Category: Film and TV

STAR TREK ENTERPRISE:

"United"

Trapped on a remote-controlled Romulan ship, Trip and Malcolm must outwit their captors to escape. NOTE: This is the second episode of the Andorian arc and continues to lay the groundwork for the Romulan War leading to the founding of the Federation.

STARGATE SG-1:

"It’s Good to Be King", Episode #813.

While attempting to warn a former adversary of an approaching threat, the SG-1 team stumbles upon what may be an ancient time machine. NOTE: Features the return of everyone’s favorite semi-bad guy, ex-Col. Maybourne of the NID.

STARGATE ATLANTIS

"Hot Zone", Episode #113.

McKay must stop a deadly virus from spreading throughout the population of Atlantis.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

"You Can’t Go Home Again", Episode #105.

Adama and Lee put the fleet at risk while searching for Kara.

MONK

"Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever"

After Monk witnesses a Chinese mob killing, he goes into protective custody and is taken to a remote cabin in the woods, where he uncovers another murder.

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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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).
5. 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.
6. 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!

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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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).
5. 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.
6. 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!

ENTERPRISE

"Babel One"

The Enterprise’s benign cooperation in a peace conference between
Tellarites and Andorians turns dangerous when a secret Romulan vessel
begins attacking ships on all sides. NOTE: A riff on the TOS episodes "Journey To Babel" and "The Balance of Terror."

STARGATE SG-1

"Prometheus Unbound",
Episode #812.

Daniel must face off against a powerful enemy when a search-and-rescue misson goes wrong. NOTE: Features a guest appearance by Gen. Hammond!

STARGATE ATLANTIS

"The Defiant One",
Episode #112.

While investigating a distress signal, Sheppard and McKay become the target of a hungry Wraith.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

"Act of Contrition",
Episode #104.

Starbuck is forced to admit her role in the death of Adama’s son Zak.

MONK

"Mr. Monk vs. The Cobra"

Monk tries to figure out how a person who has been dead for six years could have committed a murder.

CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.

Of course, we all knew he failed to make it, but the news is that Hollywood knows it, too.

MICHAEL MOORE FAILS TO GET BEST PICTURE OSCAR NOMINATION FOR FAHRENHEIT 9/11.

Unfortunately, Hollywood also failed to nominate the picture that genuinely deserved to be named last year’s best: The Passion of the Christ.

My guess is that the failure to nominate it was partly a case of cluelessness (Hollywood is too anti-Christian to "get" the picture) and partly sour grapes ("If we have to admit F9/11 isn’t best picture material, neither will we give you the satisfaction of acknowleding that TPOTC is, either.")

SOME INTERESTING COMMENTARY ON MOORE’S FILM’S LOUSINESS (FROM A LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE) OVER AT TKS.

Quick question: What does Michael Moore’s "L" hand gesture stand for?

(a) Liberal
(b) Loser
(c) Both

I submit that the answer is the same for both the election and the Oscars.

While we’re talking about TV shows today, let’s note the new episdoes of sci-fi shows that will be debuting tonight:

Star Trek Enterprise:

"Observer Effect"
After Hoshi and Trip contract a deadly virus, two aliens possess the bodies of other crew members to observe humanity’s reaction to tragedy. NOTE: This is supposed to involve an alien race we met in The Original Series.

Incidentally, (SPOILERS):

[Enterprise writer/producer Manny] Coto also offered tidbits on the remaining episodes of the season: "In
the second half of the season, you can expect this: Stories that take
place on Andoria, a Klingon moon, Romulan outposts, Romulan Marauders,
Orion Privateers, Earth’s Moon, Mars, a 1701-class Federation starship
and more. And you’ll see a live Tholian… and a Gorn."

Coto emphasizes that whether the show returns for a fifth season remains to be seen.

"As to whether or not we’ll be back for Season 5, that’s always been up in the air. We’ll see what the future brings." [SOURCE.]

Stargate SG-1:

"Gemini", Episode #811.
When an enemy takes on the guise of one of the team, Carter’s emotions leave the planet susceptible to attack.
NOTE: Stargate SG-1 is not head-to-head with Enterprise, so you’ll have to TiVo, VCR, choose, or catch a re-run. I’d recommend Enterprise as your first-watch, then SG-1 later.

Stargate Atlantis:

"The Eye", Episode #111.
When the city is evacuated due to an approaching storm, the Genii launch and invasion.

Battlestar Galactica (new series):

"Bastille Day", Episode #103.
Apollo is held hostage on a prisoner ship by a group of convicts led by a freedom fighter convicted of terrorism. NOTE: The new Battlestar Galactica series has some very good aspects to it, but it’s got too much sexy stuff in it for me to recommend it. It’s also opposite Monk, so I recommend you watch Monk.

CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.

Yes!!!

The new season (or half-season) of Monk starts tonight!!!

What will happen? Will Monk be able to survive the tragic loss of his long-time caretaker and assistant, the beloved Sharona?

How will they explain her absence?

Who will replace her?

Will the new person be any good?

Will the audience accept her?

Will America’s favorite and hysterically-funny obsessive-compulsive detective jump the shark, as one reader ponders down yonder? (Though you really can’t tell that from just one show; shark jumps can be accurately discerned only in the rear view mirror.)

Monk is worried about these and many more questions. Just look at him! Can’t you see how worried he is?

Help Monk get over his new half-season jitters by tuning in and giving the new character a chance.

He can’t go off the air. He’s got crimes to solve!

CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS

Okay, I don’t normally watch network TV (or any TV), but this season I have found myself catching (occasionally) a couple of reality TV shows that are in proximity to Lost and 24.

These shows are called WifeSwap and (if I remember correctly) Trading Spouses. They are on ABC and FOX, respectively.

Both involve (from the 3-4 episodes I have seen) the mother of one family switching places with the mother of another family. When this happens then–formally or informally–the mother at first conforms to the rules of her new family and then begins to impose the rules that she is used to.

The producers of the shows seem to be trying to pick the most extreme (and clearly dysfunctional) families that they can find.

From my limited viewing experience of these shows, it seems that they involve pitting commonly stereotypical families against each others. Specifically: One mom comes from a messy, cluttered, rambunctious, and (usually) more-explicitly-Christian family than the other, who comes from from a clean, spartan, sedate, and (usually) less-explicitly-Christian family.

Part of the point of the shows is to see how the introduction of both moms affects both families. Inevitably, the "messy" mom comes across as more human than the "cleaner" mom–and the "messy" mom seems to have longer-lasting and more positive effects on the "clean" family than visa-versa.

That’s fiine with me.

Though I appreciate cleanliness (and especially hygiene), ultimately people are more important than things, and while venturing too far in either direction is unhealthy, it’s better to be messy, cluttered, rambunctious, and Christian than clean, spartan, sedate, and non-Christian.

Here’s to bigger famlies!

(Which regularly accompany the "messy" families rather than the "clean" moms.)

A young gentleman writes:

Jimmy,
   

Hi!  I was thinking of trying out the TV series Babylon 5, and I was just wondering if there’s any objectionable content that I might want to be aware of.  I’m 16 right now, and I have a sister who’s eleven who would probably end up watching whatever was being viewed in the house.  Is the show appropriate for children, or should I wait a few years?  Thanks!

Though most episodes of B5 are quite kid friendly, there are some scenes in some episodes that are not kiddable, particularly for someone as young as eleven. If your parents were interested in watching the series and skipping over these bits, it would be possible to watch them, but this would require a good bit of effort on their part and they likely wouldn’t have the time to devote to such a sustained effort. Therefore, I would just wait a few years.

Hope this helps and that you enjoy the series when you do see it!

NOTE: B5 fans, do not spoil what the unkiddable parts are in the comments box.

 

FOX NEWS IS NOW ON THE AIR IN THE GREAT WHITE NORTH!

Now y’all can find out what all the hubbub is about. (If you can find the channel; apparently it’s being up way high up in the numbers in cable systems up there.)

ALSO, CHECK OUT THEIR WEB  SITE.

Enjoy!