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Star Trek: Enterprise Premieres Tonight
Ankou writes: "'Enterprise' premieres tonight on UPN. Scott Backula, you may remember him in as the lead role of 'Quantum Leap', plays Jon Archer the captain of the NX-01 which is the Enterprise predating the NCC-1701 and Captain Kirk by almost 150 years. It even takes place before the whole United Federation of Planets came about! This series will prove to be a more rougher, blue-collared version of star travel than the picture portrayed by Kirk and Picard, i.e. crew wear baseball caps and their captain is a regular 'Joe' kind of guy (possibly why they chose Scott Backula as the lead role). Only time will tell if this series will last, be the judge for yourself and see it tonight, Sep 26, on UPN at 8/7 central." I discovered last weekend that I stopped getting UPN. Who knows when, since I've never needed it before. So I will be missing it, and crying in chair, while mumbling curses directed at my cable provider.
It was on local TV (Canadian) last night.
:o)
Not bad.. definitely "grittier" than the other series. Bakula did a good job of portraying Archer.
I'd watch it again
As long as they avoid time travel as a plot device the show has a chance. Except for the original "Guardian of Forever" time travel has been used as a crutch when the writers get bored.
Then why didn't they get Tom Arnold?
Because maybe they wanted people to watch?
Bakula has a solid acting career already behind him, is used to the kind of mania ST fans can generate, and does a pretty good job of portraying "competence-in-spite-of-hickness," which I'm guessing is going to be a major theme of this show.
Humans, the new kids on the block - comin' to mess up YOUR neighborhood to! This should be fun.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
I really, really, really tried to give Babylon 5 a chance but I just wasn't feelin it.
Of course only the ubergeeks among us would not only be Star Trek afficianados, but make the geeky sidekicks the focus of the show - superheroes, no less. Add to that the 'Lone Gunmen' conspiracy theory that Paramount is denying the essence of the show....
To a certain extent, you're right. Star Trek is about the heroes doing things that are impossible in our reality.
But what's happened in the last 20 years is that heroes have turned from "people who can do anything and never get hurt", to "people who are like you and me but pull it through just barely".
Who's more exciting - Indiana Jones, who gets the crap kicked out of him for 75% of the movie, then starts kicking ass, or to watch Superman shrug off bullets or never get hurt? I'll take Dr. Jones any day of the week (and twice on Sundays).
So I'm actually applauding Paramounts change of direction to more "ordinary" people who will become more than human through their trials and experiences.
Just as long as they never need the Girdle....
Of course, I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Actually, the B-2 bombers are named. Probablu because they're as expensive as a ship.
We can hope -- though I doubt it. Besides the blue alien in the cat suit I've seen in the commercials, I doubt that Paramount will do much to match the main attraction of the other shows. Sex is important (7of9) but if that's going to be it pr0n is a better use of my time.
Farscape, Lexx, Earth: Final Conflict, and B5 have a progression from episode to episode. None of the Treks have, except for an attempt with DS9 that really could have been stronger.
Here's a clue for Paramount; make us care about the major characters, kill one/some of them off, and then keep them dead .
Is this necessary? Nope. Yet, of each of the shows above, only Lexx -- an un-ST like show if there ever was -- hasn't killed off a major character perminately. If they aren't even going to try to get beyond the ST formula, I'd hope that they wouldn't even try.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Nice idea, but I always thought that Star Trek (the entire franchise) in all of it's incarnations, was about teamwork . It's always been about people coming together to get the job done. Regardless of color, creed, religion, etc. This is what I always loved about it. The super hero's you speak of were all flawed in some way and could not get the job done without the entire team. Everyone contributed.
Spock (my personal favorite) had superior strength and intellect, but at times he was too logical. This was his "achilles heel". Data, was much the same.
Capt.'s Kirk, Picard, and Janeway (pardon me forgetting the DS9 captain's name...didn't really watch it) were the leaders that pulled together the strengths of the team to get the job done, often in the most harrowing of circumstances.
So, I think you are right about the hero part, just not the super hero part. All of the characters were hero's in their own way. They all braved the "unknown" and faced their worst fears.
This is heroism.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
No kidding. Remember the pilot of TNG? Remember Jordi strolling onto the set and exclaiming "Hoooo-eee!" He only needed bib overalls and a stalk of hay in his mouth to complete the image.
Agonizing to look back upon, but the show improved drastically and quickly.
(Oh god - rereading this post, I've come to realize... I AM a geek! ;)
I love it. See Star Trek in all it's forms is really a peice of art. Normal shows aren't because at the end of the show everyone talks and they've basically all see the same movie. The interpretation will be identical. True art gets interpreted differently by each individual viewer based on something inside the viewer that the piece of art speaks to. I've heard the interpretation of Star Trek described as "Self, EGO, ID (Freud)", "the three stooges", "racism", "team work (the three muskateers)", "hero worship", "morality play", "wwf".... I think it's hilarious how many different ways people can interpret and read things into the Star Trek franchise. Of course there are the people who can't just leave things at entertainment value and who must always search for "the deeper meaning". And of course sometimes there is a purposeful "deeper meaning".
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Who says? We know the US wasn't completely destroyed, and in "The Voyage Home" Kirk doesn't say "I'm from North America", he says "I'm from Iowa."
:> )
But that doesn't nessaccarily mean anything. A united Germany citizen, a soviet East German, a pre WWII german citizen and a pre german unification Prussian could have all said "I'm from Berlin". It wouldn't mean the idea of prussian nationality would be relevant in 2001.
There may be a United Earth, but the US would certainly have been a major player in creating it, and a major source of it's early funding.
Thats just ego talking. The US could have been shattered into multiple warring states and had several of them break and reunite between the start of the alternate Star Trek time line and the start of the federation. Its like a British citizen durring colonial times contemplating the idea of a future UN like body and saying "The British Empire would certainly be a major player in creating it and a major source of its funding...." not thinking that by the time such a thing came to pass, large chunks of what they now think of as the British Empire would never dream of calling themselves Brits. (though they would still say "I'm from Pennsylvania".
I should really be doing something more constructive with my brain....
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Also saw it premiere last night in Calgary, Alberta. Would like to see it again but do not get UPN.
As always, it's hard to tell from the premiere how the show will turn out. When I think back to the original Star Trek and to Next Generation, the early shows turn out, in reptrosect, to look terribly unpolished compared to later episodes.
I was not much into Next Generation until well into the second year but episodes in later years turned out to be some of the finest television ever, as was true of the original series.
The key to the success of Enterprise will be the acting (especially the development of the characters) and what social commentary the producers can weave into the episodes - why I like the original series so much even to this day. That is why(the original) Star Trek and Next Generation were so "successful" and that other shows much less so.
As for the comments re the "latest" Enterprise looking too streamlined and developed, chalk that up to advances in production. It's hard to go backwards once each new standard is set.
Overall rating: has potential and only time (and good writing) will tell. Good start though and Bakula is an enlightened choice.
A hint: check out the pictures hanging on the wall behind Bakula in one or two scenes.
Final comment about our newest Vulcan: what a rack!
"worst... episode... ever"
It's as if
somebody wanted to make a movie about the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, but lacking any pre-World-War-II
battleships
Amusingly, the real Aegis missile cruiser design was originally criticized on the grounds that it didn't have enough weapons showing. Aegis ships use a vertical launch system, nothing of which is visible except a small hatch on the deck. No bristling missile launchers like USSR ships of that era. Members of Congress actually berated the Navy about this.
The same thing happened with submarines in the 1950s. There was considerable resistance to building submarines that looked like bland cylinders. Nautilus, the first nuclear sub, still had a destroyerlike deck. All later US Navy subs, though, were dull, boring, but effective tubes.
In battleships, the most attractive design ever was the streamlined Yamato of WWII. The designers claimed that the streamlining was to keep the shock waves from the 18-inch guns from damaging the ship. The Yamato, like most WWII battleships, didn't accomplish much militarily, and was sunk by aircraft in 1945.
Once a technology is far enough along that
a broad range of workable designs are possible,
there's no obvious correlation between a finished-looking design and when the artifact was built.
Look at rockets. The V-2 was the most nicely shaped rocket ever built. Since then, rockets are almost always simple tubes. But look at the Space Shuttle at launch, the wierdest collection of big shapes ever to fly.
It's refreshing that when someone shares his opinion honestly and succinctly, people here are too darned dense and pre-wired to call it a troll.
(Note to moderator: this isn't a troll. It's flamebait.)
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
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Its ficition, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief. They changed the klingon's appearance and everyone survived that and manage to put that great sudden anatomical shift out of mind. Its about the story.
Unfortunately, it is about the story, and while TOS looks primative from todays standards the storys were actually quite good, and if not good, at least somewhat unique. TNG and Voyager were just pathetic in their reliance on the same tired plot devices and spending nearly all their time explaining why they couldn't do somehting that we had seen their technology easily over come in the past.
Maybe this one will bring back some interesting stories. I'm pessimistic though, I loath time travel stories, at least those that aren't done "right", Voyager never did them right.