An “Enterprise” Lost

Star Trek: Enterprise is going where no Trek spinoff has gone before: To a (relatively) early grave.

As I have noted before, they finally seemed to get it right this season, but it was too little too late, it would seem. I am not surprised, but had hoped that they would have managed to win one more year at least.

So it goes and it may be time for hiatus from Trek anyway. This seems to be the case:

If Paramount doesn’t come up with a Starfleet-staffed show for the fall, and there is no indication one is the offing, it’ll be the first time in a decade that an outgoing Trek series has not replaced by an incoming Trek series.

Couple that with the franchise’s space-docked big-screen program, and Star Trek, in the words of one Federation expert, “may have run its course.” At least for now.”

I have no doubt it will be back in some form, as it is too much of a cash cow to be left on the shelf forever. A note to Paramount next time: build from your base first–one of Enterprise’s initial mistakes was to assume that the base would love the show no matter what and that they should try and appeal outside of Trek first. That’s a bad strategy, because if you don’t make the base happy, you have nothing to build off of.

There are, at least, some intriguing episodes left this run and I plan to enjoy the rest of the season (which, ironically, will probably have a ratings spike now that the show has gotten the publicity about its demise):

in its current and, as it turns out, final season, the show rallied and “became the fans’ ultimate dream.”

Taking advantage of its position in the Trek timeline as a forerunner to the days of captains Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway, Enterprise “dealt with the roots of Vulcan logic, the founding of the Federation, and it will soon even air two episodes explaining why the Klingons didn’t have bumpy foreheads in the original series, but do now,” Sparborth said.

Too bad they didn’t start out this way.