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Lots of people were angry at me when Enterprise was cancelled and I said that maybe that was a good thing. The show went out on a high note: it was coming off two very strong seasons. Too many times I've watched a series jump the shark and ruin itself for me, so that I can't even remember it fondly now. I try to pretend that the last nine episodes of La Femme Nikita never happened, and with Star Trek: Voyager it's more like entire seasons.

It doesn't even have to be that a show gets really bad for me to lose interest in watching. Sometimes the death of a single regular can turn me off, or a couple of stupid decisions regarding the characterization of someone I liked a lot. So today I am living in both anticipation and dread of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I love Harry Potter and I love its following, but I have not universally loved the books: I found Chamber of Secrets and Goblet of Fire to be rather disappointing, though I loved Prisoner of Azkaban and it was really Order of the Phoenix that made me a fan in my own right rather than just having read the books to my kids.

By this reckoning, the even-numbered Potter books, like the odd-numbered Star Trek movies, have not been enormous hits with me, and much as I'll be happy to have a new novel, I wonder whether in the end the speculation won't have been more fun than the book itself. I've read fans speculating in horror about what they'll do if for some reason J.K. Rowling doesn't finish the series - if her kids or other concerns become more important to her than making millions on book seven. Part of me would be disapppointed if that happened, but part of me might treasure the open-endedness. Sometimes I wonder whether my nostalgia for shows like VR5 is that they never really had an ending, so it's very easy to imagine that what happened next would have been spectacular.

I just hope that after this weekend I'm as much a fan of Harry Potter as I am now. Under any circumstances, I'm disappearing as soon as the book's in my hands, and I'm not coming up until I've read it.

Trek BBS Today

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

-Anyone want to talk about the United Earth Space Probe Agency, non-uniformed scientists and other anomalies in Star Trek?

-Vulcan ears: sexy or turn-off?

-What's your favorite characterization of Lex Luthor?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

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

• 'Enterprise' Scores 3 Emmy FX Nods, 5 Total
  Star Trek: Enterprise earned Emmy nominations for makeup in "Canamar", music in "The Expanse" and visual effects in "Dead Stop", "The Crossing" and "The Expanse." Trek alumni Kim Cattrall (Valeris), James Cromwell (Zefram Cochrane) and Alfre Woodard (Lily Sloane) both received acting nominations for Sex and the City, Six Feet Under and The Practice respectively.

• Steven Culp To Play MACO Leader
  After being cut out of Star Trek: Nemesis as the new first officer, Commander Martin Madden, actor Steven Culp took on a recurring role in Enterprise's third season as MACO leader Major Hayes, the military assault team brought aboard for the Xindi arc.

• Spiner Flies To 'Aviator'
  Brent Spiner (Data) joined the cast of The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese and scripted by John Logan, who worked with Spiner on Nemesis. Spiner played Robert Gross in the Howard Hughes biopic, which went on to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture.

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

Favourite film so far this summer? Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 38.4% - (495 Votes) Batman Begins 34.8% - (448 Votes) Something else entirely 10.7% - (138 Votes) War of the Worlds 9.3% - (120 Votes) Mr. & Mrs. Smith 3.3% - (43 Votes) Kingdom of Heaven 1.8% - (24 Votes) Land of the Dead 1.3% - (18 Votes) Total Votes: 1286

Please vote in our new poll on summer at the seashore!

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