Why Was This Cancelled!?!

[wade8069]

Okay, I know I'm gonna piss some people off, but here goes:

I was just flipping through the channels today, and managed to catch a couple episodes of ENTERPRISE on Sci-Fi. And, after not having watched it in a long time, I can safely say I had forgotten how truly AWESOME it is!

Now to explain why I like Enterprise as much as I do, because after TOS and TNG, it is my favorite STAR TREK series ever made. And here's why:

THE CREW: OMG, they are PERFECT! A crew this good hasn't come out since TNG, and I mean that 100%. Archer is obviously an honest-to-goodness explorer, with the heart of Picard and the rough-and-tumble nature of Kirk. T'pol is pretty much a female Spock, which means she's a GREAT character. Trip, oh good Lord, is AWESOME, the best Engineer since Scotty, if only because of how much like Scotty he is, with all the loveable county humor of Bones. Everyone else is perfect merely for being new and fresh, after a series of not-so-fresh characters.

THE SHIP: IT'S THE F***ING ENTERPRISE!!! Finally, we have a show that brings back the big 'E'. True, the design is different (and a cool design I must say, despite sharing similarities with the Akira-class) but the name is the same. It fits, and to me, Star Trek isn't Star Trek without a starship named Enterprise.

THE STORY: I think the idea of a story about "how it all came to be" was incredible, very original, and better than any idea that either you or I could have thought up. No offense, but I was getting tired of the same old, same old. True, ENTERPRISE had it's slip-ups, but didn't every show, at some point or other? (And some more than others)

I must say, to me DEEP SPACE NINE and VOYAGER are good concepts, but they are not good series, and they are NOT Star Trek. ENTERPRISE screamed true-blue Star Trek to me, in a way that Cardassian Space Stations and flying spoons didn't.

And at least ENTERPRISE had the humility to leave the title of TREK off, when the other two shows didn't. In my book, it deserved it ten-times better than the others.

Let the hate mail begin...

 

[commodore64]

No, don't let the hate mail begin. Awww. I liked your post. I really think the characters were the most likable since TOS (my fav) and the acting was incredible. They (the writers) did some things wrong, but they had good intentions and did a lot of things right.

By the way, I think you summed up the characters pretty well.

 

[Enterpriserules]

It is very sad that after an amazing season 4, ENT was not given at least one more season. We were just about to get to the Romulan wars! ENT was finally fulfilling its promise and they cancel it. It would be like, canceling TNG at season 3 or DS9 at season 3. I also liked ENT and wish that it had gotten a better run.

For me,
DS9
TOS
ENT
TNG
VOY

 

[ialfan]

I fully agree. Enterprise had a rocky start but was pure awesomeness the last two seasons. Ironically it had the highest ratings on UPN when it was cancelled I believe. Hah.

 

[Candlelight]

Which two episodes did you see?

 

[dave_R_treker]

Enterprise has always ranked second to me. DS9 was the best, though Enterprise came in a close second. I was truly sadden when they canceled Enterprise. It went before its time. I'll admit, before Enterprise aired I was one of those people who was skeptic about it. How was it going to look? How can they make it look more futuristic then TOS? All these questions plus more, Then it aired. I was blown away. I thought to myself, hey this could work. Yes there were a few episodes that I didn't care for, but then again there were those on the other series (though Voyager takes the cake with that).

 

[phylogeny]

I was one of those Trek fans that tuned in and then tuned out of ENT early on. Then I recently caught the Vulcan arc in season 4 and now regret not listening to my friend who told me ENT "got good" in season 4 and I should watch it before it gets canceled.

But I think I know why it was canceled. ENT had the luck of running at the end of Voyager, which turned off many fans such as myself who felt the series was getting lazy in its writing and never took a risk with their storylines. I felt ENT did that initially too. But then they decided to get more original in their storytelling. However, by that time, I think some of us were just fed up with bad Trek and never came back to it.

In my opinion, had ENT premiered after DS9 as the third incarnation rather than Voyager, and had Manny Coto (is that his name?) been in charge from the beginning, then perhaps we'd get the great season 4 in the premiere, thereby saving Trek from it's final fate.

ENT had the luck of premering at the end of Voyager, meaning it had to be really good at the get go to win back fans that left because of Janeway and crew. But I think the same old "safe/bland" approach to storytelling told fans like me this was a rethread of Voyager and I never came back even after it got more interesting.

It's too bad that ENT was never allowed to run its natural course. I've always liked Vulcan and loved the ENT's take on Vulcan culture.

 

[pookha]

enterprise had the bad luck of being cancelled just before how a shows audience was counted changed.
now things like multiple showings (a lot of people watched the show during the rerun over the weekend. in some markets they had when the weekday showing was preempted for sports_)tivo,dvr count toward its numbers.

i even saw refernces that at times the weekend showings got better numbers then the weekday one but it didnt matter.

but in the end les moonves was why it was cancelled.

 

[Trekwatcher]

As I and others have posted many times, there was much to love in ENT. I find it gets better the more I watch it, and felt least excited about it during the original run. Now I watch it all the time on DVD.

 

[Reanok]

I really liked Enterprise and was sorry we didn't get to see it get to have seven seasons like the other trek series had.The show when it originally aired on UPN didn't get alot of promotion like their other shows did.It's nice to see the sci fi channel is showing it and that people who weren't able to see the series when it originally aired can fnally see it.

 

[Yoda]

I thought the show was utter rubbish.

The reason it was canceled, though, was poor ratings compared to a fairly large budget.

 

[Jbarney]

Yah, as I understand it the show was nearly pulled at the end of season three, but it came back for one more season....which from many fan's perspectives it ended up being the best.

But the show's ratings were a concern and the size of the budget for each episode didn't help.

 

[Jono]

THE CREW: OMG, they are PERFECT! A crew this good hasn't come out since TNG, and I mean that 100%. Archer is obviously an honest-to-goodness explorer, with the heart of Picard and the rough-and-tumble nature of Kirk. T'pol is pretty much a female Spock, which means she's a GREAT character. Trip, oh good Lord, is AWESOME, the best Engineer since Scotty, if only because of how much like Scotty he is, with all the loveable county humor of Bones. Everyone else is perfect merely for being new and fresh, after a series of not-so-fresh characters.

The Enterprise crew in my opinion were the least interesting and least likeable out of all the shows. Archer the rough and tumble nature of Kirk...did Archer ever win a fight? It seemed that even the writers didn't like him and constantly had him beaten to a plump every other episode.

THE SHIP: IT'S THE F***ING ENTERPRISE!!! Finally, we have a show that brings back the big 'E'. True, the design is different (and a cool design I must say, despite sharing similarities with the Akira-class) but the name is the same. It fits, and to me, Star Trek isn't Star Trek without a starship named Enterprise.

The other shows couldn't focus on the Enterprise because they were running at the same time as TNG, either the series or movies.

I must say, to me DEEP SPACE NINE and VOYAGER are good concepts, but they are not good series, and they are NOT Star Trek. ENTERPRISE screamed true-blue Star Trek to me, in a way that Cardassian Space Stations and flying spoons didn't.

The titles disagree with you, they are titled, STAR TREK: Deep Space Nine and STAR TREK: Voyager, so they are Star Trek.

And at least ENTERPRISE had the humility to leave the title of TREK off, when the other two shows didn't. In my book, it deserved it ten-times better than the others.

Let the hate mail begin...

So you didn't make it to the third season then? Because if you did you'd notice that the show was titled STAR TREK: Enterprise from that point on.

 

[RoJoHen]

^I pretty much agree with everything you said.

I couldn't stand the ENT characters. They were so fucking boring to watch.

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

Well, wade, you did ask for hate...

 

[Verse]

I agree, the potential was always there and Enterprise season 4 was the best overall year of Star Trek ever, hands down.

 

[Skywalker]

Outside of Trip, T'Pol, Phlox, and occasionally Reed, I thought the crew was actually pretty underwhelming. And I thought the show started out pretty well in the early part of the first season, but stumbled big time in the latter first and much of the early half of the second seasons. It started to pick up again late in season two, and seasons three and four were a huge step up over the first two (which seemed to be the common trend in every Trek show since TNG).

Ultimately, however, it was cancelled because the ratings weren't good enough to justify the budget. The audience was there in the beginning, but the show couldn't seem to keep the majority of them interested enough to keep tuning in.

 

[ChristopherPike]

UPN had been squeezing out every promising sci fi show from its network since Voyager left the airwaves. Twilight Zone didn't last very long for instance. In the end, it just came down to Star Trek Enterprise, until it too lost out to a Britney "reality" series that cost a nickle and a dime to film... presumably through keyholes and on her ex-boyfriend's mobile phone.

It was good to see Enterprise reruns regularly attracting respectable ratings on the Sci Fi Channel, even beating first run BSG during their 'Starbuck is dead' period. If only TPTB had the foresight to shop a Season 5 there... Even a reduced episode count of 13 or less, would've eased the withdrawal symptoms somewhat.

 

[Skywalker]

I still wish they'd allowed ENT to move to Spike, unless those rumors about Spike being interested weren't true. I'm sure the budget would have had to come down some, but ENT's numbers would have been good for a cable channel like Spike as opposed to a "major network" like UPN.

 

[Captain Tuvok]

I like ENT, but I really don't have a favorite series. I have just recently started watching all star trek episodes, starting with ENT-TOS-etc, and I am just started season 3 of ENT - see my ongoing blog. I have seen alot of eps of trek in the past, but finally sitting down to watch all.