Star Trek: Enterprise Reactions?

So, what did you think of it? The theme song has to go. Commander Tucker ("Kumanduh Tuckah") needs to get a personality other than "he'll be just like McCoy, only clumsy and stupid". Is it really necessary to rehash "cold emotionless Vulcans vs. thoughtless, reckless humans"? That plot device was old thirty years ago and it's physically painful to watch now. How can armor plating go "offline"? Electromagnetic shields maybe, but one of the virtues of a hunk of steel is that it doesn't go "offline". And what's with the soft porn? I was waiting for the bow-chicka-bow-wow music to kick in. CT: I didn't get to see it! I don't get UPN! Curses!

Comments

... one in every crowd.

[cookiej]

Does anyone remember the "Encounter at Space JellyfishLand (er, Farpoint)" that was the pilot of TNG?

Personally, I thought it was EXCELLENT for a pilot. The show will get its legs--let it happen and enjoy what you can while it does. Or just watch Andromeda.

Always looking to pick. Lighten up, dude.

Blatant Fanservice... Not that I mind

[Bonker]

Looks like Paramount is still trying to grab viewwers by their gonads. I know that I was certainly paying close attention to the 'disinfection' scene where the guy got to rub gelatin all over the scantily-clad vulcan girl.

Still, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of prejudice, intolerance and violence. This show definitely played a lot like an old TOS show. It was quite a refreshing change of pace from Voyager and TNG's 'moral issue of the week' approach.

Reaction

[CtrlPhreak]

I liked scott as the captain. The rehash of the standard trek technology into older, original types is interesting. My first reaction was that the theme song just plain sucked. The intro images fits in with the overall theme nicely. I think it has some problems, all mentioned in the story, but it has promise. When did kingons and humans start hating each other? I know they had to meet first, but throughout the original series, they were the above all enemies. I'm going to keep on watching it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. It wasn't the series premiere that I'd hoped for. My fav premiere is still TNG one, great characters, great story, with a good twist.

Trek seems to be de-evolving into soft porn. From 7of9, we all know what the whole point of her character was, now to this. It doesn't really fit into the series about exploration and discovery. I don't know, do we really need it? (after all, what's the internet here for anyway?)

The recent broadcast

[Migelikor1]

I kinda liked the show, keeping in mind that its a pilot. It had a bunch of good qualities:
No universal translators-Hooray, a realistic look at meeting strangers...they're strange!
No ridiculous premise-phew...they haven't been warped to a far off dimension, a la the worst trek of all. They're just explorers, trying to prove themselves.
They aren't invincible-There doesn't need to be mind control or some wacky technology to disable the Enterprise ( like in STTNG) it gets pounded, because, frankly, it's not that good.
There is potential for some ongoing plot lines, like the best of DS9. If the show is done right, there will be diplomatic issues w/ the Klingons. (the whole encoded information in genes, conspiracy thing)
On the other hand, there are a few annoying bits:
I didn't like the vulcan. She wasn't even hot enough to fill the 7/9 spot. The just bugged me, like a really dumb spock. At least the original pointy ears respected the humans.
There wasn't a lot of character development, but hopefully that will come with time.

Anyway, I'd tune in to the next few episodes to see if the problems go away.

I think this series has a shot at being Good.

[LordZardoz]

The new series is quite different from the other Star Trek series in many ways. And I will say that it is a good thing. They did quite a few things right.

First, the technology was appropriate to the timeframe. The ship has a maximum speed of about Warp 4. The warp core looks primitive. The medical techniques look primitive. There is no universal translater, just a linguist.

Another element they got right was the distrust between the Vulcans and Humans. Some posters have already complained about the rehashing of the "Emotionless Vulcans vs Irrational Humans". That will be a factor, but the issue is larger then that. The distrust between the two races goes beyond the emotion vs logic debate. The humans see the Vulcans as being restrictive and patronizing. And the Vulcans are somewhat racist. The role of the Vulcans is very close to that of a colonizing authority as in the British of the 18th century. An intresting side effect is that the humans are currently in the role of one of the many background races that really does not matter in the greater scheme of things.

They will have to be careful though if they wish to do better the Voyager did. They cannot fall back too often on "Sexy Exotic Alien Softcore" before they alienate too many long time fans. And the temporal villians are something else to be cautious with. It will allow the series to explain some deviations in continuity, but they must avoid breaking all continuity with the other series.

This pilot was stronger then the TNG and DS9 pilots. And Trek shows tend to take a while to 'hit their stride'. It will be a few weeks before I come to a conclusion, but the series is off to a good start.

END COMMUNICATION

I Loved It

[Chris Y Taylor]

Quite Simply,

I loved it.

I thought the Theme Song was touching.

I liked the vague familiarity of the "Country Doctor" and the Vulcan Science Officer.

I liked the spaceship that "felt" like a spaceship instead of a luxury hotel.

I liked the feeling of an impatient humanity that was well conveyed.

I liked the new translator chic who looks like she can scream better than Chekov could (and that says a lot).

I do wonder why the exposed crew didn't have to decon their "private areas," or will they just be sick in a few weeks as a result of their modesty. (No, UPN didn't have to show it but I would have liked them to have implied it at least.)

Well, let's see here...

[Pollux]

The essentials of a good Star Trek:

Theme Song: Sucked. Come on, I need the orchestra with the powerful brass about ready to blow my ear drums away. Something new. Not some recycled theme song written by a recycled band.

Ship: Nice design, though I honestly want to just have someone on the show explain why they picked that design for Star Fleet (circular disk, engines in the rear). If this is their first big star-ship, then at least tell me why they built it the way they did.

Crew: Interesting, but I was hoping for at least a little bit more of a clash between everyone's feelings toward each other. They all get along like compadres. Even the Vulcan science officer had little trouble getting along with the captain. Half of the storylines in Original Series/TNG/DS9 were about clashes between the crew. There's also little racial difference between them all. I mean, they're all Americanized people. At least Czechov had an accent.

Crew Chemistry: Gee, am I detecting a resurected Kirk/McCoy relationship in the captain and his science officer? At least McCoy knew when to add "colorful metaphors" when they were needed. It seems like Bacula just doesn't get the timing right (perhaps he could use some guidance from the South Park writers...can you imagine him yelling out to his crew, "Kick Ass!", and "Respect my Authorita!" to the Klingons?).
Storyline: Wait, there was a storyline I had to follow? Sorry...I had too many images of rubbing petroleum jelly all over some hot woman's back and behind. Ever since I saw some peculiar protrusions thrusting out of the Vulcan's undershirt I lost all sense of storyline.

Hot chick: Well, at least they got one thing right. Ever since Councelor Troi, this has been an absolute must. Voyager got it right in the second half of their run with Seven. At least they were able to keep some of my attention off the storyline and on the Jolene Blalock.

All in all: give me about a month to see if they can go somewhere with their setup. They've put in some good potential, and I'd like to see something come of it. But the key I would say is that Bacula has GOT to get an edge. Come on...Kirk, Sisqo, Picard, and Janeway all had veins popping out of their foreheads at one time or another in the show. Bacula's gotta do his part as well to continue the captain's legacy.

Forget it, some of them weren't listening...

[Midnight Ryder]

Second, didn't anyone else hear them say, "Polarize the hull plates!"? It's not the steel that's offline, but the polarization (early shield technology?) that was breaking down.

Forget it. Yer wasting your breath - some of the first people to start slammin' it were people who didn't really care in the first place. Some just WANT to hate this Trek as much as they hated Voyager (And, can ya blame 'em after that damned show? It almost got decent in the last season. Almost.) I heard exactly the same thing you did. So did everyone else, but some just gotta have something to bitch about.

Remember how it was supposedly the Vulcans that made First Contact with Earth after the first warp drive test? From the bit I saw (missed the first 1/2 hour :-/), it's the primitive race (Humans) chaifing under to tutalige of the advanced race (Vulcans). Not sure how much they'l be able to stretch out of that one, but it might make for some fresh material.

I agree - it's a much different perspective on things than the normal Trek setting for the last 3 shows where Humans and Vulcans are considered 'equal'. Plus, I see something very cool about this - while the Vulcans seem to have tried to protect us from ourselves based on what we've seen so far, we aren't beyond going off half cocked, and really screwing things up. I really expect to see this happen a couple of times within the series.

The other thing I see comming is how the Prime Directive finally gets created. So far, it doesn't exist. Humans can't really understand how come the Vulcans would hold back technology from us. We finally break free of the yoke somewhat, and go out on our own. Eventually, we're gonna find another species that is SO CLOSE to making it to warp technolgy, and we'll hand it to them. Then watch them have it blow up in thier face (yes, there was a Voyager a bit like that in the last season. One of the few almost likable episodes, but, it was too easily resolved for my tastes. Like most Voyager episodes. A hangnail is more of a problem than most of thier moral delimas.) After we see that happen, we'll probably start to understand the Vulcan mindset concerning the subject, and the Prime Directive will eventually created.

If fact, that Humans CAN and WILL totally screw up from time to time in this show is going to be one of my favorite things about it. 'Bout time we show ourselves for what we really are - flawed beings, who learn to adapt and overcome our problems eventually. (Ok, that's the rose colored glasses version ;-)

JTK is back in town

[Tetsujin28]

Let's see...

Getting kissed by alien hotties...

Running, two-gun Western-style shoot-outs...

Caution-be-damned attitude...

Oh, yes -- Jim Kirk is back!

(Now they just need to build a decent show around him...but I think they're on their way.)

Re:Real treckers...

[dragons_flight]

We have a time traveling bad guy providing tech (some reports say 29th century alternate universe), and you expect time line consistency?

Oh, come now.

Re:Spoiler-tastic

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I have scoured the internet for weeks looking for the answer to the age old question "What really happened to the Klingons between TOS and TNG which changed their appearance from white looking guys with shoe polish on their face to the full decorated Worf that you see today?" I have finally found the answer all of us seek! Apparently, somewhere between 1950 and 1990, new prostetic latex make-up technology was invented that allowed more complex make-up than a pair of simple "spock ears" to be created. Apparently, this new technology was used to give the Klingons a better look. To tie it all together when Worf went back to the space station which "The Trouble With Tribbles" took place, the writers of DS9 decided to put in a little joke which was very funny at the time. Now, it's seen as some kind of huge conspiracy. Well, I'm here to tell you folks... there's nothing to see here, it's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors and you should think of the racist white Klingons of TOS to just be the Klingons you see today except with more make-up.

Trapped by the canon

[maggard]

Y'know, I kinda feel bad for the Enterprise writers. They've got 5 TV series, 9 movies, a cartoon, who knows how many books plus guides and manuals and even language dictionaries out there with every ST-fanatic just drooling to be the first to catch an error.

Get over it. It's a TV show, not a coding textbook. Yes there will be inconsistencies and errors and who knows what else. Sometimes they're done for dramatic effect ("whoosh" sounds in space), sometimes they're done for convenience (ships always being shown upright 'cause it's too hard to explain to Uncle Vern why it's not *really* upside-down) and sometimes they just screw up. Or an author screwed up years ago. Or they're screwing with continuity on purpose and this will all make sense later.

Whatever the case for a premier episode it wasn't half bad. As many others have pointed out it's no worse then most other TV shows premier episodes and certianly not worse then any other ST's premier episode.

They've established the characters, given us a couple of directions for dramatic tension, showed off the fancy new (old) hardware and apparently started their first big plotline. Not bad for one show.

Sure we can all wonder if this is going to rise up to the best of the past or suck out loud like Voyager. As many others have pointed out that all of the series and movies and books and whatnot have had good stuff sprinkled amongst a lot of clunkers. Now the question is how will this new team and cast and direction play out and it's really unfair to judge from just one episode, particularly the first.

So enough nice-talk, my own opinions:

• Loose the "Felicity" music. Get something that won't date *quite* so fast.
• Enough with every race having weird ears and bad noses. CGI, puppetry and the popular imagination are good enough we can have a few more "Horta" races. There was a hint that the next destination will be non-humanoid, hoorah!
• I like that the new Dr. is a bit bizarre. Aliens *should* be, well, at least a bit alien. I don't get the direction of thought of many SE Asians or E. Europeans right off; the thought processes of an alien should be a lot harder.
• If they're going to go the morality play route then at least be bold about it, no more of these covert "the gay episode" where if there is any subtext it's so buried to be meaningless. Stand up for *something* - DS9 could've gone some interesting places with the issues of refugees and occupation and such but backed off and eventually just diluted it into oblivion.
• Loose the softcore porn. I'm absolutely no prude but the jello-wrestling bit did nothing to move the story forward, the plot point could have happened anywhere else a lot more effectively. Play up the sexual tensions on the ship (close quarters, lots of stress, different cultures, different species, different cues & values etc.) if they want but make them part of something, not just there to get the boys all horny.
• Finally, and this is something that Voyager finally did start to get right (if only out of desperation): Add some background characters. The person who always answers hails to Starfleet, the maintenance person usually polishing the decks late at night, the cranky supply depot supervisor who likes alien trinkets in return for good service, the flack from Starfleet PR constantly trying to hype & spin Enterprises missions, whatever. Give these folks a bit of a world to live in, not just the same faces doing *everything*.

Anyway, I'll hold my judgement for a few more episodes. At least the premier wasn't awful even though it wasn't great either. Heres to hope...

what a bunch of whiny bitches

[argStyopa]

Fer chrissakes. "Hi there, we're the /. crowd, and we have the patience of a mayfly..."

"There wasn't any character development" : hey guys, this was a PILOT. Few pilots develop much characterwise, they have too much expositional ground to cover. Two hours is what, 80 pages of script? How much "development" can you cram into that without forcing it, AND still have time to show all the neato-whiz-bang special effects for which the series is famed? (And remember, they ARE trying to build a ~new~ audience, not just attract the old. The old will keep coming to con's and buying rubber vulcan ears forever.)

"How does armor plate go offline?" SOMEbody wasn't listening when they said that the armor POLARIZATION had gone off line. 1) At least in the NCC1701 a great deal of the hull stability was imparted by gravitic and other (insert pseudo-physics handwaving) fields. Assuming something has to assist normal matter holding together at 4.5 times the speed of light, yeah, I guess that would make sense. 2) Alternately, (insert more pseudo-physics handwaving) one could postulate that the "armor" was an ultradense iron/coherent molecules/whatever the heck - something that required a charge and computer support to dynamically resist damage. Whatever, it's nit picking.

I thought the pilot was decent. Bakula was (if I may mix genres) a physical Sean Connery-esque to Picard's Roger Moore-ish distance. I thought, yes, some of the supporting roles were pretty forced. But then again, I *remember* Encounter at Farpoint - a truly crappy pilot. Ship's Counsellor? What, a ship's prostitute in the future? And remember, Riker and Troi could communicate telpathically? That was dumped pretty quickly. And who can forget the Naked Now (episode 2) where writers (apparently already grasping at plot straws) reverted to the old saw of "everyone acting opposite" which would have been a lot better if we had more than caricature opinions of what their personalities WERE in the first place!
ST:NG took FIVE SEASONS to come up with ep's like "The Inner Light" - DS:9 royally sucked the first 2 years (fortunate, since I preferred watching B5 anyway...which ALSO took at least a few episodes to find it's feet).

The only two gripes I've seen that are valid IMO are the gratuitous slathering scene (not unappreciated, but pretty obvious. My god, no wonder we like the Vulcans!) and the points about putting spoiler comments on the front page before it aired. Rather provincial mistake, really.

The rest of you, cripes, give it a season or two. Let some of the characters' personalities gell a little, and let some chemistry develop. They may even change the theme music. I think it was a fine pilot, given the circumstances, no matter how "disappointed" some /.'s are from over-pumped expectations.

STFAYFM

[tcc]

If you don't want to get spoiling, why the heck do you continue reading after "tonight's enterprise episode, first reactions" ? I don't get it, why do people bitch about that, you KNOW what's comming.... I didn't see the episode *I* wanted to see people's reaction, so I am happy about it, if I wouldn't want to read anything about it, I'd just skip it.

Bitching for bitching is lame, okay bitching against the people bitching isn't any better, but can someone actually explain in a Vulcan way (logic heh) what's the problem with that?

sheesh :)

oh and the letters in the topic are for your own imagination, you probably guessed the F right though :)

Re:The Vulcan Chick - Link

[kilgore_47]

Am I the only onwe that thinks it's kinda of sad that this got +5, iformative?

Quite possibly. I can't think why anyone else would find it sad that link to pictures of the hot chick from the new star trek serries got modded informative.

I was informed. How is that sad? Surely pictures of Jolene Blalock aren't sad!

Re:Spoiler-tastic

[jx100]

Actually, this guy is getting the idea right, but the facts wrong. The incident Bonker is referring to happened on the episode on TNG where another culture (the ones with the unseparated digits) were about to obtain warp capability, when one of the federation "spies" (Riker) is caught after an accident.

In the episode, Picard refers to the first contact with Klingons as with the Federation making first contact(when the Klingons attained Warp drive) , and that the Fed. didn't know anything about their culture. He also says that if they had implanted spies like Riker, then first contact would've gone much smoother.

Re:What a piece of crap -- TOS was different

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, "Star Trek" will always mean the original TV series. It was the 1960's for bleeps sake. In a time of pervasive and official racism, it had a mixed race crew. In a time of women viewed as weak, unskilled, and happy housewives, it had competent women (though the fight to have a female command officer was lost). In a time of "no open mouth kiss" prudishness, it aggressively pushed the envelope. In a time of sliderules, binoculars, and suitcase-sized reel-to-reel tape recorders, it had tricorders. In a time of punched cards, it had voice recognition and (albeit experimental and nasty) human-equivalent AI.

It inspired people. It infuriated people. Diplomats complained and complemented. People cared. It mattered.

"Enterprise" will be followed in my area by Chicago(?) police officers blowing up the local bad-guy aliens. If Voyager and the first episode are any guides, it will be a toss-up which will be more socially and technologically intriguing. The aliens will have less variety than one finds among humans in downtown LA. The technology... will look like an inspired 1960's vision of the future. This seems so very sad.

Might one do another "Star Trek" today? The original required continuously fighting the network suits, and spending through the nose for the special effects needed just to make every-day surroundings work. So "the studio _is_ the network" doesn't help. I fuzzily recall the DS9 director(?) saying some of his interesting stuff was only possible because the suits were off focused on Voyager. Voyager. I could live with moralizing, but it would be nice to get at least "harassed at airport" level thought behind it, rather than say "drunk homeless person" rantings. Ah well. But imagine, what would a new ST look like? Assuming the same basic "socially-and-technically-inspired cowboys in space" telling somewhat thoughtful stories?

Well, you need someone who can tell stories. West Wing has what's-his-name. TOS had several people. As for the social and technical...

Start anywhere. Dynamic organization rather than rigid hierarchy. A tight team acting as one, rather than "we run our sub with 18-year olds, so everything is explicit and verbose". A cast of people with deep and varied skills, rather than a couple of "I can do everything"s. People with intelligence, insight and wisdom, who make you think "gosh, what a neat perspective", rather than "god, how mindlessly stupid". Communication, coordination, planning, politics.

Walk the taboos - nudity, physical contact, backrubs, grooming, sex, social groupings, marriage, appearance. Religion - discussion of, high-profile belief in, disbelief. Push the envelope on race, class, caste, age young and old, pretty and ugly, fit and not, intelligence exceptional and impaired. Our changing humanness - delegating intelligence to the environment, genetic mods, non-biological component integration, symbiots.

Technically, if it is already being prototyped now, it's pretty silly to ignore it. Pervasive computing. Intelligence augmentation. Pervasive robotics, varied and autonomous, and active environments. Wide-band user interfaces with gesture, voice, VR, holography, force feedback, face and tone interpretation, task understanding, etc. Walk though the MIT Media Lab, and grab everything interesting. Read DARPA's current request for proposals.

Yes it would require work. Just doing zero-g in a shirt sleeve environment is a big pain. But it doesn't seem like ST is even trying any more. Perhaps that's ok, and Paramount is just mining out the last interest in a 1960's vision. I saw someone argue that the only problem with Voyager was that DS9 existed, which "divided the demographic". Perhaps. But that's not why I don't think of it as Star Trek. We can do better. Yes?

(Hmm, Neptune in 10 minutes means a light-hour per minute, so about a light-year per week. I hope they brought board games.)

"Out there"

[mikosullivan]

I agree. An aspect of this series I like is that they are "out there" exploring strange new worlds (and new civilisations, etc). My biggest complaint about ST:TNG was that they seemed to be flying a shopping mall around the neighborhood, not roughing it out there in unexplored space. Even Voyager, which should have been "out there" spent a huge part of the series in their own little world dealing with computer glitches taking over the ship.

As for the soft porn, the original show wasn't exactly lacking that either. What straight male over thirty hasn't had fond thoughts of the green chick in The Menagerie? That was racy stuff back then. The difference is that Menagerie and the rest of the original series had some class. They didn't just say "OK, how are we gonna get them naked? How about a disinfectant scene where they 'have' to rub each other down?"

Enterprise seems to have recaptured the spirit of the original show, if not the intelligence and class.

Time Travel has that kind of effect

[FreeUser]

Let's see. Several "watershed" events have been mucked with and subtly (or not so subtly) altered by time travelling Feds.

Commander Cisco in the Mid 21st had to usurp the role of a historical figure after said figure was killed defending him in a random street brawl. While he got history back on track, clearly it wasn't perfectly back on track, something Star Fleet noticed (his picture in the history books) and had some pointed questions about.

Captain Piccard and the Borg mucked with humans' first contact with vulcans, and while they were able to get out of the way (for the most part) and let history take its course once the Borg were defeated, it is likely some residue of the battle(s) would have been noticed by the vulcans' science sensors. This could well have led to vulcans being more cautious in their dealings with humans, delaying our exuberant expansion into space and perhaps preventing some of the historical mistakes in the original timeline, such as the Romulan Wars and the botched Klingon first contact (and resulting war).

Of course, the new timeline would encounter all kinds of new mistakes not present in the original history.

An interesting subject for late-night beer-soaked conversation fodder is the resiliance of the timeline, that despite historical changes (some significant) the timeline restores itself in large part. But, like any natural chaotic system, there are points where minor changes can have radical, irrevocable changes that completely alter the timeline, while other areas exhibit more stability and even major changes have relatively little long term effect on the historical outcome.

Theories might include the futility of killing hitler because social inertia would have led to the holocaust in any event (perhaps even under a different historical figure named hitler, as the last name was very common in Germany at the time), versus the idea of bumping into hitler in a cafe in Vienna years earlier, causing him to miss a fateful confrontation with a Jewish merchant that would solidified his anti-semetic attitudes and preventing an entire world war through a simple change in timing.

Extreme stability ("fate") vs. extreme instability. Of course, I think the most interesting theories of time travel involve a combination of the two, reflective of other chaotic systems known in nature where, under the right conditions and at the right time, a butterfly's wings can effect distant weather but under other conditions or times no amount of effort can have any effect on the advance of a storm. Some moments in history are as fragile as a soap bubble, while others as resiliant as bungie cord.

Of course, the advantage of such a hybrid theory of temporal mechanics (semi-chaotic temporal systems) is that it gives radical poetic license to writers of shows like star trek, and allows numerous consistency errors to correct themselves. :-)

Re:It's not a family show anymore

[SuiteSisterMary]

Your five year old boy can't watch two clothed beings applying bengay to each other?

Re:Reaction

[bughunter]

Trek seems to be de-evolving into soft porn

Gee - how come everyone seems to have forgotten how much T and A there was in TOS? There were silicone enhanced babes on every planet, and except for token episodes for the rest of the cast, Kirk all but fornicated with them every week.

I remember reading The Making of Star Trek as a teen, and I am reminded of the part about how the TOS producers and NBC censors were continually arguing about how far they could go. In fact there was one particular passage about how NBC had a rule that you could not show the underside of a breast, as if they thought moss grew under there or something.