New Trek Pre-quel Film?

[SirNitram]

The concept of a battle from the bridge isn't really a violation of the 'Don't tell, show' maxim. It's a means of storytelling pioneered in old submarine movies, and Roddenberry carried this.. Purposefully.. into TOS. We're still seeing the battle, but the perspective is different. I'm talking about how Archer has literally said 'I've done this and that and this' and I keep thinking 'You know, any of those scenes would be actually INTERESTING, as opposed to you sitting your ass there'. That is what the maxim is supposed to prevent.

OK. Now I see what you are saying. But it still isn't the frist time in Star Trek that an exploit has been more described than visually shown onscreen. I dont think Archer does it too often either. They still dedicate entire episodes to flashbacks, or ussually just make a long story short by telling it. It saves some production budget as Enteprprise has one of the highest production budgets on Television.

A flashback is another means of showing, what I'm really driving home is the presense of the telling. It shouldn't be used at all, and especially not things that make you immediately go 'Oh, that'd be a sweet scene'.

More annoying to me, as a writer, is the blatant disregard for internal continuity. My personal vex with the two chuckleheads in charge is for their willingness to wipe their asses with previous series, but as a professional, I'm aghast at how they just ignore their own bloody series. How many times, for example, would the Suliban Cell Ship the Enterprise has have been IMMENSELY useful?

[Hardy]

A flashback is another means of showing, what I'm really driving home is the presense of the telling. It shouldn't be used at all, and especially not things that make you immediately go 'Oh, that'd be a sweet scene'.

I'm having a little difficulty understanding that. Can you briefly rephrase it?

More annoying to me, as a writer, is the blatant disregard for internal continuity. My personal vex with the two chuckleheads in charge is for their willingness to wipe their asses with previous series, but as a professional, I'm aghast at how they just ignore their own bloody series. How many times, for example, would the Suliban Cell Ship the Enterprise has have been IMMENSELY useful?

I think they were making up for the discontinuity with the stolen Xindi shuttle. Otherwise I do agree with that statement.

You'll have to excuse my bias for Enterprise. I started watching it when i was 12 and was pretty much hooked. Aside from season seven of Voyager, that was the first generation of Star Trek I had ever watched outside of syndication. I was inherently introduced to the shows not of Roddenbury's creation, so I'm pretty much a new skool Trekkie.

Anyway I do think that this discussion is bringing the thread off topic. Nice talking to you anyway.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

The topic was actually pretty much dead by the time you necroed the thread.

[RedImperator]

Nielsen's ratings are somewhat inaccurate. One Nielsens box cold represent over 200,000 people. Could it be possible that in some cases a massive group of Enterprise fans are being represented by a non-Trekkie. It's a bit of an irrational statement, but I am only trying to express a possibility.

There's some grumbling in Hollywood that the Nielsens are inaccurate or that they're a bad measure of success (certainly as a die-hard Firefly fan, I can attest that they've helped kill more than their share of quality shows), but four years of abysmal--and declining--ratings paints an ugly picture.

They look even worse when you consider them in the context of the entire franchise--you could maybe argue that the ratings are getting buggered by statistical errors (though that's wildly improbable over the course of four straight years), but when Nemesis is an international flop, Activision bails on its contract to make Trek games, merchandise sales are falling, and the Experience in Vegas is bordering on insolvency, it's pretty clear there's no interest left in Star Trek in general and Enterprise in particular.

Now, are ratings down because people don't care about Trek or do people not care about Trek because the show sucks? Frankly, I think Voyager killed Trek--7 years of a lifeless, plodding, technobabble choked dullard of a show only a hardcore fanboi could love drove the casual fans away, and much as the hardcore fans like to congratulate themselves on how much they support a franchise, without casual mainstream fans, the franchise dies. Mass media is too expensive to produce to rely on the Spcok-ears and homemade lightsaber crowd to make you a profit. The fact that VOY was stuck on UPN probably didn't help either. Paramount should have pulled the plug on that abortion of a network years ago and put Trek back into syndication. Then maybe VOyager might have had to earn its place on the air, and maybe they would have fired the hacks writing and producing Trek for the show's lousy ratings, instead of letting them run Trek into the ground for over a decade.

Long story short: regardless of what you think of Enterprise as a show, the general public couldn't give two shits about it, and that's an undisputable fact. It's too bad we're being forced to watch a great franchise sputter and die thanks to incompetent boobs like Bergman and Braga, but them's the ropes.

[neoolong]

Unless I'm reading the ratings information wrong, haven't they been going down along each season?

That would mean that public opinion says it sucks.

Nielsen's ratings are somewhat inaccurate. One Nielsens box cold represent over 200,000 people. Could it be possible that in some cases a massive group of Enterprise fans are being represented by a non-Trekkie. It's a bit of an irrational statement, but I am only trying to express a possibility.

Somewhat? And that means that when it says that it has increased in suckitude over time, it means that it has really decreased in suckitude?

[Hardy]

Unless I'm reading the ratings information wrong, haven't they been going down along each season?

That would mean that public opinion says it sucks.

Nielsen's ratings are somewhat inaccurate. One Nielsens box cold represent over 200,000 people. Could it be possible that in some cases a massive group of Enterprise fans are being represented by a non-Trekkie. It's a bit of an irrational statement, but I am only trying to express a possibility.

Somewhat? And that means that when it says that it has increased in suckitude over time, it means that it has really decreased in suckitude?

No. I am implying...no saying...the possibility of the official figures being far different from the true figures.

Anyway, I have said before that Nielsen ratings reflect how a show performs in comaprision with shows in the time slot. To quote myself:

Besides possible statistical inaccuracy, there are many more reasons why Enterprise is not perfroming well.
One of them is genre. I dont think that the majority of America are sci-fi fans. Even so, cable and satellite TV is available tot hem so there ar more options such as syndicated shows or other sci-fi shows or movies.
Antoher is timing. Enterprise Starts at 8:00 on the east coast which is an inconvienient hour in which people could possibly be watching soemthing more productive when they finish dinner or get home from work. And then you have younger fans who are sent to bed early or the fans that are just unavailable and tape their shows. The fact that you can download episodes of Enterprise also hurts ratings as people wont watch TV. Inventions such as Tivo and the DVR have also allowed people to watch other TV outside of the normal time slot.

High "Sucktitude" is your opinion. I'll respect that.

[neoolong]

I'm not using just the numbers though. It is the trend that the ratings have been decreasing.

So unless you're claiming that the Nielsen's bias has shifted suddenly, then even taking into account and bias, which should be uniform, it still has been getting worse and worse.

And like RedImperator says, it isn't just Enterprise that shows that Star Trek isn't all that great anymore.

Oh and saying that because public opinion says something, it is necessarily better than one's private opinion is just stupid. They're both still opinions.