows. In fact I hardly can recall the names of the main characters.
However, out of all of the TV shows that I have given a shot, including the other Star Trek series when they ran, I really enjoy Enterprise.
It is one of two shows that I try to watch every week and would hate to see it die off.
Out of all the crap that they try to shovel down our throats on national television, Star Trek is most certainly a relief from it.
If you look at the bolded text - this is why the show is tanking - Non - fans are starting to dig it, and the fans were told to sit down and shut up.
That's why the neilsen ratings are teh crap, and they have to jump the great white every fifteen minutes in the show.
Had they not gone with the stupid premise of being a prequel, and outstanding cast could of done Oh so much, unfortunately, they were saddled with berman and Braga - the "ren and stimpy" of the star trek world.
No. (Score:2, Insightful)
No.
Depends... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, an occasional foray into time travel is cool. An entire season based on a 'temporal cold war' it is a sign that the idea factory has burnt to the ground.
Just my $.02...
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit that I was against the idea of a prequel to start with. It just seemed like the Berman/Braga team saw that George Lucas made a financial (if not artistic) success of the idea and therefore decided it was worth copying. I watched the pilot anyway, but gave up about halfway through. Now, Trek pilots are classically weak, but this one was just boring. Like Voyager on Sominex.
So I waited a while. I still didn't like the whole prequel idea, didn't like the fact that the tech seemed to be more advanced than the first TOS pilot, and wasn't that impressed by the cheesy technological substitutions for stuff from chronologically subsequent eras of Trek like "polarized hull plating" and "protein resequencers." (Now of course the obvious reason is that "The Cage" was 1966 and "Broken Bow" was 2001, but how do they go from "phase pistols" to "laser pistols" back to "phasers?" Why does the Romulan ship look like it belongs in the 24th century with the similarly-styled D'Deridex rather than the 22nd? But I digress.)
So when an anticipated "event" episode that all the reviewers said was good came up, I tuned in. I did this with the Borg episode. How cute, they managed to work one of the the most recognizable Trek villains in and made all sorts of in-jokey references while leaving the principal cast in the dark as to what they had just encountered! I did this again with the first Xindi episode, when half of Florida got taken out. The terrorist metaphor and somber mood just seemed forced to me, like they were groping for something to write into the script.
I did this again for the last Xindi episode. That was pretty neat, even though Archer's action-hero stint left me cold. The Death Star ripoff was kinda cool, and seeing the CGI P-51s was neat even though I knew the twist was coming, but the alien Nazi thing was just blah. I didn't really care how that turned out, fearing similar convolution to the concealment of the Borg and the intro of the Xindi. Since then I've tuned in once more, to the Augment episodes with Brent Spiner. He was kinda cool (my mom even walked into the room and exclaimed, "It's Data!") but the actors playing the Augments (who had to carry much of the story) kinda sucked. It was partly what they had to work with. The most memorable thing, to me, was that it was the first time I had heard the word "bitch" in what was ostensibly a Star Trek episode. Ooh, edgy.
That being said, I have to respect Manny Coto for tying in old plot elements. It looks like the next hyped "event" episode will be the Mirror Universe one, and I may tune in for the "ooh-ahh" of a CGI battle damaged Constitution-class. But the TrekToday preview I saw made a point of noting how much more aggressive and backstabbing the mirror Archer would be. Big whoop. Another problem I've had with the show is that Scott Bakula seems to have lost his acting talent since "Quantum Leap." All the Archer performances I've seen come off as wooden, and I have no reason to believe this won't be the same.
Another point in Enterprise's favor is the awesome special effects that trump just about anything else in Trek, but SFX do not a show make. Without characters to fly all them nifty ships in a convincing manner, it ain't worth much. A lot of people have cited the addition of Worf to DS9 as something similar to the Enterprise gimmick castings, but think about what they did with Worf on DS9. He got married, got captured and thrown in a POW camp, met Martok and joined his House, watched his wife die, and at the end of it all wound up a diplomat instead of a warrior. Tell me, is Arik Soong gonna be back, ever? Are Riker and Troi going to be stranded in the 22nd century and join the NX-01 crew, and thus explore new situations we haven't seen their characters in before? Hell, is any of this gonna happen with the already-established Enterprise characters as a result of these castings? Somehow, I doubt it.
This comment is already way too long, but I'm also gonna h
Re:Stick a fork in it please... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh Dear God (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stick a fork in it please... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just it. Star Trek used to do that! At least in pre-Berman TNG.
Stargate: progressive discovery (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why is because it's progressive. If you exclude the introductory and wrap-up episodes common in more recent series, you could swap the first and last episode of ST:TNG. ST:TOS. Quantum Leap (other than Sam regaining his memory). Seven Days. And on and on and on. It's all fantasy - the actors have a magic box or two and roam the universe or timeline without really changing anything.
Stargate is one of the few shows that shows progression. The Tori'i were clueless in the first few episodes (after Teal'c joined them). But their hard work introduced them to the Toik'ra, gave them naquida generators, introduced us to the Asgard, bootstrapped the development of our own fighters, allowed us to run the Prometheus, got us advanced engines from a grateful Asgard, and on and on and on.
Have they had missteps? Sure. Are they on the verge of having so many goodies that they run the risk of having the rabid viewer ask "why didn't they use the gozmotron from the 3rd season?" In fact they've turned that to their advantage - after a few seasons those goodies are reintroduced in a natural manner. The "safe" bullets are used for training. The virtual reality pods are used for training and planning.
Sometimes the science is hokey, but you have a very real sense that they're trying to figure things out and often get it wrong. But they keep at it until they succeed.
Re:Wouldn't this require a time-portal thingy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stick a fork in it please... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they say "action stations," not "action alert." "Action stations" is correct military jargon
The milieu of the new "Galactica" is a blend of US Navy, Royal Navy, US Marines and a few of the less silly aspects of the old, 1970s show. For instance, during the series pilot if you listen carefully you can hear a voice on the 1MC say, "Do not radiate or rotate antennas while personnel are aloft," which is exactly what you'd hear aboard a ship in the US Navy. I mean, word for word. On the other hand, the order of battle for the officers goes lieutenant, captain, colonel, commander, which is not similar to any existing military force structure. It's a direct lift from the old show's character names: Commander Adama, Colonel Tigh, Captain Apollo, Lieutenant Starbuck.
There's no great technical advances in the show as far as the character's technology.
Correct. This is by conscious design. The show was written from the start to be a very low-tech science-fiction show. The in-band story behind that is that cylons were able to infiltrate and corrupt any computer system they encountered, so the Colonials got rid of almost all of their automation. After decades of peace, the Colonials reinstated their automation, and it was because of this automation that the cylons were able to so overwhelmingly defeat the Colonials with their surprise attack.
BG has no such exscuse besides the laziness of the wanna-be writer.
It's not laziness. It's much, much harder to write a sensible, internally consistent story from realistic premises than it is to just make up technobabble every week. When he sat down to write "Galactica," Moore asked, "What if this happened to us?" In doing so, he set a nearly impossible task for himself: to tell a story set in a distant solar system about spaceships and robots in a way that would be not merely alien-of-the-week science fiction but character-driven high drama.
Now, you may not like that sort of thing. But it seems like, from looking at things like TV ratings over the past few years, that most people do. Shows like "The West Wing," "NYPD Blue" and "Lost" have been both critically lauded and phenomenally successful. "Galactica" is in the same class.
If you're looking for space aliens and shoot-em-ups and jargon and gadgets, "Galactica" probably isn't the show for you. Doesn't mean it's bad; quite the contrary. In my opinion, with the lackluster performance of "The West Wing" this year and the fact that "Lost" isn't paying off quite like I think it should, I think "Battlestar Galactica" is the best scripted drama show on US television right now. Not just among genre shows, but among all shows.
But if you don't like those kinds of shows, then you're not gonna be happy with "Galactica." That's not because it's trying to be genre science fiction and failing. It's because it's trying to be character drama that happens to be set in outer space
Re:I remember (Score:3, Insightful)
Or it's a blatant attempt to show the effects the temporal cold war will have on the future like they've done already with the Enterprise-J.
I realize it's popular opinion here to hate Enterprise, but geez, give them a little credit.
Re:I remember (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not a fanboy about the old star trek, and I've definitely seen more episodes of TNG. Even so, practically every episode of TNG reminds me either of an episode of ToS or a previous episode of TNG :P
I attribute the success of the Trek shows thusly: ToS was an excellent sci-fi show, but would also have been a great show no matter what the setting had been. It looks pretty melodramatic by modern standards but is so well acted that it feels somehow right. Corny, but right. The plots were relatively original, although I half recall an old saying about how there are only [approximately] 7 original ideas in existence and only three of them were being made into Hollywood movies. TV is the same thing except that a series forces you to meander or fall into a rut. And, of course, there's the sex appeal. It's not television without it. TNG had some excellent acting, but much more entirely unconvincing stuff, and because they had more technology available spent more time technowanking. DS9 was new and went into darker territory, which kept it going pretty well, and Voyager had chicks with nice tits and a captain with a whiskey voice; Trek gets to every demographic eventually. Enterprise is darker still, is even more overt about selling sci-fi with sex, and involves more threats to humanity. In other words, they've just been upping the ante all along, and I think it's been a fairly natural progression.
Re:Oh Dear God (Score:2, Insightful)
Quit rooting for my show to die when it's still one of the last great accomplishments of a dying genre. Sci Fi nowadays has nowhere near the fanbase it once did - and because you snub your nose at Trek while touting the wonderful miracle that is Battlestar Galactica, you take a toll on the genre itself.
I, like many others, have been thrilled with Enterprise in its entirety. The Star Trek universe will never get old for us. And people like you, arrogant sci-fi tasters of the finest, could do the least bit to admit that Enterprise is better than 2/3 of the complete filth that is television today.
Two sci-fi shows is better than one.
I'm gonna start watching Battlestar Galactica now along with Star Trek... Give Enterprise another chance, please.
Re:OK, give the show a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
Excuse me while I go vomit. It's thinly disguised xenophobia and megalomania. That, and these fucking aliens apparently can't have a private conversation without borrowing a couple ephemerals' bodies. Nonsensical crap like that is a big turnoff to me, even though I'm sure the vast majority of the show's audience either didn't catch it or doesn't care.
Now, Galactica paints people as the imperfect beings we really are, and pits us up against one motherfucker of an enemy. Technically, and artistically, the show is great. Very high quality. Unfortunately, I'm not too fond if it because it's just so dark.
I do like my entertainment to be positive, happy-endings and all that. With Trek and Galactica, however, the choice is between saccharine and vinegar. Bah, they both leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Re:Wouldn't this require a time-portal thingy? (Score:1, Insightful)
Lots of people who tuned out on Voyager after the first two (horrible) seasons. Seem prone to criticise the last two seasons as well.
Which is unfortunate.
Just wondering if you actually saw them at all.
Re:Stick a fork in it please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Likewise, it's probably not the show for you if you're looking for "Battlestar Galactica." Because among other reasons, Cylons are ROBOTS, and Starbuck and Boomer are MEN.
Re:Oh, no more... (Score:3, Insightful)
Which aren't "key" differences.
First, he was, as you note, a regular character. It wasn't just a guest appearance.
That's a big difference, but I don't see how it's key. It also wouldn't make a lot of sense (putting a future character into the show would cause too many problems. Dr. Soong has some potential though...).
Second, it made sense in terms of the story.
I don't think it did. With Miles and Keiko it made more sense, but with Worf, in the series finale of ST:TNG, Worf and Troi were dating.
Even if there had been no Worf from TNG, it would have made sense for them to invent the character for DS9.
Not really. If you *wanted* a Klingon arc to the story, any ol' Klingon would do. They also wanted Ensign Ro to play the part that became Kira, why would you have needed Worf and not Trag or Krang or something?
The key difference (if you want one) is that Enterprise appears to need a gimmicky episode, while DS9 didn't. Remember the tribbles episode? It was a fun aside. The current season of Enterprise is pretty good, really more in line with what I was expecting when the show first came out. I don't think it needs a gimmick, but if they're going to do one, I hope that at least it works.
Re:Wouldn't this require a time-portal thingy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OK, give the show a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
The doc was cool.
at least the new series has Hoshi
That's because you have a thing for asian girls.
And really there isn't anyone groan inducing like Neelix (which is strange - because the doctor kind of reminds me of him - just not annoying) or Nog from DS9 or Wesley
Nog was fine. He was neat foil to Jake. In the beginning they were worthless characters, but by the end, they were both interesting characters. I know your heart sank when Nog lost his leg during the Dominion War. (That was good very good episode by the way.)
Not as good as it could be, and certainly not as "cool" (now the in thing is to be anti Star Trek) as Battlestar (now that we decided not to kill anyone for a female Starbuck and human cylons)
The new BSG is good. The old BSG sucked and it always has. New BSG is how old BSG should have been made. The costumes aren't crappy Star Wars knockoffs, and plots aren't in the vein of Star Trek's "The Roman God Appolo Makes Kirk Fight Genghis Kahn At The O.K. Corral On A Planet Of 1920s Chicago Gangsters To Settle A Bet With Rumplestiskin On Whether Good Or Evil Is More Powerful, While Hitler's Bare Midrift Greenskined Girlfriend Watches On". The episodes have the right mix of independence and plotarc. Most importantly, the characters' lives suck just as hard as less than 50k refugees fleeing their homeworlds from the relentless attack of mechanical killing machines should.
The were only two redeaming features of old BSG. First, the cylon bombers. That was cool design, and it still holds up over the years. Second, seeing Ben Cartright as a military dictator.
Don't even get me started on Galatica 1980!
or Stargate (but not Atlantis, because thats NOT cool in the eyes of the SF culture police)
SG:A may be a knock off, but it's an entertaining knock off damn it! Yes, Sheppard is basically O'Neil, but I like him damn it! I loved the scene where McKay and Sheppard explain to Wier that when they were testing a personal shield they found when Sheppard threw McKay off a third story balcony. (Wier: "And you thought throwing him off a balcony would be best way to test it?" McKay: "No!" Sheppard: "First, I shot him!")
The wraith aren't that interesting, espcially from an artistic standpoint, but so far they've been used sparingly, and mostly as a backstory element.
Your scifi police need to go back to discussing whether or not Smurfs are egg laying species or nothing more than simple mammals.
Re:OK, give the show a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, they just have different tastes, and find that the third season was pedestrian, unimaginative, derivative and uncreative.
Well, how crappy, bland, and predictable do you think the show would be if everything went exactly as foretold?
Utter nonsense, the excuse of a lousy writer (you don't work on enterprise do you?) That's like saying you couldn't make a movie about the second world war because you know how it ends (Hello private ryan!) There was nothing wrong with the concept, the problem was the talentless execution.
And I do agree that neither of the first two seasons, where they tried this formula, were particularly good.
I take it you meant "weren't" - and they were crap because of bad writing and lame producers, not because of a straight jacket concept - one that they didn't respect anyway. Die hard fans can list hundreds, if not thousands of cases where they just change established continuity.
Rather than looking at the downside of the lack of continuity, consider the upside - there's now a possibilty for an "alternate" future, where the temporal war has changed things. Will this wind up being for the better or worse? Who knows!
I do, the odds heavyly favour crap. They hired Many Coto and at least he tries, but its probably to little to late.
DON'T TAKE THE TREK UNIVERSE TOO SERIOUSLY. When you get your panties in a wad anytime creative liberties are taken, you'll lead a very unpleasant life in your parents' basement.
You sound more like you are the one living in a basement with (your head up your ass). Its not a question about taking the trek university too seriously, its a question about expecting certain standards from people who pretend they are artists - something the writers fail at too much on Enterprise when they simply phone in a story from the commissary - if they have taken any liberties its the liberty to not be creative.
Re:What .,. it's still on.,. Didn't notice ... (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I liked Firefly, it was essentially just Blake's Seven in the Wild West.
Media SF is never innovative; at best it repeats ideas that literary SF tried out a decade before -- BSG, for example, is combining the original series, MilSF and Vernor Vinge.
Re:OK, give the show a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
I gritted my teeth through all of them, but Season 4 jumped the shark with 'Philadephia Experiment II'. In fact, if you consider that some of the educational channels are filled with sharks and Nazis, there's a bit of a link there.
However.
Season 4 has picked up a lot. Arik Soong was a great addition, there's been a turning point for the vulcans and we've just met the Organians. They're dealing with canon, rather than introducing a race that noone has ever seen before and get into the time-travel lark early, which seriously, seriously annoyed me. The story should be about the foundation of Starfleet, not improbable odds; it just makes it feel tacky.
"Oh, Archer's dead. No he isn't"
"DON'T TAKE THE TREK UNIVERSE TOO SERIOUSLY."
Then let it die.
"Well, how crappy, bland, and predictable do you think the show would be if everything went exactly as foretold?"
Oh, do the flipping research. Stories are split into three parts, with the last half of the last part being the solution and wrap up. Apart from the multi-part episodes it's a reduction to set pieces within the context of a soap-opera in a spaceship. Compare that with the multi-arc monstrosity that was Babylon 5, the hidden agendas of BSG or even the compelling moral dilemnas introduced by DS9. Enterprise isn't even on a par with the quality of storytelling those series showed. Hell, it even took Voyager a couple of seasons until Seven arrived. T'pol whipped her shirt off in one of the first episodes.
That's unpleasant when you consider that the grab pot contains battles between every major concern right up to the intervention by the Organians and where exactly is Starfleet? At the moment it looks like Archer has his own Admiral. These are the critical events in the ST canon, not a temporal cold war that nobody knows about...there's a huge grab bag of ideas and concepts that they've ignored in favour of flashy effects and 'nudge, nudge' style self-referential masturbation in how they came up with 'Red alert'.
The main problem I have isn't with the ST canon, but the quality of the story told, and Enterprise is coughing up blood if they keep having to try and drag it's seriously obsessive fanbase back with gimmicks like more time travel for old characters.
Trek is dead because it ran out of things to say (Score:3, Insightful)
No, trek is about the past. Specifically, the technocratic science-utopia ideals of the 1950s, the emerging civil rights movement of the 1960s, the 1980s liberal ideal of an greed-free moneyless society so utterly purged of "isms" that they've become inconcievable.
SF has always been about the present day as seen through a distorting lens. Trek was no exception.
And then, it painted itself into a corner. Typical left-utopia problem: nowhere to go, nothing to do, no hope of rising above equality except in science, arts, or the military. Effectively Trek disproved itsself. The only society-changing message it can send anymore is "avoid this".
They tried to keep it running on momentum, but Trek without a message, without reflections of reality, is just a dull and dated SF show.
RIP