Star Trek: Enterprise is now history, but it wasn't the only thing that died the night of May 13. Cmdr. Trip Tucker, one of the UPN show's most popular characters, set off an explosion in the series finale that was meant to kill evil aliens, but he wound up killing himself as well.
"At first I was shocked and a little miffed at the choice that was made," says Connor Trinneer, who played Trip. "But, selfishly, things worked out for me. I'm the only one who went out with a bang... no pun intended. I got the goodbye no one else did."
Most of the
Enterprise regulars were cheated out of airtime to make room for juicy, highly hyped guest stints by
Jonathan Frakes and
Marina Sirtis of
Star Trek: The Next Generation. "I wanted us all to have the big
M*A*S*H moment — the really memorable farewell," Trinneer says. "Sadly, it just didn't happen. That's not where the writers and producers wanted to focus."
The deadly p
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The world of daytime drama has lost its lion king. William J. Bell, the groundbreaking, taboo-busting mastermind behind CBS' The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, died April 29 from complications of Alzheimer's disease. He was 78. Bell cocreated both shows with his wife, Lee Phillip Bell, and is credited with writing and producing some 15,000 soap episodes in a four-decade career.
His slow, hypnotic storytelling style was rooted in romance and family, but Bell also embraced controversy with landmark plots about crack babies, AIDS, incest, date rape, euthanasia and homelessness.
Bell was just as audacious off camera: He was a tough and supremely confident showman who paid no mind to focus-group research and tolerated no interference from the CBS "suits." In exchange for that autonomy, he gave the network two wildly popular cash cows: Y&R, now in its 32nd year, has been the No. 1 soap since 1988. The 18
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From the talk shows to the soaps, the 32nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards are all about the drama. Before you watch tonight (9 pm/ET on CBS), we answer some nagging questions.
Why no Oprah?
After winning seven Emmys as host and nine for best talk show, the Big O took herself and her show out of those races several years ago. But she still lets her technicians compete (they have four nods this year, ranging from lighting to hairdos). Winfrey's guilt over gilt has opened the door to some very bizarre entries — how else to explain the best-talk-show nod for SoapNet's hopelessly dopey Soap Talk? (Editor's Note: We must respectfully point out that Mr. Logan's take on Soap Talk is his own.)
Will Martha Stewart show up?
Recently, the house-arrest queen has been under investigation by her probation officers for attending an awards gala that may not have been all that business-related. But we bet she'll be at the Emmys. Not only is Mar
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We didn't need a psychic to tell us that the success of NBC's Medium would have other networks jumping on the afterlife wagon.
But a new CBS drama pilot, starring former
Party of Fiver and Neutrogena hawker
Jennifer Love Hewitt as a young woman who communicates with the dead, isn't as similar as it sounds. Or so claims the show's creator, famed seer
James Van Praagh.
"Unlike Medium, we have nothing to do with crime solving. Our psychic is a ghostbuster who helps the dead cross over into the light," says Van Praagh, who previously hosted the syndicated spiritfest Beyond with James Van Praagh.
He based his pilot (working title: The Ghost Whisperer) on a popular Cleveland medium known only as Mary Ann. "She believes that there is a 48-hour period after death where we all have free will; [our souls] can stay earthbound or go to the other side," Van Praagh says. Love Hewitt's character will be married to a pa
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Not even Captain Kirk could have saved Star Trek: Enterprise.
The UPN series (Fridays, 8 pm/ET) will end its four-year run May 13 due to a steep drop in viewers (just 2.9 million this season). "And I don't think an appearance by
William Shatner would have mattered," says executive producer
Rick Berman. He'd been
in talks with the
Trek icon, hoping that a guest shot would lure lapsed Trekkers.
"But the writing was on the wall last year," he explains, "when UPN moved us to Friday nights and the network began skewing in a different direction." (That would be toward young female viewers.)
On the bright side, Berman promises that Enterprise will end with "a little valentine to all Trek fans. I will say that the finale is surprising — something we've never done before — and it might involve people fro
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Get ready for the new, uptight, buttoned-down Juliette Lewis. The 30-year-old actress — known for her wild youth and her freaky, hell-raising characters — takes a major career departure with Chasing Freedom, an original movie for Court TV airing Jan. 19 (9 pm/ET). Lewis plays Libby Brock, a staid, career-obsessed corporate lawyer forced by her boss to represent — pro bono — a young, Afghani woman seeking asylum in America. Set just before and immediately after Sept. 11, the film explores the horrors of life under the Taliban, as well as our own issues of homeland security and ethnic paranoia. It's heady, mature stuff for Lewis, who first gained fame (and an Oscar nod) as the Lolita-esque teen who sucked Robert DeNiro's thumb in 1991's Cape Fear. She went on to play a slew of
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Seabiscuit doesn't horse around. The acclaimed film, about the Depression-era racehorse and his rider Red Pollard, took a $110 million bite out of the box office and could win big again on Jan. 27 — that's Oscar nomination day. But Tobey Maguire, who shed 23 pounds from his 5'8" frame to play Pollard, brushes off any talk of a possible nod for himself. "I'm a young guy," says the 28-year-old, never-nominated star. "Right now I'm not concerned with that kind of thing." Instead, like Martha Stewart and her salad, he's here to talk about the Seabiscuit DVD. Due for release Dec. 16 in a single-disc format and a two-disc gift set, it boasts some rare extras — including setside photos (taken by Maguire's co-star, Jeff Bridges) and director Gary Ross delivering
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Yeah, yeah, we know the truth is out there — but will we actually get any of it on Feb. 25 when The X-Files picks up the story of Agent Mulder's apparent abduction? After all, the character, played by David Duchovny, disappeared last spring, and viewers have been led to suspect he's being held hostage aboard an alien spaceship.
"We will figure out what's happened to Mulder — to an extent," X-Files creator Chris Carter tells TV Guide magazine, on sale now. "There will be a most shocking discovery, one we think cannot be happening — but it is." The installment also boasts revelations about Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick) and the arrival of a new FBI sleuth, Monica Reyes, played by Annabeth Gish, who may become a regular next season. That is, if there is a next season.
The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off about Mulder's three technonerd pals, takes the X-Files ti
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