All they had to do was take a year off , let the show run in syndication, and then debut S5 on the CW and just jump right in to the Romulan War. Then do the ENT film trilogy once S7 ended.
Complimenting ENTERPRISE...
- Thread starter Farscape One
- Start date
I wonder if we would see them adopt Cage style uniforms at some point during the end of this proposed film trilogy. Interesting thoughts, all the way around, though.
V
Vale
Guest
I recently rewatched the whole of Voyager and Enterprise. I've seen both in their entirety before, but only once each and not for a long time.
My plus thoughts on Enterprise in no particular order...
My plus thoughts on Enterprise in no particular order...
- In general it's much, much better than I remember.
- There's no bad main characters. To be sure I'm not wildly keen on Trip, but all the others are well conceived and well acted, in a way that many of Voyager's are not. (Some of them were served badly by the writers – Mayweather first and foremost, Reed, arguably Hoshi – but that's a separate issue.) Standout characters for me are Archer, T'Pol, and Phlox.
- The design is really fantastic. I LOVE the interior of the NX-01 (apart from the warp core "boiler"). The bridge, the corridors, the sickbay, the crew quarters, the shuttlebay, the cargo bays – all of it looks amazing, easily the best of any of the Berman-era Treks. A believable evolution of realistic near-future NASA-inspired design extrapolated in a Trek-wards direction. The uniforms are arguably the best uniforms Star Trek ever had, because they're actually plausible as real uniforms.
Maybe made for TV movies?
Just thinking, those extra seasons would have been, '06-'07, '07-'08, '08-'09.
The series would have ended just in time for the TOS reboot movies.
Since I am of the mindset that Enterprise was the first show in a post-FIrst Contact altered timeline, it could have just kept moving the timeline forward, with some minor tweakings to the Kelvin movies.
Made for TV movies were a possibility. That what the miniarcs of S4 basically were, which is why its surprising that ENT did not get a continuation with a focus using that format.
If ENT did at minimum 7 TV movies a season, they would be able to air at least one per month as a special event. And I’d imagine that the studio would want double the output to air 2 tv movies per month. Which would mean ENT would have to take another page from 24 and have a season from January to May, since airing 1-2 TV movies per month would lead to erratic viewership, especially if those movies weren't advertised ahead of time. So, it’s be more like ’07, ’08 and ’09 for the final 3 seasons.
TV movies would make sense for weekly Friday night viewing. I’m just wondering if ENT would get the Friday slot back then, because that was the slot that wrestling had back then on UPN and CW for ‘06-‘07 and ‘07-‘08 before heading over to SyFy. But one of the two shows would be moving timeslots again. I can imagine that wrestling could be moved back to its previous Thursday slot. I can’t imagine the final three seasons of ENT being on a Saturday or Sunday, but I don’t know if they would get their old Wednesday slot back either. I suppose anything’s possible.
Hopefully enough content would have been written that ENT would not be significantly affected by the writer’s strike. Which would be one of the benefits of taking a year off, to write as much content as possible.
And with a tv movie format, maybe that crossover with Doctor Who could have happened too.
Taking a year off was not a thing U.S. network television programs did back in 2005 except in truly rare circumstances. The TV landscape was very different then; in particular, there would have been major problems with paying the cost of set storage when the studio could otherwise profitably use the space, and paying the cost of locking in the cast to be available to come back in a year. Obviously these days costs like that are a thing studios can deal with, but back then it was almost unheard of.
So you're saying that the made for tv movies basically would BE the last 3 seasons?
So, like that one season of Futurama that consisted of all the movies chopped up?
Yes, networks thought that a year off was enough for viewers to lose track of what was going on. Its what ruined Heroes, during the aborted S2, and the beginning of S3. Instead of continuing S2 as planned, they scrapped it all, and started fresh with S3, which was its downfall.
So, like that one season of Futurama that consisted of all the movies chopped up?
Yes, networks thought that a year off was enough for viewers to lose track of what was going on. Its what ruined Heroes, during the aborted S2, and the beginning of S3. Instead of continuing S2 as planned, they scrapped it all, and started fresh with S3, which was its downfall.
24 took a break for 2 years after the sixth season in 2007, and had a tv movie in late 2008 to serve as a prequel for the seventh season in 2009. If the audience is interested in your show like with 24, they’ll come find it and watch it.
TV movies would have covered the final three seasons, yes. Ending the series at the Battle of Sol and seeing the founding species form a new alliance and transition from the Coalition of Planets to the United Federation of Planets in the immediate aftermath would have made a great finale. I don’t know if I’d chop the movies into parts though.
Heroes failed because Tim Kring isn’t a good writer, even though he has good and interesting ideas for TV shows. That became apparent when I was watching that show lead by Kiefer Sutherland called Touch (which I regularly forget the name of) and felt that it was a drag to watch at times. Heroes leaving a lot of content on webisodes that realy should have been TV did not help either. Heroes: Reborn did alright to me though and was the best Heroes had been since the first season, imo.
Under the right circumstances, I’d be fine watching a Heroes: The Next Generation.
You're not wrong, but Kring's weaknesses could have been overcome if it wasn't for the "fan's won't know whats going on if we put the show on hiatus for this long" after the writers strike cut season 2 short. The original plan was for the virus to get out, with Hiro thinking he had stopped it by imprisoning Adam and having to learn a lesson there; a whole storyline where they had to use all of their powers to lock down the town where the virus was; A heroic sacrifice by ... Maya i think the name was? The disease chick, where she sucks up the virus and saves everyone. Meanwhile Sylar would have been hunting for new powers, with Elle (?) on a mission to try to stop him, during the course of which he would have gained an invulnerable shell (instead of getting healing/ressurection) and a camouflage power (instead of invisibility.) God, its been so long, I'm having trouble putting my memories together here. I use to have my Heroes rants down to a science LOL. But all the wasted bits of Season 2 would have had a payoff, instead of being crammed into an "easy ending" at the end of the shortened season, and would have never gone towards the soft reboot that was Season 3 (the first half of which utterly destroyed the show.) This, and Supernatural, were the two shows that brought me back to regular TV-viewing, after taking most of the late 90s/early aughts off completely - i missed the end of DS9, Voyager, and the whole of Enterprise, because I had stopped watching television for quite awhile.
Yes, S2 was messed up. There was supposed to be an additional volume (Exodus), and Caitlin getting stuck in an alternate timeline that never comes to be and her story never gets brought up again. I wonder if its possible for there to be a spinoff series to explore that alternate timeline one day and that planned volume that never aired.
I still strongly believe that Issac should not have been killed off in S1. I feel that his drawings were an important part of the storytelling in Heroes.
I still strongly believe that Issac should not have been killed off in S1. I feel that his drawings were an important part of the storytelling in Heroes.
Despite loathing that superseding series I'll give ENT one thing, it gave me "Carbon Creek" the best episode from its entire run.
Yes, two years after ENT was cancelled. It was highly unusual at the time.
Sure. But that doesn't mean this was clear to the industry at the time, or that it was a commonly-accepted practice at the time for network television programs to go on a multi-year hiatus.
When 24 took its break, it was coming off a terrible 6th season by 24 standards (despite having a very strong 2-night season premiere) and several years of being stuck in the same setting. That it was popular at the time likely allowed it to take the break needed so that the producers and writers could refocused the show. And it paid off with a couple extra seasons, and then another one a few years later with an adapted format. Plus, plans of a movie that - while it never got produced - at least was discussed about. FOX took a risk and it paid off.
Enterprise never got that chance, even though it was known that CW would be in more homes than UPN. Why not take a break, let ENT run on syndication (like VOY, DS9, TNG and TOS before it), and then put the fifth season on there to see if it will make a difference? At least if ratings and viewership still declined afterwards, it would be understandable as to why it would be cancelled. And if the franchise was suffering from fatigue, would it not make sense to give it at least a season off? Its thought well enough to have been referenced in the reboot films multiple times over and used for both character development and plot development i.e. Scotty meeting Admiral Archer and his beagle, the NX class model in Admiral Marcus’s office, MACOs & the United Earth Military, the USS Franklin, the Xindi & Romulan Wars, and to a lesser extent, Section 31.
For whatever reason, there was a reluctance to have a break to develop and better plan out Enterprise, both in the planning stages when it was first pitch and again near the end of its run. And the reluctance to take risks helped get the show cancelled.
Cancellation was an error.
Pausing costs money.
From what I recall, they trashed the sets so quickly, there was no way it could have been shelved and brought back.
The shows would be in syndication, so they’d also be making money. Not to mention DVD and Bluray sales, Enterprise soundtracks and any other related merchandise.
So, build new sets. Surely after a year of refits and building starbases, United Earth Starfleet would look different:
- NX-Refit (warp 7 engine room room is twice as big as the warp 5 engine to accommodate a bigger engine, the bridge and captain's ready room would get refurbished, mess hall and rec room expanded, new shuttlebays, guest quarters on the secondary hull. Maybe show early touchscreen use on starships and show how it was imperfect at the time.)
- Daedalus class (new bridge, maybe engineering and sickbay)
- Neptune class (with the S1/2 captain’s chair)
- Warp Delta (interiors never seen before)
- United Earth starbases (either in orbit or planetside)
- Oakland shipyards
Then there would be a number of other settings, mainly related to the Earth-Romulan War story:
- Various Earth colonies (Alpha Centauri, Deneva, Vega) and outposts
- Lunar cities, Martian cities, Jupiter Station & the Janus loop
- Romulan ship interiors
- Romulan Senate chamber (if they still had them from Nemesis)
- Romulus and Romii cities, suburbs, countryside and seaports
- Vulcan (Science Directorate and the Security Directorate)
- Andorian capital and outposts
- Tellar homeworld and trading outposts
- Denobula
- Berengaria VII
- Various planets in the Rigel system (Rigel II through V)
Even on Earth, they could have shown new and different settings:
- MACO barracks
- family homes of Archer, Reed & Sato
- the interior various buildings of the university campus that Sato taught at in Brazil
- Starfleet Intelligence
- Starfleet Medical
- UESPA HQ
- office of Section 31’s Harris
- maybe those arenas or museums with the holograms of those rock bands
- 22nd Century Smithsonian
- a soccer pitch during the World Cup
- Mobile, Alabama as a thriving city, as well as Atlanta, Georgia
- United Earth parliament (either virtual or physical)
- Earth Cargo Authority HQ
- Xindi attack memorial
- the gravesite of Henry Archer
- New York City
How many of these sets are really just a matter of moving some furniture around, changing the lighting and changing the background on the greenscreen? A number of them would just involve being outside too, so more costs can be saved.
Last edited:
@FederationHistorian , I'm not disagreeing that a pause might have worked. But the idea was just not something that was done at the time. Even your 24 example did not happen until two years after ENT ended. It's really important to keep in mind the evolution of business practices in the history of TV when we talk about what they should have done.
I always go back to the scene where Talas tries to seduce some MACO and he's not having a bar of it and then the two of them start punching on. I just love how it portrays neither of them as stupid and both capable.
Admiral Forrest's outfit is one of my favourite uniforms and such a cool blend of today and tomorrow.
ISS Enterprise NX-01 is one of my favourite looking ships in all of Star Trek and Lorian's Enterprise is not far behind. I love Lorian's Enterprise's messed up deflector dish.
The Vulcan ring ships are fun callback to the ring ship from TMP although I wish those ships had tied together more.
Season 2 of Enterprise has a lot of my favourite Enterprise episodes and all time Star Trek episodes. Minefield, Dead Stop, Future Tense, Regeneration and The Expanse are great. I think Regeneration is one of the best Borg episodes the franchise has done.
I'm currently rewatching/watching for the first time Season 1 now. I have a feeling this will be the first Star Trek series I'll have seen every episode of.
Admiral Forrest's outfit is one of my favourite uniforms and such a cool blend of today and tomorrow.
ISS Enterprise NX-01 is one of my favourite looking ships in all of Star Trek and Lorian's Enterprise is not far behind. I love Lorian's Enterprise's messed up deflector dish.
The Vulcan ring ships are fun callback to the ring ship from TMP although I wish those ships had tied together more.
Season 2 of Enterprise has a lot of my favourite Enterprise episodes and all time Star Trek episodes. Minefield, Dead Stop, Future Tense, Regeneration and The Expanse are great. I think Regeneration is one of the best Borg episodes the franchise has done.
I'm currently rewatching/watching for the first time Season 1 now. I have a feeling this will be the first Star Trek series I'll have seen every episode of.
And again @Sci , I am, since Family Guy was greenlit to be revived in 2004 two years after cancellation, and returned with new episodes in 2005. DVD sales helped of course, and a few years off was seen as a break that was beneficial to the show. And I’m wondering if the issue with Enterprise DVD sales was that it did not sell well, or was it that it did not sell like TNG. Very different parameters to meet.
Sounds like Enterprise would have ironically been better off at FOX.
Sounds like Enterprise would have ironically been better off at FOX.
Not enough to justify either storing sets or building new ones, as well as trying to structure contracts so the cast comes back while continuing their careers in the hiatus.
Not saying it's possible but the structural and technical difficulties with a show who demonstrated a loss of viewership until the last season is questionable as a business decision.
Similar threads
