Gerald So reports on his blog…
In last night’s season finale, the Enterprise destroyed a key sphere, saving the Xindi homeworld in the Expanse while Captain Archer destroyed the Xindi superweapon that threatened Earth. Finally, in a Planet of the Apes-style turn, Enterprise ends up in the midst of WWII, with a badly burned Archer found by Nazi Germany. For the last shot, the camera pans up to a sinister blue-faced alien. Ooh.
Oh, indeed. This entire season has been a desperate effort to save the show itself from a UPN superweapon — cancellation. While the stories were better (its hard not to improve on exciting episodes like… “Capt Archer spends a night in sick bay worried about his dying dog”), most of the plots still felt like re-heated left-overs from previous Star Trek series. The attempts to sex the show up — with backrubs, showers, and a visit by a bisexual alien who “x-rays” humans with heavy petting — seemed to have been written by horny teenagers who’ve never been laid.
But the ratings stayed lousy, and the future must have looked bleak to the producers…why else end the season with a ridiculous nod to Planet of the Apes? My guess, and its strictly a guess,. is that they figured the show was over, anyway… so why not?
That’s why we blew up the hospital in a season finale of “Diagnosis Murder.” We didn’t think the show was coming back… (and if it did, I wanted to shoot new hospital stock footage and this was one way to force the studio to pay for it).
Hell, I would have preferred if all the Nazis *were* apes… at least it would have shown some cheeky humor on the producers’ part.
What’s more amazing is that network execs looked at this episode and said “hey, let’s do more!”
Actually, not really.
The studio that makes the show just happens to own the network.
I gave up on the show after Deep Space Nine went off the air. My God, how could Trek fall so far from grace?
Oh, yeah. They made Brannan Bragga exec producer and let Ron Moore get away. Yeesh! Makes me glad I switched to crime fiction.
I have friends over each week to watch Enterprise. The only saving grace for me is that I get to watch Babylon 5 with them afterward.
Of course, I actually liked that twist at the end. Maybe because it was the only thing all season I didn’t see coming a million miles away.
Here’s to next year really being their last year!
As to your little confession, I think I know have to hate you. I hate it when a show ends with a cliffhanger and doesn’t come back. You almost did the exact same thing with DM. CBS was kind to you so I’m still speaking to you. 🙂