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.

Comments

Re:Star Trek is about Superheros...

[Dark Paladin]

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.

Re:Star Trek is about Superheros...

[moonboy]

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.

Interpretive Dance

[nhavar]

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".

Re:Baseball hats?

[KahunaBurger]

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