The death of "Trek"?

Just finished watching my tape of the season/series finale of "Star Trek: Enterprise". And basically for Star Trek fans, if you're going to have a feeling of closure, now is the time. It's too fresh to criticize the finale. Only time and perspective can give a decent assessment. I think I'll probably watch the tape again in a couple of months. Suffice to say, it was a decent wrap-up of the series and maybe for Star Trek as a whole. At least for a while. But now that it's all over I have a few thoughts on the state of Star Trek.

I'm not a "trekkie" or "trekker" or whatever they call the most devoted fans these days. I'm just someone who grew up with the show as part of the culture and I've enjoyed some aspects of the phenomena and been indifferent to others.

First of all, let me say that I'm very disappointed in the demise of this particular show. I'm not sure I can honestly say I loved it. But I certainly liked it enough to watch every single episode and eagerly anticipate each one. It had it's rough patches over the last four years but to me it feels like a show cut down in its prime. It seemed to be just about hitting its stride. But in this ratings-sensitive environment, that's not good enough.

So why did "Enterprise" come to an untimely end? Many reasons.

The first is one that was mentioned by the show's creators - Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. They chalked it up to franchise fatigue. In a sense they're right. Not because the show wasn't good enough, but because there was not enough buzz or excitement at a time when there has been a "Trek" franchise on TV (sometimes two at a time) since 1987. I don't think it was so much that people were tired of the franchise as much as they took it for granted.

Back in the mid-1980's when the generation that grew up on repeats from The Original Series (TOS) heard that a new show was coming it generated a lot of talk and anticipation. And overall I would rate The Next Generation (TNG) as probably the best of all the shows - even TOS. But toward the end it seemed like Paramount and Berman & Braga wanted to try and squeeze every last drop out of the franchise. In my honest opinion, I had no interest in either Deep Space Nine or Voyager.

If TNG had simply ended in the spring of 1994 and the franchise had gone on hiatus for several years, I think "Enterprise" would have been more warmly received. I think the concept was terrific and gave fans an opportunity to learn a lot of the backstory of the "Trek" universe that was more close to home. The characters seemed closer to our own world, more in the early stages of deep space exploration.

The next reason is that good science fiction is so much more available today than it was fifteen years ago. After the original Trek, the only sci-fi shows that made it to network television that I can recall were the original Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers and Quantum Leap. But with the proliferation of cable, science-fiction fans were able to get their fix more readily. It's interesting that Star Wars, which was the catalyst for making the Star Trek movies and later the TNG series is now one of the alternatives that is stealing Trek's thunder with the release of the prequels.

And finally, I think the fan base had matured. The people who enjoyed TNG in their twenties had for the most part married, had kids and taken on a bunch of responsibility. Time was a factor in 2001 when "Enterprise" premiered. The target audience just didn't have as much time to commit to a new series as they had when they were much younger.

"Enterprise", while well-conceived had some problems in its execution. The series did show moments of brilliance but it too often recycled old ideas from past shows. It also fell into the trap of playing it safe. At this point, the audience was looking for something more edgy, more gritty and real. One need only look at the success of the re-envisioned "Battlestar Galactica" on the Sci-Fi channel to see what turns the audience's cranks.

The characters were well written but poorly developed. The stories were too tentative. I mean that it was interesting to see the crew's aversion to the transporter in season one but by season four they were still using shuttlepods. Boring. The connections to TOS were slow to develop and a lot of what the fans had hoped to see never materialized.

Ironically, it was in this past final season that the show seemed to really get good. Perhaps this was the creators' vision all along in that they expected it to be on the air for seven seasons (or more) and they didn't want to "shoot their wad" too soon. But that kind of thinking is what led to so-so episodes and light ratings.

I don't plan on buying the series on DVD because quite frankly each season is weighed down by so many mediocre episodes that it makes the purchase price too prohibitive. I may watch the show in syndication now and again because I developed a genuine attachment to most of the characters. It really is a shame that a show with so much potential never quite reached it.

So it the franchise dead? Well, for every fan who would deny that it is and say that it's "simply pining for the fjords" there is another who would shake their head and (if I may take the "dead parrot" analogy further) declare that "Star Trek" has ceased "to be". That it is an "ex-franchise".

In order for Star Trek to have a future, there needs to be a "cooling off" period for the fans. They need to see NO new Star Trek for a while. It's like the kid locked in the candy store that makes himself sick. Or put another way, most guys think it would be really cool to be a gynecologist until they realize that these doctors must come home after a hard day's work and say to their wives "Honey, if I see one more vagina today, I think I'm going to lose it".

Perhaps if after four or five years of no Star Trek the idea of a new series will seem exciting. But the concept must also be a good one - nothing half-assed. And I think it might be a good idea to have someone other than the Berman/Braga team take the helm.

So for now, I will turn my attention elsewhere and if something new for Star Trek comes over the horizon I will cast a skeptical eye and maybe I'll even give it a chance. Until then, I'll just wistfully look back on an era that for all intents and purposes has come to an end. All good things...

Posted by: Gary at 12:03 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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