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Enterprise Season Premiere Tonight
l0key432 writes "Enterprise, Star Trek's fifth series, begins its second season on UPN tonight at 8pm/7pm central with the episode Shockwave Part II, airing just before the series premier of the new 'The Twilight Zone' show at 9pm/8pm central. Shockwave II is the conclusion to last season's season-ending cliff-hanger, and additional info can be found at this page(possible spoilers!) on StarTrek.com." Of course with my luck, it'll be pre-empted by some sporting event.
So if you haven't seen it, someone else here probably has. So you don't want to read on if you want to avoid spoilers.
So essentially ... SPOILER ALERT(!!) for this whole story.
Great premise, likeable characters and good actors.
It got off to a great start. The Broken Bow was easily the best of the Trek pilots.
So what's the problem? It almost seems as if the producers want Enteprise to ASPIRE to be as mediocre as Voyager was.
It's stuck in that "nothing can change week to week" mentality that Paramount has long imposed on Trek. Worse, it's not even particularly bad like Voyager was early on... it's just... there. More often then not, it's not good or bad. Just something I could care less about.
The Temporal Cold War is at least a step in the right direction, even if I think they've removed too much of the mystery from it. Compare "Future Guy's" appearance in the pilot to what it was in the finale. Initially, you couldn't tell anything about him and there was that cool distortion effect. Now, he looks like a guy dressed in stage black.
Sullick and Daniels are a little too black & white. I wished they could've pretened for more than a fraction of an episode that the Suliban might actually be the good guys. Or that there were no good guys in this fight.
But the fact that they have an continuing, if infrequently returned to, storyline is a positive step. Having *consistant* internal continuity is generally a good thing for a show. It's an incentive to watch, when done properly.
As it is, I generally don't care about Enterprise.
One of the major problems with Enterprise is that TIME TRAVEL SUCKS. It's been completely overdone, BADLY, particularly on Trek, and I for one am not going to watch any more time travel eps.
Because they're ALL THE SAME EPISODE: crew encounters time wedgie. Crew solves time wedgie puzzle. Time returns to normal. Teenage son lies to a cute girl at school to impress her, but gets found out and learns an important lesson about honesty. Roll credits.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I thought that was one of the most thought-provoking pieces of sci-fi to hit television in a long time.
For those unfamiliar with the plot (spoilers ahead):
I found it to be a fascinating insight into the moral responsibilities that they faced: Cure the sick, leaving them to continue their subjugation of a developing species, or allow nature to take its course while doing what they could to ease suffering.
P.S. No, I did not have the whole thing memorized. I did a bit of web surfing to get the names of the species and some plot specifics.
Have you noticed that since Gene Roddenberry's death the franchise has truly suffered?
Sure, the showrunners bristled at Gene's humanist view and various objections to darker themes - but sure enough, since his death the franchise has continually become less-and-less "beloved."
There are so many elements that ignore Roddenberry's view in Enterprise that I wonder if it is the first show that is hardly "Star Trek" at all?