Star Trek: Enterprise - Yay! Netflix.

[Leisher]

Dead.

Ok, now's their chance to give this franchise life again.

Don't release any new shows or films for 5 years.

Hire any writers from TNG that you can get back into the fold. Fire anyone who worked on Voyager, Enterprise, and Deep Space Nine (the writing was ok on DS9, but they took themselves waaaayyy too seriously and were too religious).

Take all of your writers and make them watch the DVD sets for the original series and TNG at least 5 times from start to finish.

Instead begin working on a long term script writing for a new TV series. Don't focus on show by show plots, but rather focus on the overall story arc of the whole series.

Rules for the new series:
1. Ignore Enterprise and Voyager. Pretend they never happened.
2. Go back to the formula that worked. Characterization aboard an exploring warship on a mission of peace.
3. Your new ship must be called "Enterprise".
4. Remain faithful to your characters and the franchise's history.

Now start releasing rumors on the net that a new series is coming. Get the buzz going. Release real and fake details about it and see what the general reaction is to each.

Cast people from the only previous series that mattered "ST:TNG" to give the new show credibility. Use as may references to the original series and TNG as possible to link the new show to its roots. Its also a nod of respect to those shows and makes it easier for their die hard fans to accept your new show.

For example, add something from the original series and TNG's pilot episodes. It doesn't have to be a major plot device, just something that reminds fans of the good times.

When shopping for a network, avoid UPN and the WB. That's the wrong audience for your show. Also avoid the Sci-Fi network, too many households don't have it.

Launch the new show with a 2 hour movie, but make it for TV. You've got to gain respect and trust again with your audience before making a new feature film.

Stay away from programming your show against big competition. Don't program for a weeknight in prime. Unless someone makes you a great deal to run on Friday nights. They seem to be the new "family night" for network programming and your show would fit in. Just go for the 9 or 10 p.m. time slot, 8 is the kiss of death. Repeat your shows on Saturday afternoons around 3 or 4 p.m. and Sunday evenings at 11:30 p.m. Nothing is on Sunday at 11:30 p.m.

Have your host network try and program other "niche" shows around you. More Sci-Fi and adverture shows would be perfect.

Announce the show one year to the day before the show is scheduled to debut. Release tidbits of info to fans such as bios of the cast, but don't tell them SHIT about the new series except for generalities.

Example: Its set right after the last Trek film. This person is the captain. The ship may or may not be the Enterprise.

Now, your series is off and running. Keep the long term story arc going at all times and remind the readers of its existance whenever possible (ala The X-Files). Remain faithful to your characters and franchise's history. Remember that the original series and TNG worked because the focus was on the character.

Seriously, what's so hard about that?

[GORDON]

Anybody watching the last episode? It takes place on the holodeck of the Enterprise-D, while Commander Riker tries to figure out what to do with his former Captain, Pressman, and the fact the USS Pegasus has been found. That was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and this episode of Enterprise takes place behind the scenes of that episode.

[DictionaryDave]

You know this last year had some pretty good episodes. They dealt with the begining of the Fed and some of the classic star trek races. Too bad they waited until now to do it. They wasted so much time on completely stupid story lines when they had so much material available from the original series that they could have used.
I mean for 3 years they had the story line with the "temporal wars" Complete shit.

[Zetleft]

"temporal cold war" - yeah that's the reason I don't watch the show, time travel episodes are overdone and they made it a season long.

[GORDON]

I am about 15 episodes in to the 24 episode season 1.

I started watching this show when it first aired, I lived in Memphis at the time. About 4 episodes in the local (Fox?) affiliate started preempting the show in order to show college basketball, live. They assured us it wasn't a big deal because they were still airing the show later the same day, at 2am. This was before DVR, so I stopped watching the show.

Now it is on Netflix, and I started watching it again, I don't know why.

I am really enjoying it for some reason.

I always heard there weren't any story arcs... I would argue that. Things that happened in episode 4 just had repercussions in episode 14.

This show is the very beginning of Starfleet with a ship capable of getting anywhere new in under a year. The Vulcans have been holding the humans back since First Contact 100 years ago, and tensions are high between the Vulcans and the Humans.... but lessons are being learned, and pride is being swallowed.

And Jolene Blalock makes a great Vulcan.



I think it is her dedication to the role and her big boobs.

Anyway, I started the series figuring I would be constantly rolling my eyes, but I am surprised to find I am enjoying it, only rolling my eyes now and then. And, I heard seasons 3 and 4 were the best, so apparently it is only getting better from here.

[GORDON]

Almost done with season 2.

I say again, plots from previous episodes have ramifications in later episodes... it isn't all just a big "reset everything" button every week. And that's good.

I like seeing the precursors of policies and procedures we see in later series as they get invented and worked out.

Only one thing that bugs me a slight bit... obviously different people write different episodes... I wish they could be a little more consistent in tone. In one episode, Captain Archer is still exuberant and excited and open minded to meet new cultures... in the next episode he is immediately suspicious of this new race for no reason aside from the fact they are alien. The episode after he is back to open minded, again. Slightly irritating.

I am enjoying every time he has dealings with the Vulcan High Command, though. It is amusing to see that relationship evolve.

I like how they are still using calender dates in the 2100's as opposed to those stardates which who knows how they fuck they work.

*****

Speculation on a show that aired like 10 years ago but I haven't seen the later seasons yet:

Speaking of timelines:

This show has an overarching "Temporal Cold War" happening, where agents from the future are using proxy races in this timeline to affect events in some way we haven't learned, yet. It has me thinking about Trek, the different series, and JJ Abrams' reboot.

So:

TOS and TNG: Original timeline.
Then Star Trek: First Contact happened, and I think it changed the timeline because I glanced ahead in the episode list and there is one coming up where deactivated Borg from Picard's Enterprise-E are woken up and start causing problems. Even without advanced technology having been found, they still took Cochrane's engineer... Lily? up to the Enterprise-E, and she got a big ol' attitude adjustment about what the future had in store. I would bet a dollar it had an affect on decisions she would make later in life. No way this hasn't affected the timeline.

So this leads us in a new timeline to Captain Archer in this altered timeline, having their Temporal Cold War... and future tech from 1,000 years in the future has already been left aboard the Enterprise NX-1. They are all disciplined and don't use this tech until... hey... we really need to use it now. More time fuckery is yet to come in another 2 seasons I haven't seen yet.

Which, I believe, takes us directly to JJTrek, and further time fuckery when Nero's ship comes to the pre-Kirk era from Picard's era on a Quest for Vengeance against old Spock. First thing Nero does is kill Kirk's father, and nearly Kirk, very nearly derailing Kirk's rise due to being raised now by an abusive stepfather (as seen in JJTrek deleted scenes). (Who knows what Old Spock ends up doing after that little adventure... "There is a big-ass Earth probe coming home, it is Voyager 10 and it has gained sentience, and here is the deactivation code. Send it by radio. It likes to be called V'Ger. And there is a big-ass tubey alien ship heading toward Earth to talk to some whales... get to work now on genetically engineering some, you have about 30 years to get it right. And there is a ship adrift out there that was launched in 1986, called the 'Botany Bay.' Don't board it, don't scan it, just destroy it. You will save everyone a lot of lives and a lot of trouble." And so on and so forth) The new JJTrek Enterprise NCC-1701 is being built in a corn field in Iowa in tribute to Kirk's hero Dad, instead of orbit, as in the original series. And, the ship is now so huge that the engine room is the size of a brewery, *ahem*. The bridge looks like an Apple Store compared to TOS, and now we can attribute it to higher tech due to a new timeline, as opposed to "well production values in the 60's weren't as high tech as now in the 21st century."

So, that's how I think everything fits together, and how the "reboot" still fits with the overall franchise.

[GORDON]

Damn, there was an episode where moral high-mindedness led to a suicide.

[GORDON]

Damn. End of season 2, REALLY BIG HUGE BAD THING happens, which looks like it is going to set the tone for season 3.

Beginning of season 3:
- Archer attacked by superior Klingon battle cruiser. Klingon calls for Archer to surrender his ship... Archer yells GO TO HELL and cuts the Klingon off the viewscreen in mid sentence and opens fire.
- Archer tortures a prisoner to get needed intel.
- Archer manhandles a woman and threatens to kill her if she won't give up some intel.

And tomorrow I will watch episode 5.

[GORDON]

The darkness continues.

Episode X: Archer stabs a dude in the neck with... a broken statue. Murders the shit out of him.
Episode X+1: Literally, hookers being abducted for their organs
Episode X+2: clone created for organ harvesting. Clone doesn't want to die. Archer tells it to accept its fate. Clone says, "You won't force me... you aren't a murderer." Archer responds, "Don't turn me into one."
Episode X+3: Suicide bombers on the ship.

I like seeing the origin of the redshirts.... but having them claim to be "the best Earth has to offer," then seeing how generally lame they are in a fight compared to, say, Seal Team 6 or any average Marine, is a little silly. They lack intensity, big time.

I don't know what happens in season 4 yet, but this shit is good. Highly recommend if you are a Star Trek: TNG fan and never gave this one a chance.

[GORDON]

Finally finished season 3. I'm not sure of the power struggles behind the scenes of making the show.. I heard there were some... but whoever wrested control for season 3 turned it to possibly the best season of Trek for any of the Trek series, including TNG. Yes, bold statement. But aside from the occasional 2-parter in the other series, this one actually had a season-long arc of a story... and it was dark. Things that happened in episode 2 had consequences in episode 3. Something that was broken in episode 5 was still broken in episode 6. Hell, the last third of the season, the ship was so badly damaged that large sections of the interior decks were exposed to space. We got to see peeps being sucked out into the vacuum.

We dealt with the death of crewmates, how far we were willing to bend our morality in pursuit of a greater good, and we had long conversations in dark rooms reflecting on the nature of total war, and contemplating how many millions of children we were killing in the conduct of it. There were scenes in season 3 that were practically noir.

And, all of this shit didn't even get wrapped up, and the season 4 arc began in the final moments of season 3.

So, whoever was in control of Season 1&2 were making classic, Roddenberry Star Trek. Episodic. Pretty much everything gets reset from one episode to the next. Basically... old fashioned TV.

Whoever got a hold of the show in season 3 brought Trek into the modern area... did they do it before Lost and Battlestar Galacticareally brought story arcs into the main stream? I'd need to check the dates. If this person had been in charge from the beginning, Enterprise would have had a minimum of 7 seasons, like TNG it would have had a huge fanbase from the beginning, and would be a much more respected Trek series than it is. It really is too bad.

I would have hated to wait a week between these episodes as they aired... so many cliffhangers.



Edited By GORDON on 1359491001

[Malcolm]

I kept waiting for Dean Stockwell to show up and then Archer would jump out.

[GORDON]

I kept waiting for Dean Stockwell to show up and then Archer would jump out.

He showed up in season 1, actually. Maybe 2. But I think 1.

[Malcolm]

There also appears to have been no real change in writing credits during season 3.

[GORDON]

Interesting... I've not done a lick of research onto this. But it became an entirely different show in season 3.

[GORDON]

You know... I watched some Roddenberry documentary a long time ago on Netflix... Roddenberry's son was driving around trying to get to know his dead dad better by talking to a bunch of the trek peeps he worked with.

There was some scene with one of the writers... Brannon, I think, of Brannon/Braga. He was saying how Roddenberry had entrusted him to keep Trek pure to his vision, utopian and episodic, or whatever. He mentioned there was some conflict with how they should proceed after his death, and he had a bust of Roddenberry on his desk, and he had a blindfold on it, because Gene wouldn't like seeing what Trek was becoming. I don't know what he was talking about, and I don't know the time frame of it, in relation to the shows. But there's a clue.

[Malcolm]

Braga was the dude most responsible for the shit that was Voyager, consider him a producer. He may be the reason every other episode was a fucking time travel/alternate universe one.

Rick Berman and a dude named Michael Piller were the execs that were responsible for DS9 and Voyager. They created both shows.

I think much of DS9's direction was due to a writer named Ira Steven Behr. He's the one that orchestrated most of the Bajoran-related things which bore me to death. He's explicitly stated he hates Gene's "technology as a panacea" viewpoint and is more interested in science's destructive aspects.

All three seems to be obsessed with stamping "their vision" onto existing franchises when they just need to tell a decent story.

[GORDON]

I know one of the Trek peeps went on to Battlestar. Who was that?

[Malcolm]

Ronald Moore, Braga's early Trekkie writing partner. Moore walked away from Voyager because he couldn't deal with Braga being a control freak.



Edited By Malcolm on 1359494035

[GORDON]

Hmmm.

Then I don't have a clue who did what, I just know the difference in the show between season 2 and 3 is noteworthy.

[Malcolm]

Hmmm.

Then I don't have a clue who did what, I just know the difference in the show between season 2 and 3 is noteworthy.

Credits didn't change, but that's a far cry from "nothing in the creative realm changed."