You know, when you sit around waiting for somebody to come to your house, it gets rather boring. You find stuff to do. Like laundry. :-/ Although I have to admit, listening to some great jazz while being slightly bored isn't too bad.
Okay, so I don't really know what to write right now. I'm just rambling on. So I guess I'll just tell ya what's going on today.
Well, we had a big storm around here about a month ago. Big hailstones, high winds, tornado warnings and the like. Eh, it's Oklahoma. But after that storm, Mom and Dad figured we should get the roof on the house looked at. We got a roof inspector to come to the house and he said we had some damage and should really get it replaced. Normally that would be really expensive, but their insurance covers storm damage. And I guess insurance companies would much rather replace a roof than have to handle the claim if it wasn't replaced. So the insurance adjuster is coming in a couple hours to inspect the roof himself to see if they'll replace it or not. And right now, I'm waiting for the roof inspector to come back and mark the damaged spots once again. I think he was supposed to come around 11. It's 11:46. So I'm still waiting.
I have to admit, I kind of hate being stuck at home sometimes. But lately, I've been watching Star Trek Enterprise. I've already gotten through seasons 1&3. I think it might have really improved if was given another couple years. But the whole premise of a prequel series was just a really bad idea, in my opinion. Also, with so many sci-fi shows around with a setting of present-day, I think the whole Star Trek franchise is on its way out.
I think that nowadays, people want more realism and believability. Star Trek is entirely fiction. The UFP (United Federation of Planets) and Starfleet are entire fiction. Even the setting is fiction. Take Stargete SG-1, for example. It was the longest-running science fiction show besides Doctor Who, and ran the same time Enterprise did. (Enterprise ran from 2001-2005 I believe, while SG-1 ran 1997-2008) It was set on Earth, during the years of its production. The organization that the main characters were in was the U.S. Air Force. So the setting was familiar. Sure, they went to other planets and fought aliens, but at the end of the show, they would always return to present-day Earth. It grounded the show. The Star Trek franchise has no such grounding. Sure, just about everyone in the world with TV has heard of Starfleet and the Federation. But nowadays, without an active crew on TV or on the big screen, the public interest for Star Trek may be dwindling*. And without the interest in Star Trek, unfamiliar viewers (non-nerds) may not find anything to relate to. Those who don't know the background of the Federation (a fictional creation and institution) may simply be confused by what goes on. With so many sci-fi shows being based in current times, they may gain an audience that alienated (pun totally intended!) by Star Trek.
Also, I think the idea of a prequel was a big risk for the franchise. Ultimately, it was a bust. There may be a few reasons for this. Quite a lot of fans know the canon quite well, and when you have a prequel series, you run the risk of messing with continuity. The writers are quite limited in what they can do. Granted, this could have been an opportunity for the writers of Star Trek to show how good they were in creating new stories while keeping with canon. But that didn't happen. The writers pretty much screwed the canon and threw continuity out the window. And fans noticed. And they left.
Another reason it might have failed was because it was moving backwards. Star Trek fans had been moving forward since the beginning in the '60's. With the movies after the original series, the plot of every one took place after the last. It was a continuing story that had a flow. Then with TNG on TV and the movies, the story continued moving forward. DS9 did the same thing. Voyager, while set on the other side of the galaxy, was still moving forward within a timeline. Then came Enterprise. It was so random, so out of place that I think many fans just weren't ready for it. Also, after 16 years of TV episodes and something like 8 movies by then, they'd ran out of original stories long ago. And what with the limits that technology and continuity brought them with the prequel, it was almost destined to fail in the writing department.
The casting for Enterprise always seemed to me like it was not thought out very well. The chemistry wasn't all that great from the get-go, and I thought that the choice of Scott Bakula for the captain was all wrong. Granted, as the series went on, the chemistry improved and so did the acting. As with all the Star Trek series up to that point, it was starting to come into its own. But it was too late. It had lost too many fans and wasn't attracting enough new ones. So it crashed and burned. To many in the Star Trek community, it remains the black mark in an otherwise stellar franchise. (Yep, that pun was intended too.)
*I'd like to clarify this statement. Star Trek has prbably the most dedicated fans of any TV show and movie franchise in history. To be sure, these people will always be trekkers and will support the franchise and watch the shows and movies. What I refer to here are new viewers, people who have either never watched Star Trek or who have never been interested in it. "Non-fan, new viewers", so to speak.
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