Why Star Trek: Enterprise Failed
As many of you know, the UPN series “Star Trek: Enterprise”
was taken off the air earlier this year, never to return.
Paramount tells us that they don’t plan to introduce a new Star Trek
series for at least a couple of years. Reasons I’ve seen given by
the Paramount executives for the series’ failure include:
- Competition with four previous series running in syndication
(1) - There’s some “erosion” of interest in the
franchise (1) - Low ratings (2)
- There’s no longer an
audience for science-fiction (3)
Though I am not
convinced that anything other than the “low ratings” have
anything to do with the real reason the show was canceled, the reasons
themselves show some surprising lack of touch with the Star Trek fan
base. If people really are watching re-runs of the four older
series instead of the new one, that should tell you that the new series
isn’t “reaching” the hearts and minds of your audience.
If there is an erosion of interest in the franchise, then you must be
doing something wrong. Consider Doctor Who on the BBC, which has
managed to deliver what its audience has wanted for decades without any
such “erosion”. And if there was no longer an audience
for science-fiction, why has the Sci-Fi Channel found such success with
Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica? Why
are audiences still watching Star Trek: The Original Series, etc.?
No, it wasn’t competition with other Star Trek series, erosion of
interest, or the lack of an audience for science-fiction that caused the
low ratings for Enterprise and its subsequent demise. It was the
lack of a vision.