Aww, I preferred "Mugging the Doctor"

once again guys, terrific job!! 

i was never that excited about star trek..but watching the podcast really caught my interest and i loved every minute of it

i actually used to watch TNG back in the 90's..it was TNG and Coach, that was my lineup and i would get SO excited every afternoon to watch them

and now i saw the other day they had a whole day marathon on the "SyFy" channel and since watching the podcast, i kept it on in the background the entire day while i was doing schoolwork

keep it up guys!

I have loved everything Star Trek I have seen (With the exception of The Motion Picture. It was good, I think it just moved too slow)

Enterprise was a terrific show and would have done better on Fox (Where I watched TNG back in the day).  I think I have watched if not all, almost all, the episodes of Enterprise on HDNet in full HD glory.

The show rocks.  Scott Bakula brought me to it the storylines and characters keep me coming back.

As far as ranking I would put it 3rd behind TOS and TNG.

If it hasn't been already, you really need to register www.rapingthecanon.com.

It could be the next jump the shark!

I do think Enterprise was greatly overlooked by the public (well, the last two seasons at least).  I'd probably put my list of favorite series (from most to least) as: TNG, DS9, ENT, VOY, TOS.

Plus, rapingthecannon.com is not a bad idea for a website.  We may have to snatch that up.

Whats the outro theme?

Moody Blues - Ride My Seesaw

It's in the credits.

I notice you guys make it clear this is the offical podcast, are you implying there is an unoffical podcast? :)

I think one of the largest issues you guys fail to mention, especially when it comes to the death of Star Trek, is UPN. Because UPN was specifically created for Voyager, there wasn't enough programming to keep it afloat. Voyager being the network's flagship, took down other good shows, like Seven Days because of the problems with establishing a network for one purpose.

Because of that singular purpose, I think that hurt Enterprise's value, because even when it was in production, Paramount was considering merging with Warner Brothers to create what eventually became the CW. On the flipside, WB had some decent shows, and allowed me to watch a lot of the DC Comics shows on Saturday mornings. But fantastic shows like Veronica Mars got trapped in its own limbo on the WB. Because it was lying dormant on this nothing network, it stumbled. Then Dawn Ostroff killed it with the CW merger, because having a strong, young female protagonist didn't fit into the business model she wanted.

Most television markets had their own Fox affiliate. This was the time before House MD, when Fox really didn't have a lot of original programming. It was all Simpsons, COPS and America's Most Wanted. There was a market for syndecated programming, and Star Trek fit that bill perfectly. Had Voyager, Enterprise and Veronica Mars been on Fox, they probably would have thrived. Just as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel did. Angel died when Joss Whedon got into it with the Murdoch money machine. The last season of Angel was amazing, and ended on a terrible cliffhanger, because it moved networks.

There's an interview with Brent Spiner from the Phoenix Comic Con last summer where he said that another movie script had been written and was intended to rectify the issues with Nemesis, which was flat-out said by the writer to be an homage to Wrath of Khan. This script had hands in it by Ira Steven Behr, Jonathan Frakes and Ron Moore, but Paramount went with JJ Abrams. What was the most telling from Spiner's interview was that that film would have Data. Not B4, but Data.

The problem we face with reboots, like the newest film, is that it's taking Star Trek back, when it needs to go forward. Not to mention that, but we've got this entirely new timeline, and a lot of people stand confused. Those who aren't confused are mad because it did "rape the canon." I'm fine with a new timeline, but the prime timeline needs to continue.

As for Voyager, I hated Seven of Nine. I felt that when the show started, it had a lot of promise. Chakotay was one of the best written characters I'd seen, but he took a backseat to the Doctor/Seven/Janeway stories and got regulated to screaming "Red Alert!" every chance he got, just to get a line in. Tom Paris was thrilled to be away from prison, but ended up spending the last two seasons playing B-Movie holodeck programs and watching black and white cartoons. The Borg, however, we knew it had to be coming, because TNG established that they did originate in the Delta Quadrant, and it was going to come sooner or later. But the pew pew that came out of Voyager was horrible.

The show really needed to transition back to the Alpha Quadrant earlier in the show, simply because the plot truly needed to focus on the reprocussions of having been away from home for so long. Did the Doctor get deactivated? Did Tom Paris go back to jail? Did Seven end up in a lab? I know there's a reboot, and those questions were answered, but it should have been on film. They should have taken the Barzaan Wormhole or Janeway should have had the Q-Spawn, then gone home.

To blame Rick Berman is spot on. Because of his relationship with Jeri Ryan, it skewed the progression of the show. There was so much potential to Voyager that was left unmet in later seasons.

A new show needs to be on the air soon. Starfleet Academy would have been awful. What I was hoping for is a show about Starfleet Medical, that incorporates aspects from shows like House. The babble in House is real medical stuff. It wouldn't be that hard to apply that to Klingon anatomy.

Great Podcast as always. I loved the last Star Trek movie it's one of my favorite movies of all time and would love to see a new TV series if done properly. Love your podcasts just wish they were more frequent.

The utter failure of post TNG Star Trek is something I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about in the past and I really enjoyed this podcast. But I also think that Mr K really brought up some very valid points. To add to his reply I would like to say that in my opinion Voyager dropped the ball in every way possible and can shoulder a lot of the blame. What Star Trek needed was a new direction with new problems and new situations – what we got in Voyager was a wet blanket that offered nothing new to the franchise.

For example;

- For the first time we had a Federation star ship and crew completely cut off from the long arm of Starfleet. This could have been the perfect situation to explore human nature and how people act when no one is watching. It could have been a bit darker, a bit edgy, where Starfleet’s rules were desired but the reality of being cut off so far from home meant they couldn’t always apply. I’m thinking a Babylon 5 kind of feel. What we got was a show where the prime directive (among other rules) was always adhered to no matter what. Am I seriously supposed to believe that given the opportunity these people would not steal a piece of Alien tech or get in a fight if it meant shaving a few decades off their trip?

- The forced integration of the Maquis with the Starfeet crew would have been a perfect setup for tension and drama. Remember, the Federation had more or less been at war with the Maquis for years. Ben Sisko even went as far as making an entire Maquis planet inhospitable to Human life just to catch 1 guy! Up to this point we had never had a Trek series with serious internal tension between crewmates; it would have setup some great story lines which had never really been tested on a Trek series before. But instead the Maquis situation, with the exception of some very few lacklustre stories (usually involving Seska), was resolved pretty much instantly as if it was never an issue.

- The writing sucked. Really sucked. Remember the episode “Threshold” where Tom Paris breaks the warp 10 barrier and then starts “evolving” into a lizard, then steals Janeway, makes her turn into a lizard, mates with her, and they then leave the offspring on some planet? Yea Voyager had its good episodes but 80% of the writing was awful. The treatment of the Borg was awful. The treatment of Q was awful. Character development was stagnant....

After TNG Trek needed new directions. But what they presented in Voyager was basically TNG set in the Delta Quadrant but with storytelling far below the quality of TNG or DS9. As a result Voyager shed viewers like crazy and Enterprise was too little too late to rescue it.