By the middle of May, the “Star Trek” franchise will be no more, having died a death as long and lingering as — well, insert your favourite Trekkie long-and-lingering-death simile here. UPN has decided to bring “Star Trek: Enterprise” — the latest version of the saga — to an end and to give the whole idea of “Star Trek” a creative rest. The producers of the show have rejected a hopeless last-ditch effort to raise funds directly from fans to continue production. The original “Star Trek” series proved what a little imagination, a little patience and a lot of plywood and foam core could do for televised science fiction. It ran for only three seasons on NBC in the late 1960’s but attracted a devoted following. It also inspired four additional series, 10 “Star Trek” movies and a delightful parody called “Galaxy Quest,” which flirted momentarily with the nihilistic possibility that a television show about space might merely be a television show about space. For “Star Trek” fans, a future with no “Star Trek” at all must seem as empty as one of those great space voids the ever-endangered starship Enterprise kept getting sucked into. But somewhere, a TV executive is repeating the slogan about going where no one has gone before — and wondering how to make that idea about fan-financing work. — The New York Times