Next week’s TV Guide landed in my mailbox this morning and with it came the final results of that poll I mentioned awhile back, the one about various favorite and non-favorite aspects of the Star Trek franchise. As a public service for any of my readers who may care but don’t have their own subscriptions to TVG, I will now post what America — or at least the minority of it that votes in Internet polls — had to say about these oh-so-important issues.

Being what it is, TV Guide naturally began with the results of the most superficial question in the whole survey (all of which was pretty superficial, actually), “Which male or female character would you most like to spend an evening with in the Holodeck?”

If you’ll recall, I wasn’t too comfortable responding to the “male character” half of this question, but if you held a sonic disrupter to my head, I would’ve picked the one and only Captain Kirk, galactic babe-magnet extraordinaire. It seems female Trekkies agreed with me; the official result was James T. Kirk, with 38% of the vote.

As for the female half of the equation, I voted for the lovely Jadzia Dax, who combined physical hottiness with intelligence, wit, and interesting characterization. Fanboys, however, are notoriously vulnerable to the skin-deep charms of the skin-tight bodysuit. Seven of Nine was the winner here, with 20% of the vote.

(Interestingly enough, classic Trek‘s Uhura took second place, according to 15% of the 20,000 who responded to the survey. I find this both surprising and pleasing, because classic Trek doesn’t get much attention or respect these days, and because Nichelle Nichols doesn’t quite meet our modern standards of highly emaciated “beauty.” Of course, given my retro tastes in just about everything, including the ladies, Nichelle’s rather, um, substantial figure has never bothered me in the least. Uhura could open my hailing frequencies anytime…)

Moving right along, TVG reports that Data is the character [fans] most want by [their] side on a mission, while my choice — Captain Kirk again — came in second. Eh. Whatever.

As for the issue that everyone has an opinion on, the most annoying character, I’m rather surprised that my choice, Alexander, was the winner. Apparently, Wil Wheaton’s Internet posse is substantial enough to ensure that Wesley Crusher only scored fourth in this category, tied with The Computer Voice at 11% of the vote each.

I’m not at all surprised, however, that The Borg were declared the the most fearsome villain(s), thanks a whopping 60% of the vote. Personally, I don’t get all the fuss about these guys. The Borg were genuinely creepy in the first couple of appearances, but their abilities and goals were very quickly watered down until the hoseheads weren’t any more “fearsome” than Jake Sisko. But then I probably think more about these things than most of the folks who responded to the survey.
Finally, the favorite catchphrase was a big disappointment to me. I personally believe a catchphrase should express the spirit of a character or, in this case, an interconnected arc of television shows. Of the available choices, I thought “live long and prosper” best summed up the spirit of Trek. (The best choice, which wasn’t even listed as an option on this stupid survey, would’ve been “to boldly go,” the most famous split infinitive in the history of English.) However, the other voters disagreed with me, and The Borg slogan “resistance is futile” took the title. I don’t like it. No, sir, I don’t like it one bit. It’s aggressive, hostile, unimaginative, hard-headed, and, after hearing it so many times, cliche’d — everything Trek should not have been. Unfortunately those qualities have gradually taken over Trek in recent years, so maybe that catchphrase is appropriate after all.

On a somewhat related note, I was disgusted by the following revelation about the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, which appears in a TVG article that accompanies the poll results:

The real meat of the finale is tossed to [Next Generation] icons Johnathan Frankes (Cmdr. Will Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi)…

Why does this trouble me, given that I am not a fan of this particular show? Because I think it represents the core of what went wrong with the Star Trek franchise in recent years: essentially, the guys in charge stopped giving a crap about the fans.

Enterprise may be the lowest-rated of the various Trek series, but it does have its supporters, and if the producers are willing to give them a definitive finale, they should be willing to give these fans an honest finale, one that dignifies the characters that fans of this show love. If characters from one of the other Treks are going to appear, they should be either cameos only or else fully integrated with the regular Enterprise cast. However, this article makes it sounds like it’s mostly Riker and Troi’s show, with the regular cast characters relegated to the B-plot. And that’s just wrong, in any number of ways. It’s like the producers are giving the finger to Enterprise fans and saying, “your crew isn’t even good enough to wrap up its own storyline, so we had to bring in some pinch hitters from the almighty Next Generation to do it right.”
The cynic in me suggests that this move is actually designed to garner solid ratings for the finale by drawing in Next Gen fans who otherwise wouldn’t bother with Enterprise. At the very least, I’d say it’s poor writing, and a gross misunderstanding of the proper way to close down a show that people — even a small number of people — love.

To any Enterprise fans reading this, I’m truly sorry that things are turning out this way. I myself was burned by the lame-o finale of one of my favorite shows, Highlander (I was actually burned twice, if you count the hideous big-screen travesty that was Highlander: Endgame). I know how disappointing it is to see a series in which you’ve invested a lot of thought and emotion just fizzle out, to have the producers think you’ll accept any stupid plotline they see fit to hand you just because it has a particular brandname at the beginning.

As far as I’m concerned, fans of any TV series deserve, whenever possible, a satisfying finale that’s true to the characters and spirit of the show. There is such a thing as a good death, at least on television, but unfortunately Enterprise won’t be getting one. And that just sucks. It isn’t that I personally liked Enterprise; it’s a matter of principle. Call it solidarity for my fellow fans, no matter what they’re actually fans of…