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I'm hesitant to say anything nice about UPN, given my current state of disgust with the people in charge of programming there, but I must admit that I've really been enjoying Veronica Mars. I didn't watch it at first: I'm a little past high school, which is the age of many of the protagonists, and the whole girl detective plot sounded unnervingly Nancy Drew-ish to me.

But I have to admit that the show is exceptionally well done. It's one of the few series I've ever seen that manages to balance both a season-long arc - in this case a mystery that relates to Veronica's own family and that of her best friend, whose death set in motion a chain of events that led to her father losing his job in law enforcement, her mother leaving town, and her boyfriend leaving her - with weekly serial episodes that are entertaining and easy to follow even for someone like me who wasn't around for the first many episodes and is only now catching up with the reruns.

It also has teenagers who talk more like teenagers than those on the WB, where everyone announces everything they're thinking and feeling in a way that most teenagers can't articulate so clearly, even putting aside the question of whether they'd be so honest in discussions. And the adults on the show are more well-rounded than those on a lot of shows for teens, with their own lives and secrets, even though viewers see them primarily through Veronica's eyes.

Veronica Mars is getting even lower ratings than Enterprise, so I'm worried about whether it will be back next season even though it would seem to fit in perfectly with UPN's new target demographic: young women. UPN has tried to reinvent itself so many times in the years I've been following it, and then only because it was the Star Trek network, that I shudder to think what the next incarnation of the network might be. But I really hope that if the executives decide to clean house and get rid of this season's well-reviewed but low-rated series, this one finds a new home at the WB or even CBS.

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

-Horatio Hornblower, Master and Commander, and the Star Trek legacy.

-Did Jendresen get his numbers wrong?

-Could Attack of the Clones not have sucked?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from March 2003:

• Paramount Confirms Borg Episode
  Paramount Pictures released information on Enterprise's episode involving the Borg, which canon dictated could not be identified as such to remain consistent with The Next Generation. "An arctic research team on Earth discovers debris from an alien vessel, nearly a century old, buried in a glacier along with the bodies of two cybernetically enhanced humanoids," said the press release.

• Fred Freiberger Passes Away
  Original series producer Fred Freiberger died at his home at age 88 after a career that including the final season of Star Trek plus Space: 1999, The Six Million Dollar Man and numerous other genre credits.

• Bakula: 'Enterprise A Great Shot In The Arm' For Trek
  Actor Scott Bakula (Archer), along with UPN president of entertainment Dawn Ostroff, agreed that the prequel concept was a way of reinvigorating the Star Trek franchise:

  The re-imagining and re-creating and starting from a new point has been, I think, a great shot in the arm. Our mission was a peaceful exploration. Well, that's great, but I don't know that you can build that kind of TV series in this day and age for a long period of time. So I think what you're going to see is a different kind of energy come into the show that's going to give it a little more weight.

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

Okay, so what's your guess: will 'Enterprise' be saved? No 48% - (1454 Votes) Yes 24.3% - (737 Votes) Possibly, but in some watered-down form 10.1% - (306 Votes) I'll tell the truth, I don't really care 9.4% - (286 Votes) 7.9% - (240 Votes) Total Votes: 3023

Please vote in our new poll on which series you'd have saved if you could have saved any of the Star Trek shows from cancellation.

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