Failing Enterprise

Stephen Green is reporting that Enterprise is making its final voyage. UPN has canceled the series.

Several alternatives for a new series have been suggested. One would be the teeny bopper Starfleet Academy concept. It's Dawson's Creek, but in space! Set phasers to sexy! Well at least Amybear and I would be able to watch Star Trek together provided the cadets were hunky/cute enough. Other alternatives would be CSI: In Space! or the West Wing: In Space! I think people are picking up on the trend by now.

Another suggestions would be Fleet Marines, a story about the ground pounders of the Trek world. This could be based on some of the WWII series like Combat. Another might be a show about a freighter trying to pay the bills in the Trekiverse. The second would never get made of course. The current batch of writers isn't capable of coming up with a decent story that doesn't have the Prime Directive in it. Sorry, did I say "decent" story?

Supposedly these ideas would save Star Trek. Frankly I think the first thing to do is fire Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. These are the "creative" producers that copied (yes copied) Babylon 5 to create DS9. Evidently then they copied the premise of Gilligan's Island to create Voyager. Finally they copied a particularly disappointing bowel movement to make Enterprise. They can probably massacre any good concept before it gets off the ground with well meaning suggestions. (Let's have the hot "decontamination" scene between the hot Vulcan chick and the southern yokel engineer.)

Just for the record, I did like some of the things they did with Enterprise. For instance turning the Vulcans from a noble and logical race totally incapable of self-interest or deception into the arrogant, deceitful, and racist masterminds of Enterprise was great. I really really liked it. I particularly love the episode with the Andorians taking the monastery hostage in the first season. Finding out that Andorians were right about the Vulcans using the monastery as a listening post was wonderful.

But really what I think Star Trek needs at this point is a nice rest.

UPDATE: Ike has pointed out that Enterprise basically took Vulcan from Tolkien all-wise elf to trickster mythological elf. I hear the next Trek series will have the Vulcans living in a big tree and making cookies. In Space!