Stop Trek

I’ll admit a fondness for “Star Trek,” having enjoyed the original show in reruns as a generally geeky youth and its many successors as an only moderately less geeky adult. But after having caught five minutes of an episode this season wherein the crew of the latest show, “Star Trek: Enterprise” were shooting it out with aliens on a world that resembled America’s old West (crazy!), even I will admit that the whole franchise is just begging for a bit of television euthanasia.

For about five minutes at the launch of the series, “Enterprise” seemed to promise a new, fresher take on the tried and true Trek formula, in which a cadre of futuristic office co-workers spreads free market principles around the galaxy. But it too has succumbed to retreading the same old territory as its predecessors, and just a glimpse of the show reveals it to be hackneyed to distraction. Now word comes that, apparently, UPN has acquiesced to fan pressure and renewed “Enterprise” for another season. Please, someone make it stop.