I guess I'm one of the few people on this planet who actually enjoyed this show. No, it's not great TV, but it's solid entertainment. In the past year in particular it's gotten to be pretty great entertainment. For those of you Imaginary Friends crying out, "What? After all this talk about artistry over popular entertainment you bemoan the death of a wholly unartistic show?" I say that I have nothing against unartistic entertainment (I like Super Mario, for example, and that's not exactly a work of art), except when it comes at the expense of better things. Until very recently, with the coming of the brilliant new Battlestar Galactica, there were no such "better things" in sci-fi TV, and I don't think Star Trek was to blame for that. Thanks to some of the new talent Enterprise has brought on, the show keeps getting better and better, so it's a real shame it had to end like this. My hope is that in syndication it gets a bigger following, until eventually Paramount decides to wrap up Enterprise's story somehow.
In the meantime, I'll be watching BSG. I've been downloading copies of the British broadcasts off the internet, since we don't have a working TV and it's not on any stations here in Israel anyway. Okay, sue me. Anyhow, every single episode is fantastic. The first season ends in a two-parter which is without a doubt the most artful hour and a half of TV I've ever seen, in any genre. I cannot recommend this series enough. If any of you IFs has a TV, watch this show. If you can't, then tape it. Or watch a rerun. But watch it in order from beginning to end, if you can.
However, I would still like to see
something made of Trek. Its universe has become so rich thanks to all the development it's gotten over the years, that it would be a terrible waste not to use it. Obviously, what I'd like most is a new iteration in some interactive Form, but I doubt this will ever happen. In general, TV shows are thrown to the worst teams in the Game Industry for them to feed on. The trouble is that the decision to make these shows into games is not made by talent but by businessmen. There is a little hope on the horizon for interactive adaptations of movies, as the genius Michel Ancel (Rayman 2, Beyond Good & Evil) is making a game based on Peter Jackson's King Kong remake. If this goes well, there is a slight possibility (okay, very slight) that it will set a precedent for games to come. But in the field of TV show adaptations, there is not even that faint glimmer. So a Trek game is not on my wish list. They'd probably just make it into an action game as they always have. (Note the irony.) No, it should be a TV series, but if they're already starting from scratch, they might as well go in a different direction. The ensemble cast concept has been done to death. How about making a show about one individual? As long as the Star Trek universe is utilized, and utilized well, and the show is entertaining, I'll be happy.
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