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Feb 05 | Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton and Denise Crosby will be part of Star Trek® TNG EXPOsed – a full-cast reunion of Star Trek: The Next Generation® to be held at the Calgary Expo April 27-29, 2012. The special reunion event will be held at Calgary Stampede Corral on the evening of Saturday, April 28, 2012. This auspicious occasion marks the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation® and will be the first time in over twenty years that the cast has participated in an event such as this. Included in the evening’s program is a 90 minute panel discussion, a Q&A session, and a video presentation in honour of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation®. A commemorative guide will produced solely for this event along with exclusive merchandise. This is a separate ticketed event with tickets going on sale through Ticketmaster on February 18, 2012 at 10 AM MST. Although the cast will be participating in various panels throughout the course of the weekend, Star Trek® TNG EXPOsed will be the only opportunity to see all nine of the cast members in one incredible panel. Tickets will be available at www.ticketmaster.com and range from $40-$125 CDN.
Jan 30 | A large, heavy pewter sculpture that Paramount
commissioned, commemorating the series finale of DS9 in 1999 is available on eBay.
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By Steve Krutzler / 16:24, 25 April 2005 / Enterprise
STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE co-creators and executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga spoke with TrekWeb and several other media outlets this morning as part of a UPN conference call to discuss the final episode of the series. Both producers offered appreciation to fans for their years of support and said they hoped that "These Are The Voyages..." will pay homage not only to ENTERPRISE but the last eighteen years of the STAR TREK franchise.
"We were looking for a way to pay homage to these characters," Berman explained about developing the final episode, which will air on UPN May 13th. "We needed 'Jonathan Archer' to segue into being an epic STAR TREK hero and we felt the best way to do it was to find a perspective to look back. The idea of 'Commander Riker' having a big decision to make in his life and deciding to go onto the holodeck of the 24th century Enterprise-D and study certain events that happened at a very crucial time near the end of the mission of Jonathan Archer would be a good way to pay the homage to these characters that we wanted to."
"We also wanted to come up with a concept that was different and special and was able to straddle two generations of STAR TREK; something interesting and not just do a straight-ahead episode," offered Braga. "We kind of looked at the final three episodes as a sort of finale because the two prior to the final episode are a two-part story and do tap into very ENTERPRISE-oriented themes and character arcs and if these episodes had aired as the final episode we would've been very happy and it would've felt very good and epic to us. But then when it came to the very last episode we knew we wanted to get out of a totally plot-driven story and do something that was really character-oriented and centered on the internal dynamics of Enterprise and the people onboard. That's why we came up with this concept of Riker on the holodeck looking back at history of old heroes, in this case the Enterprise crew."
Not everybody was pleased with the finale script, notably Jolene Blalock, who made her dissatisfaction very public earlier this spring. Braga admits there was some resistence to the idea but that the final episode reaches beyond just this latest series.
"There were a couple of people who were slightly uncomfortable with the fact that we have NEXT GENERATION characters in the show and it is a different kind of episode, but there were no serious complaints. None of the actors have seen the episode so they can't be dissatisfied with how it came out [yet]. You have to remember that under normal circumstances most people probably would've thought this was a very cool episode because it has a great concept and is quite unique, but as the final episode of the series, emotions are running very high."
"There were some grumblings about bringing in [Jonathan] Frakes and [Marina] Sirtis in from another series," Berman continued. "The feeling that if this was going to be the finale of ENTERPRISE then why bring in characters from another series, but I think when people see the episode and realize that to be able to truly pay the respect to our characters the way we have, we've couched it in unique fashion to be able to look back on them. It's going to be a very positive response toward the ENTERPRISE crew."
Braga says the episode is a "thank you" to the fans of not just ENTERPRISE but STAR TREK as a whole.
"One of the reasons we did it is we wanted to say kind of a 'thank you' to people who watched not only ENTERPRISE but some of the other shows and did something that told us something about the ENTERPRISE crew but [also] about STAR TREK as a whole and this eighteen year-era of STAR TREK."
Season four has seen a complete love affair with existing STAR TREK lore, but could more strict adherence to continuity earlier in the show's run have saved it?
"We did feel we were utilizing continuity from TOS, we were doing it in smaller doses," Braga says. "But we were definitely doing it beginning with the pilot with references to Captain Kirk's original log and Zephram Cochran and many others. But it definitely was in smaller doses and it wasn't until season four when we consciously decided to go deeper and stronger with that."
"A lot of fans have stressed the fact that Brannon and I have ignored the continuity of STAR TREK and ignored the canon, and that could not be farther from the truth," Berman responded. "We live and breathe this continuity and we're dealing with every element to try and get this continuity going but at the same time [we're] on a weekly basis trying to create an entertaining television series. I remember the first season of TNG, we got 200 letters because by mistake there was an optical where a photon torpedo came out of a phaser port. We had to bend the rules a little bit, but a lot of the continuity that people talk about is not necessarily part of the legitimate canon of STAR TREK. There's a lot of stuff that people think are part of the rules that are fan-based creations, and there are rules within the continuity of STAR TREK that contradict themselves. We found ourselves in treacherous ground in that way and we tried to do the best that we could."
Braga added that he and Berman understand the value of the hardcore fanbase to STAR TREK and their show and that some of the more personal criticism has to be taken in stride.
"We have nothing but respect and admiration for these fans and obviously we need the fans - we wouldn't have a show if it weren't for the fans," Braga said. "The only times when it becomes irksome are when there are postings on the Internet - which is a relatively new phenomenon in terms of STAR TREK's longevity - that become really personal and vitriolic, but we try to take all that with a grain of salt."
Both expressed the feeling that ENTERPRISE accomplished a lot of what it set out to do and could have done more.
"We felt there was more potential to come, the series could've continued and we had a lot more that we would've liked to do.," Braga said. "However, we are very happy with ENTERPRISE. We set out to do a different kind of show that was more character-oriented and that's what we did and we're very proud of the first couple of seasons of the show. We took some course corrections in the third season and we were very happy with the way they paid off, and the fourth season has been a real barn-burner. If I have any regret it's that it didn't go on any longer. But I am very happy with the show for no other reason then that it was a great group of actors playing a great group of fully realized characters."
"We hired seven wonderful actors and the characters - in a sense as you produce TV each season the characters develop 25-odd episodes of back story each year - you get to peel the onion back a lot more and I think that our characters were growing and that it's a shame that they didn't get a chance to continue," Berman added. "I think that we would've had a lot of wonderful ammunition to develop the show further. I think it needs to be said that UPN has changed a great deal over the last few years, it has become a network that is skewed in a totally different direction than STAR TREK, and I think that's caused as much of the problem with our erosion as anything else."
Fan groups claimed to have raised more than $3 million to try and win the show a fifth season and while that may have been surprising, Berman and Braga say the fans' outpouring of support was not.
"We're not surprised by the reaction, we've always had a very passionate fan base," Braga said. "I think we've discussed a couple times if we were to go off the air what would the reaction be, and I think the fact that they've raised substantial sums of money - no one could have predicted that, that was a real eyebrow raiser - but we were not surprised at the passion. It's always been very vocal."
"Unfortunately the way television production works and the expense involved in producing a television series, a group raising even an impressive sum like $3+ million, it doesn't really make the kind of impact to try and put together a year's worth of television shows," Berman said.
Braga says the fan campaigns prove at least one thing, however.
"On a positive note, their efforts are not for nothing because it probably does on some level send a signal that there are people out there that still want STAR TREK, so this is probably not the final frontier for STAR TREK."
Does the demise of STAR TREK signal some kind of overall decline in the popularity of science fiction?
"It's never been unpopular, it's always been around," Braga said. "If you look at the top ten grossing films you'll probably find that most of them are sci-fi films. The science fiction genre has been around since the dawn of filmmaking; one of the first films ever made as a sci-fi film. It's always been popular. The subject matter changes and yesterday's STAR WARS may be today's MATRIX or may be tomorrow's STAR TREK, but it's always been around."
Berman reiterated that franchise fatigue played a factor, however unpopular the opinion is.
"Lots of television shows good and bad don't go right and it's hard to tell," he said. "There are a lot of people who criticize us for saying what I'm about to say but I do believe that there was some degree of fatigue with the franchise. I think that we found ourselves in competition with ourselves. I think that after eighteen years and 624 hours of STAR TREK the audience began to have a little bit of overkill with STAR TREK and I think that had a lot to do with it. If you take a look at the last feature film we did, NEMESIS, which I still think was a fine movie, it did two-thirds the business of the previous movie."
Braga agreed, saying the slide began long before ENTERPRISE.
"STAR TREK hit its apex during NEXT GENERATION, in fact when NEXT GENERATION was transitioning to DS9 and VOYAGER and since that time there has been an erosion in the fan base and it did not start with ENTERPRISE," he said.
Despite this, he says, ENTERPRISE was embarked upon with the utmost confidence.
"To be fair, we felt we were taking greater chances with the show all along the way," Braga said. "Not to say every one of them hit, [but] we never set out to do ENTERPRISE in any kind of 'rest on your laurels' fashion."
| ENTERPRISE Mission Schedule | Logs by Season: 1 2 3 4 | ||
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