Randomness

[Kotik]

CX, I agree with your opinion about Jolenes acting. She really shone in situations, where she wasn't used as a tittilation tool. The scenes of her with Trip in "The Forgotten" are some of the most brilliant moments of the whole show.

[WarpGirl]

We'll just have to agree to disagree about VOY. I agree that the actors were incredibly well suited to their roles. Trek rarely has "bad actors" (I'm ignoring Kes) like I said once, as a concept ENT was a great idea, they couldn't execute it properly, and it's a shame. And honestly Archer and T'Pol's characters were the greatest casualties. What really gets my brain humming is "what could have been" that's why I write fic for this particular fandom.

[Alelou]

I am willing to concede that maybe those guys were burned out and bitter by the time they were charged with writing the finale for their poor dead show ... and the whole franchise. That is really the only explanation for *the_abomination* going so wrong (that and I sincerely believe they wanted it to be easy to reset). Shit often gets written by good writers under the usual pressures of writing under a television series schedule ... as well as the suits from on high demanding this and that. Also, shit is less likely to be caught and fixed when the boss writes it. We also underestimate the effect that casting, acting, direction, music, editing, effects, and all the rest has on how an episode ultimately comes out. I remember D.C. Fontana, who wrote some of my favorite TOS episodes, doing a much-anticipated Pocket novel. I was so disappointed with it. Apparently she really NEEDED the participation of all those other people.

If Ent had been truly as terribly written as you guys keep saying, however, I don't think we'd be here. You wouldn't care about the characters enough to want to fix anything.

[Kotik]

Alelou, the show wasn't written poorly throughout its entire run and nobody said that. The Xindi arc had some brilliant episode and season 4 was really good except for a few exceptions, like the highscool angst or the return of Super!Archer. The main "offenses" were horrible episodes like "The Seventh" or ANIS. There was a run of several bad episode in mid-season two, which I think is ultimately responsible for the premature death of the show.

WG has explained it quite well. Most of us write fanfic for ENT, because it had so much potential, which wasn't explored by the writers.

[WarpGirl]

Thank you! And I also believe I put all of those obsticals they might have been facing in a previous post. That said, I don't care about the characters because of how they were written I care about them because the actors who played them did a fantastic job despite the poor material they were given.

Alelou I get that writing a TV series is hard. I would never, ever, ever, do it no matter how much money was in it. But bad writing is still bad writing, and when I know the creators are capable of more I'm disappointed.

All TV shows have issues, right now trying to figure out a career timeline for G. Callen in the NCIS fic I'm working on, is nothing short of a nightmare. But you can't use that as an excuse when you know something isn't working.

[Asso]

Mh ...
What can I say? I am Italian.

[Alelou]

And I would suggest that by the time you know something isn't working in television, at least six weeks have passed from the time you finished the script and sent it off to be produced. It's easy for us to watch an episode and say oh THAT sucked, and they should have done this and that instead. But for someone in the thick of a television production schedule there's that lag -- probably even more so for a show that's really heavy on effects -- so by the time they get to fixing something it's going to take awhile to ever see the light, and it's not easy to get the time and distance they need to even know how to fix it. Meanwhile everyone is righteously sniping at them -- something Enterprise got hammered with before it even aired -- because they think the job is much easier than it is.

Reminds me of teaching, actually. So many idiots truly think it's a cushy job that they could do better. But then that's probably true of almost any job that requires actual expertise. And yes, there are a few lazy/incompetent/sneaky sons of bitches who've figured out how to game the system in teaching -- just as there have been in every single job I've ever had in marketing, publishing, and advertising. But I bet it's a lot harder to get away with that in TV.

[WarpGirl]

<sigh>I'm not sure I would equate being a teacher with writing for TV. But I think it's also possible that in TV writing it depends on the production team. If you have a team that works then they pay attention to what is going on. The production team on a show like Bones is incredibly cohesive. Yes, they've made some mistakes (and amazingly admitted it) and yes they have issues, but they pay attention and when something doesn't work, they try to fix it!

I don't think the production team on ENT worked well together. Too many ideas that didn't mesh, too many competing agendas, even the actors had trouble following the direction of where their characters were going.

[Kotik]

I think the people behind ENT were and are getting hammered because they made some patently bad choices throughout and I think someone with the experience of B&B should have known better. We had the "designated babe" discussion recently, so we know that every Trek show had that, but while TNG, DS9 and VOY mainly kept it to skimpy "uniforms" ENT went absolutely overboard with the concept. By doing that the character of T'Pol was damaged in the process. Every show had it's horrible episode, but ENT had too many of them.

I'm not saying that they are bad at their job, nor would I say I could do better, but that people judge your work, who wouldn't be able to do it themselves is a fact of life. I'm an IT specialist and even if my boss couldn't program his way out of a paper bag, he's still going to lambast me, if the software I produce is buggy or cumbersome to use. The people, who use my software will rightly say I'm an incompetent fool if they're faced with a buggy product, even if the can't program themselves. That is the situation B&B are in. Theoretically they had the talent and the experience to deliver a great product, but they made some bad and some downright incompenent choices and spoiled what was basically a brilliant concept. Manny Coto did a better job at it, but by the time it was too little too late.

[Alelou]

I'm not sure I totally agree with that. Manny Coto's reign saw some great episodes, but it also saw some real yawners (endless Augments arc, anyone?). I also consider the MU episodes the most embarrassing of all of Ent's. I'll cut them some slack since the idea was ambitious and creative and maybe they can't help it if the direction sucked, but frankly they were painful to watch. Honestly, I think that fourth season was a little too fan-boy.

[WarpGirl]

Frankly I agree with both of you. This is why I say that the entire production team wasn't unified in their vision for the series. After Jeri Taylor left ST, things started changing. Toward the end of VOY things definitely started slipping severely. Truth be told, I think people just started getting complacent. I don't think the B's loved ST anymore. Their passion died out.

Coto and Sussman, were "newish" and not part of Rodenberry's "old guard" therefore quite understandably wanted to leave their own mark, and everything got muddled. Just looking at it from a "shipper's" perspective you had Coto the TnTer, and Sussman the AinTer. No unity! No cohesion, and a massive case of 'too many cooks spoil the broth'!

I think it isn't reasonable to put the entire blame on budgets, studio pressure, and time limits. Those are just the reality of the business. If you have been writing and producing TV for decades (especially ST for decades) you should know how to deal with those realities.

Frankly ENT got breaks that other, (arguably better) shows would never have gotten, simply by being ST. I think of Firefly and I just want to cry and the absurd unfairness that it got one season and ENT got four.

[Alelou]

Firefly did get screwed (and was far better produced than any Trek, IMO, although I couldn't call myself a fan in the way that I'm a Trekkie). Ent, however, would have run much longer if it had been airing under the same conditions that birthed Voyager. I don't think the quality was that different. Enterprise was also closer to TOS in spirit -- less dour than either Voyager or DS9 in terms of the crew's situation. I think the circumstances of Paramount and UPN and television in general changed, and if the writing staff was indeed getting a bit complacent or burned out, so was the audience. I know I was ... I'd already bailed on DS9 and then Voyager, and I never made a habit of Enterprise -- but then again I could hardly ever find it even when I had the time and wanted to. There was a long stretch of time when it was simply unavailable to us where we lived.

Star Trek is just too expensive for today's networks, I guess. You'd think they'd all be riddled with movie spin-offs from all the successful super hero movies and Star Trek 2009. I guess they just don't believe the investment will pay off unless they're made in Bulgaria, in which case they would probably suck as badly as most SyFy channel original movies anyway. I still find it kind of amazing, though, that Paramount hasn't tried to launch a new ST series. It seems like if it's ever going to work, it would work now, after the movie has sparked new interest and the other shows have been out of the public's eye for awhile.

Maybe they don't want to deal with the crazy fans.

[WarpGirl]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then. Because the biggest problems couldn't have been money and the Network. While I have no doubt those two concerns were a big part of the picture, it just doesn't tell the whole story. There are other non-scifi shows being produced that are far more costly. Think about Hugh Laurie's salary for House, or the budget for the guest stars on a show like Glee or How I Met Your Mother... Believe it or not, it costs more to make some sitcoms than a sci-fi show.

[Kotik]

Franchise fatigue was probably as much a reason for cancellation as the (seemingly) burnt-out writers. They could however have made more of the initial concept, which was to show how Earth found it's space legs, but that whole idea was chucked overboard quite quickly. Soon the transporter was used as the mighty deus-ex-machina in every second episode and only 5 or 6 episodes into season 1 the universal translator was perfect and all aliens spoke finest english. Soon force-fields and photon torpedos were in the mix as well, so instead of reigniting interest they just strengthened the fanchise fatigue.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Now it can be told: The “Star Trek” attraction that almost came to life in 1992.

Argh! This would have been so awesome!