This is perhaps the most hopeful Trek news I've heard in years.
Cioto has impressed me since his great work on Odyssey Five, and his stint on Enterprise has generally been good to exceptional. Having him as showrunner may mean the series gets done in the way it deserves.
Scott Bennie
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The new showrunner on STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE is taking the series back to its roots -- namely, drawing on ideas from THE ORIGINAL SERIES and expanding upon the rich mythology of the long-running science fiction franchise in order to develop stories for ENTERPRISE's fourth season.
At UPN's annual party for the Television Critics Association, newly minted ENTERPRISE showrunner Manny Coto revealed still more secrets about what's to come next year on the struggling space opera. If you're an old school Trekkie, what Coto has to say will cause your pointed ears to prick up.
"What I really wanted to do this season is make the episodes that I as a Star Trek fan would have to see," Coto is quoted as saying on the official STAR TREK website. "You know, as a fan of the original series, if I heard that they were doing the Orion slavers and the Eugenics Wars, I would have to be in front of that TV."
To achieve that Coto and the writing team are assembling short, self-contained story arcs that will last two or three episodes in length. One will see Brent Spiner play Arik Soong, the great-grandfather of Data's creator Dr. Noonian Soong. However, the earlier relative of Data's isn't a good guy at all; he's considered one of Earth's most notorius criminals on a level that Coto compared to "Hannibal Lecter." The reason for Arik Soong's infamy has to do with the Eugenics Wars, that tantalizing era in STAR TREK mythology that supposedly took place in the 1990s and which saw genetically engineered superhumans nearly take over the world. In the three-part ENTERPRISE episode featuring Spiner as Arik Soong, it's revealed that the character stole twenty embryos of these so-called "supermen" and they have since grown to adulthood. Now Soong has to work with the Enterprise crew to stop the supermen from igniting a war between the Klingons and the humans. The ship will travel to a new region of space called the Borderland, which seems to serve as a buffer between the Klingon Empire and the Orion Syndicate...yes, the same Orion Syndicate that brought us the notorious and scantily clad green-skinned Orion Slave Girls in THE ORIGINAL SERIES. And yes, they will make their appearance next season on ENTERPRISE.
More surprises abound including a possible civil war on Vulcan ("It's gonna be a blast," Coto says. "I'm picturing the scene where two Vulcan armies are poised on the desert ? what's gonna happen, will they or will they not fight?"), the conclusion of the Temporal Cold War arc within the first three episodes of season four, whether William Shatner will make an appearance on ENTERPRISE and who or what the identity of the Sulibans' "Future Guy" may or may not be.
How come all of a sudden ENTERPRISE is paying such close and faithful attention to its past history, especially for a show that seemed to play fast and loose with established TREK continuity during its first two seasons? "Well, first and foremost, I bring a passionate love of all things STAR TREK," Coto explains. "I've loved STAR TREK since I was a little kid. When Star Trek Communicator magazine was doing a little article on me, I went through my box of old photos, and I found a shot of me at age 11 watching STAR TREK on TV, with a picture of Spock on the screen. In that same box I found a comic book that I had written ? I must have written this when I was 10 ? and it was a STAR TREK comic book, with 'Beam me up Scotty' and all this. And I realized, 'Oh my God, I've been doing this my entire life." Coto also admits to having watched all past STAR TREK series including THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE and VOYAGER.
Source:
http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Television&action=page&type_id=&cat_id=270355&obj_id=42132
Topic: Enterprise - Good News? (Read 1248 times)