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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!
For anyone lacking UPN affliliates.
Quantuum Leap? Where was Al throughout the whole show. Kinda disappointed me. And he only did the leap thing once. Oh well.
Maybe you should wait until everyone in the US has had a chance to watch it Mr. Eastern Standard Time. :-P
-Jayde
What's a sig?
I am going to give it a few more weeks before I give it real judgement. The Enterprise's deisgn was pretty cool looking from the outside, imho.
:-)
Oh, the Vulcan chick is hot
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
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.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I was just thinking it was high time we had rednecks like Tuckah in space :-) yeeeeehaw!
Where are the links? I have never even heard about Star Trek:Enterprise. I use to love Star Trek: The Next Generation (in fact, in a TV song identification contest, I guessed it's theme song from the first couple seconds of rumbling). Since then I haven't been impressed by the Star Trek series. So does anyone have any information (aka links) that explain what Michael is talking about?
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Wow, Michael. Could you post a few more spoilers on the top of the front page? I don't think there are enough.
Seriously. Not everyone watched or even *could* watch Enterprise tonight. You could have at least had the courtesy to hide the spoilers "under the fold", so to speak.
Now, for my opinion (some spoiler content).
It looks good as far as a stand-alone show is concerned. But it seems to break from the "known" Star Trek history, as described by the other shows and movies (not books and fanfic). For instance, we're looking at the later appearance of the Klingons, when Worf told us that something happened to change their appearance that "we don't like to talk about". And Picard told us that the war with the Klingons was sparked by a botched first contact with them. But that contact didn't seem to be botched.
I'm a little disappointed with how contrived the disinfectant scene was. And the way the camera paused during it was just silly. And Archer's whole thing with staying on the station after he set the maglock charge was pointless. First, it should have been longer than 5 seconds. Second, there was noone shooting at him, so there wasn't really a reason to set it and stand there, rather than setting it and running.
I think I'll wait for a couple more episodes to reevaluate that and see if I really care about this series. As it is, I can take it or leave it.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
C'mon people.
Star Trek: The Original: First season
-Wooden acting, hokey stories, lotsa work to be done.
Star Trek: TNG: First Season
-Wooden acting, hokey stories, lotsa work to be done (just watch some of them fer chrissakes!).
DS9: First Season:
-Wooden acting, hokey stories, lotsa work to be done.
Voyager: First season (and second, and third...)
-Wooden acting, hokey stories, lotsa work to be done.
Give the series a little time to put down some roots.
Sheesh.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Christ almighty, can we at least wait until the damn thing has AIRED on the west coast? It doesn't start for twenty minutes over here.
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.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
They just _had_ to trot out the temporal crap in the pilot episode. Why couldn't they have waited 'til the 3rd season when the writers run out of new ideas.
Not as gritty as I would have liked either.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
Here's the original subject that Slashdot's "Lameness filter" censored:
1950 meets 2001 meets 2150
We knew it would be a problem, and it's interesting to see it play out on the screen. Humans have achieved world peace, yet captains and admirals are all white males. Computers have speech capability, yet voice-activation is not yet invented. And, of course what we all expected -- no gender-neutral language yet.
One thing some sci-fi especially books has done is not sugar coat things. Sometimes you have to be almost naked when doing screwy things like decontamination. Star Trek has always stayed away from it until recently with 7 of 9 in Voyager and Enterprise. I believe that it's more realistic to show stuff like this. I don't mean pure soft core (fully naked), but stuff like in this scene. I don't believe it will be a weekly occurance in any event.
:)
;) ). I know, but man I didn't know Vulcans could look that good! ;)
The theme song....well, it's better then most other tv shows, but PALES when you compare it to DS9 or Voyager or any other Star Trek. Also, I feel there's too much past stuff being show in the opening sequence and not enough stuff from that 100 years since First Contact. Yeah the history is important, but not for this show. They need a different opening with more beauty shots of the NX-01.
Flashbacks to Archer's childhood were cool. Anyone get a load of the antigrav remote control plane he built? Cool eh?
I don't like to nitpick too much, but it's been added to my must see tv list!
One last thing...let me say this.....T'pol = Tent Pole! (had to be done
Gorkman
I was expecting the worst, so I was pleasantly surprised. The effects were good, but not overpowering, the acting was decent, the storyline was better than I thought, and the soft-porn was great, but I'd prefer to have seem some XXX live girl-on-girl action ... uh .. yeah it was ok.
They didn't completely screw up the time-travel angle (but I suppose there's lots of time for that), but it did strike me that it was awfully easy for them to accomplish their "mission" even though the "bad guys" had vastly superior technology and advanced genetics. I guess they forgot to advance their brians when they were going though their genetic engineering.
Anyhow I haven't seen Star Trek in years so I wasn't really sure what to expect (I've hardly seen Voyager for instance), but I thought it showed some promise. I think the best part about it is that it's not overly Star Trekky--this might make it appeal to a larger audience. It's no masterpiece, but for TV, I say it's pretty good.
- j
In general I agree. But this literally is the same team that brought us umpteen seasons of voyager drivel. Bad science, bad acting, bad plots, good tits (7 of 9). I like tits, sure, but I hoped for much more. Although it was a daring episode - space porn in prime time.
My cat can eat a whole watermelon
I thought it was best pilot of all the spin-offs - but no way does it compare to that great TOS pilot "The Cage"
A quick google search led me to this site.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
I did like how James Cromwell (Zephram Cochrane in "First Contact") had a cameo. Also, I liked how the sets were not lit as bright as the other series.
I did not like the wooden characters and paper plot, though to be fair many shows are guilty of that during their first seasons.
I got bored halfway through and ended up watching a West Wing repeat I had seen twice before. Maybe I'm getting old (I was six when TOS first aired) and I've grown out of the Trek demographic. The Vulcan was cute, but Janel Moloney (Donnatella Moss) rocks my happy world.
I'll probably give it another chance next summer when it's in reruns.
[OT] - I do not need a beer brewery or car company to tell me how to feel about 9/11/01, thankyouverymuch.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Apparently, the Borg aren't the only alien species with implants...
JMR
Speaking only for myself, as always.
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
It was a good beginning for the series. I think there is a lot of potential for the characters, The Dr in particular.
While I'm not sure where the 29th centure guy is going to go, or wht they'll do with him, it is a plot hook, and presumabily will develop into a story arch. Which is what everyone says they like.
The Jello scene did perhaps go a bit over the line, it serverd a usefull purpose in allowing the chracters to intereact.
Without it, you'd be asking "Why the hell didn't she take the ship and run. I thought Vulcans were logical."
I think you may be slamming it because your expectations were too high. It was good television, and good startrek.
There are some reviews of it at http://www.revolutionsf.com/article/441.html
Colin Davis
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?)
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
The sort of Indiana Jones/John Wayne/Han Solo attitude in the crew was refreshing - that's something that had been lost (and something that was fitting for the "maturity" of the human race at that point)
As far as the soft core porn, I had no problem with seeing that side of a Vulcan, and my non-geek g/f had no problem seeing a starship captain in his briefs.
I didn't like the science all that much. I got the sense that they had lost some of the knack for reality that we had gained during TNG, etc. For instance, the light of the phaser beam moved *much* slower in that communications room than the people in it. I didn't understand the whole shielding scheme either. It is very unlcear to me exactly what technologies they have and do not have. For instance, they have deflectors, transporters, anti-grav, and beam weapons - but don't yet have a tractor beam. I don't know if the physics of these are consistent or not. (What I mean is this: are any of these like having incadescent lights and not having figured out that you can use electricity for heaters)
I did like some of the "primative" touches. I liked the human linguist. I liked the "sweet-spot" in the ships anti grav unit.
once thing I'd like to know - do they have subspace communications? I assume that they do, but it was never mentioned, and on TNG they through around "subspace" the way people throw around "Action Item" in a corporation.
_sig_ is away
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.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
In my market it won't be on until Saturday evening. Check www.wfft.com and go to Saturday the 29th and you see it there on the schedule (yes UPN shows are actually run on the FOX network here). So to really be safe the article should not have any details about the commanders or anything. I want to find out about the characters for myself. I know movies don't come out the same time for everyone and Slashdot generally has kept the spoilers inside.
Jolene Blalock.
Zounds.
Damn this compression filter!
I bet this has nothing to do with the effects budget, and everything to do with not scrutinizing the work for inconsistencies with prior works. I don't think the same people are doing Star Trek that were 30 years ago, so it's really easy for obvious details to be forgotten. It happens all the time in series, such as Transformers the cartoon. It's kind of frustrating, although it causes a lot of interesting discussions (such as how Optimus Primes' trailer can disappear and reappear magically: some think transformers have some "container" in subspace where they can store stuff).
The blood is pink; just watch the opening few minutes of Star Trek 6 (I think it was 6; it's the one where Kirk get's framed for killing Klingons).
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
I swear, when that woman was on the radio it really really sounded like she said CmdrTaco.. /. reference?
Actually, leeches and maggots are proving to be among the best tools modern medicine has. Leeches are used in re-attachements of severed extremities to prevent clotting and maintain blood flow; and maggots are used for removing dead tissue. Both are better at those tasks than any artificial alternative yet devised. Still gross, though.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Ok, just got done with the viewing party I threw here at the house. Here's the general impressions of the group:
1) Yes, theme music was LAME, but the intro video was pretty cool.
2) Is it cold in that bio-decom room or something?
3) There were some good laughs.
4) The doctor is going to be a great character.
5) The whole Enterprise going to Kronos is a bit of a stretch. Majorly F's with the whole timeline of the other series'.
6) We all liked how they made it seem like this is the first time they've really gone away from Earth. Thing is, you'd think they had already been doing that with ships that could do less than Warp-5 and as a result would have at least met a FEW more species and learned stuff from them. It seems like the Vulcans hold a monopoly on information in this series.
7) The Speech by Cochran was LAME!
Now, in regards to what others have been posting...
We HAVE to re-hash the whole Human vs Vulcan thing because at the time of this series, it HASN'T HAPPENED YET!
The armor plating is polarized by an electromagnetic field to help repel particle weapons. As a result, yes, it CAN go down (ie, power failure). Then it's just plain old hunks of steel. So, this is basically the pre-cursor to shields.
I personally would have prefered it if they would have kept things fairly primitive and then over time phased in the technologies that we all know and love (like transporters, phasers, etc.) They more or less introduce all of them in the first episode (though, as we saw, they're all pretty new and not very reliable.)
Anyhow, just my $0.02
Like creating a starship named Enterprise prior to ToS and eliminating the United Earth Space Probe Authority of Captain Pike wasn't enough rewriting of Trek histroy, they give Klingon's lumpy heads as well... Figures...
Enterprise might get better...As for that theme song, shit, Rodenberry must be rolling over in his grave.
It sounded like Michael Bolton mated with John Denver.
Also, I like the sexy characters on Star Trek to be subtle. T'pel almost got drilled in the decontamination chamber. And those nipples...I mean, how long before they just get it over and have her spread her legs on TV?
I mean, I thought it was supposed to be Star Trek, not Forbidden Alien Poon-tang Quest.
Who did what now?
Personally I've only been somewhat of a trek fan throughout voyager and SOME of the movies.
:oD
And the captin struck me as a DUMBASS, I mean was anyone else feeling the urge to stand up and scream "NO DONT DO THAT! " or "Why are you going to do that, starfleet would be mega pissed!!!!"(which they weren't... that baffled me a bit)
For everyone who was dissin' the softcore porn... ta hell with yas! Theres nothing that a geek like myself enjoys more than a DAMN FINE, nekked alien!
This was better than most of the bull on tv this season (see love cruise), and I'll probably continue to watch it... hoping it'll get better.
Find Escorts, Strippers, Massage Parlours, Swingers
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
know when they are being hoodwinked.
+ "Phase pistols"? Stick with the laser pistol up till at least TOS, please.
+ A Vulcan, who has zero ties to Earth's Starfleet (no Federation) not only sits in the Captain's chair 15 minutes into the show, but takes command?
+ "Wading into space"? After WWIII and warp speed, we blasted off the planet. Most warp research was done on Alpha Centari (See TOS show with ZC and the Companion)
+ The last movie placed First Contact in circa 2063. This is 90 years later, 2153.
According the ST Encyclopedia, the Federation was founded by several planets in 2161, after the Romulan wars. Better get busy in order to fight and win a war with allies and enemies you haven't met in less than ten years!
+ I won't even talk about warp 5.
+ IDIC. What happened to Vulcan respect and tolerance and non-judgementalism?
If I got any of this wrong, say so. (Not that I have to worry...)
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
It was a completely different feel than the other series' I've liked (ie NextGen/DS9/Voyager). I thought on it, wondering what it was that made it so different than the others, and it came down to the exploration aspect. NextGen didn't really explore in the same way. They had the technology, they knew how to use it. There were few new concepts explored, only new ways of using the old concepts.
Enterprise seemed to me to be on a whole new level of exploration. Humans really haven't penetrated much of the galaxy. The best warp they can achieve is warp 4.5, transporters are for cargo only, phasers (phase pistols) are a new technology, no Universal Translater!. I could feel the sense of accomplishment they showed when talking about the "incredible" speeds the new ship could achieve. Everything's new.
My only disappointment was putting in a "temporal cold war" so early in the series. Time travel has been overused in the other series, and I had hoped that it would be used cautiously, if at all, in these archaic pre-Federation times. Ah well. All in all, I approve.
Last post!
<SPOILER>
I was a bit disappointed at how they moved the Star Trek franchise into the past. To me it was indistinguishable from Voyager except that they didn't have certain pieces of technology or knowledge. You can't get from Voyager to the original series just by removing knowledge and technology; there's more to it than that. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, and apparently neither could they.
There seemed to be just as many alien races hanging around as ever. I was expecting a smaller, more limited universe. Imagine if it was only the Vulcans and the Humans, and this is the episode where they meet the Klingons. Without all those other aliens, they might have to write a story that actually has something to do with the characters.
I liked the bit when they were trying to escape with the Klingon, and they couldn't understand each other. Nobody broke character, and yet you could tell they were all thoughtful, intelligent characters interacting in a genuine way. If only I could say that for the rest of the show.
Yes, the Bon Jovioid theme has to go. And for that decontamination scene, I provided my own bow-chicka-bow-wow music.
Normally I'd say give it some time, but the problem I see is that this premiere has already made the universe too big. That may be hard to fix.
</SPOILER>
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
How the bloody hell to you polarize a metal?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Well, the original (REAL!) series had a pretty cool pilot way back when.
This show had cheesy foreshadowing of stuff we all naturally know (phase pistols, that transporter device, etc.), plot holes you could drive a truck through, and some big historical inaccuracies.
But you know what? It was pretty damned good. Pilots always suck, and this one sucked less than most. It wasn't preachy, it wasn't deadly serious, and it has some great potential for ongoing subplots. (just why _do_ the humans and klingons become enemies?)
It's got more promise than any other new show going, and more than any other new Trek had. Let's give it some time to find its legs.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
More tits, or more plot?
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Well, you never know. Maybe the front plating is an advanced form of the explosive armor they use on some tanks and armored vehicles these days; by actually exploding outward, it further reduces the force of an incoming round or warhead directed inward. Maybe going "offline" means it needs to be recharged or reloaded.
Or, maybe this really IS a deflector shield, but not yet advanced enough to be projected out, so it's sort of a surface-effect thing still. Going offline means the same thing as losing shields.
Or, maybe I need to quit doing the work of the writers and expect them to explain their own gaping plot holes.
Soft Porn? I finally have a reason to watch this schlock.
BTW,
Trekies was on Showtime yesterday. I laughed my ass off.
mr.
By any chance did anyone catch the fact that the science officer (T'Pau) is (circa STOS) T'Pau of Vulcan (ie...basically the most important person on the planet at that time...leader of the the family that was Surak's (who was the prime leader in the Vulcan emotional detachment/peace movement)) I found it umm...most fascinating. :)
Wonder what other famous ppl besides T'Pau and Zephram Cochran we might see ? (or at least famous species...like Orion slave girls?...actually when I saw those reptiloid ladies eating the butterflies...I thought of the Orions...but they weren't green of course!
- This is the later Klingon look, but in TNG Worf says "something happened" to change the Klingons' appearance that they don't discuss. However, if there were originally two Klingon races, one with the "old" look and one with the new, maybe the old-style ones were forcibly changed to look like the others. Thus they (the formerly-old-style Klingons) would not like to talk about being forced to change their cultural identity.
- The first contact we have here might indeed be botched. We don't yet know. There might turn out to be something the Enterprise crew has done that the Klingons haven't found out about yet. Or maybe "first contact" is an ongoing event and this is just the first note of the movement.
- This Enterprise doesn't appear in Picard's set of models. But is it specifically stated that Picard's models are all the Enterprises? (I don't remember what ships exactly were included -- the carrier? the Space Shuttle? the wooden frigate?) Maybe he just had all the NCC-1701x Enterprises.
And I liked the theme. My favorite is still the Voyager intro (even though I never really liked the show) but this is a close second.
-- Old Man Kensey
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.)
I'm pretty sure they will get around to explaining this in the series. Worf's comment was clearly a "no comment" on the matter. I believe Roddenberry mentioned something about the Klingons seen on TOS being from a different part of Qo'nos... as they mentioned in this pilot the Klingons do have 80 dialects; it's conceivable that some of these dialects might be related to diverse "races" of Klingons. Some are wussy Klingons who wear chain mail, some are mean ones with big ridges and lots of sharp bladed weapons. And perhaps the "ridged" Klingons despise the "smooth" Klingons, which is why Worf didn't want to talk about it. Just wait for the episode when they say for certain, and then you'll know for sure. Until then even everything I said is speculation. :)
Roddenberry wanted wrinkly foreheads all along. He finally had the resources to when TNG and the movies came out. Suspension of disbelief--shouldn't sci-fi fans be pretty good at this??
Hate to go into drooling fanboy mode, but...based on the available evidence, they were wrinkly, then some at least were smooth, then they were all wrinkly again. Consider:
My guess? Some weird fashion for body modification grips the Klingon Empire in the 23rd century. By the time of the movies, it's as embarassing to them as that Mohawk haircut from 1985 is to today's 30 year old stockbroker.
Someone who's though about this much to much has a page here.
Or better: it's just a show, I probably should relax. :-)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well a quick search (PDF) actually turns up Methyl Oxide AKA Dimethyl Ether on the US Hazardous Materials list. It's a a clear, sweet-smelling, toxic and highly flammable gas (at room temp).
Nitrogen Sulfide isn't listed but I suspect that Nitrous sulfide might be a possible analog of nitrous oxide given the right conditions (S and O are both period 6 elements).
As strange as it is, it does suggest that they are trying to come up with real compounds. Might they even have competent technical advisers on staff? Time will tell.
I hoped for technology that was a bit clunkier than this. The medical technology was interesting but the ship is too advanced. Is the captain the only one who gets to have a dog? and a basket hound at that ...
Ok the science officer is hot. That's alright. I never minded Gates Mcfadden or the short skirts, hose and boots they wore on the first series.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
These are the lyrics to the theme song from the original series:
Beyond the rim of the starlight
My love is wandering in starflight
I know he'll find in star clustered reaches
Love strange, love a star woman teaches
I know his journey ends never
His star trek will go on forever
But tell him while he wanders his starry sea
Remember me, remember me.
Allegedly. (Sounds more like the Urusei Yatsura theme song to me. <--Proof I'm a dork.)
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
The theme song....well, it's better then most other tv shows, but PALES when you compare it to DS9 or Voyager or any other Star Trek. Also, I feel there's too much past stuff being show in the opening sequence and not enough stuff from that 100 years since First Contact. Yeah the history is important, but not for this show. They need a different opening with more beauty shots of the NX-01.
I liked the theme song. I'm not a huge Rod Stewart fan, but, it's a song that I've liked from before the series. I do think it matches the situation perfectly. However, I do hope that after the first season or so, they ditch it for something else instead (else, I'm gonna get reallllly sick of it. ;-) Something like B5's evolving intro would be nice over the next couple of seasons.
Anyway - the real point of my post. I did see where they were going with the intro, and it's pretty cool when you think about it. This series is supposed to be closer to where we are now, so, they show us a very very quick synopsis of how we got to where we are now, and showed something very pivitol from our currend day setting - the ISS being built, piece by piece. Then they show ISS being used as a launching platform for something that familiar to those of us who follow space development (and still familiar enough to those who don't, but have seen the shuttle.) From there, it's only three more images to the shot of the Enterprise flashing past the screen. They showed us how far we've come, and made it seem like that from this perspective, we've got a very short distance left to make it to where 'There' (the show) is. It's no longer deeply removed from us, like TNG or Voyager is.
And for the record - I hated Voyager. But I think this show is gonna friggin' ROCK when it gets past the first season!
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
1. What deodorant ad did they steal that theme song from?
2. The climax consisted of two guys wrasslin over a laser pistol. I was on the edge of my seat, weren't you?
3. I think Berman, when he named one of his characters "Seven of Nine", was making a secret reference to how he comes up with plotlines for episodes. This one was no different. "Uh, send them to that planet, and then they get shot at, and then one of them gets left behind, and then they have to risk the ship to save him. What shite! (Anybody who thinks I just did a spoiler is an idiot--every fucking Star Trek Episode since DS9 aired has been off the rack).
4. You can tell how even the producers knew how lame this witless show would be. It took Voyager something like 3 seasons before they were forced to haul in the plastic tits to save a dead show from cancellation. Here, they're not even going to bother to wait.
Studio Hack 1: "Hey Rick, nobody's going to watch this garbage."
Studio Hack 2: "Well, shit, Brannon. Lets just throw tits at them."
SH1: "OK, which astro-bimbo's sports bra are we going to fill with Play-Doh?"
SH2: "Well , shit, Brannon, why just one? Give em all tits--big ones!"
SH1: "Rick, I still don't think it's sexy enough."
SH2: "Well, shit, Brannon, put em in a decompression tank, strip em and... grease em down! Oh, and make sure you tell the camera man to pan over her ass a few times--slowly."
5. I'm sorry, but I don't watch Star Trek to see some himbo getting his hairy-ape legs greased down and then turning around so we get a profile of his Big Fat Boner.
6. They had the chance to get some really cool retro looking tech, and be inventive with how lame everything would have been. Instead, the tech on the show looks more advanced than The Original Series! Even the communicators were smaller than Kirk's! Now, I know there are people with cell phones smaller than these things, but couldn't they have come up with some kind of aesthetic response to this? Nope. "Get out the cookie cutter, we're makin a show here!"
7. No imagination, no initiative, no character, no invention. Mediocrity incarnate.
8. People will say: "wait till it gets its stride". Horseshit. These are the same people that were working on The Next Generation. They should know by know how to do one of these. The reason it sucked so bad was because they *DID* hit their stride--8 years ago. They've been in Recycle Mode ever since. It's not going to get any better. Its going to continue to suck in exactly the same way Voyager sucked for 7 years. If they couldn't come up with original characters, an original premise, or even some fresh conflict for the pilot freaking episode, then I have no hope.
Me, I refuse to give this pile of crap any more of my time.
Che Puzzo! Quel Fromage! What Tripe!
I don't recall why the Klingon was even on Earth. If he was trying to get his message back to his people, what was he doing on Earth? It seems that he would have had to go in the opposite direction to get to Earth.
Oh wait, I get it... it's the only way Bragga could setup the Human-Klingon link. Gotcha.
It occurs to me that depending on how you apply the "temporal civil war" you could use this to patch up a lot of continuity errors by simply throwing this series into an alternate timeline.
Personally I'd rather not see things go that way, but it does provide a solution to writers if they feel overburdened by the history of preceeding Treks.
Correct me if I'm wrong but... didn't Warp Drive come along as a result of contact with the Wyn from the Wyn Star Cluster? I read this in the old original Star Trek book series upon which alot of Star Trek the show was based. I believe it happened after the original NCC1701 was built in earth orbit and a few years before Captain Pike commanded the Enterprize.
Also, at this early date, the starships *SHOULD* have armor plating but no shields, just impulse and reaction engines, and pulse lasers.
I know that they had a wierd episode in ST-TNG where warp drive was supposedly created, we were recognised by the Vulcans and we narrowly escaped the BORG but... can't we keep a cohesive history and time line? I mean c'mon.
Oh well, I guess I can forgive them... they do have this fantastic looking Vulcan Blalock chick.
Codifex Maximus
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
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.
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.
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.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Could be. I know definitely I heard a lot of people trying to get "first contact".
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
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
.... oh i'm sorry were you saying something?
mmmmmm exploration
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
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 ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Except the soft porn. I agree, they should have gotten a Vulcan with real tits.
I was reminded of several ST episodes as well as Aliens and other movies. I think we should give it time to find its feet. What series isn't weak the first season?
If this is supposed to happen a century before the first ST, why is it more diverse?
Isn't it amazing how many inventions and new people, procedures, etc. all happen in such a small period of time?
- I like pudding.
While I have a mixed opinion of the title music, I do believe it's not nearly as bad as some are saying it is. Yes, its a dramatic change from what Trek (and SF in general has done), but I would argue that's not at all a bad thing. Much of Trek's rut can be attributed to the fact that Berman and Braga hadn't been willing to take risks when they should have.
In fact, with each viewing, the song and the images that go with it are starting to grow on me. I think the orchestration could have been a little better in some spots, but that's more a point of personal preference.
Don't whine that Star Trek never does anything new when the fanbase urinates itself every time they do something new and/or different. The song is a very upbeat piece that matches the visuals beautifully. Granted, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but some of the people I watched with thought it was something that makes the theme of exploration more accessible. The fact is, that's what Fast Forward was made for, but don't try to fault Berman and Braga for at least giving an attempt to change the nature of Trek for the new century.
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.)
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
The only thing more predicatable than that is that in the season cliffhanger we'll be finding out the guy in the temporal communication chamber was a Romulan. (Besides the fact that the architecture in the chamber was clearly Romulan, he had a Romulan siloutette, he talked like a Romulan, the Romulans and Klingons are generally known to not like each other, etc... etc... etc...)
Most of the people here would be saying the same things no matter what the episode was like. They had all these preconceptions and didn't even want to give the show a chance.
In my opinion, it was a great show. Paramount is trying to reach out to a broader spectrum here, the Star Trek franchise has been faltering as of late. Unfortunately "Star Trek" is so synonomous with geekiness and nerdom, mainstream acceptance is unlikely. Anyone else notice that the show has no mention of "Star Trek" it's just called "Enterprise." Also no cheesy re hash of the same opening sequence (no offense to TNG, it's my fav series).
This show looked really good. They are dealing with more human issues, and we are seeing the imperfectness and difficulty of space travel come out. There are some unrealistic things like I'd presume starfleet would have some trainings and protocol set for off ship expiditions, etc. I know it's only the beggining and picard's suggestion of the captain not leading away teams hasn't been implemented yet, but come on. This is Earth's first and only ship, the government and others should be watching it like a hawk and would probably have had very strict guidelines laid down.
All in all though, it seems very promising. Action, plot, suspense, drama, female teasing, all the great ingredients. We'll see how it goes. Anyone else besides me waiting for an "oh Boy" everytime something bad happened?
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
It's my understanding that the pink Klingon blood in Star Trek VI was used to avoid an 'R' rating from the MPAA. I believe that Klingon blood had been shown in a TNG episode prior to the move and it was red in there.
Of course, it's still confusing considering that 1) Their complexion should probably be different with blood of that colour and 2) McCoy specifically referred to their pink blood when he explained that he didn't know how to save the chancellor (or whatever his position was)
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
*Spoilers* (Just in case) :)
The dislike/prejudice between the Vulcans and Humans was well explained, and made quite a lot of sense as far as I was concerned. Actually did a lot for me... think it's good for there to be a bit of distrust/tension on the bridge.
Another thing I enjoyed was the Klingon, though mostly because it was the first. That's one of the nice things about this show... we get to see all the firsts. The first 'Phase Pistols' (read, phasers), the first time at Rigel-X, the first Klingon encounter, etc.
Personally I'm looking forward to seeing what alienates the Klingons and Starfleet (Though is it just me or did it sound like the Vulcan ambassador talking to the just-introduced aliens? Possibly it was, his interaction is discovered, and the Klinzhai find fault with Starfleet also since they're allies of the Vulcans? Hmmm...)
And people keep talking about the decon scene (Read: Shower scene). What purpose did it play? To show that the vulcan's stacked, that's why. Worked quite well too, as far as I was concerned.
But there was one thing that just absolutely bugged the crap out of me. That's the transporter. Berman had said that they wouldn't have one in this series, mostly since it was too much of a plot safety-net. When the writers couldn't think of a plausible method to do something, out came the transporter. Then what does he go and do? He hands them back the safety net. (Though the 'Leap' effect was pretty neat)
Which reminds me, wouldn't the transporter systems need to be newer than 300yrs for Bones to always be worked up about the 'newfangled gadgets'? If something's been around for that long, I don't think someone would have that sort of reaction.
But overall I have to say that I'm looking forward to the coming episodes of 'Quantum Enterprise'.
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
Wow you tore a strip off it. Before I try to refute everything, is there any SF shows that you like? You do have to give them some leeway you know, and it is just a pilot.
Did anyone else notice the whole "Neptune and back in 6 minutes" thing? I worked it out, that's 87 times the speed of light. Not very fast if you plan on going anywhere outside of the nearest couple dozen star systems in any reasonable (few days) period of time.
If God gave us curiosity
I'm waiting til Sunday to watch Enterprise. Thanks, Space!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The comment in all the ads was "Neptune and back in 6 minutes"...referring supposedly to Warp 4.5.
Neptune and back (from Earth) is 8 709 400 000 km.
They then talk about bringing the Klingon back to Kronos...4 days there, 4 days back. 4 days, again assuming Warp 4.5, works out to 5760 minutes.
Kronos, one-way: 8 361 024 000 000 km.
1 light year is 9 460 800 000 000 km.
Since we're less than a light year from the Klingon homeworld, doncha think we would have noticed the vast Klingon empire rolling over our Solar System???
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
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:
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...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
None of the "actors" could perform.
Yeah, let's look at the pilot for TOS. The very first one. Then the second one. Then we'll look at TNG's pilot.
Them people damned near had broom handles where ther spines were. The acting was INCREDIBLY stiff. No one knew their characters yet. In TOS, there wasn't even a 'mold' for that type of character yet (yes, there was Sci-fi stuff done before that, but just LOOK at it. EEEKS! Most of it was so bad it wasn't even worth it.) TNG they had something they could look towards for a model, but, none of the characters were really easily translated (Picard, for instance, couldn't be a remodled Kirk.) It wasn't until the second Season that TNG got to be very good, and continued to improve. TOS managed to 'get it' a little quicker, IMHO (Why? Dunno.) Give it time... they will grow into thier rolls, and make the characters live (heck, even the Voyager group managed THAT MUCH eventually. It took them almost the entier series to do it ;-)
The vulcan was a hissing bitch during the first half, I thought count bakula wanted to cry several time, the plot was mediocre even by the standards of the crew that brought us voyager.
Well, considering that Archer already told her at thier first meeting he'd love to knock her on her ass, can you BLAME HER? ;-)
On the Count Bakula comment, I've got no clue WTF you are talking about. Heck, he probably gave the best performance in the show. Which other actor showed much emotion on thier faces during the whole show? Not many, since they really don't know the character enough yet to really know what the character is thinking.
As for the plot - Ok, I'll give you a point for it being 'mediocre'. Comparied to the V word, naw - they already set the standard for what mediocre episodes are, and for bad episodes. ('Cept possibly "Spock's Brain" from TOS ;-) It could have been better. I think alot of it was time spent trying to prove "Hey, this isn't the Trek Universe you are used to", and trying to set the stage for where the series is going to head in the future.
What amazes me is that no one seems to have gone back to the original ST series to see what made it great. It was daring culturally for its time and tried to present a complex cast of characters. Was it perfect? No. But the Berman vision of the future is a piece of plasticine crap undistinguished by any character motivation or deep emotion.
You say Scott Bakula looked like he was going to cry, but, then say there wasn't any emotion? Sheesh.
TOS didn't have much of a complex cast. It had 3 primary characters, and 5 lesser characters. Heck, Friends has almost that many characters. So far, Enterprise hasn't even had much of a chance to explore these characters.
And of course - when all else fails when flaming Trek, pull out the Berman card. Fine, I'll trump ya with a... shoot. Ok, I gotta admit - most of what Berman touches turns to shit. He's got the Septic Tank touch. But he's finally way from the V word - he's got the chance to break free. With ST:Borager, there was a trap - once it started a direction, it was DAMNED HARD (IMHO) to change that direction. Here he's got the chance at a clean slate to work from. Given the start here, it might actually work out. Personally, I think Enterprise is gonna ROCK starting about second season, once the writers, the actors, etc., finally get in tune with thier characters and the job at hand. But I could be wrong - it's too damned hard to tell just from one episode. Give it a season to work out the kinks, then check it out again if you don't like it so far.
If nothing else, tune in for time to time just to check out the latest advances in Vulcan anatomy... ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
> Bad science, bad acting, bad plots, good tits (7 of 9).
It would be more customary to rate them as 7.777 out of 10.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Fer chrissakes. "Hi there, we're the /. crowd, and we have the patience of a mayfly..."
/.'s are from over-pumped expectations.
"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
-Styopa
Anybody have a divx so I can catch up (yeah, I said that I wouldn't watch it, but gave in)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
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
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I saw in a New Scientist recently a short article on a new type of armour plating for tanks.
Armour piercing anti-tank shells work by using the kinetic energy released in the impact to compress and liquefy the copper core of the shell, which then ends up getting squirted through the point of the shell, through the armour and into the tank. I guess getting bathed in supersonic liquid copper can really put a kink in your day.
The newer armour was covered by a mat of optic fibres. When the shell hit the armour systems detected the distortion of the fibres and released a heap stored charge into coils in the armour. This creates an electromagnetic field that retards the copper. Sounds like a long shot but the article said it worked in trials.
So, there you have it, armour plating that has to be 'switched-on' and can go offline =)
.flip.
http://www.maximonline.com/girls_of_maxim/girl_780 .html
In Maxim this month. Yum.
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What I am complaining about is the spoiler info on the Slashdot opening homepage. As I said with movies spoiler stuff is inside after you click the link and there are even warnings saying so. You know, little messages like "caution: spoilers ahead" Slashdot does this when reviewing movies for people who haven't seen the movie yet. I was only suggesting the same thing should be done for series premiers like this as well. In order to not see that "commander whatchamacallit has no personality" and some other stuff I tried to avoid reading I would have to avert my eyes before I scroll down or maybe just not visit Slashdot until after Saturday.
Which means they're aiming for an audience twice as old as the target demographic of Phantom Menace.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'm surprised someone hasn't made a play on this topic called "Startrek Erections'
---
Rob Flynn
Pidgin
...but it seems to be more for the show than for humanity.
This premiere was better in any one spot than my new favorite show Farscape. However, this premiere also had a pace and resolution of my all time most disgusted show; Voyager.
I swear to god, every last Voyager writer should be barred from ever writting for TV ever again.
There is one virtue of commitee writing in this case, and that is that the Voyager writers didn't get their hands into everything. You can taste what they didn't contaminate, because it doesn't stink. The ending was not something that escaped them. That is probably the greatest failure of this episode, and the one that really sticks with everyone that saw the show. How many people recall how it really ended? The last thing I remember is Archer talking with T'Pau like Janeway talks to 7of9, and then Archer going on the bridge to say something encouraging. The ready-room scene is the part that sticks, not the bridge scene.
Also, the theme song blows major ass. The video is rather disjointed from it, and while fitting, is pretty tacky. Overall, the intro says "one season, tops." Get rid of it. At the very least, do something I couldn't do in Flash 5.
I've seen people questioning how "hull plating" could fail. The answer is that the plating itself doesn't fail. What they have for "shields" is effectively a primitive combination of TNG's structural integrity field and TOS' defence screens. It's more integrity field, though. It is supposed to increase the armor strength of the hull beyond that of its physical properties. From the technobabble, you can assume they do this by putting a lot of energy into the plating to somehow strengthen the electro-magnetic properties of it. Think about how much harder it is to disrupt a stack of little metal blocks over if you magnetize them.
The blue girls on the planet seemed like something that could have been straight out of TOS. I didn't have a problem with the gel scenario itself - I doubt anyone sane did - but like most people I thought the camera work was extremely tacky.
T'Pau's make-up makes her look very elfin. I like the look, and though it detracts from the typical Vulcan make-up I find it a nice addition to the Vulcan species. Her wardrobe is pathetically 7of9. I'd be willing to bet that Vulcans usually wear those heavy robes to feel more comfortable in lower gravity enviornments. T'Pau's character must be feeling even more naked than her actress does. T'Pau herself is a moody bitch instead of a coldly logical creature with an alien alure. Commander Savok was my favorite Vulcan female. How many people realized exactly what she did on Genesis for Spock? I sure didn't until years later. It wasn't a shock, because it was logical. I don't want T'Pau to be a copy of Spock. I do want her to be a little less insulting by grace of class and more insulting by grace of logic.
While it was humorous, I was cringing badly at every Vulcan on the premiere. I think it was bad writing as much as bad editing as much as bad acting. Those were not Vulcans, those were people pretending to be Vulcans. They just didn't have ANY of the strength of will that comes from having found Kalimar. They were dirty little conspirators constatly feeling off guard with the irrational humans.
Of course, everyone probably figured out that the Vulcans were making sure humanity could stand on its own two feet by not giving too much information. That was something that was a little painful to see... nobody got that?
I like Hioshii. Nothing wrong there at all, just make sure she doesn't stay stagnant. Character development is vital to everyone.
Captain Archer isn't as passionate as he is irrational. This is supposed to be part of his character development, so I'm not critisizing it quite yet.
Enterprise NX-01 is a nice adaptation to the new ship we saw in First Contact in the battle against the Borg. It works. I know some people don't like it when old tech looks better than new tech, but the concept is more important to my mind, and that has remained intact.
What REALLY bothers me about this episode is that the "new" enemies are almost exactly the same as the ones found in Insurrection. God, I hated that movie. I refuse to add it to my Star Trek library, ever. The one saving grace of that entire movie was the cool nebulas, but as we all know, pretty graphics do not make sales after opening weekend.
The technobable was somewhere between TNG and Voyager. Technobable should not ever be technobable. In TNG it was always comprehendable. I had a bit of trouble trying to keep the technobable straight in my head. There was a lot of non-sense strewn about the few key words of realistic and theoretical science.
The plot was similar to the technobable. It just didn't hold together all the time. In that sense, it was a lot like Voyager. This episode didn't have to be two hours for the content it had in it, but if it was only one hour it would have been just like a Voyager episode. If that was the case, the two words left in people's minds would be "suck" and "boobies" and they would try to connect them in some way to make up for the lack of connections in the episode.
So far, I'm concerned that this series has taken bits and pieces from almost every single piece of Star Trek lore to create something new. The going line for this series has been "we've never done this before!" I hope they do go boldy go where no man has ever gone before, as TOS did. There is real promise here, but there is also the chance this will go the way of Voyager.
This premeire seems to be a sampler, and it is up to us to decide where we want to go with our main course. I say we set course for the second star to the right.
Lastly, I think Star Trek should once again get one or more advisors from NASA, MIT, maybe even slashdot (hah.) People with connections that can relay ideas back and forth between writers and experts in their fields.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
I should point our (according to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition) that the "warp factor" does not necessarely mean times the speed of light.
The following is blatantly plagarized from page 373:
Speed KPH x Light Speed
Std Orbit 9600
This is in reply to a comment lower down that talks about it being 4 days to Kronos and back.
According to this, if Kronos is 1 light year away, we'll say exactly 1 light year for "educational" purposes, it would take 1 year at warp 1, 36 days at warp 2, 9 days at warp 3, and 3 days at warp 4. So the calculation was pretty close to correct, I've just added some other data to it.
Yeah, group. Oops.
He didn't say theme music, he just said theme. Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick....
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Okay...Jolene Blalock is pretty hot. Berman hit on the formula with 7of9 and found another nymphette to titillate frustrated teenage boys by juxtaposing a pointy-eared swimsuit model with a cold, emotionless demeanor.
The whole thing with the DNA-encoded secret information. 1) It's unlikely that the Klingons would have such a technology. (In TNG, they hadn't the technical sophistication to fix Worf's broken spine, since they often favored euthanasia to advancing medical science.) 2) I won an award from HP and the ACM for a science fiction story I wrote in which the underground of a plutechnocratic Silicon Valley used the same biological transfer methods as their "underground newspaper." I'm pissed.
you start seeing the Intel Blue Guys(TM) in a new Star Trek episode, cleverly disguised as a primitive morphing race.
where's the poll dammit? You can add a poll to a story, do it here.
sulli
RTFJ.
Maybe it is that future genetically engineered corn.
"Osmotic Eel" is a band name waiting to happen.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Jolene Blalock. [maximonline.com]
Am I the only onwe that thinks it's kinda of sad that this got +5, iformative?
Stupid like a fox!
Actually the warp scale must be logrithmic, like the Richter Scale (where a 5.0 quake is 10 times as powerful as a 4.0 quake) - the captain's father mentioned that the Warp 5 engine would be 1,000 times faster than the previous.
Thanks for the nice math, though.
I think I've finally put my finger on what it is that has always made the Star Trek series (plural) special.
They are the only series that I can think of (except for M*A*S*H) that builds a thoughtful platform for discussing philosophy. Transmitting philosophy and encouraging rational thinking has always been the hallmark of ST, started by good old James T. Kirk/Bones and perfected by Picard and Riker.
What else on television sets such a great example for the moral standards we should set, not only in the future but today as well?
You know, I think Worf's comment was meant to be a joke.
The explanation is that it's a TV show, and back then they had bad make-up. Let's just assume that how they look now is how they've always been meant to look, and be done with it.
Hell, at one point, I think the Klingons were supposed to be modeled after the Russians, but that kinda drifted away...
I can't believe I'm posting to this stupid nerdy thread, but...
...it makes sense. In The Undiscovered Country their blood was purple, but it was also floating around in a depressurized, gravity-free space craft, if I remember right. Human blood is also bluish purple when it doesn't contain oxygen (as when it's traveling through your veins back to your heart... just take a look at the underside of your forearm). So I imagine that's what it'd look like when it's floating around in a vacuum?
Breakfast served all day!
Thank god. Gene R. would be proud. The TNG/Voyager/DS9 time was a little too antiseptic for my taste.
I, for one, was glad to see them play up the tension between the humans and vulcans (gee, you mean we haven't always been best friends?). Just goes to show you what was achieved by Kirk's time. I was glad to see the humans buck them and take the bull by the horns and just do what we've always done...explore. For no logical reason other than that's what we want to do.
Loved the ship, loved Bakkula, he's a "regular" guy who has a dog and a ball cap. I was beginning to think pets had been outlawed in the future and so had headgear (except for Guinan's dopey hats). Glad to see a smaller crew (instead of a cast of 1000's). This is what Trek was all about once upon a time--human beings taking risks and exploring, not managing crises. Picard was OK, but he was no captain in my book.
Not sure about the temporal villans yet, time will tell (pun intended).
As for the boney-headed Klingons, the story supposedly was that they adopted a "more human" look during the original ST years to more easily deal with humans, but that it was a dismal failure and a shameful episode in their history, that's why they don't discuss it.
In all, the best Trek I've seen in a long, long time.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
So will you be sending it to me on VHS or what?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
This show is GREAT!!! I love how their weapons need to be turned on (limited battery?), no one trusts the transporter, their sensors had trouble locking onto people, the crew is learning their equipment, and the crew bickers (realistic). The best part is that their engine room, stairs, and ladders all have railings very much like on US submarines! Oh my God, that is a very nice touch! Their uniforms are a lot like our poopysuits (jumpsuits we wear on the boats) and I love the flat profile of the ship! I also enjoyed seeing the crew crosstrain on positions, just like in real life! I also love the fact that their top end speed was only warp 4.5 (I assume they are using the ST:TOS warp scale of 4.5*4.5=times the speed of light). Also the ship was effectively depth charged! Oh I love so much about this show already! We even get to see humans screw up first contact with the Klingons, setting up the stage for a cold war with them in Kirk's time! Lastly I love the fact that they can't rely on super technology to solve their problems! No more ST:TNG technology conquers all crap! I love this show!
They really screwed up with the Klingons. Now they're going to have to say the human-like appearance was the first thing to go wrong, and then a second one changed them back. (Why am I making excuses for such a blatant f-ck up?)
I guess since Vulcans aren't emotional, they must always have hard nipples. That, or the shower was pretty cold.
would NEVER make it in there since the show would be labeled as a gay show and no geek would admit to watching it.
They could go halfway, and make a female character homosexual - that would be almost as "culturally daring", and wouldn't lose them many viewers. Or, they could make an attractive female character bisexual, not lose any viewers, and attract hordes of additional love-starved geeks to the audience. Watch for a later introduction of such a character; this is too win-win an idea for the writers not to come to the same conclusion eventually.
Here's what I liked:
Vulcan vs. Human interactions: The pilot had a nice twist by pitting the two races together on a governmental level where representatives of each could display their predjudice, mistrust, and fear of each other. This was perfectly believable. As insufferable as the rather pretentious and overprotective vulcans are and as impulsive and basically untrustworthy as humans are, I'm surprised the two never ended up in a war on opposite sides. Obviously the vulcan / human thing has been overdone in the past but it was always on a mano y mano level , never at the level of governments maneuvering for control of a situation.
The tribute to green (and other coloured) Orion slave girls: Remembering Christopher Pike's Talos induced vision of a visit to Rigel's slave markets was a nice touch.
I didn't think the disinfectant scene was too pr0nish... To me, it actually seemed as if the director had vague arty pretensions and thought the sensuality of the scene, mixed with the harsh dialogue, would create a lovely bit of dissonance. I think he almost succeeded in this effect.
I really liked the joy these ship-board geeks found in their technology, such as "warp 4.5!" or the sweet spot. TOS had a similar love of technology but the later series seemed to lose their joy in what could be done and what the possibilities are.
I like that the characters finally have a measure of humanity. They're occasionally noble, often shortsighted, easily amused and excited, sometimes brave, usually susceptible to blind predjudice, quarrelsome, hypocritical, and driven by baser instincts they usually dont try to understand. This is a return to the happier days of TOS when (wo)men were (wo)men and even when Kirk would give a sanctimonious speech about his / Federation ideals at the end of an episode, you could hardly forget that he spent the bulk of the episode violating almost every single one of the Federation's sacred beliefs and rules. That sort of willful inconsistency and hypocrisy is typical of almost every human who has held any sort of real power. That is how people would really act, not as the insufferable, always correct robot that was Picard / Janeway. Most leaders will always have more Shatner than Stewart in them. For example Bush's line: "We value our freedom and we value America. That's why we're going to ban any real encryption because freedom is a wonderful thing." could have just as easily been spoken by Kirk in some vague defense of the Prime Directive after he topples a planet's leader and sleeps with all the green and lavender women with iron brassieres he could grab.
Ranting aside, its nice to see the Ugly American in space again.
I think this was the best ST pilot since The Cage and the dark few first minutes of DS9. It wasn't great sci-fi but I think it'll have half a chance if the writers can resist the urge for preachiness.
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!
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
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.)
Well, it could have been a lot worse.
I don't know how. The theme song is my number one complaint tonight. That singing! It's just wrong... That kind of music is bets kept on copy protected cd's, not on star trek.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
I won't say that Clarke's gone completely senile, but honestly, did you read 3001? What the hell was that?
I'd like to see a real SF writer consultant (didn't B5 have Harlan Ellison?), but someone who's writing good stuff currently. Michael Flynn, for example, is pretty good at plausible near-future settings.
Well, they got rid of the idiot American host from last season, and replace him with.. another American host. (Only saw two minutes at the end, don't know if he's an idiot or not)
I want the English host back, damnit. Junkyard Wars the Americanized Version just isn't as good as the original.
If you don't pretend to be anyone, are you?
Your critique seems way overcritical michael, and lacking in some very basic common sense. If vulcans and humans didn't get along in Kirks time, or any other captians time, why would they get along when their relationship was just beginning? That would have been an absolutely unforgivable mistake. What you are proposing is similar to saying "Why don't buffy and the vampires get along, this whole fighting thing is getting old". Vulcans and Humans arguing over logic is part of the way thing ARE in the Star Trek universe. If you don't like it maybe you aren't as big a fan of the series as you claim. Secondly regarding the "soft porn", I too was kinda taken by surprise by it, but should we have been? Has anyone seen the original series recently. It comes on after Quantum Leap, and I swear every time I leave the TV on after QL and go into my room Kirk is making out with some half naked hottie hot hot of an alien superchick. The original series definetely didn't lack in the T&A department. As far as the rest goes, I think you need to realize what the word "fiction" in science fiction means. Overall I loved it, it looks like we are going to get a much more kirk-like captain, I liked the kinda sarcastic smartass commander, and most importantly it looks like we will actually see a show about seeking out new lifeforms, like the original series, not about what crew member is sleeping with what other crew member.
Everybody is complaining about the "Jello scene". Don't you see, this is the most brilliant part of the pilot? Perhaps you don't realize it now but soon you'll be saying to yourself, at least subconciously, "maybe if I watch a few more episodes, there will be another Jello scene..."
;-)
-Paul Komarek
The HESH ammo would conform to the outide of the armour and blow, resulting in little damage to the exterior of the armour but somewhere on the interior a large chunk would come loose and fly around at high speed, much like "newton's cradle" the toy on your doctors desk where u whack the balls at one end and they come loose at the other.
Tank crews took a dim view to chunks of their armour shredding through the interior of the tank.
HESH ammo meant there was little point in just making solid plate armour thicker.
The Russian response was reactive armour which worked fine, but was VERY expesive to maintain properly, and dangerous when dealing with anything other than another Main Battle Tank.
The allied response was laminated armour, where the different layers of composite absorbed the momentum imparted by HESH.
Both approaches proved effective but laminate is easier to maintain and looks cooler, so thats the way they went.
But if you had an older tank (and many do) then you wouldn't say no to a strap-on reactive shell if you were up against people using either HESH, or many of the other fancy shells & missiles out there these days.
BTW the shell with the stick on the front was IIRC called "Probe" ammunition.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
that would be HEAT ammo which is a good 20 years old,
the armour approach is new though
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
My guess? Some weird fashion for body modification grips the Klingon Empire in the 23rd century.
My Guess? Producers said "we have a budget now and technology that we didn't have in the 60s! Make them look better!"
and besides, most people don't have the attention span to think like that. If non-wrinkly Klingons showed up the average viewer would be going "huh?"
If God gave us curiosity
B5 had a lot of dreadful acting, but it also had 2 of the best-acted characters in all of sci-fi TV: Londo and G'kar. In comparison to them, everyone else looked to be phoning it in.
Lt. Yar wasn't a LESBIAN, she was just the head of security.
Though if you do the wild thing with the ship's talking toaster, maybe there is some other label for you.
Yep. I'm a goon.
:-D
The departmental colors (Red = Command, Blue = Medical, Gold = Engineering/Security) are present in the piping on the otherwise staid blue uniforms. In other words, the guys with the Gold piping are gonna get smoked.
El riesgo vive siempre!
It was a better premiere episode than I expected. I mean, there's only *so much* you can do when you assemble a bunch of actors in an ensemble show like the ST series' and make them act before they fit with each other and their characters. No ST series has ever had a real all-encompassing central character--you have the captain as the "hub" but all the other characters are just as important to the feel of the series. That's something that always set ST apart from most other TV shows--that it's a true ensemble production.
;-)
The same is true of the writers. The writers have to know the characters and know how the actors fit into their characters' shoes (or bodysuits, in the case of 7 and the Vulcan chick...hehe...). This means by definition that both the writing and the acting in the first season of a ST series are not going to be up to par. It takes time for the actors, the characters, and the writers to all "mesh" well.
That's why I was pleasantly surprised by the passable story and acting. It's better than the first few episodes of any other ST series. It's promising.
I especially like hearkening back to the old TOS rough-and-tumble attitudes. That's something a lot of people forget--that Roddenberry set out to write a "Wagon Train to the Stars," a sort of Western set in deep space. In that respect shows like Babylon 5 and even Andromeda (yuck--sorry, but--yuck) and of course Farscape have been far closer to the concept of TOS than any of the newer ST series have been. So despite the bitching thus far, I think Roddenberry would have been very happy with this episode and with the potential of this series.
Not that there's anything wrong with the world of TNG and DS9 and even Voyager (80% of the episodes were "good enough" in the last 2 seasons, so wuite yer bitching)--as a geek I love the technobabble and the idea of having such an advanced technological framework. I love the wormholes and tachyon beams and especialy the episodes involving quantum mechanics. But there's also nothing wrong with returning to ST's shoot-from-the-hip roots. Especially since it got to a point where many average folks couldn't watch ST--my grandmother for instance was a smart woman, but she never understood half of the technical stuff they were saying and so after loyally watching TOS and then TNG for 30 years she gave up. This is a chance to recapture those people.
That said, I agree with what so many have said--the opening music has to go. What the FUCK were they thinking? I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. What they should have done and what they can still do is have Scott Bakula read off the a variation of the old standard, "Space, the final frontier..." They could reasonably inster a few anachronisms, like calling it the "spaceship Enterprise" instead of the "starship Enterprise" and such. Because, that opening music alone is enough to alienate most or the current ST fanbase, who'll view it as a sign that the show is catering to a certain uneducated demographic alone.
And finally, as for the tits--why complain? As long as the stories are good, the tits are just a bonus. How can any man woman or child with a pulse complain? I mean, did you SEE those things in the rubdown scene? Those nipples were like two stiff warp nacelles, boldly jutting out where every man would love to go...
Now excuse me while I go jerk off to the thought of a borgalicious lesbian encounter between 7 of 9 and that Vulcan chick. Mmmm, now *where* did she just put that tricorder???
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Yeah, after he rescued the Klingon, and was wondering around the base I kept expecting this scene:
"Al, why haven't I leaped yet? Ziggy said I was here to save that Klingon guy, right?"
"Hmm... Ziggy says there's now a 73% chance that you need to set up a nemesis for future episodes first.... Or maybe you're supposed to do that Vulcan chick. It's a little hazy. (Do you see the set on her? Yowza!)"
Theme Song: Sucked.
Yup. I wanted something that makes you go "Yeah!" when you hear it. TOS and TNG both had cool and memorable theme songs; DS9 and VGR both bored me.
What I would love to see is a Trek show with a rock soundtrack. The original Babylon 5 pilot, oh so many years back now, had a rock theme by Stewart Copeland that I liked very, very much. (When they recut the movie, they did improve it, but they lost the rock and went with the same classical the rest of B5 used.)
Ship: Nice design, though I honestly want to just have someone on the show explain why they picked that design for Star Fleet
There is a good book called The Making of Star Trek about TOS. That book described where the design of the Enterprise came from. Almost everyone figured a space ship should look like a flying cigar or a flying saucer, but Gene Roddenberry and a few other folks wanted something really different. They made a bunch of sketches and models and came up with something cool and different.
Later they came up with reasons for the design: the warp engines have to be out on long poles because they are radioactive or otherwise unhealthy to be around, and the saucer was attached to the rest of the hull with explosive bolts so you could ditch the rest of the ship in a real emergency. (In TNG they of course showed us that the 1701-D could detach the saucer and reattach it whenever Picard felt a need to surrender or something.) The impulse engines are supposed to be on the saucer, so it wouldn't be just dead in space if it blew free from the warp engines.
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.
Ehh. They are all happy to be there. Give them a few months on board the somewhat cramped NX-01, and then write stories about them clashing.
Of course, the original show mostly had everyone getting along, but good-naturedly needling each other. You don't think Spock and McCoy actually hated each other, do you?
Hot chick: Well, at least they got one thing right. Ever since Councelor Troi, this has been an absolute must.
"Ever since Troi"? Uhura was a hot chick, and Yoeman Rand was pretty darn hot herself.
Speaking of Uhura, the Hoshi character is sort of close to Roddenberry's original ideas for Uhura. Uhura was supposed to be a linguistic genius, and she was supposed to have a whole department working for her (communications and translations). They wound up just ignoring the language issue, and she got turned into a glorified telephone operator, alas.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
...and ds9 had leela...
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
First off, scenes with any human rubbing ANYthing on ANY Vulcan's skin are totally ridiculous. Vulcans are TOUCH TELEPATHS. They are beings of calm reserve and inner discipline, and they can't tolerate being physically touched by emotional and uncontrolled beings like humans. It leads to telepathic overflow of human emotional garbage, thus Vulcans avoid ALL physical (skin to skin) contact with humans as if it were the PLAGUE. It is ungodly bad manners to shake hands with a Vulcan, or even offer to. Rubbing your hands over a Vulcan's naked body could only happen AFTER you overpowered or drugged them. Or during Pon Farr. Take your pick.
Secondly, I don't see where you get off with that crack about "prejudice, intolerance, and violence" in TOS. I *assume* you meant to say "pleasantly surprised by the extremely low level of (etc., etc., etc.)", seeing as how THAT is the only possible analogy to TOS. Devil in the Dark? The Empath? The Corbomite Maneuver? Yep, all sorts of prejudice, intolerance, and violence there. Suuuuuure. Yeah. Riiiiiiight.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I was watching at a friend's house, and her parents came home at exactly the same moment they walked into the bar with the pole dancers. Bleh.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
But it seems to break from the "known" Star Trek history, as described by the other shows and movies
I believe it was on saturday night live, after being confronted by a trekkie with apparent historical inconsistensies between different episodes, that William Shatner immortalised the phrase: It's just a show, 'Get a life'
;-)
Really, I liked the pilot. It's far and away the best pilot episode of any Trek yet. Nice sort of adventure story, promising characters, setting actually seems to have lots of potential. The whole "fledgeling steps into the interstellar neighborhood thing" reminded me of the Babylon Five movie where the Earth first meets the Minbari. But I liked all that.
The thing I don't like is the ship. Its design is way too advanced -- other than the warp nacelles, it looks like a ship from the Voyager era. Worse, it's a ripoff of a design they've already used. Compare the ship from the new series with the Akira class from First Contact and Voyager (another set of views is here).
I know I'm sort of nitpicking here, but really this is terribly inconsistent with the look and feel of later shows and movies. Yes, it does look really cool, but in the overall Trek context it really doesn't work for me. Oh well, I'll get used to it I guess.
If you're feeling aargh
Or you're kind of mwhahahahahaha
Could be you've met up with BAKULA.
If your crew goes moan, moan
And your guns go pssewp pssewp
Maybe you've bumped into BAKULA.
He flies through the night
In a costume that's too tight
But there's always a moral insight
BAKULA
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Yes, it sucked even worse than Voyager's first episode. Christ, but it was *bad*. Just some of the highlights:
- Bakula still can't act, and as a captain he's laughable in his attempts to be tough. Why in gods name didn't they pick some hungry nobody willing to bust his ass for this role?
- The communications chick was a complete loser, the stereotypical pre-Xena "I'm a screaming bitch who needs to be rescued by a big strong man" kind of girl. I thought we'd put those days behind us in SF....
- What the hell was up with Texas boy? Can you get any more wooden than that? He's even worse than Bakula.
- The doctor could actually act, but for chrissakes - interstellar LEECHES? That's what we've come to??? Roddenberry has to be turning over in his grave.
- more hackneyed Vulcan shit. On the brighter side, not only was the Vulcan one hell of a Hot Star Trek Babe(TM), but the best actor of the lot. That isn't saying much, but one can see how she might improve over time.
- the entire Vulcan lot was openly emotional, even when they denied it. For a moment I wigged and thought they were Romulans.
- the Enterprise was just plain ugly on the outside, and doubly ugly on the inside. I mean, it looked like a tramp steamer run by a bunch of lackwits. No wonder the Vulcans kept saying "um, maybe you should wait on this interstellar exploration thing". The graphics design team should be put up against a wall and shot.
- hey, guess what? At warp 4 it's only FOUR DAYS from Earth to the Klingon homeworld! Wow! Completely contradicts anything ever said on the subject in previous series, but hell - who cares? This is Star Trek, birth place of TV paradoxes!
- argh! Time travel in the pilot! Surely a sign of imminent doom if there ever was one.
- "polarized plating" - and it 'goes down', like shields. Metal that disappears! And comes back once it repolarizes! Nifty.
- the chemical composition of the gas giant just isn't possible. Chemistry 101 folks; or hell, spend a quarter, call a college astronomer, ask him what *real* gas giants are made of.
- no actual plot. Maybe one will come clear in the future, but other than 'get the Klingon dude home' the rest was confused wandering.
- the Enterprise certainly can't shoot for shit. Guess we're going to have more eps of "the Enterprise is badly outgunned by everyone they run into" or "power fails mysteriously once again" or "the computer's been possessed again".
- Berman. 'nuff said. This guy turns everything he touches to shit.
Man, I can go on and on. But I'd rather watch Farscape. At least it's internally consistent and the girls can kick as as well as, or better, than any man.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
#!/bin/perl
s/Star Trek: Enterprise/Star Wars Episode 1/g;
s/Theme Music/Jar Jar Binks/g;
if ($comments ne $starwarscomments) { $idbesurprised = 1; }
You clearly haven't ever seen DS9-- it's a pretty good opening theme, especially coming from Dennis McCarthy. Dennis also did the music for Star Trek Generations (his first motion picture piece), as well as the background music for almost all of the modern Trek shows (TOS excluded, obviously, since it's less modern and more OLD).
As for opening themes.. WHY GOD WHY didn't they get Jerry Goldsmith to do it?! Roddenberry is rolling around in his tomb right now, I assure you. (And before some dumbass shows up and says he was cremated, fine, his ashes are stirring into a tornado.) I hope to heaven above that they ditch the current opening theme for something more Trek-like (and less lame-like) in the next episode..
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
... was one of the Three Musketeers.
Miko O'Sullivan
In the shows thus far, Vulcans have been friends of Earth, respected, and mostly liked. As Data said in ST:TNG "Vulcans are a highly respect race." The tension between Humans and Vulcans were the differences between two friends who respect each other but go about things in a very different way. Kirk and Spock were of significantly different temperaments, but they were brothers-in-arms.
In Enterprise the relationship is quite different. Vulcans consider themselves superior. Humans, while resenting it, have unfortunately allowed themselves to slip into that role for several generations. Now the Human race is emerging from adolescence into adulthood and the Vulcans are having a hard time dealing with that.
Overall, I thought that element of the story worked quite well.
Miko O'Sullivan
Bakula, doesn't have, the proper spacing between words, or emphasis to be JTK!
Best Slashdot Co
I had been admiring how nice looking the ship is, but now that you mention it, it might be a bit too pretty. It might have been more effective to have a spacecraft that seems ugly at first but we grow to love, like the The Millenium Falcon the Apollo LEM. That would have been more in keeping with the spirit of just getting going.
Miko O'Sullivan
It was refreshing to hear Archer do the captain's log using a real date. I've never been a fan of the stardate thing.
Miko O'Sullivan
HESH has been primarily used as a combat engineering vehicle round for bunker busting and the like. Most obviously in the 165mm demolition howitzer used by the British and if I remember correctly on the M60 based engineering vehicles of the US. It was also used experimentally in a round launched from an M16 rifle. Imagine if you will a rocket propelled basketball. The problem with HESH is that if it is fired at too high a velocity, the charge will literally splatter onto the target dispersing the charge before it can detonate. This factor makes HESH less useful in high velocity guns and at long ranges (slower round, longer time of flight, less likely to hit).
The primary tank killer is still the kinetic penetrator. Usually using a discarding sabot around a small dense projectile, these rounds punch through the armour of the opposing vehicle. The key to these rounds is cross sectional density, thus tungsten is popular as well as DU (depleted uranium), the stuff that everyone was worried about in Bosnia and Iraq.
Reactive armour, by exploding, disrupts and de-focusses the gas jet of the HEAT round rendering it much less effective. It most certainly will interfere with the scabbing effect of HESH as well.
Spaced and reactive armour is used on Canadian reconnaisance vehicles. It's attached by velcro........
Just state that there is still some residual relativistic effects even in warp. Have Cmdr. Tucker making a comment along these lines:
(Question: why does the person recording a log have to give the date: doesn't the log entry get its own timestamp? What, the ship's computer isn't running NTP?)
This would allow them to say that it took eighty hours to get to Khronos ship time, while having it be several weeks Earth time. That way, anytime the writers forget how really, really, amazingly, mind boggling huge space is, they can use this explaination to correct their mistake.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Remember, to a Vulcan, any Terran normal environment would be COLD. Personally, I find it refreshing that the show's writer's paid such meticulous attention to detail in this matter.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Good call. I liked Troi when she had some curves, and didn't look like some plastic barbie-doll. I don't know about losing my lunch over the vilvan chick, but I do prefer women who are shaped more like Xena than Ally McBeal.
I thought the opening video, the shots of space travel etc... were very kewl. Especially the mars rover blip. I recognized almost all of it. Some of the test pilot guys were not familar to me.
Let's hope this seris is still around on the 100th anniversary of flight.
Krispy Cream is people
Can we please not bastardize everything in existence just to make a few whiners happy?
Ok, mod me down, I'm not PC
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
(If it'd been Seven of Nine in Voyager, it might have even been appropriate, since she was supposed to be struggling with her human/sensual nature.)
Other than that, it was passable for a first episode.
(Ugh.....)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Count Bakula, if you're nasty.
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
apparently that was just a shadow of his hand,
but even if it wasn't, could you keep it down in that situation? I doubt that I could.
If God gave us curiosity
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.
Uhhh...how did the Klingon get to earth then if they don't already have warp? How did they come to be on Rigel in numbers? Have an empire? I think there's already a break in continuity here. The TNG reference to a "first contact with Klingons newly discovering warp drive" apparently didn't happen.
Of course this could simply be "revisionist" history in action. I mean we can't even get straight goods about shit we've done in the last 50 years on our own planet...
You're using her as bait, Master!
What - you didn't consider Nurse Chapel or that red-shirted blonde chick with the mini and the pony tail to be hot? It would have been nice if the green-skinned lap dancer stayed for a few epis...
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
Shatner would probably disagree. Nichelle Nichols and Jimmy Doohan would probably agree that he would disagree.
Miko O'Sullivan
Kinda funny how Slashdot readers consider themselves to have better taste than the average person because they use Linux over Windows. But then they have to go and ruin it by promoting Star Trek.
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.
Miko O'Sullivan
Why not use Babylon 5 as an example of good acting? With the exceptions of Picard and Spock, there's never been a character on any Star Trek "franchise" that was half as interesting as G'Kar, Londo, Sheridan, Ivanova, Delenn, or Garibaldi.
The minor characters were great too. Lennier could get more across with one look than the typical Trek character could with an entire scene of their hand-wringing monologues. Even the recurring guest characters on B5 were far beyond the regulars on a Trek show. Who could forget Lord Reefa or Mr. Morden or the Emperor Cartagia?
Sinclair was wooden in a cheesy fashion, but it seemed to work for him, the same way Kirk's cheesiness ultimately made for a more interesting character. The only actor on B5 that I found really bad was the the red-headed telepath. Can't remember he name off-hand. Lyta, maybe? Zack was pretty bad too, but still likable.
Also, how the hell can they not have shields, when shields are basically the same technology as the warp drive and the anti-gravity system. I guess maybe they haven't encountered hostile forces yet, but then why would they have weapons? Very odd.
Now, it's not going to impact my enjoyment of the show, which, for a ST pilot, was quite good. But, as someone who spent a lot of hours in high school being very interested in the technical aspects of the series, this is just annoying.
My first inclination was Romulans - and the light build and calm tone of "shady half-cloaked future villan" seems to support this. Weren't the Romulans also big into genetic engineering?
;P
The other obvious choice would be Dominion-related, as the Klingons were fairly instrumental in the DS9 wormhole conflict, and they also posess the genetic engineering tech.
Cardassians? They never really liked the Klingons either, although they never factored into TOS, and as such probably aren't suspect.
I'm sure by season-end, we'll have a fairly good idea
I think you are thinking of Futurama... DS9 had Dax and Kira.
Enigma
That theme song must be changed and all copies of it must be destroyed. Can someone please start a petition to get paramount to change it?
Technoli
Redundancy
*Sigh* Now I'll probably get modded down as "redundant"
Enigma
I really liked this first episode. Humans acting like humans again, instead of sanitized puritanical boring bastards that we've gotten used to in TNG and Voyager. I think Scott Bakula is a great actor and is perfect for this part. I loved seeing him tell those Vulcan assholes to piss off. It's about time someone did. The whole episode I was thinking "Yes! This is so like old-school Star Trek."
I watched most of the episodes of TOS and TNG, some Voyager (everyone knows it sucked in the beginning but got a lot better in the end), and almost no DS9. DS9 was just pathetic.
Anyway - my point is, some of you ultra trekkie people need to take a step back. Did you watch Galaxy Quest? Did you see the guys with the plans and how they were nit picking one little inconsistancy? I thought that was an exaggeration, I guess I was wrong. Drop the whole stupid-ass Klingon thing. THEY CHANGED THE MAKEUP. That's all. Warf's comment was a fucking inside joke! Get over it!
The shower scene and the hottie vulcan part was stolen directly from 7 of 9 because it was so successful in making Voyager more liked. Deal with it. Why the fuck are you complaining that they're putting hot women in our Sci-Fi shows? And who was the idiot who said this would make Roddenbury flip over in his grave? Did you WATCH the original episode? Kirk did the nasty with every hot alien chick in the universe. They just couldn't show more back then because the censors were stricter.
Personally, I think a little sexual/romantic tension is a GOOD thing. It gives the show dimension and a more realistic feel.
This was the best pilot for a Star Trek show ever, and you're talking like it's total trash. You know it's not, so stop finding excuses to trash it and watch it or don't watch it.
If you like Star Trek, you'll watch it and like it. If you don't, you won't. We all knew which camp we were in before we even saw the opening credits.
Now, about the theme music.... was I deaf during that part? I totally don't remember the singing at all, but I recognize some of the images. Wierd. Anyway, the singing I heard off the version linked to online was terrible, and I agree that it should be thrown out for some old-school orchestra music.
-Thaniel
I guess most people don't get sarcasm anymore, either....
Casting pearls before swine...
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Interesting idea.
... emulating the appearance of those who had bested them by a minority through plastic surgery or genetic manipulation. The majority of klingons would consider this a perversion of the highest order, but if that minority had been in a position of political power or influence that would explain their frequent contact with the federation during Kirk's tenure, only to be eradicated once more traditional klingons seized back control of the council at some later date.
Perhaps it was a social/religious reaction to losing a war with humans
This would be similar to a religious group of Kzin (Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, Throne of Ringworld, et al, by Larry Niven) who believed that humans were favored by the Gods, and so cloaked themselves in the skin of dead humans in an effort to decieve the Gods long enough to win a war and conquer earth. Said religion was of course ruthlessly suppressed by the establishment, but that didn't prevent some highly placed Kzin from practicing it and/or believing it at some deep level (e.g. Speaker-to-Animals, later Chmee).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
think back... WAAAAAAY back...
T'Pol, the most decorated Vulcan of all time. T'Pol, who helped her (son? relation of some sort) Sarek become an Ambassador to Earth, where he met and married a human, to the chagrine of his Vulcan brethren, who later gave birth to a son they named Spock.
T'Pol is the head of Spock's family. Something tells me that Enterprise is going to be showing ALOT of backstory.
And I liked the opening sequence visuals. Showing all the REAL Enterprise ships, and the timeline of human exploration was quite nice.
~Donald
~Donald / Just RTFM
Good: Looked better than any other Trek, sometimes better than Farscape. The letterboxing was a nice touch. Probably the second best Trek pilot after DS9. The exposition didn't feel as awkward as I expected. The "unstuck in time" chamber is intriguing. The "nasty primitive aliens uplifted by their descendants" concept. The presence of a linguist, I don't know why but I like that.
;) The flashbacks were awkward and seemed like non-sequiturs most of the time. Also, while the Klingons were handled fairly well overall, "I HEAR DOOR!" Did you? Most of all, the glowing jello room, especially the camera work. I predict that despite the apparent 3M:1F ratio among the crew, no matter how many years the show runs, there will always be just enough female red shirts along on away missions that we'll never, ever, ever see two guys in there. Berman would feel too threatened. Oh yeah, and their genitalia are going to rot off now because they forgot to gently and sensuously rub jello into them under the backroomesque black lights.
Bad: The THEME SONG. EWWWWW. What is this, Pax? The run of the mill plot. The now-mandatory forced tension between crewmembers. The now-mandatory treknobabble (bad in this case for even treknobabble.) I liked the part about the hull going offline. Sounds like Braga and Berman did s/shields/hull/g on some rejected Voyager battle script. Also, oh no, we're fighting the Dominion again only this time they're kinda scaly.
Ugly: They need some new makeup artists to populate the "lots of different aliens" scenes, or maybe they should use Muppets
Overall, not bad but I'm not sorry West Wing is coming back next Wednesday. Hope the new B5 pilot in January is a little more inspiring.
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
9. The Vulcan hottie mentions Rigel and none of the humans have ever heard of it. Hell, I'VE heard of Rigel! It's a well-known, neighborhood star, and anyone trained as an officer on a starship should have known roughly where it was, and where to lok up the exact coordinates.
10. If the naturalistic "let's use leeches!" form of medicine is so effective, why does it never make an appearance on Trek ever again?
11. Bad and inconsistant characterization of the Vulcans. Contempt is an emotion. Bitchiness is an emotion. Sympathy is an emotion. And at no point does any Vulcan attempt to actually explain themselves logically. (note: "Logically, you dirty apes could never understand us" doesn't count) Most of the actors also did a poor job. It makes you appreciate Tim Russ a lot more.
12. I really wish the people who designed their sets had also been in charge of the CGI. The sets were nice: they looked functional, and believable, and communicated that they were on a ship. They really sold the setting. The CGI, on the other hand, could have come from any of the later treks, and didn't seem to have any personality or connection to reality. The motion was bad, and nothing looked simple and functional. See Babylon 5 for an example of CGI done right.
13. I was BORED. I was tempted to wander off and do laundry.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Diane Warren best known for writing songs for the likes of Whitney Houston, Michael Bolton, Toni Braxton and Even Mecha-Streisand
This theme tune is more of her usual Schtick... all written by the numbers.
Personally, I'd have liked to see Orbital write the Music, they're trek fans and great writers....
I beg to differ. Judging from what I know of Trek writing, the pilot contained all of the character development these characters will ever get (Vulcan goes from antagonistic to sympathetic: done. Crew goes from distrusting Vulcan to accepting her as one of the crew: done.). The actors will get more comfortable with their roles, and the writers will pick up on how to write the characters more sharply, but nothing will change.
I hope to be proven wrong, but I doubt I will.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
No, what he said was "It's all real."
The original ST pilot was "The Cage," was shot in black and white, and featured Captian Pike and a woman as "Number One."
You mean, apart from the "shadowy nemesis from the future?"
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
> I didn't know Vulcans could look that good! ;)
what?! Don't you remember Spock's wife, T'Pring (I think that was her name) from TOS? Yikes! She makes T'Pol look like dogmeat.
Hehehe
:)
they did mention *ionizing* the hull plating, which might help disperse particle-beam weapons; basically, the impression I got was that it's metal armor that can be ionized for more protection from energy weapons; when it went off-line, it was the ionization going offline (de-ionizing).
Maybe.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
I think you are thinking of Futurama... DS9 had Dax and Kira.
I was actually thinking of Leta, the Bajoran 'dabbo girl' on ds9, but it somehow (probably due to futurama influence) got remembered wrong.
It's been a while since i've seen ds9
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Try these comparisons:
Minbari: A Conservative race, sceptical of the Humans expanding into the galaxy
Humans: An overly optomistic, shoot from the hip race, who tends to walk right into a trap in every episode.
A secret race wanting to incur chaos, lead by an equally dark, even mytical SHADOW.
Hey, it worked for one 5 year series, maybe it could work for two?
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
2. Doesn't the heart of the Klingon Empire seem a little close to home at less than 4 days travel from the heart of Star'fleet'? At warp 4? (But then I am told the Universe is expanding. .
3. I thought humans hadn't left Earth yet. So what's with the guy with all the cargo ship experience? And WHAT cargo, exactly? I thought the Vulcans were restricting trade. No WAY would Earth not have ALL the cool tech within about 10 years if people were allowed to travel in cargo ships.
4. Leave the locker room scenes in the locker room, please. This is Trek. If I want to watch crap like that, I'll watch LEXX.
(Brr! Did I actually say that?)
5. For later ships in later years, I see no problem with non-perfect crew compliments. But for the VERY first crew representing Earth? No way. They would be super-trained, super-perfect, super-men. Just like the first crews of real astronauts. And all chosen at the last second? Yeah. Right. The audition lines of ultra trained super people would stretch WAAAY back. And where's the televised link to the ravenous public? Of course, this would make the show very boring, much like the real space program. So I forgive.
6. Why were none of the Russian space accomplishments, (First satelite. First manned orbit), included with that country music? Typical American revisionism-through-ignorance.
HOWEVER. . .
I DID like:
1. The letterboxing.
2. The planets and general effects FINALLY look right.
3. The shoot-em-up scene, while obviously Quake inspired, was nonetheless fun. One of the more engaging I've seen in film or television, in fact.
4. I LOVE the interior design of the ship. Inspired by elements of our current space craft and space stations. Bravo! Too bad the exterior has too much borrowed from ship designs which came centuries later. That's just stupid. Oh well. . .
5. None of the actors pissed me off. Wooden and uncertain, yes, but I can see the makings of a fine crew. Give them time.
6. Plenty of great raw material for future episodes. It doesn't look or feel anything like the cartoon TNG, DS9 and Voyager Trek universe. There's lots of room to grow!
7. I love the shuttle craft deployment. Looks great!
8. I like the new take on space medicine. Better health through dung ingestion!
9. The two idiot producers, (responsible for such atrocities as Generations and First Trek Episodes everywhere), rarely grace the world with their insipid writing. This means the REAL writers will soon get their teeth into this rich bed of possibilities. Plus, everybody already hates the show, which means the hot young execs will not want to be anywhere near such a potential bomb, which will allow the actual creative staff some room to do their jobs.
I have a good feeling about this show. I think in a year, Enterprise may well rank up there among the best sci-fi ever produced on TV.
Here's to hoping!
-Fantastic Lad
I've seen and watched almost every episode, from my first days in black and white as a kid.
And I have to say, minor technicalities aside, this is the best pilot in terms of creating a good series since then.
Yes, the biodecon scene was too obvious, but it was better in its entirety than the promo teasers led one to believe.
And the Vulcans being a little more emotional than they liked to admit was a very nice touch. The whole power shift between everyone is quite nice.
So long as they cut back on the transporter use, and let a few transporter accidents slip through, I can live with it.
And even though I loved Captain Proton, I'm very glad the Holodeck is gone.
Let the discovery begin!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
If they'd been able to sneak it past the censors and if they'd been able to hire a real hottie to do it (aka, one who didn't need to be shot through a gauze screen), do you think that TOS would have had a rubdown scene in it as well?
Think a minute. The answer, of course, is YES!
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Come on guys, all TV shows are mostly populated
by attractive actreses and actors, that does not make them porn, not even soft porn.
I would not even describe Lexx as soft porn, despite nearly half the shows be themed around sex. For a work of media/act to be porn its primary purpose is to aid masturbation. Where as
Trek and the other sci-fi shows primary purpose
(not always achived) is to engage the viewer with compelling plots and characters.
> Jerry Rice? That's Jerry Lynn Ryan you mook!
Jerry Lynn Ryan? That's Jeri Lynn Ryan, you mook!
Virg
I forget the name of the episode, but it was the one after "Best of Both Worlds", when Picard gets shore leave after being assimilated and de-assimilated? He just breaks down and cries to his brother about how he was resposible for the destuction of so many ships, so many lives.
I also recall the cardassian special ops episode, where Picard gets captured and tortured 1984-style. (Why does he keep getting tortured anyway? Poor bastard.) He does get pretty broken down.
I'm the stranger...posting to
At this speed, you could cover
Of course, this turns the widely-held assumption (on the part of both fans & writers) that ST episodes happen more-or-less in real time (IE about a week of time elapses between episodes). At the above speed, the E. could only travel about 1.65 light years per week, which would mean that the planets they visit are VERY close together. The Enterprise has to go a lot faster than that to get to another new planet every week. If we assume an average distance of roughly 10 LY between M-class planets, you'd need to be going over warp 8 (512*C) to get to a new planet every week. The math just doesn't work out, at least using the TOS warp formula.
Of course, doing mathematical analysis of a TV show is kind of silly. It's fiction. Sit back, crack open a beer, eat some popcorn, and enjoy yourself.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Your five year old boy can't watch two clothed beings applying bengay to each other?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Supposedly the unemotionality is a state they try attain; the average Vulcan citizen trys to not act based on emotions, where as the hardcore Kohlinar students get pretty self-flagellent.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I kept imagining that, perhaps, I'd get the great channel meld and somehow "The West Wing" and "Wolf Lake" would be morphed with "Enterprise".
Command Deck of ENTERPRISE
Captain: Has anyone seen Ruby?
Vulcan (eyes glowing): No. (wiggles ears) I think she was written out in an earlier episode.
Engineer: Polls are in. Mammet-speak required.
Teenager runs in
Teeniebooper: I'm SOOOO fed up with you Daddy. (pushes up glasses) you won't let me do ANYTHING. The drug dealer down at the Transporter just wants me So BAD!
Captain, morphs into Donner:
Donner: Go take orders in the crews mess - and stop piddling on the floor while you're at it.
Vulcan morphs into Ruby whose eyes glow as the view of the bridge does funny colored transitions.
RUBY: I'm glad you mentioned that!
RUBY transforms into wolf, piddles on DONNERS feet and flees the room in herky-jerk motions of hyper-color.
ENGINEER: Offers wise Native American saying.
Secret Service appears: Mr President you're standing in dog piddle.
POTIS: Why yes, it was forseen in Revelations (cites chapter/verse in Greek). Now get me some Klingons, I'm gonna do something....
----------
"The past isn't dead. It's not even past!"
Quentin Compson
... but it was profoundly contiguous with the show and various movies.
1) Cochran was a womanizing drunk, and probably about as un-PC as you can get, who was a world hero despite these character flaws because of his tremendous technical contribution to humanity (inventing warp drive) as well as his social contribution (making first contact). It was a direct quote from his speech, which reflected his character (with all of its flaws).
2) Humans had done some backsliding, as a result of various wars and conflicts. Cochran may or may not have been representative of his time 50 years hence.
3) It is entirely possible that, in 150 years, language nazi's will have been the first against the wall when the revolution came (viva la revolution!)
4) It also provides continuity to the TOS phrase "where no man has gone before"
5) As another noted, it is more accurate ("man" in the generic sense, cf mankind, human, etc.), as they are going where no humans have gone before (but where just about every second rate species in the quadrant has been going for some time).
6) Human progress tends to come in fits and starts and not be uniform across all areas. It is entirely plausible that world peace has been achieved, yet gender neutrality in language (and perhaps even in custom) hasn't yet fully occurred for any number of reasons
(a) world peace includes peace with cultures much more "sexist" by western definitinos than our own, with their influence having perhaps held up perfect gender equality for longer than other forms of equality or justice (e.g. racial and ethnic equality)
(b) those involved in Star Fleet come from a subculture more akin to computer geeks or engineering geeks than MBAs or politicians, and even though the women in that subculture are equal, perhaps they detest PCedness more than most (having proven themselves in the technical field, they could see the use of gender-neutral linquistic contortions as downright insulting or patronizing, for example).
(c) perhaps local ethnicity/culture is playing a role (e.g. the mostly white cowboy "west" vs. the more cosmopolitan regions of the world -- Cochran was in Montana after all).
(7) As to the "white male" thing, perhaps wealth is not yet equally distributed throughout the world, so while peace and social equality have been achieved, economic equality is still being worked on and, in the meantime, the areas of the Earth most able to afford luxuries like a space program tend to be mostly white western nations such as the United States, Europe, or Australia.
(8) (And this is the most likely explanaition) they are trying to depict a more primitive, rough and tumble Federation and so have used audio and visual queues specific to our culture to do so (older, more dated words such as "man" for gender neutral pronouns, a mostly white crew reminiscent of TOS, etc.) It's called artistic license, and I think in this particular episode it worked very well -- I did have the feeling of seeing an early precursor to the UFP, one which still has numerous flaws to iron out before becoming the perfect ST:TNG utopia.
You get the idea. The use of the phrase is perhaps not PC-compliant language, but it is only offensive to a radical few who give the rest of us liberals a really bad name (now I can really relate to Muslim's feelings of frustration in having people like the Taliban being the most vocal examples of their culture/religion), a small cost gladly paid for the continuity it creates and the potential for some interesting cultural and social exploration within humanity, something generally lacking in the other Star Trek series.
What is next: people being offended because they still have the death penalty (the Federation of Kirk's time did, while that of Piccard's time did not, so it makes sense they will. Then there's the whole meat eating thing vs. replicated food in later centuries, etc. Shall we start spray-painting animal rights slogans on the Enterprise set?)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
All this dog was missing was Rick Moranis turning to the camera and saying "Did you get that?". The expositional dialouge was truly horrid... worse than the rest of the bad dialouge.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Warp 4.5 = 4.5^3c = 91.c OK
30,000,000 miles per second = 100.c OK
1 light year = 88 hours at 100.c
Rigel is 15 light years (1000 in reality)
15 light years = almost 8 weeks.
Eta Erdani (Vulcan) is 8 light years = 4 weeks.
While I agree with a lot of the negative comments seen here, there is some good original stuff in the pilot episode that I haven't seen before.
I think this show has potential but I'm not giving my hopes up.
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.
I can see the fnords!
she fucked Data. I don't know if that qualifies as an heterosexual encounter - but he said he was "fully functional and programmed in multiple techniques" - so I'm sure it ran the gamut.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Thank you Mr Gates!
now can you please come and step over here?
Yes, on that large yellow X.
No, the hanging cow is just for decoration.
If God gave us curiosity
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
"In which case, first contact with the Vulcans was 'botched'. Anyone remember ST: First Contact?
... Thanks
;-)
Vulcan: Live Long and Prosper.
ZC:
Cracks me up everytime. "
Zefram didn't know, and I'm assuming the Vulcans also didn't know that the humans' minds would be so emotional and unsavory to Vulcans. Perhaps the Vulcans on the team assumed that by offering skin-to-skin contact, Zefram was a member of a touch-telepathic race and wanted to communicate. They probably saw it as a unique opportunity to communicate with another telepathic race, and were no doubt greatly disappointed with the result. This is all conjecture; maybe they just wore gloves!
"Please name one scene in ANY of the series or movies in which it is stated that they can't control their telepathy enough to withstand touching."
Ummm, if you can't find such a scene, you're not looking very hard. Just watch the Vulcans and how they act - hands clasped behind back, maintaining a "warning space" around their bodies. You should also check the novels. Regardless of what many say, they ARE established fan canon and include much that is not explained in the movies. Vulcans CAN touch humans, but they prefer a moment to raise their psychic shields to blot out human emotional overflow. And it is not the VULCANS who can't control their telepathy, it is the HUMANS. Spock's life on the Enterprise is full of the background noise of the emotions and thoughts of the humans around him, who don't know how to stop sending, because they can't receive.
"If spock was half vulcan and half human, how did his father even bear touching his mother? I'm no star trek expert, but I don't think I've ever heard the touch telepath theory"
Well, Sarek and Amanda were in love, silly! Well, Amanda was in love and Sarek was experiencing the closest thing he could allow himself to. Amanda was also trained for many, many years in Vulcan mental disciplines, thus resulting in an orderly, controlled mind that Sarek wouldn't mind touching. Additionally, when they were mated they were of course bound by the Kah (kind of a permanent telepathic connection between mates). This "Kah" is how T'Pring drew Spock home to Pon Farr, by the way. Spock himself was born by genetic manipulation, and then implanted in Amanda (there was also much technological effort involved in merely bringing him to term!). His genes are half Sarek and half Amanda, however.
The touch telepathy is certainly fact in the ST universe, and was decided upon by Gene and Nimoy working together when they fleshed out the character of Spock. Fans are divided over whether the Neck Pinch uses telepathic powers, physical adeptness, or a combination of the two to render its victim unconscious. However, it is certain that the Mind-Meld is evidence of touch-telepathy. Remember, Spock did not like to do the Mind Meld and found it distasteful, since human and other alien minds were a bit unsavory to him. He did it more often than any other known Vulcan, however, possibly because of his half-breed nature and the many years he lived among humans. He melded most, of course, with his best friend Kirk, which wasn't as hard.
Finally, when the episode Journey to Babel was being written, Gene (I think) came up with the idea that instead of holding hands, Sarek and Amanda would simply touch their first two fingers together. This delicate yet sensuous move showcases what Vulcan marriage is like: calm, reserved, physically aloof, and with an undercurrent of psychic unity and love.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Try this: the humans feel that it's necessary to return the Klingon alive. The Vulcans want to pull the plug and send the corpse back. Perhaps the botch in first contact is that the Vulcans were right, and the fact that the humans felt the need to return Klang alive was just Earth-centric thinking. Therefore, the pilot plot is covered, but the insult of the return of a live, disgraced Klingon is enough to precipitate the war in the future.
Or maybe the Klingons were pissed because the Klingon with such a dorky name still lives.
Virg
Distance from Earth to Neptune (shortest)
/3 minutes = 1,435,300,000 km/min = 23,921,700 km/sec
Minimum (10^6 km) 4305.9
Time at Warp 4.5 = 6 minutes round trip = 3 minutes one way
4,305,900,000km
therefore, Warp 4.5 = 23.9217 * 10^6 km/sec
Now, Earth to Kronos was given at 80 hours at Warp 4.5 so
80 hours = 4800 Minutes = 288,000 seconds
288,000 sec * 23,921,700 km/sec = 6,889,449,600,000 km to Kronos (6.8894496 * 10^12) (6 Trillion KM)
Light travels at 300,000 km/sec
6,889,449,600,000 km / 300,000 = 22,964,832 LightSeconds
Light seconds to light years:
60 seconds in 1 minute
60 minutes in 1 hour
24 hours in 1 day
365 days in 1 year
60 * 60 * 24 * 365 = 31,536,000 seconds/year
THEREFORE:
22,964,832 / 31,536,000 = 0.728210045662100456621005 light years
Since the closest star to Earth is some 4 light years away, the Klingons are SURE some CLOSE neighbors!
The Digital Sorceress
I was very Pleasantly surprised, I have many comments: 1) I like the opening credits and new theme song! All of you who don't like it need to chill out, it's a great change. It gets back to the exploration and destiny of man's quest for exploration and search for knowledge. At first I was shocked by the theme song, how it wasn't orchestral, but I liked it after hearing it 2-3 times. 2) I like that they put an edge onto the show, no more quib comments, like "Oh Mr. Bad Guy, I guess you're out of business now, ha ha ha..." Instead its been replaced by "I'm gonna knock you on your ass..." Much more Babylon 5'ish there. 3) I like the risque stuff they added, although blatant, they were trying to get the point across that this show is no longer for 3 year olds, its got babes and even fondling...no more Mary Poppins crap!!! It's about freaking time they joined prime time TV!!! 4) I like the special effects, very well done, they got a bigger budget. Remains to be seen if they blew their wad on the first episode. 5) I like the acting, for the most part it was good, no glaringly bad stuff, a few bad lines here and there, but that will be worked out as it goes along. 6) I like the attention to detail, how they brought back the actor who played Zephram Cochran (did you notice Cochran's statue on the top shelf of the captain's quarters?), and how they have pictures of all ships in human history named "Enterprise" on the captain's walls, and how the ship is obvviously less advanced (they had to walk through rooms over a bulkhead, just like they do on nuclear subs), and how the people wear jackets and more contemporary attire (I saw a suit and tie in one scene).
One thing I find so...fascinating...is Vulcans' continal disappointment and surprise of Human (and only Human) emotionalism. As of Enterprise, the Vulcans have shown themselves to already be a well-traveled spacefaring race. By now they should have noticed that the other species they meet are all emotional. They certainly know how emotional they were, until their race's own savior (Surak) started preaching logic.
Think about this. They don't understand Human psychology because it is so illogical, but they deign to tell humans about what will and will not offend the Klingons. Do they understand the Klingons better (consider: they have put a team on Earth for 90 years, and show no sign of permanent relations with the Klingon Empire) than they understand us? Are Klingons more logical than humans?
All in all, it seems that Vulcans are friendlier towards other emotional races than they are towards humans. It seems that there is something particularly disturbing to Vulcans about Humans, and I can't see it as being our emotion. I have a suspicion that the Vulcan attitude towards Humans in Enterprise is completely illogical. Remember that Vulcans have emotions, but hold them in strict check.
I hope that this is something Berman, et. al. have planned, rather than being some sort of mental dropout. If they have this planned, I look forward to seeing what it is about Humans that makes us particularly infuriating.
--The basis of all love is respect
I started watching Star Trek, the original series, in reruns around 1979-1981 (somewhere in there). I was about 8 at the time. I watched The Next Generation pretty loyally, then got bored. To keep the interest of people such as myself, I think they need to resolve the following issues.
I think the following things were done well, and I hope they do not lose these things.
Again, I think this is promising. I will watch next week's show. But they really need to build on the things they got right, and kill off the things they got wrong. I really think the technology issue is the biggest problem, and I really think they can get around it. Look at a modern cockpit -- half of the homes in the USA have a computer, but a cockpit is still a mess of buttons and panels. We must encourage them to be more realistic with the tech on this show.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
And may I say that what you both just talked about is exactly what would keep people talking -- conflict that is a little more "from the gut". These people don't necessarily all like each other, although they have redeeming... uh... qualities that keep you from hating them too much. But this really does seem to be something that has been long lost in the Star Trek world, and it would be nice to have the prequel continue to rediscover what it was about the original series that turned it into a successful franchise.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Weren't the Romulans unknown until Kirk ran into them in TOS?
funny munging
It sounds like they took everything for granted again as far as technology, a typical cliche in Star Trek (and all of those other futuristic sci-fi shows.)
.. eh .. the transporter for example:
Perhaps they could explain some of the aspects of
If humans have 'souls', enter the transporter, and are regenerated at some other location, hasn't the original human been disposed of and the "instant clone" created, resulting in this being a different human and the other losing its life? If Star Trek explored the "spiritual ramifications" and beliefs (not all the time, it would get very boring) of the technology as it is coming into play...
Exploring paradoxes = fun.
Do you like German cars?
So when Armstrong said "one giant leap for mankind" you think he just meant us guys and that he was excluding women by not saying humankind or persons?
Just because Strunk and White says something doesn't make it so. My copy of Webster's still defines man as "an individual human" and "the human race." That is just as authoritative as The Elements of Style is. The fact is that, like it or not, "man" still does double duty and both male gender specific AND gender neutral. Is it confusing? Yes, that is one of the many unfortunate irregularities of English. Just like "geese" does double duty as female gender specific and gender neutral for... well... geese. "Man" will probably stay that way for another hundered years or more, maybe for as long as we speak "modern" English. There has been just too much literature written that way for "personkind" to sound normal. Language experts trying to change it to be PC is even tougher than when they tried to convince American's not to say "ain't." (I was on their side, but that was a losing battle.) Or when the Soviets tried to eliminate the word for "mine" from the Russian language because it wasn't proper socialist grammer. Be grateful our language at least doesn't go around trying to give gender to inanimate objects.
BTW, I thought one of the points of Star Trek was that it wasn't supposed to be what people of the future were like, it was about people from the present with futuristic window dressing. You know, the Romulan's were the Chicoms, the Klingon's were the Ruskies, the Federation was NATO. That was most obvious in Undiscovered Country when the Soviet Union... oh, I mean Klingons... collapsed economically and were reborn as our allies.
The primaries usually have bigger chests and make for more suitable whacking material while the secondaries are use for plot devices for the male characters more often. I think it's one of those Rick Berman things.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I missed the first half hour so I'll have to wait for the rerun to even hear the theme song but I noticed it had more commercials than when NBC broadcast both Alice in Wonderland and that little people show. You didn't even get a chance to get into the plot before it faded to black and ruined your hardon thinking about rubbing gel all over Jolene. I think I may go buy a Tivo now.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The DS9 tribble episode establishes that the klingons really did look the way they did so it's something that must be adressed and I honestly don't think it's that hard to come up with something though most people probably won't like it. The klingon skull is somewhat bigger so they might require a preop if they are to pose as other species in the field. It's hard not to notice a klingon. Also the new species, the Suluban, are trying to speed up evolution, why couldn't the klingons head down the same path? They are not exactly a cautious people.
The way the Valcan's directly patronize humans is overacted. To be in character and follow the story they should be subdued like the Talons in EFC. They seem overly preoccupied with keeping humans restrained yet are quiet and unjudgemental conserning all other species.
This was definetly a successful first contact. Unless they plan on time travel that drasticly changes history ala Dallas(old drama show in the 80's) which I doubt it is inconsistent with the few references to first contact with the Klingons.
I'm looking forward to ten years from now when this series dies and TOS will be revamped to update the effects, makeup, and ships. The sets were all neutral colored so it should be quite possible to update the TOS enterprise to better match the ST Movies. They might even be able to repair some trivial ST history that they are bound to mess up with this series. It would certainly be neat to see TOS with a ship and sets like this series. They could ironically update the tribble episode so that we get to see the tribble episode such that we see glimpses of the DS9 cast.
Now if only they had a script integrity field! :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yes, I do consider that to be whining. There are plenty of shotgun toting redneck farmers, just as there are plenty of cases where there are mostly white people (and no gays) in any given place...
Perhaps the creators of the show just picked the best people for the job and were unconcerned with "affirmative action"-type bullshit.
FWIW, I am no bigot and have absolutely no tolerance for bigotry. However, I also have absolutely no tolerance for people who actively look for bigotry in every little thing forcing people to be wary of who they choose for a job, etc for fear of presenting the appearance of the slightest miniscule possibility of being a bigot.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The armor was just a machismo thing. Sure, it made them look really cool to the ladies, but it also made it hard to react quickly when being fired upon.
load "linux",8,1
Boy! I found only one other poster at score: 2 or above who didn't act like a preacher about this non-sex scene.
You want pertinent? I'll give you pertinent: Humans love to have sex and do warm, fun, fuzzy things with each other. It would have been *very* pertinent if Tucker had taken some gel in his hands, gotten all hot and bothered and grabbed Vulcan-babe for a good old-fashioned Kirk-style throat examination with his tongue.
Her reaction would have been interesting to watch, and would have instantly developed a tense sub-plot in the midst of the greater tension of the Captain's absence.
The surprise when she suddenly was swayed by her erstwhile lover's insistence to press on to Kronos instead of returning to Earth would have brought the house down under these more tense circumstances and raised questions about her ability to suppress those base emotions that Vulcans hate--er, eschew--so much.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
Perhaps, just maybe, there were mostly white people who tried out for the parts on the show. Who knows, you certainly don't, so maybe you should just STFU for now.
The original series had a diverse cast on purpose, to further a good cause. In the shows that followed, the best people were chosen for the job, except Voyager where perhaps Janeway was specifically cast because they wanted a female captain.
I'm not a bigot, I was raised without even realizing there was tension among races in this country. You probably don't believe that though, because I don't personally go looking for bigotry in ever detail of everything.
"Mm. Note the implicit assumptions being smuggled in here: that it is reasonable to expect that "the best people for the job" will be mostly white males (rather than being uncorrelated with race and sex"
Wow, you're really, really trying hard to label me a bigot for disagreeing with you on this, but you've ended up just pulling stupid shit out of your ass.
This conversation, is over.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
... I hope to catch it when it's run tomorrow.
IMO, ST:TNG was the best show in the entire franchise, but not until about the third season. Most of the first season sucked on toast, in retrospect (though at the time it was just cool to have new Star Trek to watch).
Any show that's worth it will take a while to develop. You can tell a complete stinker pretty easily, but the difference between a watchable show and a great show isn't immediately obvious (i.e., you can judge episodes obviously, but if the premiere is "OK" or "pretty good" or "so-so", then it's still quite possible that the show will turn out to be excellent).
I just hope that the folks behind this show realize that there have been around five hundred episodes of Star Trek and they pretty much ran out of new ideas after about 150-200. I personally got bored with Voyager and punted the last few seasons.
I'd like to what "Enterprise", but I sure don't want to see the same "aliens have taken over the ship in some ludicrously easy way" or "Officer X has been kidnapped" or "Regardless of how dramatic the plot tries to be you always know it will end exactly back at the status quo ante."
I do know one thing from the pictures I've seen... they definitely are sticking to the "Seven of Nine" formula. Let's hope that character is more than just eye-candy (Seven of Nine _was_ a very interesting character, for a while...).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I'm sorry, but to me it seemed to s#ck from the word "engage".
I'm the stranger...posting to
"The series could have revolved around Wesley Crusher."
Jesus Christ, man, are you daft?! What if a network exec sees that post and thinks "hmm...". I'm all for free speech, but I'd have been happier if you'd indulged you love of pain by yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
Chalk it up to experience, and don't do that again!
I'm the stranger...posting to
You have to admit that in context with the camera angles and pauses and whatnot, the overall effect was not entirely platonic. There is a reason, you know, that Tucker and T'Pol were arguing while scantily clad in a very cold decon room, as opposed to in the corridor or a briefing room.
I'm the stranger...posting to
You're right. I retract my earlier comment. Can you tell I have no actual parenting experience?
Thank you for correcting my ignorance.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Games are not canonical ST lore - what you see on screen always takes precedence, then officially sanctioned books. Fanfic and games don't enter into the equasion.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?