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Nov 23 | Chuck returns to NBC with a special two-hour show on Sunday, Jan 10, 2010, before returning to its regular time slot, Mondays at 8pm on the following night. It's return to prime time television can be attributed to a successful fan renewnal campaign last year. CHUCK is a one-hour, action-comedy series that follows Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi, "Less Than Perfect") -- a computer geek who is catapulted into a new career as the government's most vital secret agent. This upcoming season will include some special guest stars, including Brandon Routh of "Superman Returns" who will play CIA agent Daniel Shaw in an episode, and the addition of SUBWAY restaurant as a major advertiser to the show. Chuck averaged a 4.0/6 rating last season, about eight percent better than the recently cancelled "Trauma". Ratings-challenged Heroes moves back an hour when Chuck returns on Monday nights. STAR TREK VOYAGER's Robert Duncan McNeill serves Chuck as a supervising producer and director.
Nov 17 | Originally hired as co-executive producer to help with the second half of the show's first season, Kevin Murphy has now taken the reins of Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica prequel on Syfy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He now serves as an executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and Jane Espenson and oversees the day-to-day functions of the show.
Nov 12 | Star Trek star Zachary Quinto is loosely attached to star in the romantic dramedy Whirligig, reports Risky Business.Quinto would play the lead role in the independent Canadian film, which is aiming to shoot early next year. The movie centers on a man who, in a misguided attempt to woo an older woman, befriends the woman's adopted son.Chaz Thorne is directing the pic, based on a screenplay by Michael Amo, creator of the Canadian supernatural series "The Listener."
Nov 11 | The CNS Foundation, is hosting an on-line charity auction at www.charitybuzz.com. One of the items they are auctioning is a signed movie poster of the new Star Trek movie which has all the cast members and writers. The president of our organization is Carol Abrams, JJ's mother, and she arranged for the donation from Bad Robot Production Company. J.J. Abrams is also a major donor to their organization. The funds raised will go to help find a cure to neurological disorders in children. The auction link is here.
Nov 10 | Candice Bergen, Charles Lisanby, Don Pardo, Gene Roddenberry, Tom and Dick Smothers and Bob Stewart have been selected as the next inductees into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame. They will be honored at a Jan. 20 ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "This year's inductees have challenged and shaped popular culture, changed television for the better and entertained us royally while doing so," TV Academy Chairman-CEO John Shaffner said. More info at the Hollywood Reporter
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By BWilliams / 13:08, 20 September 2005 / Reviews - Products
Introduction:
At the end of the second season of ENTERPRISE, the series was on shaky ground. Half of the viewers had already given up on the series thanks to tired, retread stories that went where everyone else had gone before. The ratings were lower than expected, but still it continued. And fans continued to fault Rick Berman and Brannon Braga for the problems with the series. Add to the mix the fact that STAR TREK: NEMESIS did poorly at the box office, and you wound up with one tired franchise that needed reenergizing or retiring.
Then came the season finale 'The Expanse', a brilliant 9/11-style parable that shook up the crew of the Enterprise. Among the seven million dead was the younger sister of Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer), leaving Trip forever emotionally scarred and hell-bent on revenge. For Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) it meant leaving behind the comfort and safety of exploring and heading into the unknown to stop a potential enemy from destroying Earth. For science officer T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) it meant leaving behind her position with the Vulcan Ministry of Science and allying herself with Archer. And for viewers it meant the start of a new season that spelled either sink or swim for ENTERPRISE, or STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, as it would become known for the remainder of the series' run.
The season opener 'The Xindi' superbly sets up the year-long story arc devised by Berman and Braga to bring viewers into the Enterprise's search for the ones responsible for the attack on Earth. We get our first glimpse of the Xindi, a group of five different species all focused with a single agenda in mind: destroy the Earth before their home world is destroyed in the future. Along the way there were the usual clunker episodes, among them 'Extinction', 'Exile', and 'Carpenter Street', the latter of which once again recycled the now-worn time travel plot to bring Archer and T'Pol to modern-day Detroit, Michigan. Yet along the way little bits and pieces of the puzzle would be located which would aid Archer and crew in locating the Xindi.
The quality of Season 3 shined in several places, among them the segment 'Impulse', which showed what happened when the Enterprise encountered a stranded Vulcan ship lost in the Expanse. As Archer attempts to uncover what happened to the crew, T'Pol found herself going insane in the same manner as her fellow Vulcans. Another wonderful segment came in the episode 'Twilight', which presents a look at an alternate reality with an older Archer and T'Pol learning what happened when their mission to stop the Xindi failed. Following in the footsteps as the VOYAGER episode 'Timeless', Archer must reunite with his former crewmates in rewriting history.
One of the series' greatest strengths came in the form of new writer Manny Coto, whose first segment for the series 'Similitude' gained high praise from the fans. When Trip is severely injured in an engineering accident, Doctor Phlox (John Billingsley) is reluctantly forced to clone Trip to harness critical brain tissue needed to save his life. But problems set in when the clone, nicknamed Sim, shares all of Trip's memories and wants to live on his own, echoing the VOYAGER episode 'Tuvix'. Coto's episode harkens back to the character-driven episodes of the original STAR TREK, while at the same time presenting the current and timely argument of cloning and stem cell research within a science fiction format. Eventually, Coto would be promoted to the upper echelon of daily running ENTERPRISE into its fourth season, but that is a discussion for another time.
The episode 'Harbinger' gained as much notoriety for its controversial handling of many crewmembers reaching the boiling point with one another during the episode as it did with one moment that raised the collective eyebrows of the fans and media watchdogs everywhere: the baring of T'Pol's backside in the sexual culmination of her relationship with Trip. In the days following the infamous incident of Janet Jackson's breast-baring at the Super Bowl half-time game, the FCC was out to prevent incidents of obscenity and overt sexuality from happening again on regular television. In the original airing from February 2004, UPN had edited the shot in such a way where American viewers got a tamer version of the segment, though Canadian viewers got to see T'Pol's 'bum', as Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating) would say, in its full unedited glory. And this coming on the heels of several UPN ads which suggested it would be shown. It wasn't until this DVD set that I've been able to get a chance to view this episode; every time it would come on, I would miss it. Don't worry, all you purists and dirty minds everywhere, the Season 3 DVD presents the infamous shot as filmed for all to see.
When the final seven-episode mini arc of the season began with 'Azati Prime', things were kicked up one notch after another in rapid-fire succession, as the Enterprise tracked down the Xindi race responsible for creating the sphere that compromised Earth. Archer is captured, the Enterprise is discovered, and the poor ship takes one hell of a beating that left fans stunned and wondering what would happen next. Now THIS is a STAR TREK episode with high tension written all over it, and the final version beautifully shows. Its follow-up, 'Damage', shows the crew doing what they can to recover from their brutal attack, while Archer is pushed beyond the limits of his morality in making controversial choices for the safety of his ship and his planet. 'The Forgotten' gives Archer and the crew a potential ally within the Xindi council, one who may be able to give them the information they need to stop the super-weapon from destroying Earth. 'E2' posits another possible alternate reality scenario of the crew discovering their children running another Enterprise. In the middle of this final arc, this seems like an out-of-place segment, with tension and high stakes written all over everything else, and it could have easily been omitted without too much damage to the story arc. It's still a nice segment nonetheless. And 'The Council', 'Countdown', and 'Zero Hour' bring everything to a cumulative head, as Archer and crew must stop the super-weapon at any cost.
There were lots of surface changes during the third season. Archer went from being Starfleet's newest poster boy to being a hardened warrior unafraid to push the envelope, take risks, and make otherwise questionable decisions at the risk of his own morality and Starfleet training. Fans, however, critically drummed T'Pol's character change, as she went from a logical Vulcan scientist to a sex- and drug-crazed emotional being who wasn't afraid to bare her clothes each season and take drugs in order to explore human emotions, all of which would affect her duty and her relationships with her fellow shipmates, especially with Trip. And speaking of our favorite engineer, Trip would find the emotional healing needed to come to terms with his sister's death and yet still bear the scars and guilt of it all.
Behind the scenes, however, a different drama was played out, one of falling ratings and an equal amount of tension from the network and studio heads. The ratings on ENTERPRISE kept staggering and falling throughout the season, no thanks in part to going head to head against the WB's better-written and more fan-friendly offering SMALLVILLE, and in a Wednesday night slot that included, among others, ABC's extremely popular and viewer-friendly AMERICAN IDOL. By the time of the final mini arc, everyone was convinced that this third season would be the final one for ENTERPRISE and STAR TREK, as the threat of cancellation loomed over everyone's necks. Even in the promotional spots for the final episodes of the season, the hints of the series being on its last legs were promoted.
In May 2004, when other networks were openly announcing their fall season plans, one season remained suspiciously absent: UPN. Tensions ran extremely high, as the struggling network's flagship moneymaker was obviously the lead concern on everyone's minds. It would not be until a couple of days before the airing of 'Zero Hour' that UPN finally announced the news: ENTERPRISE would indeed return for a fourth season. Fans, however, were not convinced of this last-minute reprieve, as news spread that ENTERPRISE would be moved to Friday nights, the first time since the days of the Original Series that STAR TREK was placed in what was considered the Friday night death slot.
The stage was now set for Season 4, the pressure was once again on Berman and Braga, and everyone was convinced more than ever that the writing was on the wall, that it was just a matter of time before the inevitable. They had one more shot at making ENTERPRISE great and improve its ratings, or else.
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