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Bakula Says UPN Is To Blame For Cancellation

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From TrekWeb.com:

 

Regarding the show's cancellation, Bakula said "I would say simply that we've been on the wrong network for four years. That hardly ever happens, honestly. If you're on the wrong network you don't make it out of the first year. But because of a lot of history and positioning and, if you will, corporate synergy, we managed to stay alive for four years. That's good news, ultimately. We did manage to squeeze four years out of being at the wrong place. no one could have ever predicted the amount of upset within Viacom in the last four years, in terms of personnel changing and philosophies changing. There's just no way you could have predicted that all the people at Paramount who supported the show, who supported the franchise, would be gone, that all the people at UPN would have turned over a couple of times. We were trying to ride through all of that stuff. Timing is everything especially in television. We're a victim of that and at the same time, we got 98 hours of television out of it."

 

"There were elements in the pilot of a guy who was basically inexperienced and raw and a little bit of a loose cannon that I liked a lot," Bakula said about the 'Captain Archer' character "Then we got into an area for a while where he was awestruck. That worked and it had value, and I felt that near the end of Season Three and during this season we got into a maturing and a hardening and a toughening up of this guy."

 

"He was kind of unpredictable. I just would have liked to have had a little bit more of that. I'd like to have seen him more relaxed sometimes, maybe a little happier that he was out there in space exploring the universe, with no attachments to anything that was going on on Earth, going from one planet to the next. That didn't quite happen. We were very attached to the events of our world."

 

 

I tend to partially agree with him. UPN was not a good place for Enterprise to be. It should have went to NBC or another station that had a wider range of viewers. You guys know I've been preaching about how I don't have UPN and never could see it at all during it's run. If I don't have UPN, there's a lot that don't. Like I said, I think that ratings would have been higher if it were on a channel more people had.

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Sorry Bakula, Viacom personnel changes and UPN weaknesses aside, at some point reality has to set in, my good man.

 

Your show just wasn't very good. That's the reason why the fans had enough of it.

 

You want to point the finger of blame?

 

Point it at the Blunder Twins. Because of the weakness of the writing, I believe that whichever network broadcast ENT, it would have failed.

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Bakula Says UPN Is To Blame For Cancellation

 

He has my full support.

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UPN did have quite a bit to do with the show's ultimate failing, but there were other reasons as well. The Killer Bs, for example.

 

It's a shame, really, the show's first season was spectacular. As soon as I get paid I'm buying the second season. The show, under the right management, could have gone sstrong for another three years.

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I agree about UPN we here in Mississippi didn't have it so I never watching it just like Voyager never saw one episode so when I do buy the DVD's it will be the first time I will see the show, the same for enterprise. Like I said in another post if star trek one day will make a come back fresh faces, fresh ideals ger rid of B&B they done enough damage.

 

Brian

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I don't bash Berman as much as you guys do, he did afterall co-create DS9 and wrote First Contact. And for ENT Fans, he co-created that. So I don't really cut him down at all.

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If you read "The Making Of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" you see that the concept for the show and the creation of the characters and most of the key issues and points that would run through the show were actually created by Michael Piller.

 

Berman did co-write the pilot, but you can see in that book from his own statements that his role was really based on the logistics of the production itself rather than the creative side. Berman is a good producer. He's highly capable of literally "putting" a show together in terms of organisation. But the creative side is where he is weaker and he needed people like Piller, Behr, and Moore to make DS9 as creatively strong as it became IMO.

 

As for First Contact, it was generally a no-brainer. A movie about the Borg going back in time to conquer Earth was such a great concept, even Berman couldn't mess it up. Don't forget that Brannon Braga (amazingly) and Ronald Moore also developed the story for Star Trek First Contact and it was Moore and Braga who wrote the screenplay.

 

Yet again, with Star Trek: INS Berman developed a very poor story. Admittedly Michael Piller wrote it too and the screenplay which was weak. Then came NEM, with the abysmal story written by Berman, Brent Spiner and John Logan, along with Logan's hideous screenplay.

 

So Berman has IMO got to go.

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As for First Contact, it was generally a no-brainer. A movie about the Borg going back in time to conquer Earth was such a great concept, even Berman couldn't mess it up. Don't forget that Brannon Braga (amazingly) and Ronald Moore also developed the story for Star Trek First Contact and it was Moore and Braga who wrote the screenplay.

344559[/snapback]

 

They almost screwed it up... The original script for First Contact had the Borg going back to medieval time. :biggrin: That would've flopped, big time!

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They almost screwed it up... The original script for First Contact had the Borg going back to medieval time.  That would've flopped, big time!

 

:bow: :biggrin: B)

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I tend to partially agree with him. UPN was not a good place for Enterprise to be. It should have went to NBC or another station that had a wider range of viewers. You guys know I've been preaching about how I don't have UPN and never could see it at all during it's run. If I don't have UPN, there's a lot that don't.  Like I said, I think that ratings would have been higher if it were on a channel more people had.

344374[/snapback]

 

 

Nope, definitely not NBC. NBC only gave TOS 3 years. They tried to kill it during the first year.

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From TrekWeb.com:

 

Regarding the show's cancellation, Bakula said "I would say simply that we've been on the wrong network for four years. That hardly ever happens, honestly. If you're on the wrong network you don't make it out of the first year. But because of a lot of history and positioning and, if you will, corporate synergy, we managed to stay alive for four years. That's good news, ultimately. We did manage to squeeze four years out of being at the wrong place. no one could have ever predicted the amount of upset within Viacom in the last four years, in terms of personnel changing and philosophies changing. There's just no way you could have predicted that all the people at Paramount who supported the show, who supported the franchise, would be gone, that all the people at UPN would have turned over a couple of times. We were trying to ride through all of that stuff. Timing is everything especially in television. We're a victim of that and at the same time, we got 98 hours of television out of it."

 

"There were elements in the pilot of a guy who was basically inexperienced and raw and a little bit of a loose cannon that I liked a lot," Bakula said about the 'Captain Archer' character "Then we got into an area for a while where he was awestruck. That worked and it had value, and I felt that near the end of Season Three and during this season we got into a maturing and a hardening and a toughening up of this guy."

 

"He was kind of unpredictable. I just would have liked to have had a little bit more of that. I'd like to have seen him more relaxed sometimes, maybe a little happier that he was out there in space exploring the universe, with no attachments to anything that was going on on Earth, going from one planet to the next. That didn't quite happen. We were very attached to the events of our world."

 

 

I tend to partially agree with him. UPN was not a good place for Enterprise to be. It should have went to NBC or another station that had a wider range of viewers. You guys know I've been preaching about how I don't have UPN and never could see it at all during it's run. If I don't have UPN, there's a lot that don't. Like I said, I think that ratings would have been higher if it were on a channel more people had.

 

 

I hate to say it but Archer was never comfortable with command - one gets the feeling that he would have struggled with a shuttlepod let alone a starship. I think blame the network thing has had a great deal of mileage in ST in general but in ENT's case basically it was rubbish - wooden characters, weak/confusing plotlines, lacking freshness - a key failing of any prequel - you know the result it will be alright in the end

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