trek mate
I missed this announcement last Wednesday that Star Trek: Enterprise will be cancelled at the end of this, its fourth season. Since it's become an unwritten law of geekdom that a Star Trek series must run for seven years (so at least one show can be dedicated to Pon Farr), this can only be viewed as a premature death for Enterprise and ultimate demise of the Star Trek franchise. Thank God.
As someone who grew up glued to every possible re-run of ST:TOS (that's Star Trek: The Original Series to those who have actually touched female breasts), I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the romanticism and neo-humanist optimism of the Cold War-era show. Sure, it was a low-budget affair that wielded metaphors like a gravimetric hammer, but its unapologetic sincerity was occasionally intertwined with good storytelling to create a unique bit of sci-fi that was both entertaining and inspiring. Not bad for a show that series creator Gene Roddenberry had pitched to NBC suits as "Wagon Train to the stars."
The original series only lasted three seasons because media saturation hadn't been invented in the late 60's. After one letter-writing campaign was rewarded with the abomination of Spock's Brain and other 3rd season dreck, NBC management wasn't about to be swayed by any further protests to resurrect the show. Star Trek died a quiet death, and a quality addition to the sci-fi pantheon should have been noted and promptly forgotten.
Instead of dying, Star Trek was reborn through syndication. In its second life, the show attracted a legion of new, desperate fans who enjoyed the show so much that they donned its costumes and flocked to conventions with other similarly-afflicted people willing to watch Nichelle Nichols yammer on about the minutia of Uhura's earpiece. Despite these vaguely frightening displays of Trek idolatry, the Trekkie movement was largely celebrating all that was good and pure about the show, whether it was the adventure of interplanetary exploration or Kirk's sexual escapades with alien chicks.
And then someone realized there was money to be made from this dedicated group of star-gazing saps, and a franchise was born. Aside from the lame animated series, things began promisingly enough with a couple decent movies, especially The Wrath of Khan in 1982. The New Age revolution came in 1987 with The Next Generation series, which sucked mightily for about 2 years before finding brilliance. Twenty years after its introduction, Star Trek had improbably blossomed into movies and a spin-off series that embraced the original concepts while far exceeding its execution.
The franchise was on a roll, and could have ended on a triumphant note after 7 seasons of TNG. But greed had taken hold, and The Powers That Be determined that the only thing better than Star Trek would be More Trek. And so we got Trek on a space station at war. We got Trek on a far-flung ship with a stacked cyborg and no hope of reaching home. We got Trek toys, Trek video games, Trek collector cards. [IRONY ALERT] Star Trek had thus given birth to the same superficial society it had been preaching against since the 60's, and the franchise couldn't escape its own trap no matter how radically they rescaled the Warp Factor.
Once it takes on a life of its own, the only way to feed the marketing beast is to keep churning out product, and we got a couple really terrible movies in the bargain. Insurrection actually stooped to boob jokes, so I was surprised Nemesis didn't have Worf doing fart gags. Neither film had the guts to be a real Trek movie nor the skill to be any kind of good movie, so only a dwindling number of hard-core fans (or "rubes" as we call them) paid to see an aging cast fail to be entertaining or inspiring.
With the movies dumbing themselves out of profitability, the pseudo-retro show called Enterprise represented the franchise's last gasp at relevance. The creators made all the right moves, embracing the rough humanistic flaws of the original series, hiring a commanding veteran to lead the cast, and casting a Vulcan with a gravity-defying physique. Even with its crafty marketing, this series should never have been created in the first place. It's obvious that nobody's heart is in the enterprise when flat writing and hackneyed premises are the only threads tying together numerous underwear scenes. And somehow even those got stretched out for four years.
So it would seem that Star Trek has finally been driven into the ground when it should have been laid to rest a decade ago. Hopefully now we can all have some peace to remember the best parts of the series (without having to buy one of the 49 DVD sets), and move on to a concept that is a product of this era rather than a slickly repackaged remnant from another.
At least until someone remembers that pitch about "Wagon Train to the stars."
As someone who grew up glued to every possible re-run of ST:TOS (that's Star Trek: The Original Series to those who have actually touched female breasts), I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the romanticism and neo-humanist optimism of the Cold War-era show. Sure, it was a low-budget affair that wielded metaphors like a gravimetric hammer, but its unapologetic sincerity was occasionally intertwined with good storytelling to create a unique bit of sci-fi that was both entertaining and inspiring. Not bad for a show that series creator Gene Roddenberry had pitched to NBC suits as "Wagon Train to the stars."
The original series only lasted three seasons because media saturation hadn't been invented in the late 60's. After one letter-writing campaign was rewarded with the abomination of Spock's Brain and other 3rd season dreck, NBC management wasn't about to be swayed by any further protests to resurrect the show. Star Trek died a quiet death, and a quality addition to the sci-fi pantheon should have been noted and promptly forgotten.
Instead of dying, Star Trek was reborn through syndication. In its second life, the show attracted a legion of new, desperate fans who enjoyed the show so much that they donned its costumes and flocked to conventions with other similarly-afflicted people willing to watch Nichelle Nichols yammer on about the minutia of Uhura's earpiece. Despite these vaguely frightening displays of Trek idolatry, the Trekkie movement was largely celebrating all that was good and pure about the show, whether it was the adventure of interplanetary exploration or Kirk's sexual escapades with alien chicks.
And then someone realized there was money to be made from this dedicated group of star-gazing saps, and a franchise was born. Aside from the lame animated series, things began promisingly enough with a couple decent movies, especially The Wrath of Khan in 1982. The New Age revolution came in 1987 with The Next Generation series, which sucked mightily for about 2 years before finding brilliance. Twenty years after its introduction, Star Trek had improbably blossomed into movies and a spin-off series that embraced the original concepts while far exceeding its execution.
The franchise was on a roll, and could have ended on a triumphant note after 7 seasons of TNG. But greed had taken hold, and The Powers That Be determined that the only thing better than Star Trek would be More Trek. And so we got Trek on a space station at war. We got Trek on a far-flung ship with a stacked cyborg and no hope of reaching home. We got Trek toys, Trek video games, Trek collector cards. [IRONY ALERT] Star Trek had thus given birth to the same superficial society it had been preaching against since the 60's, and the franchise couldn't escape its own trap no matter how radically they rescaled the Warp Factor.
Once it takes on a life of its own, the only way to feed the marketing beast is to keep churning out product, and we got a couple really terrible movies in the bargain. Insurrection actually stooped to boob jokes, so I was surprised Nemesis didn't have Worf doing fart gags. Neither film had the guts to be a real Trek movie nor the skill to be any kind of good movie, so only a dwindling number of hard-core fans (or "rubes" as we call them) paid to see an aging cast fail to be entertaining or inspiring.
With the movies dumbing themselves out of profitability, the pseudo-retro show called Enterprise represented the franchise's last gasp at relevance. The creators made all the right moves, embracing the rough humanistic flaws of the original series, hiring a commanding veteran to lead the cast, and casting a Vulcan with a gravity-defying physique. Even with its crafty marketing, this series should never have been created in the first place. It's obvious that nobody's heart is in the enterprise when flat writing and hackneyed premises are the only threads tying together numerous underwear scenes. And somehow even those got stretched out for four years.
So it would seem that Star Trek has finally been driven into the ground when it should have been laid to rest a decade ago. Hopefully now we can all have some peace to remember the best parts of the series (without having to buy one of the 49 DVD sets), and move on to a concept that is a product of this era rather than a slickly repackaged remnant from another.
At least until someone remembers that pitch about "Wagon Train to the stars."
Monday, February 07, 2005
posted by wae at 11:24 PM
1 Comments:
As someone who never really liked or watched any of the shows, I think the movies started sucking with that one about the whales. I could make a joke about "jumping the whale" but that would be silly.
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