|
Want to be notified when new articles are posted? Send us email saying "SUBSCRIBE ME." | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Your vote of confidence. CLICK HERE.
| ||||
According to reports at the scifi.com web site, the creators of "Enterprise" are scrambling to reboot the show, the fifth in the Star Trek franchise, yet claim not to know why viewership has been falling off lately.
I've stuck with the show, so far, on the basis of the it-takes-three-seasons-for-a-post-Kirk/Spock/McCoy-Star-Trek-series-to-get-it-right theory. "Next Generation" was blah until the crew and Captain Picard had to face down the Borg, and until characters like the insufferable Diana Troy were somewhat scrubbed of their overbearing pieties. ("I sense anger in you, Captain. You're unsettled, aren't you? Sometimes we feel upset when bad things happen to us. It's okay to feel that way." "Thanks, Diana. Now I know why we keep you on the payroll.") "Deep Space Nine" was blah until the space station and the Alpha quadrant came under threat from changelings zipping in through a nearby wormhole from another part of the galaxy. "Voyager" was blah until they brought a fabulous ex-Borg on board to create some sexy tension and conflict...
And "Enterprise"?
"Enterprise" is more papal than the Pope when it comes to enforcing imperatives of the not yet even codified Prime Directive, which presumably enjoins the captain to possibly commit suicide (and allow a fellow crewman to die) rather than "contaminate" a pre-warp civilization with knowledge of the Enterprisers' origins. And also presumably enjoins him to return an escaped slave to slavery (and actual suicide) rather than "interfere" in an alien culture by granting asylum to an obviously oppressed woman. Let's hope the Trekkers never run across a society that features the venerated ancient custom of raping and eating two-year-olds.
These kinds of morally inverted pieties also popped up in previous incarnations of Trek. But "Enterprise" has been outdoing itself with all the hand-wringing and slo-mo self-consciousness. Now, in a desperate effort to revive the show, it seems that characters must find their "dark sides" before some plot-interest can be imported to the scripts. Wasn't there all along a way to be a good guy without playing the host on Romper Room? One interminable sequence in the first season had the captain dictating soporiferous letters to school kids back home, all about how the on-board septic system works and so forth. And the producers of "Enterprise" wonder why fans have been changing channels at warp speed?
One thing the production team did right the first two seasons was introduce an interesting sub-plot about a Time War that allowed the show to escape the confines of pre-Kirk technology and battle an enemy that could get them away from navel-gazing. Time travel stories can be endlessly fascinating to play with. But here the conceit was merely used as a rabbit out of the hat to provide season-end cliffhangers. According to scifi.com, the Time War at last will become an integral part of the series, as it should have been from the second or third episode.
About time. Look, we don't need 49 episodes in order to be introduced to this aspect of the Star Trek mythology and that aspect of the Star Trek mythology, with especial emphasis on degringoladic moral posturing impelled by an allegedly natal Prime Directive. These origin stories are all very interesting, but work better if they're just slipped into the script as an incidental part of the background. Remember, nobody on the crew itself knows that they're supposed to function as an encyclopedia of pedantically-related origins for the benefit of Star Trek fans. And you know what? The Star Trek fans didn't know that that's what we were supposed to be getting out of the show either. We dumb fans just wanted to be thrilled and excited by heroic, fascinating adventures about voyages to where no man--and no scriptwriter--has gone before.
Want to rev up the show? Start thinking outside the box. For example: 1) screw up the timeline (really screw it up); 2) bring in the Borg from an alternate time line to attack the Enterprise; 3) bring in doubles of Captain Archer to try to destroy the "original" Captain Archer; 4) lose half the crew to a giant asteroid; 5) have Archer beat up T'appalling every time she says something stupid; 6) have Porthos gain intelligence and try to take over earth using talkative canines from another planet--call it the "Planet of the Beagles" arc. Etc.
It's not that hard to get it right from day one. What you do is concentrate on character and story, tight plotting and ratcheting suspense, in a universe of original, engaging ideas. What you do is aim for these. (See: "24.") Instead, "Enterprise" has been collapsing into a soap-opera-like puddle with intermittent flashes of better possibilities. Mucho work is involved by the creative team, that we can see. But it's way too much book-report type work designed to sate a non-existent constituency. Instead, let's have an adventure. We're ready for one.
--David M. Brown, 7/30/03
P.S. The recent Star Trek movie "Nemesis" is much better than the box-office receipts gave it credit for, with some great and affecting scenes involving, not least, Data. But the best Star Trek movie so far is "First Contact." It seems the Borg are one of the few villains that can whip the Star Trek crew--both on-ship and on-set--into shape.
_______________________
Get the DVD of "First Contact." CLICK HERE.
Rate this article! Give this article a Lifetime Value Score. CLICK HERE.
Sign up to receive occasional notices of updates to this site. Send us email at crunchreport@lycos.com saying SUBSCRIBE ME in the header.
Hire David M. Brown as writer or editor. CLICK HERE.
Read an excerpt from The Case of the Cockamamie Killer--the murder mystery Eric D. Dixon calls “A helluva ride!”--at webnetlet.net.
More commentary archived at http://www.davidmbrown.com/columns/index.html.
|
Want to be notified when new articles are posted? Send us email saying "subscribe me." Your vote of confidence. CLICK HERE. Editor: DAVID M. BROWN
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||