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Enterprise
Topic Started: Oct 24 2011, 01:42 PM (328 Views)
Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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I guess it was in the chat box where I was discussing Enterprise. We picked up all four seasons.

The first season was pretty weak. It had the Temporal Cold War story line that featured a lot of weak science and weaker writing. The episodes that were not about time travel were rehashed plots from TOS, ST:NG and DS9. It also relied on a good deal of RET CON to work. If you have to re-write your continuity within the same season, you are doing something wrong.

The second season, however, improved. They got onto some basic exploration plots, they involved Jeffery Combs (aka Brunt and Weyoun) as the belligerent Andorian general more frequently. They mixed it up with the Klingons on several occasions. The writing was better, the characters more solid, and the plots far more relevant to the early space exploration we hoped for.

Season three went and undid it all. They launched the Xindi arc, in which a hostile race is building a weapon (that's not a moon!) to destroy humanity. And the culprits were none other than a race involved in the temporal cold war. While there were episodes that were very well done, the entire season took place in a section of space that didn't actually exist. Despite the weak guiding arc (really, the ultimate antagonists were pretty lame space beings from another dimension) the season finished with some fairly strong episodes.

The fourth season started weak (fighting mutant nazis in earth's past - a nice nod to TOS, but pretty obscure) but got really good, really quick. Political tension between andorians and vulcans and tellerites. Early incursions by the Romulans. Brent Spiner stole the show with his role as Doctor Soong in the eugenics mini-arc. A Klingon plauge resulting from study of the earthling eugenics. Some great episodes with the Orions (pre-syndicate). A nifty two-parter reversal of the mirror universe plots...all in all, it's been excellent. Good enough that I'm disappointed its the last season.

Once the writing for the series evened out, Scott Bakula was a terrific captain. The chief engineer 'Trip' is phenomenal, and consequently gets written bigger and better parts as the series goes. And once they backed away from T'Pal as the vulcan sex kitten, things improve vastly. It becomes Star Trek.

The show will never rival ST:NG for sheer watchability - it suffers a bit from DS9 syndrome, where you cannot easily jump into a random episode as events are following a longer arc - but the quality of production definitely improved as it went and the writing got stronger and more Trekkian.
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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Were they trying to get Quantum Leap fans for awhile? Time travel is good for a one shot unless you base everything on it. The fourth season should have been their first.
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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Had the fourth season been the first, this series would have rivalled TNG for awesome-sauceness.

I think they were trying to broaden the Trek base, period. They changed up the theme song tradition, added a lot of soft-core porn (I mean, T'Pal's nipples were practically a member of the bridge crew), and featured stories that were of the Star Wars "let's-only-show-the-action" variety. It made for terrible Star Trek and probably alienated most of the Trekkies.
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Andrul
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Ancient Wyrm
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As a Trekkie you can put me solidly in the 'Disappointed' category for many of the reasons you stated. I remember having high hopes for the show when it was announced a few years before release. Then in the very first episode they had the Trip/T'Pol oil rub scene which seemed to be the only thing anyone remembered about the entire episode. I hated that they made T'Pol an emotional train wreck (at least by Vulcan standards). But I think what I disliked the most was all the retcons you mentioned. Berman re-wrote the entire Trek Universe history in the first season, starting with the introduction of the phase cannon which all certified Trek historians will tell you were first introduced in the time of TOS and in fact were retrofitted on the NCC-1701 as an upgrade to her laser banks. And then he goes on to bring in holodeck technology which was installed for the first time on NCC-1701D.

The whole time travel warfare was a travesty to me. I did however enjoy the the Dr. Soong story arc as it tied into the original series, and the klingon eugenics story was a nice clarification of the hints to explain the change in Klingon appearance between the series and the first movie. To quote Mr. Worf, "We don't like to talk about it."

By the third season I was an intermittent viewer. I'd watch it if I wasn't doing anything else but didn't bother recording it if I was going to miss it, and by the 4th season it had moved to a time-frame when I was at work and it just wasn't worth the effort to keep track of, occasionally catching the odd episode repeat on a Saturday afternoon. I do remember being disappointed that Berman would feel the need to borrow the mirror universe idea for a second time.
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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The final episode of the series was a huge, huge let down.



[spoilers!]



They basically jump the time line ahead 10 years, and then make turn the adventure into a holodeck program being viewed by Commander Riker, as he debates whether to tell Cpt. Picard about his involvement in the Pegasus project.

As a story idea, it's kind of cool. As a season finale, it relegates all of Enterprise to a brief footnote in the Enterprise 'D' holodeck. The Enterprise cast basically has to split time equally with Riker and Troi, the story that takes place is incredibly weak, far-fetched, and relies on manufactured pathos from events that take place in the future (from the perspective of the Enterprise series) but in the past (from the perspective of the crew in the episode). They kill off the most likeable character in the show with an incredibly stupid stunt, bring back a character from the dead who wasn't dead until they leapt forward in the timeline, and generally ruin everything good that the series had put together. And in the end, the 'ratings' of the show are 'saved' by the Next Generation. It's like, sorry guys, your show sucked. But we'll go out on a high note. Remember how good Next Gen was? Yay, right!?

What irks me most is that they had a perfectly good penultimate episode that they could have used as a catalyst to end the series. Humanity, after being threatened by the Xindi threat, has begun to catalyze against aliens. A fringe group seizes control of a terraforming array and uses it as a weapon, demanding that all aliens be exiled from Sol. A fantastic two-part story.

And what is worse is that they could have used that episode as a jumping board to Archer establishing the Federation. The alien delegates that were meeting on Sol were tempted to leave. The idea of an alliance was weakening. It would have been easy to have Archer step in here and take a guiding role, restore the faith of the delegates, and basically push forward the concept of a United Federation of Planets.

Everything wouldn't have had to end hunky-dory. There could still be fringe elements of xenophobia. You could have Section 32 split off an begin its clandestine works. But at the end, you'd have laid the ground work for the Federation to exist. You'd have that first alliance of races and, while it wasn't pretty, everyone in audience knows what it will become. And that would have been a far more satisfying ending.
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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Wait... what?

The whole series was just a Holodeck experiment?
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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No, but that is what it felt like in the final episode: Riker was viewing the 'historical documents' for information relevant to his Pegasus cloaking-device decision.
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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Did they at least have the records contain some pivotal information that makes a huge impact on the future once discovered? That seems to be the only way to salvage it. Otherwise I wouldn't even want to be bothered to watch.
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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No, it was dumb. Whatever great events they'd acheived to create the Federation were glossed over in the episode. Instead it had some smarmy moral about loyalty to one's crewmates, mixed in with the main engineer blowing himself up to save the captain.

As Jenn and I said, we believe the series ended one episode earlier. We aren't even going to bother encoding the series finale.
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Andrul
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Ancient Wyrm
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Wait. Who did they kill off? And who was "dead" and brought back? I want to know but not enough to slow through what you've described! Your idea that would have left fringes of xenophobia is a good idea and would tie into "Balance of Power" in TOS. As you'll recall the helmsman was relieved of duty because of his anti Vulcan sentiments after they saw the similarity of appearance between them and the Romulans.
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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MORE SPOILERS! Although, is it really spoilers for a show people won't watch?

They killed Trip at the end of the episode (after so heavily foreshadowing his impending death through the entire episode it was hardly a surprise when it happened) and Shran (Jeffrey Combs the Andorian) apparently only faked his death at some indeterminate point years earlier. And had a daughter. That they had to rescue. From aliens that couldn't go faster than Warp 2. But actually could! And caught Enterprise and beamed on board and Trip crossed a plasma relay and blew them all up in the weakest dramatic death scene ever.

Anyway, despite my vitriol about the last episode, the whole reason I'm angry is that the show was finally going somewhere good when it got cancelled. And the show and cast deserved a better send off than a 'rescue' from Star Trek alumni.

One of the things I dislike most about Star Trek is that they feel the need to mix cast from different generations. The Brent Spiner augments arc was an example of it done brilliantly. The Scotty Dyson Sphere episode was another, as was Spock's Reunification. But Generations was a terrible movie, mixing the old cast with the new. The Enterprise finale was horrible, mixing TNG crew in. It serves no purpose.

But there were more than enough good episodes in the Enterprise seasons for me to feel the purchase was worthwhile. In fact, in the grand hierarchy, Season 4 of Enterprise ranks above the first two seasons of TNG and the first three seasons of DS9 for enjoyability.
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lgm
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TNG and TOS mixing was always weird and uncomfortable to watch. They can have equal rights but they need to stay on their own shows.
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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That's it exactly! They have separate drinking fountains for a reason!
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Andrul
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Ancient Wyrm
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Now you've done it. You've gone and gotten me started on Generations. That was the WORST, most DISAPPOINTING movie of them all. You see the TOS crew for the first ten minutes, then Kirk for the last ten minutes. Everything in between is all TNG and a major disappointment. The Enterprise episodes with Spiner were good, but it wasn't a character crossover, just a good actor portraying a different role and Nimoy has the Spock character nailed down so good he could probably do it while in a coma. The best cast crossover imho is the DS9/TOS crossover where the DS9 crew went back in time and ended up on the space station during "The Trouble with Tribbles". The writers worked hard to blend them seamlessly in with the old footage.
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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Generations had a weak script. If you struck out all the parts with TOS, it would have been a good film. As it was, it bogged down tremendously when it reached what should have been the thrilling climax, so that Picard could go find Kirk to save him. What a waste.

TOS had an awesome finish with Star Trek VI. Going into Generations weakened it.

And to nitpick, Brent Spiner was playing a character he had played before. He played Soong in several TNG episodes. And this was just a younger Soong that looked like the android he would create. :D
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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The reboot movie did it great because it was just a long cameo appearance that served the main plot and character development. I also like the alternate universe appeal and how Spock is as much human as vulcan. I know the bigger fans get flustered when they mess with cannon.
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Andrul
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I have to disagree with you Lance. In the Enterprise episodes Spiner was playing Dr. Arik Soong, while it was Dr. Noonien Soong who created Data. Many people confuse them because of Khan Noonien Singh whose name was similar.
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Kishi
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Illithid
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If you were disappointed by Generations, it's your own fault. That was the seventh movie, or the first of the Next Gen movies. Either way you looked at it, the number told you it was going to suck.
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Andrul
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Ancient Wyrm
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all the TNG movies basically sucked regardless of the number. They were all two hour specials displayed on a really big screen. I once read that Roddenberry wanted the second movie to be about the cast going back in time to ensure that Kennedy was assassinated. I guess the upper echelons figured it was too politically volatile to be successful even though that's pretty much what G.R. based the entire tv series on. Oh, did you know that supposedly we would have had a new Star Trek tv series in the 70's if they hadn't decided to make the movie?
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lgm
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So you have a massive fleet of spaceships, aliens spread out everywhere, threats on a galactic level, endless possibilities of potential conflict and drama... and he wants our lovable and fiesty space farers to time travel to Earth and deal with a single act in history so extremely remote from the entire backdrop of the whole series?

That is massively retarded. That was a great move by the higher ups to save us an Earth based space adventure.
Edited by lgm, Oct 28 2011, 09:10 PM.
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Andrul
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Ancient Wyrm
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Not to mention the whole "Conspiring to achieve the murder of a U.S. President" thing.

I've been surfing and I found something about the never aired 2nd Star Trek series. Seems the pilot episode was written by Alan Dean Foster (Splinter of the Mind's Eye, et al..) and was used to make the first movie instead.

Gotta love Wiki!
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Benevolance
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Quote:
 
Spiner was playing Dr. Arik Soong


If not for you and wikipedia, I don't think I would have ever known that. They only ever referred to him as Dr. Soong or 'father' through-out the whole arc. :D

Most of Roddenbury's stuff was about interacting with past and alternate earths. Hence why they went back in time so often on the show and fought nazis or other things. But usually they didn't try to be too specific, or took pains to make it clear it was an alternate timeline/reality/planet that evolved identical to ours to avoid making the episode too politically charged. And it had the added benefit of saving on set and prop costs.
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