Entertainment Weekly

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2003-07-20 10:58pm

In Entertainment Weekly, there is an Article called "Fallen Star" aboutt if Star Trek can be saved

Equinox2003 · Post by **Equinox2003** » 2003-07-20 10:59pm

Link?

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2003-07-21 09:07pm

Actual Magazine, I seem to have gotten a lifetime subscription to it.

Equinox2003 · Post by **Equinox2003** » 2003-07-23 08:42pm

Tell us about the article. Did it have any good points? Do you agree or
not agree with the writer? etc. etc.

Solamnus · Post by **Solamnus** » 2003-08-07 04:55pm

Sorry for posting it like this. It wouldn't pull up, so I cut and pasted it from the Google cache!

July 18, 2003
Fallen Star
By Tom Russo
of Entertainment Weekly

Oh, pity the poor Star Trek fan, yearning for the days when space was the onl "final frontier" yawning wide before the Starship Enterprise. Right now, after a string of box office, ratings, and creative stumbles, Trek seems little more than a flagship headed for dry dock.

Are things really this dire for the 37-year-old, multibillion-dollar-generating granddaddy of all entertainment franchises? (Unlike, say, James Bond or Star Wars, Trek has successfully and simultaneously existed in film, television, publishing, games, and merchandise.) It's dead, Jum. Almost.

For the first time, audiences are steering clear of both Trek movie features and TV series. Last year's Star Trek: Nemesis should have lured moviegoers, given that it was billed as the sign-off of the popular Next Generation cast. But the $60 million project took in just $43 million domestically, easily the worst of any of the Trek films-which date back to 1979 and the days of $4 tickets. (The film is doing well on DVD.)

Meanwhile, after a warp-speed launch two years ago, UPN's prequel series Enterprise has struggled mightily, losing nearly a third of its viewership from the first season to the second. Enterprise had to hang on for an eleventh-hour pickup for its upcoming third season. By the end of the season, the show averaged 4 million viewers a week, light years removed from the 20 million The Next Generation attracted at its height in the early 90's.

The icing on the dilithium cake is a lawsuit recently filed by videogame publisher Activision against Viacom, parent company of Trek's home studio, Paramount. The games maker alleges that Paramount has let "the once proud Star Trek franchise stagnate and decay" and wants out of the 10-year, $20 million licensing agreement it signed in 1998. (Paramount reps decline to comment for this story, on either the case or Trek's future direction, but there are rumors of another film in development.)

Now, we're not saying that it's easy to keep a franchise flying for three decades. "Paramount was always behind the show when I was involved in it," says Naren Shankar, a story editor on Next Generation from 1992 to '94 who is now a coexecutive producer of CSI. "But even then, we had done close to 200 episodes of that show, and added to that were 6 movies and 79 episodes of the original series. You're dealing with a backlog of material unlike any other show in the history of TV. How do you keep it fresh?"

Others are less diplomatic, including Warren Ellis, author of the eerily prescient graphic novel Orbiter, about the near-future death of space exploration. Trek, Ellis argues, "has turned inward. If it's going to survive, it needs to reinvent the future. The fan base that sat through the episode where Spock's brain is stolen [is] not going away till they die. Don't play to them. Give the rest of us a reason to be interested."

Others caution that Trek can't revive itself by merely wooing young viewers. Says writer-producer Michael Piller, who served on various Terk incarnations from 1989 to 2001 and is now guiding The Dead Zone: "You could make a very good case that Gene Roddenberry's fundamental decision back in the 60's that he was not going to write [a show] for kids is why the franchise has lasted."

Paramount hopes that a third-season refitting of Enterprise will help right the ship. Retiring the series' initial conceit of a novice, largely human crew still getting their space legs, Trek gatekeepers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are now sending the gang to war. In last May's finale, a mysterious alien probe blasted Earth in a devastating neo-terrorist attack. This season will find Scott Bakula's Captain Archer charging into the Bermuda Triangle-like Delphic Expanse to strike back. Berman has billed it as the first time Trek has focused on a mission other that we-come-in-peace exploration--i.e., now-you-go-to-pieces butt-stomping.

In the same jump-start spirit, we at EW brainstormed a few tweaks--well, actually, radical transformations of our own.

Let it die...for a while
Name us a franchise that couldn't occasionally use time to lie fallow and rejuvenate. And this wouldn't be unprecedented: Don't forget, creator Roddenberry mothballed Star Trek for a full decade after the series was cancelled, and it endured just fine in the hearts of the faithful. After that came 4 new TV series and 10 films. "In 20 years, you'll have a rebirth of interest in Star Trek that equals what we did with Next Generation," says Piller. "But it may take that."

All hands, abandon ship
Could be that it's time for significant changes among the Trek creative staff, some of whom have been on board for a good 15 years. Snaring Gladiator's John Logan to script Nemesis was the right idea, but we want more new blood. How about recruiting the Wachowskis? Or the radical Alan Moore, whose comics work (From Hell) outshines Hollywood's stabs at adapting it? Or X-Files alum Darin Morgan, whose showcase tales recalled great Trek mindscrew episodes? The franchise needs to get back to the provocative scripting that marked the best episodes (like Harlan Ellison's classic "The city on the edge of forever").

How come the aliens always look like my Uncle Phil?
Enough already with the old-school ETs, with weird ridges on their heads. Consider the premise of Insurrection: A space commune is imperiled by a race of degenerating baddies who eerily resemble...F. Murray Abraham in cheesy burn makeup. They've been trying to ome up with the next big bad guy for a while, but have failed. Where are the Borg. the Khans, the Qs?

Oh, Ensign Leery is sooo dreamy!
Full-on soap-opera-meets-sci-fi really can work. Witness Smallville. A sexy teen-centric Starfleet Academy series, then, could be a logical next step: forbidden love flowering between a human cadet and a Vulcan, say, or an alienated Klingon teen and his struggle to fit in. Berman has discounted such an idea in the past, telling EW, "Putting children in jeopardy every week is not what Star Trek is about." Yeah, he's probably right. After all, no one paid attention to that danger-prone boy wizard.

Beam 'em down and leave 'em down
So Picard orders the Enterprise to plow into a Reman ship at the climax of Nemesis--cool. But the figurative impact of such a stunt--and we've seen them before--is lessened by our full awareness that there's undoubtedly an Enterprise Deluxe ready to replace it. Why not declare a moratorium on replacement ships and take the opportunity to strand the crew long-term in a completely different setting (think of the possibilities: Voyager meets Survivor)? After all, for much of Trek, the characters are sitting in fancy chairs staring at a really high-end TV--sorry, viewscreen. Get them out there doing something.

Then, maybe, audiences will enlist for another tour of duty.

Entertainment Weekly
July 25, 2003
#720

Posted by Abby at July 18, 2003 06:20 PM

FaxModem1 · Post by **FaxModem1** » 2003-08-07 07:25pm

Why does EW have great ideas for the show and Paramount doesn't?

(slaps head) oh yeah, B&B.

I really wish they would do something good with the series.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-08-07 07:37pm

FaxModem1 wrote:Why does EW have great ideas for the show and Paramount doesn't?

Actually, I would say that their ideas are only marginal. You can save the show, yet, if you know what to do (see my article on "Saving Star Trek") but the point is that Star Trek is not a tough franchise to run. B&B have been making a hash of what should have been an easy job, and so they've suffered savagely at the hands of viewers.

Kerneth · Post by **Kerneth** » 2003-08-07 10:56pm

Solamnus wrote: This season will find Scott Bakula's Captain Archer charging into the Bermuda Triangle-like Delphic Expanse to strike back. Berman has billed it as the first time Trek has focused on a mission other that we-come-in-peace exploration--i.e., now-you-go-to-pieces butt-stomping.

Erm, wasn't the whole Dominion War a fairly major storyline in DS9? Or have B&B somehow forgotten about that whole thing?

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-08-07 11:58pm

FaxModem1 wrote:Why does EW have great ideas for the show and Paramount doesn't?

"A sexy teen-centric Starfleet Academy series, then, could be a logical next step: forbidden love flowering between a human cadet and a Vulcan, say, or an alienated Klingon teen and his struggle to fit in. Berman has discounted such an idea in the past..."
THANK GOD. Berman may not have had the right reasons but he sure as fuck had the right response. Do we really need *yet another* teen drama show?

Besides which, I would not be interested in a sci-fi soap opera.

After "Second Renaissance" and "Matrix Reloaded" I'm beginning to question the ability of the Wachowski brothers to write good sci-fi. Star Trek needs to go back to science fiction stories more than anything else.

"Why not declare a moratorium on replacement ships and take the opportunity to strand the crew long-term in a completely different setting (think of the possibilities: Voyager meets Survivor)?"
Sounds like that one series NBC had for awhile, "Earth 2".

Sounds like crap. Star Trek is kinda defined as being out in space... if you want to do "spaceship crew stranded on planet", fine, do it with a new series that doesn't have baggage.

These aren't great ideas.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2003-08-08 12:24am

I really do not think that Trek is salvagable at this point. So much creative damage has been wrought at the hands of the Killer Bs and their clown crew of soap-opera hacks that there's almost no way to convince anyone to take Trek seriously anymore on any level.

Time to simply let it die.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-08-08 12:34am

Patrick Degan wrote:I really do not think that Trek is salvagable at this point. So much creative damage has been wrought at the hands of the Killer Bs and their clown crew of soap-opera hacks that there's almost no way to convince anyone to take Trek seriously anymore on any level.

From the world of business, I am reminded of the axiom that it's twice as hard to win a disgruntled customer back as it is to keep him happy in the first place. The Cadillac analogy applies very well to ST in my opinion.

Sothis · Post by **Sothis** » 2003-08-08 12:48pm

Patrick Degan wrote:I really do not think that Trek is salvagable at this point. So much creative damage has been wrought at the hands of the Killer Bs and their clown crew of soap-opera hacks that there's almost no way to convince anyone to take Trek seriously anymore on any level.

Time to simply let it die.

If given a chance, Trek can regenerate. It needs a fresh set of producers and writers, writers who'll push the envelope with intense and contriversial stories.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-08-08 02:49pm

Sothis wrote:
Patrick Degan wrote:I really do not think that Trek is salvagable at this point. So much creative damage has been wrought at the hands of the Killer Bs and their clown crew of soap-opera hacks that there's almost no way to convince anyone to take Trek seriously anymore on any level.

Time to simply let it die.
If given a chance, Trek can regenerate. It needs a fresh set of producers and writers, writers who'll push the envelope with intense and contriversial stories.

That was the idea behind my "How Would You Save Star Trek" thread </self promotion> Patrick's got a point, though--how long have Trek fans been hearing about the next great big wild new thing that's going to turn the franchise completely around? UPN is promoting every other episode of Enterprise as an "Event". Even if you did fire everybody, bring in the best writers you can find, and turn Trek into a dynamic, powerful, risk-taking drama that cleaned up the Emmys every year, would the fans come back? I think you might have a better chance of attracting people who AREN'T Trek fans than you do the disgruntled Trekkers who've given up on the franchise.

Honestly, I think the best move would be to cancel Enterprise, go through all five series and cull out the shit episodes, put what's left into syndication. Let people develop a fresh taste for Trek with quality product from the past (that means, by the way, that this sci-fi channel bullshit of expanding TOS to 90 minutes to accomidated all the commercials has got to go--for that matter, we could use a sci-fi channel that doesn't suck). Wait ten or fifteen years and then relaunch the franchise with people who know what the fuck they're doing on a real network. As a bonus, none of Trek's current competition will be on the air at that point---Buffy and its spinoffs and imitators, the superhero movie craze, the four big sci-fi/fantasy movie franchises (Star Wars, The Matrix, LOTR, and Harry Potter), the latest batch of syndicated sci-fi shows, reality TV (which is choking scripted drama all over the place, but I digress).

nightmare · Post by **nightmare** » 2003-08-08 02:53pm

Yesterday, I watched my first episode of Enterprise. It's aired here now for some reason, and I happened to notice in time to watch about half.

Not particularly interesting, but not particularly bad either. Of course, Voyager looked promising on the first episode too, and that show is the reason I stopped watching Trek in the first place. The worst part is that it was clear from start that TOS doesn't exist in the new so-called continuity. I'm not going to make an effort to watch the next episode. If I happen to watch tv it at that time and there's nothing better on, yeah, but that's about it.

No more Star Trek. It needs a fresh start with new cast, new producers and good writers to ever come back, and I don't see it happening. It's probably better to move on, beyond the concept of the new trek anyway. It's just not good anymore.

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2003-08-08 04:36pm

I think Trek should take a break, like for a decade or so. Let time heal the wounds.

The other possibility would be to do something drasticly different from what we've seen before. Make a new (big budget if possible) movie with an all new cast, followed by a series with the cast from the movie if the movie was a success, if not see above.

Darth Fanboy · Post by **Darth Fanboy** » 2003-08-09 02:41am

Kerneth wrote:
Solamnus wrote: This season will find Scott Bakula's Captain Archer charging into the Bermuda Triangle-like Delphic Expanse to strike back. Berman has billed it as the first time Trek has focused on a mission other that we-come-in-peace exploration--i.e., now-you-go-to-pieces butt-stomping.
Erm, wasn't the whole Dominion War a fairly major storyline in DS9? Or have B&B somehow forgotten about that whole thing?

well see that marks the last tiem Trek was really successful, and it was also one of the last projects those two hack sdidn;t have their fingers in

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2003-08-09 05:21am

Sir Sirius wrote:I think Trek should take a break, like for a decade or so. Let time heal the wounds.

Unfortunately, there is no way to heal from a beheading.