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First Peeks At Enterprise
abde writes: "On Monday, TV Guide featured a preview of the new Starship Enterprise on the cover (scans and comparison with other ships courtesy German Trek site Treknews.de). Entertainment Online also features an transcript of an interview (and video excerpt!) with Scott Bakula on the new bridge (and wow are the set interiors as incredible as advertised!). More images of the ship interior (including Engineering) from that ET special are also shown on fansite Section31.com."
Picard: Make it slow...
My impression of a British SciFi show (namely, Dr. Who)
Lead Character: Natter. natter. Natter natter. Natter.
Other Character: Natter?
Blue Character: Natter natter (laugh).
Lead Character: Natter natter natter natter. Natter, and natter some more.
Monster:[special effect here done by viewing a picture of Margaret Thatcher through a glass of stout]
Lead Character: Natter natter natter natter natter natter natter natter natter.
Character with strange forehead: Natter natter natter.
[Exterior shot of a strange planet, which is strange that a strange planet has so many hedgerows.]
Taking a few years off from the highly profitable series from star trek will help them in the long run I think. Much of the reason that I like star trek was because it was new to me. With each series that goes by, I lose more and more interest in it.
Not to mention that Bakula is entrenched in the minds of most Sci-Fi fans from his role in Quantum Leap. One thing that trek had going for it in the past was that the actors were relatively new to the minds of viewers, and therefore could be easily molded to the character.
A couple seasons of break would allow for the writers to think up new material. In the meantime, Paramount has the other trek shows to put into syndication. Hell, DS9 went into syndication immediately, and I fully expect VOY to follow the same path.
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Hopefully they will avoid the NexGen script flaw of inventing some technology (magic) to save the ship and wrap up the plot in the last 5 minutes. The Original series (TOS) I liked beter because it was more about the people solving the problem instead of the easy way out as previously mentioned. (How much does everyone hate the HoloDeck?!!)
Anyway, what I want to see is more battles - let's face it, watching the enterprise kick butt is alot of fun - TOS vs Klingons, NextGen vs Borg that's what males 12-60 want to see. But please more money on good interesting scripts and less on special effects - Dr. Who stayed around for like 30 years because of that
..........FULL STOP.
The TOS ship will always look too primitive, because the model was primitive. It will always look like a model hanging from strings. The prequel ship will be a CGI model.
However, look at the construction of the vessels. The TOS ship is smooth, almost aerodynamic--it looks like it was built in Seattle by an aerospace firm. The TNG and Voyager vessels are built like luxury liners. The prequel ship looks like its hull is solid steel--no transparent aluminum here. It looks like it was built in Detroit. It looks like it outweighs NCC-1701 by a factor of two, which it should.
Look again at the picture. The prequel ship is missing the entire engineering section--no cylinder at the bottom. It's not grand and beautiful--it's hard and functional. It looks more complicated because it should, and because the TOS ship is so simple due to the series budget.
One thing that viewers are going to have to deal with is that, while the technology of the stories is backwards, the technology of the actual production is much better than the TOS. A good way to think of it is that our views of the TOS episodes is "low res", but in the prequel we will have a high-res view of a low-tech universe.
--The basis of all love is respect
I forgot to mention - it was touched on in one of the books that the first "Q" was Trelane, from The squire of Gothos. So, it may come to pass that we see some Q, but not identified as "Q".
The romulan war hasn't happened yet in this timeline, according to an article i read. im sure it will be a point of conflict later in the series - and it may be a great one, if properly executed.
I'm going to wax theoretical..
I hope the klingons have their nose ridges, for one, and their sense of "Honor". I've always thought of it kind of like this.. Perhaps the klingons from the original series, identified as being from the planet "Khlinzahi", were an offshoot bunch - Klingons, without honor, perhaps some form of half-breed (perhaps with romulans? It might explain why they were allies in most of TOS [They shared the same ship design]).. If i remember correctly, they seemed to have some romulan personality traits. Somewhere between TOS and TMP, the klingons from Qo'nos became dominant again, either through politics (Perhaps all of the old klingons were from another "house") Perhaps thats why we see the "Old" klingons as the "modern rendition". Perhaps it was considered so dishonorable that klingon blood mixed with romulan blood that Worf mentioned "We don't speak of it.".
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C'mon, Scott Bakula's not THAT bad. Quantum Leap won a slew of awards and actually had some fairly thought-provoking episodes. For example, there was the one where he beamed into a Mercury Program chimp and sat in a cage with a diaper on for the whole episode. His potrayal of one of the first primates in orbit around the Earth certainly prepared him to potray one of the first primates to leave Earth's solar system. Besides, think about the fun of an Enterprise / Quantum Leap crossover episode. Sam beams into Captain Archer and looks in a mirror and sees....himself!!!
> The question is, what OS will they use on the prop computers?
Don't know, but I guess the database will be Oracle 8i Enterprise Edition. Sorry. That was inexcusable.
- Bad science. OK, this isn't PBS. But can we at least get writers who know that a "planetoid" is not a kind of planet and that burnt hydrogen (commonly known as water) is not a rare substance? And even when the science is totally made up (like transporters) it at least needs to be consistent ("We don't have energy to replicate food! We'll have to transport it from the planet's surface!"). Yeah, I know, most TV viewers don't care. But SF fans are not most TV viewers.
- Idea Cowardice. When you get an interesting Basic Premise, give it time to work, and don't abandon it the moment it gives you problems. Idea: give the characters families and make them part of the story. (Naw, can't put children at risk.) Idea: A Warp Drive Crisis! (Naw, too hard to write around.) Idea: Give the Captain a girlfriend! (What?! You want to pay another regular? Dr. Crusher can fill in when he gets horny.) A society that has evolved beyond greed! (Hey, careful, some of our sponsers are Republicans!)
- Lazy storytelling. Not just "magic". Using the same gimmicks over and over. The worst one is time travel -- since it's paradoxical, the story doesn't have to make sense. Which is why we get more and more time travel episodes!
- Brainless imitation. It shouldn't suprise me -- Hollywood hates taking risks -- but it's painful to watch. Just because there's a successful movie with planet-obliterating aliens and gigantic space battles, doesn't mean the same thing will work on Star Trek. Not every cop show needs car chases or running gun battles, and not every space opera needs to be Independence Day or Star Wars.
- Dweebish characters. Need I elaborate?
- Preaching. OK, the Big Message has always been an important part of Star Trek stories. But it doesn't work as the whole story!
- Enough with the damn Holodecks. These people are part of my fantasy life. I don't want to know about their fantasy life.
- No more trekkie stories. If people who make Star Trek into a pathetic kind of religion want to write "fanfiction" let them post it on the web. Nobody else wants to watch TV shows or movies written by overenthusiastic amateurs. Take some money out of your sfx budget and spring for some real scriptwriters.
What's really sad is that I won't be able to resist watching the new series -- even though I know I will see all of the above!__
TrekWeb has a bunch of links to various information on Enterprise including first looks of the sets. BTW, I am not affiliated with trekweb so I don't care if you don't check them out either.
The reason I think they had to do a prequel is that they've totally screwed up the technological level of the future. In the star-trek future, you have super-shields and weapons, you can travel in time, you can use wormholes, etc, etc. Its pretty difficult to write stories where there are abolutely no challenges.
The starship I can live with, though I would prefer something like an obvious predecessor to the Enterprise. (less streamlined - bigger engines that are less efficient etc)
I am more concerned these guys will change history as it has been portrayed through the 3 series (don't count voyuer) and the movies.
I am also concerned that this new "alien" in the background isn't the typical "must one-up the last series - (borg to dominion to 8472 etc) syndrome that we have seen before. I would think it great if it were the "Q" as we could have series cross-over "history" - but please no - We go to the future plots.
I was always under the impression that is what the Federation that met the Klingons, not the Earth itself (iow - the Federation existed).
Oh well, hopefully the Klingon ships keep their basic layout, and the Romulans don't pop up soon (they should barely be in space by this timeline)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Trek Geek 1 - A cell phone doesn't contain all the equipment and circuitry you'd need to actually contact an orbiting starship from the surface of a planet.
Trek Geek 2 - Ah, but your forgetting the minimum diameter of any given transtator component in TOS, which has to be at least--
Trek Geek 3 - We can also assume that the Eugenics wars wiped out a lot of 20th century technology, such as the minaturized components necessary for--
Me: *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM*... Well I just made the world a better place. Now what do I do with the bodies?
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But why a prequel?
To show George Lucas how it's really done.
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