Ron Moore's blog entry on the death of Enterprise got me thinking. Partly as an echo of and partly as a response to his thoughts on the matter, I found myself musing, and my musing expressed itself, thusly...
As Moore says, this will be the first time since 1977 that there has been no Star Trek project either in production or actively on the air.
I have to say, I'm of two minds. On the one hand, season four of Enterprise has actually been quite fun. The whole thing is one long shout-out to the fans, and they even admit that on the commentary track for "In a Mirror, Darkly." Season four has been their extremely well-funded and officially-sanctioned fan film. So, I'm really sorry to see Enterprise go because I feel like they've finally found their voice again since the first half of season one, which I loved. Season two was unremarkable. Season three filled me with political rage (long story).
On the other hand, I feel like Paramount et al. have been resting on their Trek laurels for a long time. They seem to think that they can churn out any old crap, underfund it, generally not take too much care in what they give us, and good old, reliable Trekkies will lap it up.
This is not to insult the hard work of those people who made DS9, Voyager, or Enterprise. Those series all had real moments of greatness, but none have hit the high notes that Next Gen or the original series did, and part of that is the fact that there was just too much Trek on TV for too long. There was a time when I could flip channels for ten minutes and inevitably find one of, count 'em, four Trek shows. It just wasn't special, anymore. It went from a cult love affair, to just another franchise.
I think it's time to let it sit for a bit. No movies. No shows. Wait until a truly innovative, interesting, enthusiastic project comes up. If JMS ever comes back to his Trek project, I'll be there. If some other brilliant artist with a Rodenberrian gleam in his or her eye comes crawling out of the woodwork, then Paramount should go for it. But there shouldn't be Trek on TV just for the sake of having Trek on TV.
That means that if there are no good ideas for it, then nothing gets made. If we have to move on past that world that we all love so much in order to have good TV and good movies, then we do that. That doesn't disrespect the memory. That doesn't mean we let Trek 'die' (art doesn't die unless people don't experience it, and there's no shortage of ways to experience Rodenberry's world). It means doing what everyone who's ever worked on the show has tried to do: make good fiction.
Posted by orion at May 1, 2005 2:01 AM