Enough Politics. On to IMPORTANT matters!

[athelind]

This season, The WB has moved Smallville from its Tuesday night timeslot over to Wednesday at 8 (7 Central and Mountain). For those of us who enjoy intelligently-written, character-driven, SF-related shows, this makes a nice, two-hour block: Smallville at 8, Angel at 9.

Of course, it also puts "I Was A Teenage Kryptonian" smack up against another genre show: Enterprise (which they've finally decided to go ahead and designate "Star Trek: Enterprise" -- maybe they thought they needed to remind people that this was part of a Branded Franchise?)

For me and mine, this is no contest. Enterprise is no prize -- as I said, we prefer our genre fiction to be intelligently written. Frankly, in seasons past, we've done our best to avoid catching the end of it while waiting for Angel to start.

While I know which show I think will win the ratings war, I'm biased. How much of an overlap is there, really, between the genre fans who like Superman's childhood recast as a teen drama in the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer goes to Dawson's Creek" mode and the people desperately clinging to the one last vestige of space opera in general and Roddenberry's Legacy in particular currently on the air?

My personal prediction: Enterprise will find a new night by mid-season. UPN can't and won't cancel it. For one,too much of the public awareness of their very existence is "The Network That Shows Star Trek". franchise However, they're not going to sit idly by whilst it hemmorages audience to Clark and Lex's Excellent Adventures. For another, if Viacom lets the only extant Trek franchise lapse into oblivion, they weaken their defense against the lawsuit filed by Activision, claiming that their bungled handling of the Star Trek property has undercut the value of Activision's license to produce Trek-related computer games.

The question then becomes... will it survive in the new slot? Will they be able to carve a new niche in the week for Trekkies when UPN's Wednesday Night has been Trekcentric since the early seasons of Voyager? I know that I, personally, don't watch a lot of non-genre shows, so there are several nights during the week that I don't watch anything on the networks.

So... what do you think? Which show will you watch? Which show will come out on top whilst the other is forced to stake a claim on a new night? Will this spell the end to the feeble flagship of a flagging franchise, if not the flagship as a whole?

Do you even care?

(Those who proudly proclaim "I don't watch television!" need not respond.)



Yes, I've had more than a few people tell me that "Enterprise has gotten better, and it's supposed to get really good this season". I see no reason to pay any attention to Bernon and Braga's braggadiccio. If I hear that they've hired writers like, oh, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, Joss Whedon or J. Michael Straczynski, or if they've hired back Sternbach and Okuda and decided to listen to them, maybe, just maybe, I'll tune in.

Assuming that "Luthor's Creek" is in reruns, of course.

Comments

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Hey, it could end up like 'Birds of Prey'! Man, did that show ever suck...as for Smallville...well, I'll give them that the characters are done very well, but as I'm a fan of comics over shows representing them, I'm not as interested in the show as I could be.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

   Well, I can't say I care much but only because I gave up on Enterprise after the mind-melders-are-Vulcan-gay-and-transmit-mental-HIV episode... And I never did get into Smallville. Yes, you gave up on Enterprise well before I did. I decided to give it at least a full season to find its legs- I still say your decision was entirely too premature even if ultimately correct. I haven't heard anything about Season 3 as none of the friends I discuss Sci-Fi in general or Trek specifically with continue to watch it either. The sad thing about Enterprise is that, with the exception of T'Pol, I actually like all of the characters... (and when I say like, I mean think they're good characters, not necessarily like-as-in-want-to-be-friends-with. I know T'Pol is supposed to be an off-putting presence, but she doesn't seem 'right' somehow.) But I can't stand the stories. Maybe I'll give Enterprise another chance sometime... But probably not. It airs on Saturdays on the WB here as we have no UPN affiliate, and weekends are Visit Friends Time. We watch Sci-Fi stuff regularly. We do not watch Enterprise however.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Hey, I gave up on Next Gen at about the same point in its first season, and for exactly the same reason: an episode that was screamingly stupid, punctuating episodes that were at best lackluster. I eventually started watching it again when I caught the fifth-season episode "Darmok", which remains one of the smartest episodes of any Trek series -- or any other space opera, for that matter.

Since catching up on the early seasons in reruns, I've come to the conclusion that I did, in fact, make the right decision. Those first two seasons were pretty mediocre. Seasons 3 and 4 were better, but Season 5 is easily the peak of that series.

Life's just too short to watch bad TV, and to wait for a show to get its act together when it has more than 25 seasons of precedence. I mean, how long does it TAKE to get it RIGHT? Other shows don't get the luxury of flailing around aimlessly with crappy scripts for three years -- they get it right, or they tank.

And I've seen series that started off a LOT better than ANY of the post-TOS Trek shows tank in the first season, when they should have had a long and vital run ahead of them -- including one that debuted in the same year and on the same network as Voyager.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I guess it's a matter of taste and tolerance level. Enterprise hasn't been particularly GOOD but until the Vulcan episode I mentioned it hadn't been BAD enough to lose my interest. But that one did it for me.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I usually give any SF show a decent chance, but Voyager lost me in that season 1 ep where the computer caught a "space flu." ST:TNG lost me in season 2, DS9 lost me due to irregular programming.

Serious SF here always has a bad timeslot. B5 and ST:* all ran at 11pm on Channel 9 on Tuesdays and Thurdays, and if something "important" was on (Wimbledon, a football show) the program was bumped or dumped.

Enterprise has been bumped to 1am, possibly so Channel9 can say they aired it, certainly not for the ratings.

Teen SF (Smallville etc) gets a better timeslot and so rates much better, and because of the better ratings it gets a better timeslot.

[pathia.livejournal.com]

My thoughts on Enterprise, or for that matter Star Trek as a whole are summed up in four simple words.

Rick Berman must die.

I don't watch television!

[andreal.livejournal.com]

*duck n covers*

[hydra-velsen.livejournal.com]

Star Trek has been dying since they cancelled TNG. They sure lost me as a viewer then. And even the TNG series was only good in its later seasons.