Star Trek Part I
"No.................!" I hear my readers scream.
That's if I have any readers which is unlikely, and they are close enough for me to hear them scream which is even less likely. Very unlikely things do happen though. A serious science fiction series being made for prime time TV in the 1960s for example. Did you see that, that was a link that was, in TV talk not interweb talk.
In this particular section I will be talking a bit about Star Trek. My take on the whole thing. In case you are wondering what Star Trek is I can only ask where you have been for the last forty years? Sorry that was uncalled for, my trekkerness tends to blind me to the fact people out there haven't actually encountered Star Trek before.
I'll assume you have. If not well, have a search on the interweb to familarise yourself, there is plenty of stuff out there, probably far too much and I'm adding to it. After you've spent the next few weeks familiarising yourself come back and continue reading and it will all become clear.
As you will now know the latest incarnation of Star Trek, Enterprise has recently been cancelled. Only four seasons in and already its been canned. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th incarnations managed seven seasons. It seems that the format was getting tired. After 18 straight seasons that is understandable. I remember some fans making similar claims back when Deep Space Nine and Voyager finished. I thought of a year or three's rest at the time myself wouldn't have been a bad idea to give it a rest for a bit.
Of course too much money was to be made so the rest idea never materialised. After the explosion of the interweb during Voyager's run, all the tidbits about the new show were more easily available.
A prequel, sounds a bit different I thought. Scott Bakula as Captain, sounding good I was always a big Quantum Leap fan so are a lot of people. The promotion shots had the crew in genuine space suits that looked like they would get regular use. The technology isn't as good so should provide better stories rather than relying on technobabble for plot resolutions.
The pilot was good. Everybody seemed to think so. There were elements from classic trek there, communicators, sound effects etc. Unfortunately the series wasn't quite as good to begin with. It did stagnate a little. I personally enjoyed watching most of the episodes but many of the viewers and some fans found them dull. I guess i must be easy to please. Most fans had taken it as granted it usually takes Trek a season or two to get up to full speed.
In an effort to do something about it, the 3rd season was made into one big story. I won't go into too much detail as these are still being shown as "new" in some places. I still enjoyed it. Some fans thought it was a bit better but it still struggled to get more viewers. That seems to be the most important thing to the US TV networks. They didn't believe there were enough people really that interested in Star Trek apart from the fans. Added to this was that expensive SF seems to have fell out of favour in TV network politics. Things look decidedly shaky at the end of the 3rd season and there were some big question marks whether there would be a 4th or not.
Concessions were made by the producers, new writers were brought in and a compromise mini-arc policy towards story length was established. This meant stories could take anything from one to three episodes to be resolved.
Something else happened though, all the references to other "Trek" started appearing again. Characters started referring to events and people from the history of the programme and the movies. The fans thought this was a big improvement although some were still unhappy. They believed the writers were just reusing old stories rather than doing anything new. Regardless of how the fans felt, the end was near.
Weeks ago the announcement was made there wouldn't be a fifth season. Now they are going to let Star Trek do something it should have maybe done before now, we will have to wait for a few years to see any new Trek or will we?
While all this 3rd/4th season stuff was going on, something very special was happening with one group of fans. To say it's amazing is an understatement and I will talk about it in the next article in this series.
Edit: Part II here.
That's if I have any readers which is unlikely, and they are close enough for me to hear them scream which is even less likely. Very unlikely things do happen though. A serious science fiction series being made for prime time TV in the 1960s for example. Did you see that, that was a link that was, in TV talk not interweb talk.
In this particular section I will be talking a bit about Star Trek. My take on the whole thing. In case you are wondering what Star Trek is I can only ask where you have been for the last forty years? Sorry that was uncalled for, my trekkerness tends to blind me to the fact people out there haven't actually encountered Star Trek before.
I'll assume you have. If not well, have a search on the interweb to familarise yourself, there is plenty of stuff out there, probably far too much and I'm adding to it. After you've spent the next few weeks familiarising yourself come back and continue reading and it will all become clear.
As you will now know the latest incarnation of Star Trek, Enterprise has recently been cancelled. Only four seasons in and already its been canned. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th incarnations managed seven seasons. It seems that the format was getting tired. After 18 straight seasons that is understandable. I remember some fans making similar claims back when Deep Space Nine and Voyager finished. I thought of a year or three's rest at the time myself wouldn't have been a bad idea to give it a rest for a bit.
Of course too much money was to be made so the rest idea never materialised. After the explosion of the interweb during Voyager's run, all the tidbits about the new show were more easily available.
A prequel, sounds a bit different I thought. Scott Bakula as Captain, sounding good I was always a big Quantum Leap fan so are a lot of people. The promotion shots had the crew in genuine space suits that looked like they would get regular use. The technology isn't as good so should provide better stories rather than relying on technobabble for plot resolutions.
The pilot was good. Everybody seemed to think so. There were elements from classic trek there, communicators, sound effects etc. Unfortunately the series wasn't quite as good to begin with. It did stagnate a little. I personally enjoyed watching most of the episodes but many of the viewers and some fans found them dull. I guess i must be easy to please. Most fans had taken it as granted it usually takes Trek a season or two to get up to full speed.
In an effort to do something about it, the 3rd season was made into one big story. I won't go into too much detail as these are still being shown as "new" in some places. I still enjoyed it. Some fans thought it was a bit better but it still struggled to get more viewers. That seems to be the most important thing to the US TV networks. They didn't believe there were enough people really that interested in Star Trek apart from the fans. Added to this was that expensive SF seems to have fell out of favour in TV network politics. Things look decidedly shaky at the end of the 3rd season and there were some big question marks whether there would be a 4th or not.
Concessions were made by the producers, new writers were brought in and a compromise mini-arc policy towards story length was established. This meant stories could take anything from one to three episodes to be resolved.
Something else happened though, all the references to other "Trek" started appearing again. Characters started referring to events and people from the history of the programme and the movies. The fans thought this was a big improvement although some were still unhappy. They believed the writers were just reusing old stories rather than doing anything new. Regardless of how the fans felt, the end was near.
Weeks ago the announcement was made there wouldn't be a fifth season. Now they are going to let Star Trek do something it should have maybe done before now, we will have to wait for a few years to see any new Trek or will we?
While all this 3rd/4th season stuff was going on, something very special was happening with one group of fans. To say it's amazing is an understatement and I will talk about it in the next article in this series.
Edit: Part II here.
posted by soup_dragon at 11:57 am
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