Star Trek Enterprise is dead. It has been cancelled.
Press release:
02.02.2005
Star Trek: Enterprise Cancelled!
After four seasons, Star Trek: Enterprise has reached the end of its mission …
PRESS RELEASE
UPN and Paramount Network Television have jointly announced that this will be the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise on UPN. [Production will continue until the end of this season, which will finish shooting in March.] The series finale will air on Friday, May 13, 2005.
"Star Trek has been an important part of UPN’s history, and Enterprise has carried on the tradition of its predecessors with great distinction," said Dawn Ostroff, President, Entertainment, UPN. "We’d like to thank Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and an incredibly talented cast for creating an engaging, new dimension to the Star Trek universe on UPN, and we look forward to working with them, and our partners at Paramount Network Television, on a send-off that salutes its contributions to The Network and satisfies its loyal viewers."
David Stapf, President of Paramount Network Television, said, "The creators, stars and crew of Star Trek: Enterprise ambitiously and proudly upheld the fine traditions of the Star Trek franchise. We are grateful for their contributions to the legacy of Trek and commend them on completing nearly 100 exciting, dramatic and visually stunning episodes. All of us at Paramount warmly bid goodbye to Enterprise, and we all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise in the future."
A prequel to the original "Star Trek" series, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE premiered on UPN on Sept. 26, 2001, and aired for its first three seasons on Wednesdays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). On Oct. 8, 2004, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE moved into its current time on Fridays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). Through its four-year run, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE produced a total of 98 episodes and earned four Emmy Awards [SOURCE; cowboy hat tip to the reader who e-mailed this].
With the passing of Enterprise, the Star Trek franchise now goes into hibernation. The franchise has been suffering from fatigue for a number of years, such that even when it has produced quality work (as recently on Enterprise), audiences haven’t tuned in. There has also been a lot of competition from other sci-fi shows, which weren’t on the air when the franchise re-launched years ago with Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The cancellation was expected. A year ago Star Trek was only barely renewed, and the Paramount brass apparenly told the creators of the series that they had a year to wrap it up in a nice way. It was also moved to Friday nights, which is a death-night for ratings in general (The Original Series was also moved to Friday night in its last season), and especially so for sci-fi series when the Sci-Fi Channel has such an excellent lineup opposite a show like Star Trek Enterprise.
The franchise is likely to lie fallow for several years, though there are indications that a Star Trek movie (reportedly involving exclusively new characters) is in development.
Though, personally, I wish Enterprise had got to finish its planned seven-year run, I recognize that a hiatus will be good for the franchise, allowing the field to lie fallow creatively and, more importantly, allowing the audience to regain an appetite for Star Trek. (Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.)
Whether its eventual re-launch (pun intended) will be successful is entirely up in the air. (Star Wars’ re-launch wasn’t that successful, despite eager fan anticipation.)
At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, allow me to offer a few thoughts on why Enterprise failed.
Apart from the phenomena of franchise fatigue and competition from other shows (and, indeed, a whole network devoted to sci-fi), the creators of the show fundamentally misjudged what the audience wanted to see. They made it too similar to previous Star Trek series in some ways and too different from them in others. What they produced in the early seasons of Enterprise was virtually a mirror image of what they needed to do.
Specifically:
- They misjudged the main plot of the show. The fans were not excited about seeing another Star Trek series where the characters are just wide-eyed explorers of the galaxy. We’d seen that before. What the fans were interested in seeing was the Romulan War and the founding of the Federation. Yet the creators stupidly set the series too early in Star Trek chronology for us to see that except in brief flash-forwards (complicated by the complicated and never-satisfactorily-resolved Temporal Cold War plotline).
- The fans were not interested in seeing the sexy aspects of the show, which at times verged on soft-core porn (or so I am given to understand from film critic definitions, never having watched any kind of porn, myself). Sex has always been around on Star Trek, but it has been handled in a less in-your-face way than in the current series.
- The series showed itself too similar to prior shows by introducing in its first season implausible meetings with aliens not-met-in-this-way or not-met-until-later-series (the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Borg). Rationalizations were offered for why these meetings didn’t violate established first contact facts, but they still alienated fans (no pun intended).
- The series showed itself too different from prior shows by reinterpreting major facts about beloved races, most notably the Vulcans, who are very different from how they have been portrayed in later series (a fact that was recently rectified in the current season, but only after alienating fans for three seasons).
- The series also was too different from other series by its "packaging." Instead of the vibrant color and slick design schemes that previous series had, Enterprise was far more drab in its color scheme and mundane in its design. While some of the latter was justified by its closeness to the present in time, the creators went too far.
- The creators also made a boneheaded mistake by not having the words "Star Trek" in the title of the series in its early seasons. This is a classic illustration of how the "re-thinking" of Star Trek simply went too far.
Having said all that, I look forward to the DVDs of the series, which will begin to be released May 3, just ten days before the final episode airs. The DVDs will allow me to see many of the episodes for the first time. (Since I had The Dinkiest Cable IN THE WORLD when the series began, I didn’t see a lot of them; also I was sufficiently unimpressed by what I did see that I wasn’t motivated to tune in when I moved and got better cable.)
To end on a happy note, the current season of Enterprise is much better than what has come before, and the final episodes of the season are supposed to be even better. The last episode is rumored to be very good and to serve not only as a fitting end to the series (given its cancellation) but also to be a "Valentine" to long-time Star Trek fans.
Watch ’em while you can, folks!
This season they are finally getting it right. The first few episodes were good to. This is a pity. A real pity.
This last season is the best Trek of all, in my estimation, with DS9 following not terribly far behind.
All I can say is… Ding dong, the witch is dead! The new Battlestar Galactica series is much more interesting. And I heard from a good source that they will greenlight a second season if the last batch of episodes does not drop in rating. So if you have a Nielson box in your home… tune in to the sci-fi channel!
I wouldn’t write the obituary for the show yet, as another network like Sci-Fi or Spike might pick it up. If DVD sales go well that might be an extra incentive for a network to get on board.(I heard that DVD sales prompted a rejuvination of “The Family Guy”, though that is a rather vulgar example.)
If nothing happens it will be strange without any Trek on TV, as there hasn’t been a non-Trek season since I was a pre-teen.
I’d love to see ENT picked up by Sci-Fi or someone, but budgetary reasons make that unlikely.
SEE ARTICLE HERE.
I’m sad to hear about the cancellation. I just discovered this show about halfway through last season, and I have missed a number of episodes this season because I keep forgetting to watch for it on Fridays. But based on the episodes that I have seen, this is my favorite Star Trek series since the original. (I never was a huge fan of ST:TNG, and I didn’t like Voyager at all.)
I do agree that Enterprise suffers from some of the deficiencies that Jimmy mentioned, but in my opinion it has had interesting characters and good plots, which have allowed me to overlook some of its shortcomings.
Just when they are moving the show in a great direction they cancel it!
This is really disappointing. They’ve really improved the show since the Zindi arc, and now that it’s getting really good they pull the plug. I envy those of you who can watch the Stargates and Battlestar Galactica for your sci-fi fix. We don’t even get the Sci-Fi channel on our cable. 🙁
Jimmy, You didn’t have Direct TV, or Dish Network?
Tsk Tsk for shame.. 🙂
I could’ve forgiven quite a lot but for the utter contempt they seemed to have for the art direction of the original series. (That, and not using Rick Sternbach for ship design.) It’s a shame that they’re canceling it now that Manny Coto seems to be moving the series in the right direction but they lost me pretty early on.
Battlestar Galactica is the new “Go To” show for Sci-fi. Ironically, the new series has been “Star Trekized” compared to the original. That is, there’s a new focus on the BSG crew and their internal strife and struggles. It’s not just about doing battle with the Cylons in search of Earth.
Now if they’d just introduce more Cylons and cut back on that aweful F-bomb substitute in every other conversation. Frack That!
Like everyone else, I know that Star Trek: Enterprise is going off the air. I didn’t really care for it too much. I guess after watching Star Trek: The next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, I expected more.
For one thing, T’Pol was a poor man’s Seven Of Nine. Her hairdo made her look too much like a Next Generation Romulan. I just liked Seven Of Nine better.
Archer’s Enterprise was really backward. It was an easy target for the Klingons, and lots of other races. It was like Pee Wee Herman taking on Superman in a fight. They had to have the Vulcans help and protect them all of the time.
They had none of the things that even Kirk’s Enterprise had. No Photon torpedos (till a couple of seasons later), no shields (that hull plating can only do just so much) no tractor beam (those grapplers they had were just too backward, and made them just like the Vidians on Voyager), and Phase Cannons and Phase pistols instead of phasers. If the Borg had come in Archer’s time instead of Picard’s, him and his Enterprise crew and ship would have been easily assimilated, and the Federation would’ve never been born.
Still they had at least one good episode, the one where they did a Mirror,Mirror episode. Still wasn’t enough to save the show. And the new Battlestar Galactica is in the same boat almost.
My 3 favorite shows are Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and the old origional Battlestar Galactica. They were the best that was on.
To be fair, TNG wasn’t so wonderful in its first few seasons, either…though I must say I got very angry at Enterprise because they could have done so much with it. The history, the politics, a prequil would be great providing it was done in a way that explained things. I mean, Star Trek has approached ethical situations, especially since TNG, but this one was very in your face about it. Also, the soap opera movement didn’t appeal to me…it’s not like DS9 where you had an ongoing theme with the Dominion but you could miss an episode and still know what’s going on. Each episode in the other series had it’s own separate plot incorporated into the bigger theme…Star Trek Enterprise only had a few sexual miniplots and then the rest was a continuation of the one big plot.
The ending of the series sucked.
Correction, the whole series sucked.