By Matt for the TIB Network:
Only because this came up in another thread...Yes, it's true, ENTERPRISE has been cancelled.
Am I surprised? No. When I saw Conner "Trip Tucker" Trinneer at a convention over the Thanksgiving weekend last year, I had a strange feeling it was over. Dude just looked and sounded defeated.
Am I terribly upset about it? Again, no. Let me explain that one...I'm a Trek fan...I run a fan club for crying out loud...Enterprise was horrible Trek. It had great potential, but it just never lived up to what I expected in the series. I mean, we get Scott Bakula to play the captain and THIS is what we got?
I am upset that there was no news on a replacement series or any movie news in the release. We're back in limbo, folks...we'll have to see if fandom still has what it takes to rescue the franchise...again...
2/10 Update
Stephen Green has some interesting commentary on a piece by Adam Yoshida about saving Trek. Star Trek: West Wing is my personal favorite, but your mileage may vary...Mark's Remarks
I am disappointed that Enterprise failed. I am saddened. However, what it became was a joke. As Matt said, it had tremendous potential. It had the ability to lay the connection between Zefrem Cochrane and Kirk, to show us an area of trek we hadn't seen, to help fill in the gaps only theorized about.
What we got, however, was not trek. What we got was revisionist history. Rather than taking the tack of enriching the mythos already there, they sought to deconstruct it and reform in in Rick Berman's own image. Rick Berman is terrible to trek. He took a colossal and successful franchise and has brought it to this.
Duplicit Vulcans, Borg on Earth, etc., etc. Again and again, we who grew up with Trek get our mythos spat upon. And, there was no unified theme throughout the show. The whole temporal cold war was cute, but it lent more problems and lame ideas than solutions. The Zindi thing could have been good, but without the Temporal Cold War how do you come up with them attacking? Berman sought to turn the world Roddenberry envisioned upside down and leave his "legacy" on trek. Instead of just making good tv, he sought a legacy. And like others who sought legacy, they ended up failing.
I also blame Paramount. Trekdom has been waning due to inferior product for the better part of a decade. Rather than seriously rethink the direction of trek and its "guardian" (Berman and Braga), they instead rewarded the consistent drain of B and B's series--DS9 and Voyager. Granted, they turned in good ratings and profit, but their viewership and fan base showed decrease from the heydey of TNG. Paramount only saw profit margin, and did not see what Trek fans have seen--namely, that it was no longer Trek being produced--it was an x-games mountain dew commercial/soap opera disguised as Trek. And that dog won't hunt.
Enterprise, I hoped, would take us back to exploration and show us the wonder that was TOS and TNG. With Bakula as the Captain, a Vulcan, and an uppity engineer, I hoped to recapture the magic. I was wrong. It quickly became an exercise in destroying the fabric of trek, of revisioning that went too far. And don't get me started on the change in the theme song--we're at war, but let's sing the theme in a happy campfire way....come on now....
I fear, dear friends, Trek might be dead....
