My biggest problem was the Romulan disguised as a Vulcan.Some of the novels dealt with the idea of Vulcans who didn't follow the path of Surak, but followed some warlike path (T'Pel?) of aggression and embracing emotion and whatnot. I would have *loved* to see a passionate Vulcan libertine, prone to intimidation and sudden violence, rather than yet another repressed logic-zombie.
Or skip the Vulcan altogether and have a Deltan or something. Persis Khambatta was hot.
It would have helped if they chose an actress who could act, instead of focusing solely on how nice she looked in the decontamination scenes. Personally, I thought Hoshi won there too.
Granted, I was part of the "Push Hoshi out an airlock" contingent...Hoshi was the 'Barclay' of Enterprise. If someone has a phobia, it's gonna be Hoshi. If someone is going to freak out, it's going to be Hoshi. She was just a bundle of neurosis, and seemed like the go-to person to be unqualified for and / or uncomfortable with anything that was going on. At least with Barclay (whom I also couldn't stand), he was an 'NPC' that only showed up every 20th episode...
From a writing standpoint, I could understand that the new-ness of the whole 'humans in space' concept called out for one or more characters who weren't just going to roll with it as ideally as Merryweather or Phlox, who were kind of irrepressibly enthusiastic about it, but piling every single insecurity and phobia and whatever onto Hoshi made her seem like the last person that should be representing the human race to a bunch of technologically superior alien cultures.
I don't want to create the impression that sex appeal is the only reason to watch Enterprise -- because in all seriousness, I don't see anything terrible about the series...but there's a part of me that wants to do all kinds of R-rated things to Hoshi. Others can have at 7-of-9, T'Pol, the Daxes, those green sex aliens...but me? I'm all about the cuties!
Then again, I don't remember her having all those neuroses, so maybe I'd feel differently if I did. (Maybe it's because I've only seen some of seasons 1 & 2, or maybe it's because I had the volume muted...odd story.)
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No one ever talks about The Animated Series.
Like, ever. :(
Enterprise was crippled by two things--the insistence on tying it to the future instead of treating it like a stand-alone prequel to TOS (minor) and flat characters (major).
Granted, every Trek had under-developed characters--Sulu, Dr. Crusher, Dax, Kes. When you have a well-developed character, their interactions with others create good dialogue; you can usually predict how they will respond to a given situation, and when they behave unexpectedly it is a defining moment. Sadly, most of Enterprises' characters failed to pass this test.
That said, I really liked what Manny Coto did with the show. I just wish it had retained more of the "boldly go where no one has gone before" that was part of its original promise...
Cause it sucked?No one ever talks about The Animated Series.
Like, ever. :(
No, it did not suck.
It was what it was, a Saturday Morning Cartoon. In that it succeeded.
I think its biggest failing was Shatner's flat line-readings.
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Michael Ansara -- aka Captain/Commander Kang from Star Trek (3 different series!), Mr Freeze from Batman: TAS/Batman: Beyond, Elric from Babylon 5, Kane from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and a ton of other stuff -- has died at 91. Somewhere, the Klingons are yelling for Sto'Vo'Kor to prepare for his arrival.
Michael Ansara -- aka Captain/Commander Kang from Star Trek.
"Only a fool fights in a burning house."
-Kang
I'm not a huge fan of ST plots that revolve around time travel and all that jazz. They did it occasionally in TNG, rarely in DS:9, way too often in Voyager and then.. wrapped an entire series around it in Enterprise.
I liked the ship and the first season or two but when It became Star Trek: Time Travel instead of Star Trek: Enterprise I pretty much lost interest.
blech.
-S
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I liked the ship and the first season or two but when It became Star Trek: Time Travel instead of Star Trek: Enterprise I pretty much lost interest.
Time travel is annoying (except when it's not, Trials & Tribble-ations was awesome!).
But it pales compared to the aggravation I felt for Holodeck-related plots and, worst of the worst, appearances by Q.
Agreed; time travel makes me face-plant, no matter the film or show.
"Oh no, the holodeck trapped someone in a death-scenario!" plots just make me want to punch the captain for failing to dismantle the damned thing after the last malfunction.
And Q is the worst kind of Gary Stu GMNPC.
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I like Q. =(
I like or dislike Q on a show-by-show basis.
I liked the Voyager epi with the son.
I disliked the one previous to that about the Q-verse being Gone with the Wind.
I generally dislike the Q epi's where its really holodeck-gone-wild with Q at fault instead of a circuit breaker.
I like the time travel epi on Voyager where they had to stop the guy with the bomb. that wasn't too terrible.
I disliked it in Enterprise because you knew that everything they did was going to amount to nothing because if the entire alpha quadrant was being terraformed it'd have made it into the time lines already- so none of it actually happened or mattered. (cuz if it actually happened the entire Trek continuum would have ceased to exist, so we know there's no way it could have.)
Even though we know most crew and the ships will prevail there's always a little wonder about how they'll do it and if they will lose someone or if something really interesting will happen.
When the entire multi-season plotline is a time travel thing that actually never happened then it all literally doesn't matter, even in the bounds of the fantasy show.
just blech.
-S
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Agreed; time travel makes me face-plant, no matter the film or show.
I'd make an exception for the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", that featured the DS9 crew crossing over with the original series "Trouble With Tribbles". That was a hoot.
I'd also like to point out that if it wasn't for Star Trek, there'd never been a Galaxy Quest...
I loved the episode where Q was made fully human as punishment for all the crap he pulled.
Q: What do I have to do to prove I'm mortal?
Worf: Die.
I enjoyed that greatly, until they completely reused the plot in Voyager.
I was kinda disgruntled at that.
-S
Time travel, when used sparingly and carefully can be a cool thing. ... And it didn't work in whatever the episode Gary Seven was in is called.
Of course it didn't work - that episode could have been titled "Kirk and Spock make cameo appearances in a stealth pilot of a show starring Gary Seven"
Agreed; time travel makes me face-plant, no matter the film or show.I'd make an exception for the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", that featured the DS9 crew crossing over with the original series "Trouble With Tribbles". That was a hoot.
It's certainly possible to enjoy something despite TT. I like the new Trek movies, for example.
It's just that TT is a big red flashing NOPE ISN'T POSSIBLE EVER warning light with sirens, in a way that even faster-than-light travel and unlimited energy isn't. It's the one tech (and occasionally magick) that consistently pulls me right out of the fiction.
IMO the new stuff is an exception because at the end of the movie they don't hit the reset button and say
HA! IT WORKED! THE WHOLE THING NEVER HAPPENED!
Instead they used it as a vehicle to *make new things happen* Which is awesome.
I hate Enterprise because the whole TT thing is all about knowing at the end, the button gets pushed and none of it happens.
Because the entire multi-season plot is about getting to the button to push it and erase it all.
Just.. bleh.
"yay we won, now nothing we did matters."
-S
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Of course it didn't work - that episode could have been titled "Kirk and Spock make cameo appearances in a stealth pilot of a show starring Gary Seven"
That being said, I'd totally have watched that show. Mysterious agent with a cat that's also a hot (possibly alien?) babe? Whacky!
Speaking of stealth pilots, I'm pissed that Bones is still on the air, and The Finder isn't. :/
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Enterprise was crippled by two things--the insistence on tying it to the future instead of treating it like a stand-alone prequel to TOS (minor) and flat characters (major).
Granted, every Trek had under-developed characters--Sulu, Dr. Crusher, Dax, Kes. When you have a well-developed character, their interactions with others create good dialogue; you can usually predict how they will respond to a given situation, and when they behave unexpectedly it is a defining moment. Sadly, most of Enterprises' characters failed to pass this test.
That said, I really liked what Manny Coto did with the show. I just wish it had retained more of the "boldly go where no one has gone before" that was part of its original promise...
Enterprise most of all broke with the timeline when it should have been far more tainted by the darkness of humanity. If it had been more about the dirty rise to prominence of a global military power in control of Warp Travel...it would have been more about the story and less about the weeping over the dream.
The DEEP SPACE NINE writer's room had a big sign on the wall saying, "NO HOLODECK MALFUNCTION EPISODES!". They made an exception for the Bashir/James Bond episode because, as the writer said, the transporter malfunctioned and the holodeck was actually used to save the people trapped in the transporter. Executive producer/showrunner Ira Steven Behr thought that was kind of sneaky and cheating the rule but the script was so good he approved it anyway.
Q was really, really good in 'Q Who?' and 'Tapestry' (and in both cases he catalysed the main plot rather than had the whole thing revolve around him, which was a better use of the character), quite good in 'Deja Q' and the DS9 one ("Picard would never hit me!") and otherwise was fairly disposable (apart from catalysing Worf's best-ever line in 'Qpid'). I really didn't like how he was used in VOYAGER. He could return Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant at will and they kept having to think of reasons why he wouldn't rather than, say, keeping him off the show altogether.
In other news, Netflix still hasn't added that one Trek movie to instant streaming. The one where we see the inventor of the first warp drive...which was that? I saw five minutes of it a while ago, and I've been wanting to see the whole thing.
Very disappointing. :(
First Contact.
Worth getting the DVD for, imo, if only for the silly Jukebox music
tho the movie as a whole was solid, imo.
-S
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The DEEP SPACE NINE writer's room had a big sign on the wall saying, "NO HOLODECK MALFUNCTION EPISODES!". They made an exception for the Bashir/James Bond episode because, as the writer said, the transporter malfunctioned and the holodeck was actually used to save the people trapped in the transporter. Executive producer/showrunner Ira Steven Behr thought that was kind of sneaky and cheating the rule but the script was so good he approved it anyway.
Vic Fontaine became DS9 holodeck episodes. I didnt mind though most of them were pretty good episodes.
Vic's were different, IMO. Even when they malfunctioned they didn't take over the whole station. The only issue is- do we keep it running or delete him? (unlike alot of TNG episodes which found the holodeck running the ship and such).
-S
So...Red Dwarf.blend that with crazy...
It isn't already?
It all begs the question why bother sending crewed ships out there..
just crate a program called Moriarty and give it some program goals and let it go to work..
Like wiping out the Manty Fleet!
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Every one of us had assumed that Cochrane would get killed and that the new bridge-crew guy, Lt. Hawk (you know, the actor who looked a lot like the clean-cut, steely-eyed Zephraim Cochrane character we saw in TOS?), would have to step in and replace him in history. Classic time-travel stuff.
Instead, we got Picard crying and raving while some gangly pig farmer in a grubby bandana slouched his way into interstellar space, whining all the while about how much it sucked to move humanity forward. Ugh.
Wow, that would have been so much better!
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Every one of us had assumed that Cochrane would get killed and that the new bridge-crew guy, Lt. Hawk (you know, the actor who looked a lot like the clean-cut, steely-eyed Zephraim Cochrane character we saw in TOS?), would have to step in and replace him in history. Classic time-travel stuff.
Instead, we got Picard crying and raving while some gangly pig farmer in a grubby bandana slouched his way into interstellar space, whining all the while about how much it sucked to move humanity forward. Ugh.
Wow, that would have been so much better!
I kinda like the way they did it. Goes to show that most of people who are idolized now were probably major ass***s and douches.
Sorry to hear negative reviews of First Contact, but I don't expect grand entertainment of Trek.
Which has made season 3 of Enterprise a rather pleasant surprise. Action? A bit of moral ambiguity? An overarching plot? Yes please!