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Rick Berman: Enterprise May Not Suck Next Year
Steve Krutzler writes "Star Trek producer Rick Berman has made his latest comments in a new interview with a British magazine and he says the season finale of Enterprise ("The Expanse") will begin to change the ultimate mission of the show for the better: 'I think our final episode of the season is going to be quite startling because we're going to do a cliffhanger that will put a new twist on the series as it enters its third year.'"
Microsoft: Windows may not suck next year
KNW
Oh, give it up. It's over. End this soap opera. Don't try to save it. Be like Buffy; she knows when to quit.
I really hope its true but the only way that I think it will happen is if they splice Shatner and Nimoy into the series.
Just to piss off scrappers?
Blah
Of all my friends who are Star Trek fans, none of them watch. I know of only one person who regularly watches Enterprise and she traditionally skips this type of show.
Sure, it's not a representative sample but from what I see Enterprise just doesn't appeal to its expected audience.
When talking about why ST: Nemesis was a failure Rich Berman (basically the head of all things Star Trek) said that opening between Harry Potter 2 and The Two Towers was tough on the film (70 Million to make only took in 43 Million in the US). I'd say to Rick, paying to watch such a bad movie was tough on the audience. The reason Nemeses failed was that it was BAD, both the story and directing.
...oh no that's in the interview too!!!
I DO like Enterprise but after reading the article to find out that the Borg are going to be in an upcoming episode. I feel sick.
Paramont please fire Berman and replace him with someone who does not rehash old ideas and thinks they are exiting story lines. It took are huge letter campaign to get ST from Paramount/Gulf-Western/Desi-Lu's closet to the Big Screen. Anyone want to write to "Impeach Berman" ?
What's next have a new young helm officer named James T. Kirk?
Cant say I will watch it after the first season. Semms like a cash in on the Trek franchise to me :P
- Sucked:
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Star Trek: Voyager
- Star Trek: Nemesis
- Star Trek: Generations
- Star Trek: Enterprise
- Didn't suck:
- Star Trek: First Contact
- Star Trek: TNG
DS9 and Voyager sucked consistently throughout every painful episode. Forgive me if I don't hold my breath for Enterprise to right itself before it sinks."I don't really want to get specific about it, but we're not talking about a tiny change. We're talking about a change that is going to, to some degree, alter our mission"
Maybe Archer will change into a woman, he's touchy feely enough already.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
I haven't liked star trek since about the time voyager clashed with the borg. It seems to me that there aren't many new trekkies either. It seems like all the current fans were fans before voyager. The Star Trek story may just need to lie low for a while and then make a triumphant return.
They kill off Firefly halfway through the first season but let Enterprise go on for three years. Shheesh.
They use gritty cinematography, Archer shows equal prejudice towards everyone (hell he beat up an Andorian chick one episode), plus Ensign Sato is HOT!!!.
Hot gel-showering hot chicks aside.. I kinda like the series. I do think a "change of direction" would be an improvement though.. you can only go so far in space with that naive "we're from earth.. please don't kill us" thing. Maybe they'll develop some better weapons and grow some larger space nuts too!.. and MAYBE... just MAYBE... we'll get the scoop on this whole Klingon forehead thing.. No ridges... Ridges... That's a choice in potato chips, not aliens dammit!
chown -R us
If you didn't like it, oh well. But MANY of us did. There was lots of good stuff happening.
Only way they could improve was if they removed the stupid temporal war subplot. Then again, I see they already got the Borg involved...
Je ne parle pas francais.
They are thrown into the er, hell... Theta quadrant and must struggle tirelessly to avoid the multitudes of vicious alien races and ultimately make it back to Earth. Yeah that sounds about right. Where the Star Trek I used to love? :(
Said in the paper today its Bill Shatners birthday 2day, hes 72(yipes!). Happy... Birthday!, Captain.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Say what you want about Berman, but it could be worse. The Star Trek franchise could have been in the hands of the man who did in 2 movies what the Joker, Riddler and the rest of the villians in the Batman universe could not do to the Dark Knight in the entire run: he destroyed Batman.
Ugh...
Paramount, Berman, et al are under the delusion that the Star Trek universe is impervious to profit loss. They've bought into the Cash Cow reteric of your favorite Marketing-type. Newflash: This cow pumped it's last load of lactose ages ago. All the poor bovine has left is a trickle of teet sweat.
Look to Arm&Hammer. These dudes wake up every morning praying that somehow that can put a fresh face on baking sode. Surveys, focus groups, potheads...anything that will give them a scrap of an idea on how to re-market an old-outdated-tired-beentheredonethat-product. Use it for baking. Use it for toothpaste. Use if for deorderizer. Use it for smelly shoes. Use it as a cleanser...
Well, guess what Berman...we're SICK AND TIRED of baking soda!
I really wanna hear from CleverNickName
And screw the political sidestepping of the issue. Wil, how would _YOU_ fix it? WWWWD? Inquiring minds want to know!
Don't make me get my dueling glove.
best web host ever
Voyager had one of those season finales every year and the show just kept getting better and better!
paintball
... Rick Berman, Executive Producer of the Star Trek(r)(tm)(c) franchise is announcing his retirement from creative control of Star Trek...
C'mon guys... It won't stop sucking until Berman is out of the driver's seat. He doesn't know how to do anything truly creative. He was Roddenberry's financials guy, for crissake, not the creative pillar behind the series.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Archer wakes up with Suzanne Pleshette in his cozy bed. We realize the whole thing has been a dream and Archer is really a balding Chicago psychologist.
A new theme song! That St. Elmo's Fire ripoff they have now just makes me cringe.
If you can't be a little flexible now and then, then you deserve everything you get YOU BITCHY OLD HAG. So shut up and leave me in peace. Every single evening you try and phone me and email me to get you your medicine even though I showed you how to climb on the little stool and everything to get it. So screw you, OK? Fuck off and die.
It is possible that they just might be able to pull off some spanking new effects, unfortunately it still won't eliminate the "Berman factor", nuts.
Time travellers from the future reveal that future Trek series will suck just as badly. In a last ditch effort to save Enterprise, the crew must travel back in time and assassinate Rick Berman.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Scene:
Enterprise Bridge. Archer occupies the captain's chair, his crew working busily around him. Archer suddenly sits bolt upright, and then sags as if exhausted.
Archer: I feel a great disturbance in the force.
Crew: The whaa?
My guess would be that they've finished the Saliban so its only natural to work on the next nemesis of the galactic peace, Piraq.
Well I guess it would be interesting to feature Q in Enterprise... Because that could happen, given that Q is this wildcard characters that they can use anytime ... but maybe it's just me being nostalgic of "All Good Things..." :)
Umm... The only thing Enterprise has going for it compared to any other Trek so far, is the fact it's recorded in widescreen format (I have a 16:9 aspect ratio tv, and it fits so much nicer)...
Then again, the plots are SOOO crappy that I never actually get to enjoy the benifit as my TV won't actually let me tune into the channel playing it...
I mean, there was an entire episode that I dragged myself through, where two people were on a shuttle running out of air, thinking that enterprise was destroyed, going back and forth about how they don't wanna die. That's not entertaining, that's like pulling teeth... Hell, Enterprise is like watching paint dry... except it never seems to dry... it's painful... make it stop!!!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Disclaimer: I have not watched enterprise.
My take on this: of course he is going to say it won't suck! His job is to make a good show, and get people to watch it so the station can make money. If his show sucks, no one will watch it, and he won't get another paying job.
We have seen a TON of hype about TV lately (always?) and more than 95% of the time it is bullshit. Marketting hype.
Recent example: Fox TV: Joe Millionaire will make his decision next week! reality: No, just a filler episode, people boycotting Fox for lying.
Too many commercials anyway.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I've all but given up on Enterprise, it's even worse the Voyager. No, not the show. The fact that now that UPN runs the show, there's not enough episodes.
They play rerun after rerun during the season. I can understand one or two, for a holiday or something.. I've gotten to the point where I assume it's going to be another rerun.
How do they think this is good for the show? Especially considering the show is 2 seasons old, there's not a lot of old episodes to show.
I think the fourth episode of Enterprise was a rerun of the second.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Have the Enterprise be forced into a situation where they have to destroy all records of the shitty theme music.
DS9 didn't suck(in my opinion) i liked it a lot. I also liked voyager. my ranking of trek:
ST:TOS
ST:TNG
ST:DS9
ST:Voyager
ST:Enterprise
i like them all, and though enterprise is no TNG, its still descent Sci-Fi, berman on the other hand almost seems determined to destroy it. Where is Frakes? He should com eto the rescue!
Romulan Wars.
Q.
Borg.
Other Ships.
Young Sarek.
I know a lot of people are saying that they are just going to rehash old ideas, but even if they do do that to some extent at least it will be from a different perspective and even given the same problems they may have to come up with different solutions. (ie now that 10 years have passed in real time, so much our TV evolve)
Of course I'd still like to see them at the edge of television. Not sure what that means now-a-days though.
Actual cliffhangers considered by Paramount:
Sorry, that was one was added by me.
The best TV-watching decision I've made all year was deleting Enterprise from my list of TiVo Season Passes. I'm a huge DS9 fan (still rewatching episodes as they air), I watched every episode of the other series (well, I missed a few Voyagers, I think you understand), but I can't believe people are still watching Enterprise.
The Slashdot story I'm waiting to hear is that Terry Nation's Survivors is coming out on DVD. Terry Nation was a science fiction script writer who could actually write.
How about hot steamy Vulcan sex between Archer and T'Pal!
You're using her as bait, Master!
I can't stand it. I tried to watch it when it started but the opening theme music is so freaking painful that I am forced to change channels or just turn the tv off in shock.
There are many nasty things you can say about Rick Berman: lousy writer, assumes audience consists of morons, rips off actors and writers, etc. But even if he had none of these issues, he'd have no hope of producing a watchable SF series. 'Cause he has no idea what SF is.
He thinks SF is all about the Gee Whiz Factor. Fancy effects, pretentious pseudo-science, lots of gadgets. That's why he abandoned the Picard/Sisko/Janeway thread: it was getting to hard to top himself with fancier and sillier gadgets and effects. So he goes back a couple centuries, where he can derive GWF from the "this is where it came from" element.
Real SF has nothing to do with the GWF. It's about playing with ideas, fiddling with them, seeing where they will go. That's why Star Trek developed a serious following in the first place.
Enterprise has pro forma "ideas" of course. But they're lame, silly, invented by retarded people who don't even know Junior High science.
Ironically, absence of the GWF is also why Stargate SG1 is doing so well. Which is really weird, because the premise of SG1 has got to be the silliest ever. (The USAF is secretly involved in intergalactic exploration and warfare? Yeah, right.) But the better SG1 episodes do what Star Trek used to do -- find interesting ideas and use them to tell simple interesting stories.
Bah, Berman has fell victim of the conservative trekkies. There are a lot of people who already like Enterprise. And majority of the people who like Enterprise are a "new breed" (IMO) of Star Trek fans (such as myself) who have never seen Star Trek before, but like this series.
The reason I like Enterprise is because it's more "humble". There really isn't a prerequisite to the show, so I was able to be introduced to "Star Trek" just as the crew (staff) of the show is. It's less technical and deals more with the human experience. (Like Voyager) I heard that people dislike the intro, but I think it works very well. It keeps up the "human"/"humble" theme. Even though the orchestra openings are good, I don't think there's a problem with the opening song (Faith of the Heart). (BTW, if you want to see what the Orchestra version would of been like, a "leaked" recording is here*.)
Now that I got into Enterprise, I've also started watching Voyager nightly, and now TNG on the "New TNN" and I'm having a new appreciation for Star Trek as a really good collection of shows, instead of the stereotype "geek" show that I used to make fun of.
Anyways, I hope they don't mess up the series. The last few episodes ("Stigma" & "Canamar") have been pretty good, "Stigma" went on about the politics of an AIDS-like disease among the Vulkcans (via Mind Meld). Though, they should of done something like that years ago.
I'll keep watching.
Rick Berman would click this link.
T'pol and Archer have a baby together - and it's Kirk
Get off Slashdot. NOW!
unless it really kicks up kind of like DS9 did, well for me I thought the first season was bad but its what sets the stage, so it has to be kind of boring in some respect. Honestly though I want series 5 to be in the future, future not 150 years in the future. Its the whole point of Star Trek, a utopian society with cool gagets and gizmos, I don't need to see how it got there. Hey, you don't have to take my word for it.
He's already destroyed star trek and he's digging an even deeper hole for himself (to soon be filled with molten lead).
Enterprise has already broken the star trek timeline so many times that it's just not funny anymore. The plot lines are cheesy rip-offs and hold no future for the show.
I bet his idea of "quite startling" is "implied nudity" and "cliffhanger" is "predictable ending" and "new twist" is "old and abused nonsense."
I hate cancelling moderations like this. Someone less lazy than myself should make a patch to fulfill that feature request about cancelling one's moderations.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Well, maybe for the first season or two. And it definitely was not typical trek wherein you had one episode that could stand fairly well on it's own. DS9 got to be a very good political soap opera, and I mean that as a compliment - you'd think being based on a space station would be limitting, but it explored whole new areas of trek that had never been done before - how starfleet runs, how the federation conducts diplomacy, how religion and advanced science may not be totally different. On the original series and TNG you knew who the good guys were. On DS9, you just had guys, and sometimes they were good, and sometimes they wern't.
The tradeoff is you pretty much had to watch it every week for it to make sense and play well, but that's not exactly unique to that show (West Wing comes to mind.)
As for Enterprise, I would probably watch it if it wasn't in the same timeslot as West Wing.
As for Berman, he's an idiot. The studio stuck a studio guy in what is a creative man's job. He's trying to make Trek work by doing what worked for Trek before, not realizing that worked for Trek before was doing something that Trek had never done.
The Borg wern't cool because they're the Borg. The Borg were cool because they were something Trek had never seen. Like Tribbles and evil copies of main characters from a parallel dimension, they're only good for so many episodes.
paintball
I hope it involves time travel! Or the crew going nuts! Or people not trusting each other! Or people being incompetent! Or people violating very basic rules of common sense! Or people spouting technobabble as exposition, conflict, and resolution!
Roger Ebert summed up contemporary Star Trek best (in his review of Nemesis ): "Star Trek was kind of terrific once, but now it is a copy of a copy of a copy."
The title should read:
"Rick Berman: Enterprise may not suck next year, but it probably still will."
Sorry for the mixup.
paintball
I'm talking about mixing in some suspense and drama with the sci-fi/speculative fiction.
Kill some characters off. Make the ones that don't change. Have a plot that lasts. The soft-porn sections are (let's be honest) nice, but I'd trade them for a plot.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Why not bring back the remaining original cast for a new show?
And when they bring it back, don't have kirk play some overly mature captain who doesn't fight with klingons every week or womanize green aliens. TOS wasn't about political correctness, it was a fun show to watch that occasionally tossed in a life lesson. I want my kirk to be the womanizing manwhore he was in TOS.
Enterpise sucks, sorry I just can't stand to watch that sugar coated politically correct basterdization of my favorite show. It's way to complicated.
TOS had 3 main plots for every show.
1. Kirk gets laid.
2. Kirk kicks butt
3. Kirk enlightens an otherwise un-enlighted species to their wrongdoings, using steps 1 or 2 or a combination of them and in turn, gave a social commentary to the social injustices of the day (racism, prejudice, tyranical rule, ect)
Everything past TOS got way to complex and sucky, you don't need SGI indy made FX for a great show.
I have serious doubts that John de Lancie would reprise his role as the "Q". I saw him at a convention once (yeah, I was a Trekkie geek) and he was truly a complete asshole. He downplays his role as "Q" because he wants to be recognized for his other work in various soaps like Days of our Lives and things like that. IMO a totally egomaniacal jerk who doesn't appreciate Trek fans at all. If Berman and company wanted to use a "Q" character, I think they'd do well to just cast someone entirely different. After all, there wasn't just one "Q" (de Lancie), but a whole "race" of them if you recall.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
die die die merkin invaders!
fuck you
I think the whole status of the franchise can be summed up with the opening theme for Enterprise. Hands down, people hate that song. Sure, there may be one or two fans, but for the most part, it sucks.
When asked about the backlash brought on by the atrocious theme, Rick Berman's response was "I like it". That there, to me, is the whole problem. Berman doesn't give a shit about what anyone else thinks. If he likes it, good to go. And, since Berman has shitty taste and doesn't know the first thing about Trek, we're stuck with substandard crap.
Bring on 7 of 9!
She, with her big boobs and tight jumpsuit, managed to improve the ratings of Voyager so much (and disgusted me enough to stop watching it) that it kept going for years.
So, bring in a crossover with her and the show will do fine. Of course, it will stop being believable, but who cares if you can see a nice chick with big booms in a jumpsuit?
bash$
First Post!
Make it a drama with contiguous episodes. We need mutli-season plot arcs, and an over-arching theme.
How many star trek episodes have you watched where they discover some AMAZING new technology (new weapons, new technology, new energy source etc.), possibly even something that alters the reality of the show (afterlife, alternate realities, etc) and then that development is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN ?
Think about the big shows right now -- Sopranos, The Shield, West Wing, Buffy, Farscape etc... All dramas, no episdoes where everything is resolved in 44 minutes.
One of the worst abuses EVER was in Enterprise, when they found out one of the crewman was FROM THE FUTURE and that there was a time "cold war". They didnt mention it again for like 6 episodes ... they just kept flying to different planets to talk to aliens ...
Why don't they wanna have a Drama? The show is much more difficult to repeat, much more difficult to write for, and much more difficult to produce. However, in exchange for this they get -- loyal fans --.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Perhaps they could use his son who played Q's son in a Voyager episode.
that drivel like Enterprise gets another season, yet Farscape which is superior in nearly every way gets canned.
I thought that the Bad episodes in Voyager or DS9 were as low as it could get, Enterprise has surpassed them all.
The problem with Enterprise is that the basis is time travel and crummy technology. It was doomed from the start. Both of these plot devices force the writers to cheat, back peddle, and generally create unbelievable plots. The best thing the writers can do is to assume a good enough ship, ditch the time travel arch, and concentrate on character development and other basics of good story telling.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
And there you hit upon what the show needs! Orion Slave Women! (and pirates, arrr)
I'm sorry if you other Trek fans can't see it, but Deep Space Nine was the best modern Trek series and holds its own against the original Star Trek. It is far better than TNG IMO, and has done more than all the other 3 modern series. It is intelligently written, funny, has intriguing character development, excellent special effects, and goes back to the root of Star Trek by examining issues such as racial prejudice, politics & religion. What is best about the show is that it doesn't offer all the answers to these questions (a la TNG), but it is up to the viewer to decide who they agree with.
That being said, Enterprise would be so much better off if tried to emulate any of the elements that DS9 had. That is how they can save the show.
Would have liked to see him in a movie with Alec Guiness, playing themselves of course.
Star Trek needs a Rimmer-like character.
If they would have a character *with* character we could actually see some tension happ-penn-ing.
Get rid of the temporal cold war. Oh, and experiment with the storylines. Can't get worse than what we're seeing now.
Btw, *I* liked nemesis.
-- Still waiting for the 9th...
Cheers,
-- The Coward
Have you noticed that when they display Jolene Blalock's name during the intro, that it's over a scene of a very phallic launch of a Saturn V (?) rocket? Subliminal suggestion, maybe?
GWF. Hmm. Maybe Enterprise needs a Hoshi - T'Pol subtext ala Xena.
Nevermind that they had never been heard of prior to the last season of The Next Generation, and nevermind that Voyager already tried to ret-con it so that Seven of Nine's parents actually knew about them prior to the events of "The Best of Both Worlds," and nevermind that each successive appearance of the Borg in TV and film has made them less interesting, but can the writers come up with no better ideas? Even after the Borg were introduced in The Next Generation, the writers kept trying new things and didn't rely on them. Deep Space Nine's Dominion plotline was dramatically insulting, but they found a way to deal with non-Borg life. Voyager I can understand, since that show took place a long way away from the Federation, but... but... Enterprise?!?
Mr. Berman, hear this: If you have to rely on the Borg to make your show interesting, you need new writers! And quick!
--Matthew
"If the lights of Broadway blind me, I won't mind..."
I notice that there have only been a few episodes this season. The vulcans versus the blue antenna people episode was watchable, but the rest stunk. All of them have been predictable in that nothing happens. Captain Archer finally accepts the fact that his chair squeaks, the hick stops telling it like it is and has a moment of "spiritual growth", the token black character escapes death once more, the translator puts her clothes back on, the medic does something wierd, the vulcan supermodel gets in one frosty remark, and the people with silly putty on their heads ....oy veh, who cares.
I'm generally too busy whacking it to notice details like that.
I wasn't even aware it "sucked". I do think it attracts a much more mainstream audience, as I pretty much detest MOST of the previous ST series that have been on TV, with the errant episode here or there drawing my attention.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Do you remember when Enterprise was first introduced? We were promised it would be "Star Trek with phasers". In other words, lots of action, less "character development" episodes and other slow topics.
That recent "Stigma" episode (T'Pol has mind-meld disease) was as far from "Star Trek with phasers" as you can get. On the other hand, that recent "Canamar" epsiode (Con Air, in space) was pretty cool.
Here is the best hope for the series: Berman and Pillar have stopped writing all the episodes. Every time I watch Enterprise, I make careful note of who wrote the episode. The whole first season was purely written by Berman and Pillar. Recently, we have had a string of episodes written by other writers.
If they want to make us happy, they ought to get some scripts from actual SF authors. How about John E. Stith, David Weber, or Catherine Asaro? (I draw the line at Piers Anthony, though...)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Let me guess. Earth is hit by a devestating attack by the Suliban. Earth retailiates, then builds a huge Starfleet and expands into the galaxy, assembling a "Federation of The Willing" to prevent future attacks.
DCMonkey
Star Wars and Star Trek have totally turned into shitty franchises milked for money. It's to be expected though i mean even the teenage mutant ninja turtles started out as a badass comic book and was reduced to cowabunga after. It's the american way to use something untill you can't make money from it anymore and then throw it away.
Won't you be my my neighbor?
Does this idiot really think that anyone will watch the finale based upon this media 'plant'?
I hope that this means that the series is in real danger of cancellation, but UPN seemes determined to press on.
Why do morons have so much power?
Given his age (and his weight) I don't think he'll last more than a couple of years. Personally, I would like to see him reprise the role of Kirk one last time along with fellow sidekick Spock. I bet the ratings for that would be pretty substantial, even if people tune in to goof on it.
When Enterprise first came on, I thought this was going to essentially be "pre" Star Trek. But essentially it feels the same as every other Star Trek series. They have all the same stuff, only crappier. The only good thing that has happened is a mild limitation of the techno-babble deus-ex mechina that plauged the later series. Mild.
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
Here's what's going to happen:
Young James Tiberius Kirk is rescued from a giant space rat or something. They let him drive the ship for a little bit, but Wesley Crusher visits from the future, and convinces Kirk that it's a really really bad idea, so Kirk leaves the ship to train as an Iron Chef (Iron Klingon). The entire timeline is changed, except for Wesley, who now travels in a battered blue police box, and is thus immune from the changes he has wrought.
In the meantime, when the Klingons attack Earth after trying Kirk's attempt to cook gagh, and a Vulcan shuttle transporting young Sarek crashlands onto the Picard vineyards, killing the entire family. Just to play it safe. The bistro in New Orleans where Sisko came from can stay. Good restaurants in New Orleans are surprisingly hard to find.
Finally, young Checkov discovers that he has psychic powers, and the rest of Starfleet travels off to meet the Minbari.
OK, we could only wish. But the ultimate problem with what Star Trek has evolved (devolved?) into is that the producers don't actually have a story to tell. They have episodes, and a made-by-committee chronowar goulash to hold it all together. They just don't get it. They need a continuing story, where you can't get everything if you miss a couple of episodes.
They also need to start killing off redshirts. No one on the crew has died so far (at least on the episodes I've watched). I want to see Crewman Jones choke to death on space pollen. I want to see a crew member shipped home because of genetic damage caused by routine exposure to the Warp V engine. I want to see some sacrifice here, space people.
I wanna see them complete f*ck up an undeveloped world trying to do good, resulting in the creation of the Prime Directive. It's got to be bloody, and horrible. I want to see them drop off on an unsuspecting planet that really nice scientist who thinks that the Nazis could have been a good idea - but he's really just an evil Nazi bastard like all of them are and secretly went there to create the Fourth Reich in all its glory. [want an alternate universe story? Starfleet vs. Nazis armed by the Klingons].
AND, they need to drop all of their useful crutches, that means:
1. No holo-anything. Not even holo-trinkets from Vulcan.
2. No transporter malfunctions that result in anything other than painful and irreversable death.
3. No mirror-universe
4. No mirrors - let's play it safe here.
5. No Borg
6. No Q. OK, maybe Q, but they can't remember ANY of it at the end of the episode.
7. No time travel chrono war. Have it all resolved in a very special episode with special guest stars Wil Wheaton and John DeLancie.
8. No decon gel. Let's get real, folks. Just let them have space-sex, and we'll get all the fan service we want. Just give us an honest space-erotic massage, and I'll be happy.
Need a plot? War with the Klingons. War with the Romulans. Peace protestors at home. Vulcan and French disapproval of Starfleet military intervention.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I don't know the timeline that well, I'm just not *THAT* big of a Trekkie (Trekker?), but what I'd like to see is the start of the Federation... all done up with season long arcs through the episodes.
But that's just me...
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
This man has lost all credibility. He still claims the latest movie's problem was that others were good (and "Die another day" wasn't even all that good), rather than admit that it was a weak story poorly told that any fan would rather never had hit the ST universe. Look at every thing he had told us would be good. Look at how good he told us the first year of Enterprise would be. Maybe by his standards the next year will not suck, but by his standards all of the others things that did suck were great programming.
Time for a massive fan letter writing campaign to the studio to take a series off the air!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The Enterprise goes back in time and crashes into Berman's childhood home, thus ending this thread.
The startling plot twist in the season finale will be that the doctor will get kidnapped or captured and thrown in an alien prison. I think he is the only main character who hasnt been kidnapped or captured so far in the series. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, her five year mission to seek out new life and and get imprisoned by it.
There were only 2 watch able Treks, TOS and TNG. DS9 was as painful as watching a House session on CSPAN and Voyager was written by no talent fanboys.
Unfortunately, he was very good in the role, asshole or not. Actually, maybe that's why he was good- he was playing himself!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Nothing can "suck" in the vacuum of space.
/., I could stand to look at myself in the mirror . . .
Before I came to
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Star Trek is like Windows. They have run out of ideas and just keep recylying old ones. And like in Star Trek, people are becoming aware of it.
I had no idea people thought this. I think it's much better than Voyager or TNG.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Seems like folks are taking thier ideas of a better trek and doing it themselves....thus Hidden Frontier
http://www.hiddenfrontier.org
Go grab a few shows and see what folks with the DIY attitude can do...then get your geek on and go make.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
They have two options:
1) Junk the entire cast of the Enterprise. Bring in a new ship called Moya. Introduce a dynamic bad guy called Scorpius. And Have a few new good guys including a lost astronaut from Earth, his alien lover who is pregnant with his child, a guy with a fake nose and a load of muppets. Oh and rename the show Farscape.
2) Junk the entire cast, Earth, and show title. Instead write a new origin show, this time describe the origin of the Borg. The residents of a certain planet could be human lookalikes (save on makeup). They use a series of computers to communicate and exchange information (could call this the Collective). The Borg is a a company that wrote some of the most popular software that the Collective runs on and there is a corrupt element rising within in it, with a thirst for knowledge. Would probably have a limited shelf life (4 seasons maybe) but it would at least be something different
When watching the premiere, both me and my roommate immediately commented that it was looking a little like NYPD Blue, the hand held camera technique.
Then on "Shadows of P'Jem", the scene where the rescue team knock out the guards, very nice single point lighting to create silhouette of the characters.
You should watch the show before commenting next time.
Screw Star Trek. I want a show about the Klingon Empire where they constantly beat the living shit out of each other and conquer new worlds with an evil grin on their faces as they yell "FIRE!"
For the intellectual part of the show, they could concentrate on inter-clan wars, the empire itself, and its culture-rich religion.
Sex appeal is the only problem. Sure they have their tits hanging out of their uniforms all the time, but those nasty-ass ridges don't do it for me.
Oh yeah, and there wouldn't be any time-travel, whiney women/geekey men, or techology based episodes, because the klingons wouldn't give a damn, and if they did, they'd just kill the offenders.
Something I wrote for e2 makes sense here-
,
I have to take several of the points against DS9 on right here and now.
# The hero or heroic group does not have to make a physical journey so much as a spiritual or experience based one. Go back and reread Jospeh Campell's Hero With A Thousand Faces or The Power of Myth. Time and time again little minds always equate the heroic call to journey as a travel based journey. Space is only one dimension of experience. Go read Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) for more on experience and expansion thereof.
# DS9 the station may have "sat" there but the characters in it moved across time, space and experience.While other Trek show characters simply mouthed the required catch phrases ("make it so" "blah blah blah logical" "I cana change the laws of phsyics") DS9 characters had to grow, had to expand, had to come into conflict not just with the swirling universe around them but the swirling turmoil in their own selves.
Once again we are hitting on the narrow minded ideas of what makes a Star Trek Production good.
# Besides the many great topics hit on by WolfDaddy take a look at how they dealt with the issue of Race. Many times the plot of a show or arc of shows had to do about a characters race and the conflicts they have in being that race.
The Captian himself has to come to grips with this in the alternate flash back universe of Benny, the black science fiction writer living in the middle of the 20th century.
# DS9 also looked under other unseemly issues that most of the other Trek shows glossed over. In the other Trek shows the Federation were a group of happy content citizens whose every basic need is catered to. In DS9 we finally see the cracks in the Federations shiny armor. People are still fsked up, people are still people rather than holier than thou walking talking good will ambassadors.
I can see where many die hard Trek fans would find this a bad thing. They were happy knowing they were part of a just and right thinking future and here DS9 comes along to tell them all is not as it seems.
Have you ever been to a movie house full of die hard Trek fans? Watch and listen to them. They will cheer as certain catch phrases are used, start citing chapter and verse detailed factoids as to way such and such cant be happening
"well in the third season shows 23 it was clearly shown that Sub Commander Thalls second half sister was on that planet when it was destroyed by speices 776523 and so that character can not be in this movie because that would cause a rip in the space time continuity"
and will have this warm happy glow on their faces no matter how bad the movie or show was. Why? Compare and contrast the audience in a Jimmy Swagart revival or in the audience of any evangelical church gathering. See something interesting? I knew you would.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Totally dude.
-- Support Ometz le-Serev.
Archer:
tall man with glass jaw
why do you talk so strangely?
your father watches
Hoshi:
sad little Hoshi
Universal Translator
her only lover
Mayweather:
silent, empty chair
what is my function, captain?
the captain hears not
Tucker:
banjo pickin' boy
leave space before she bites you
on your redneck ass
Reed:
they are all your foes
you're only course, sacrifice
serve the greater good
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Unless she and Archer get down to some hot Human-Vulcan Hot Monkey Love; at least in silhouette where we can see those fun-bags unleashed, I dont plan to watch again.
The stories are lame, and they dont blow up enough shit. Give me an episode where they invent the Photon Torpedo, inspired by a violent T'Polgasm. Dont these people watch Fox, for christ's sake? T&A and explosions = Ratings. It aint that hard.
"When Rick (*cough*-ing) Berman talks about creatively working the Borg into a pre-Picard timeline, I get worried."
Ah, but they left out part of the interview in the article. They only mentioned that he said "So we have managed to deal with that in what I feel is a very interesting fashion" but he did then go on to say "Chef accidentally drops a pinch of tachyon particles into the steak dinner at the end, so they all go back in time to the begining of the episode, but T'pol (being a vegetarian and getting her own special meal) prevents the encounter from happening again, and doesn't tell anyone about it because they would just think she's lying anyway (which as a Vulcanoid, she isn't supposed to do)."
The word Cliifhanger demands obligatory post referencing Farscape... maybe they'll cancel Enterprise too just to mess with our heads.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Already tried in Planet of the Apes -- and it didn't work.
Maybe the finale will involve Rick Berman and Brannon Braga being tied to a fence post and being whipped with flails. They've managed to take a legendary franchise and turn it into a soap opera in space diluted with weekly writer wankfests over "frequencies" and "phases" as solutions to every problem in existence. I can't bring myself to watch it due to the massive amounts of pseudoscience permeating every episode.
Enterprise sucks for the same reason that The Young Indiana Jones sucked, it is little more than a vehicle for left-wing politically correct propaganda. The producers behind Young Indiana Jones seemed to believe that using special effects to make it look like they were filming in exotic places would actually make people want to watch despite the fact that the show itself was little more than a gimick to push PC. Enterprise seems to rely on Ms. Spocks cleavage for the same purpose. Personally I like the little asian translator girl better, but neither is enough to make me want to watch the show. A perfect example of the shows purpose as propaganda can be seen in the "AIDS awareness" episode called Stigma. The details of this can be seen here:
http://www.trektoday.com/news/010203_03.shtml
I don't know about you, but I've been aware of AIDS for almost 20 years now and I don't need Rick Berman and company to tell me about it.
It would be so nice if the producers understood that stories that are little more than contrivances and vehicles for political and social propaganda aren't something that people are going to relate to. The sad thing is, the people behind this program probably don't even realize what they're doing. Hollywood is so intellectually inbred that they probably believe the programs they're creating will actually resonate with audiences. While these shows might resonate with the people behind the camera, out here in the real world they come accross as a steaming pile of PC.
The job of television programming is to entertain. It is NOT the job of television programming to propagandize. Whenever the people behind a program become deluded into believing that they can use the show to push whatever social or political ideology they subscribe to, the quality invariably suffers.
Part of what makes Farscape so great is that the show doesn't have an agenda beyond entertaining its audience. It makes me wonder if the fact that it is an US/Australian production has anything to do with that. Did the producers have to leave the country before they could make a decent show? What role did its lack of preachiness play in USA network's decision to cancel it? If you ask me, they cancelled it because it makes the rest of their lineup look like a bad joke. I'm almost afraid to see what its replacement, Tremors, is going to be like. How can one create a sustained story line from such a simplistic plot as people running away from underground monsters? Its good enough for an action movie, but hardly something that makes for a weekly TV show.
I can't really complain though since I almost never watch TV. Farscape and Stargate are about the only things I make an effort to watch on a regular basis, and now that Farscape has been killed off I suspect I won't even bother to tune in for Stargate.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
- Tossing in the Defiant will fix Deep Space Nine because now they can get off the station (well, they could with the runabouts too, but those weren't cool enough)
- Tossing in Worf will fix Deep Space Nine because now we'll have Klingons, and Klingons R Kool
- Tossing in a big multi-year bunch of B5-envy will fix Deep Space Nine because we didn't know what this show was supposed to be about in the first place, and the Bajoran/Cardassian thing is getting boring.
- Tossing in Seven of Nine and killing off Kes will fix Voyager because Borg R Bitchin' and you can never have too much of them
- Jumping 10 years closer to home will fix Voyager because everything we've set up with the Kayzon and the plague and stuff just isn't working
Sigh. I believe anime term for this kind of viewer abuse by a long-running series is "Tenchi Restart Money-Grab". It's obnoxious, and nobody should be falling for it anymore.- "The Andorian Incident": The transporter is new and not guaranteed to work. By taking hostages, the Andorians have already forfeited their lives, but rather than beaming them out, an away party is beamed in.
- "Cold Front": Near the end, Archer has a phaser on Silik, yet does not kill him.
- "Fortunate Son": The Enterprise away team is under fire from the freighter crew. They could have had their opponents beamed out or heavy weapons beamed in--on the gripping hand, neither option would be necessary if Starfleet Academy could find non-Stormtrooper marksmanship instructors.
Conclusion: The protagonists' survival is attributable solely to their being characters in the Star Trek universe. Were they nonfictional, they wouldn't last five minutes in a firefight.You mean they're finally going to change the theme song?
Stargate SG-1. It's very accessible to the average person (I have a lot of friends who are not geeks by any means but are avid fans of SG-1) yet it's not TOO cheesy (most of the time.) It accomplishes basically the same thing as Enterprise tries to while being a much better show. Yes, SG-1 is sci-fi fluff, but so is Trek.
and the Vulcan is a poor man's 7 of 9.
If Jolene Blalock is a poor man's Jeri Ryan, I want to be the most penniless pauper in the world.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Its been the best star trek's for me since the borg were introduced (lacutis especially) in Next Generation. Voyager is just a tad rediculous - flame me if you like, its just my opinion. I find the timeline that they chose to do it at perfect - right as we left the planet and started exploring. Star Trek left a big gap in where we are today and where we *could* be in the future and Enterprise is filling that pretty well. And Jolyne B.'s buttocks are spectacular :)
Here are the resons that I think the latest Star Trek is doing so poorly: 1. Berman and Bragga are not supporting the fans, but are instead, antagonizing them. The name of the show is "Enterprise", not "Star Trek: Enterprise". Yet, I find nothing that is different from regular Star Trek in Enterprise. It is the same old story, with people in a ship. NOTHING DIFFERENT. Also they hire a director for Nemesis who brags that he has never seen an episode of Star Trek before. Did I see Nemesis? No. I will not support these idiots who don't have respect for me as a fan of the series. In trying to win a larger audience they have pissed off the majority of the loyal fan base. 2. Trying to make Star Trek into something it is not. Star Trek, to me, will always be a cerebral kind of show.... yes with the occasional firefight, but the main focus will be on ideas, and dilemas, not on technology and cool spacefights, althought the first does not preclude the latter. It seems to me Berman is trying to make Star Trek into a kind of Star Wars clone, with huge battles and scifi effects, but that is not what star trek is. Nemesis, to me, seemed to be just another Star Wars wannabe. 3. Lack of interesting stories and lack of continuity. Berman seems to be intent on destroying what is accecpted as being part of the Star Trek past. Instead of exploring intersting ideas, such as the beginning of the foundation, early earth struggles, the romulan - earth war, he wants to create new crappy ideas (the suliban) that go against everything we know in the other series (where are the suliban in TNG, DS9?). Enterprises episodes are just more of: Go to Planet X, meet alien Y, discover secret Z, and a big reset at the end, with everything forgotten for all future episodes. This worked well the first time the did it (TNG) because everything was new and interesting, but now it gets boring. 4. Temporal Cold War. What the heck is it? I don't think even the writers know. The idea seems pretty ridiculous to me. I think Berman just put together some words to come up with something cool sounding. 5. T'Pol and the catsuit. Can we please stop trying to attract the teenage boy crowd. I hear they have something called the "internet" now, and they don't need Star Trek to fufill their sexual urges. geeze. The only way to save Star Trek is to get rid of Berman, and everyone he has affected and put his stench on, namely Braga. These guys are just out to squeeze ST out of every buck they can. ps. for reviews of Enterprise episodes read http://www.firsttvdrama.com/enterprise/index.php3 most of the times it is spot on with whats wrong with the show.
Here are the resons that I think the latest Star Trek is doing so poorly:
p 3
1. Berman and Bragga are not supporting the fans, but are instead, antagonizing them. The name of the show is "Enterprise", not "Star Trek: Enterprise". Yet, I find nothing that is different from regular Star Trek in Enterprise. It is the same old story, with people in a ship. NOTHING DIFFERENT. Also they hire a director for Nemesis who brags that he has never seen an episode of Star Trek before. Did I see Nemesis? No. I will not support these idiots who don't have respect for me as a fan of the series. In trying to win a larger audience they have pissed off the majority of the loyal fan base.
2. Trying to make Star Trek into something it is not. Star Trek, to me, will always be a cerebral kind of show.... yes with the occasional firefight, but the main focus will be on ideas, and dilemas, not on technology and cool spacefights, althought the first does not preclude the latter. It seems to me Berman is trying to make Star Trek into a kind of Star Wars clone, with huge battles and scifi effects, but that is not what star trek is. Nemesis, to me, seemed to be just another Star Wars wannabe.
3. Lack of interesting stories and lack of continuity. Berman seems to be intent on destroying what is accecpted as being part of the Star Trek past. Instead of exploring intersting ideas, such as the beginning of the foundation, early earth struggles, the romulan - earth war, he wants to create new crappy ideas (the suliban) that go against everything we know in the other series (where are the suliban in TNG, DS9?). Enterprises episodes are just more of: Go to Planet X, meet alien Y, discover secret Z, and a big reset at the end, with everything forgotten for all future episodes. This worked well the first time the did it (TNG) because everything was new and interesting, but now it gets boring.
4. Temporal Cold War. What the heck is it? I don't think even the writers know. The idea seems pretty ridiculous to me. I think Berman just put together some words to come up with something cool sounding.
5. T'Pol and the catsuit. Can we please stop trying to attract the teenage boy crowd. I hear they have something called the "internet" now, and they don't need Star Trek to fufill their sexual urges. geeze.
The only way to save Star Trek is to get rid of Berman, and everyone he has affected and put his stench on, namely Braga. These guys are just out to squeeze ST out of every buck they can.
ps. for reviews of Enterprise episodes read
http://www.firsttvdrama.com/enterprise/index.ph
most of the times it is spot on with whats wrong with the show.
Kirk as Mr. SEX, screwing every alien woman that got in his way!
Superpower Spock that hated everyone with his slight diatribes against humans.
Sulu,Checkov .....
Drunk Scotty...
Great characters man!
Screw these new characters. These new series suck. I do like the female vulcan on Enterprise. She was in MAXIM 2 months ago. HOT. Totally NUDE. One of the best Maxims along with Christina Aguilera series last month.
Bring back the originals. Have a Hot looking blackwoman in minitight miniskirt ! Bring back all the miniskirts! Quit being politically correct. Take chances.
Put sexy women back on startreck instead of shit like Voyager. Damn that Bitch captain needed a good lay by the BLACK VULCAN !
peace, out.
Oh, amen. It's not that there's a message that bothers me, it's that Enterprise has to be so insulting as to spoon feed it to us.
See, in the original series, after the episode where the half-black/half-white people were fighting with the half-white/half-black people, they didn't end the episode with a "ATTENTION! THIS EPISODE WAS ABOUT RACISM! IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING RACISM CONTACT THE NAACP"
I mean, WTF...To put AIDS on part with Vulcans dabbling with emotions both trivializes AIDS and insults everything the Vulcans plot line has produced. If emotions are all so grand and wonderful, are we supposed to cheer the Vulcans who develop them or be depressed that every other series in Trek shows utterly emotionless Vulcans.
Feh. I blame Brandon Braga. He is responsible for every single Trek debaucle in recent history. He created Borg kids and that horrible Voyager series finale, for starters.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Did anyone notice that Berman's "new" ideas were basically "new ways to reuse the old stuff [which we think the fans will drool over because they love that kind of stuff] in the current series"?
In Hollywood these days, the height of originality is deciding what to remake. Ug.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Watched a few this year and they seem significantly less awkward. Even pretty good in some cases. Certainly better than TNG could claim in year 2. Now, if they could get up to the level of TNG years 3 thru 5, that would be awesome. Seems like all the new treks have taken a little while to ramp up and figure out what works (most TV shows seem to have an awkward first year before they get in the groove, but treks seem to require a couple).
I mean we've had some pretty cookie-cutter series over the years:
I say, quit complaining. At least it doesn't resort to holographic settings, or all-powerful beings with single-letter names as a plot device... well... wait, let me finish reading the article... oh fsck. My series is ruined.
There, now are you happy!
Perhaps Berman is finally resigning! That would improve the show no end!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
the borg that are going to be survivors of the borg sphere that was destroyed over earth in star trek: first contact, according to this link.
http://www.frostjedi.com/phpbb
First off, I never understood why they insist on using the borg so frequently, as I find them extremely boring. Even the first borg episode in ST:TNG was extremely yawn-filled.
... that's the borg.
I liked voyager (words you will not hear often it seems), but took it at face value, instead of trying to analyze it all, and compare it to past ST's. Yet when the finale was so borgtensive, it borged me to no borg. I mean come on... think up something original or rehash something at least interesting.
Boring ships, boring goals, boring characters
I figure that the writers are actually the borg, with berman as their queen. That's why these useless drones keep pumping out the same boring borg shit.
fucking borg... never deserved life in the first place.
It's pre-TOS, with old fashioned nukes and stuff. Should be around the right time period.
Oh, wait. Berman probably has shellshock from Nemesis still.
Rumour has it, its a sort of semi continuation of the TNG movie "First Contact" - in the movie the Borg and Enterprise travel back in time to earth. In this Enterprise episode (which takes place more than 100 years after the movie) a research station on the Northpole finds a crashed Borg ship, and two corpse (so they thing) of these strange cybernetic organisms - of course as soon as they thaw they start assimilating the base - then its Archer to the rescue. It might work actually... no what am i saying - its the great Turkey of the Galaxy behind this.. oh well, one can dream, right?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Let's face some basic facts, kids.
SciFi on the TV/big screen is nearly dead. Why? Well, it's not lack of plotlines or new stories.
There are literally thousands of scifi books out there with original plotlines.
It's because Hollywood execs are braindead. They don't want to take risks anymore.
They are not willing to take risks because these shows cost money. Whoa. Duh.
It's all about ratings, beancounters and return on the dollar.
Where's the modern Roddenberry when we need him?
Jackson seems close...
Herder of Catz
The Pied Piper was an amateur.
The exec also talks for the first time about the Borg episode "Regeneration," which he says will find an interesting way to work the Borg into the pre-Picard [Patrick Stewart] time period....."One of [the last four episodes] is going to be a fascinating Borg encounter,"
They already had pre-borg in that eposide with the automatic repair station outpost, the one that stole a crew member by making a dead clone.
Table-ized A.I.
...is if Rick Berman goes away, and they replace him with someone like J. Michael Straczynski. Star Trek Enterprise has no originality, no stories, no decent recurring arc, no acting, and no suspense. In other words it almost doesn't even exist.
I liken Berman to Saddam. He knows his days are numbered, and for the sake of that which he controls he should simply give up. But he doesn't, apparently for utterly selfish reasons. Give it up, Rick. You don't know science fiction, you don't have any talent for creativity. Either hand over the reins to someone with actual ability, or close up shop. Either is preferable to the farce called Enterprise.
I didn't realize folks were thinking Enterprise was bad. I enjoy it more than I did the TNG series. I liked Voyager more, but that's probably just because they had a lot of Borg, and the Borg rock.
I really enjoy watching the future technologies and ideologies emerge in Enterprise.
Isn't Berman the guy who couldn't understand why _Nemesis_ did horribly? Why should Trek fans listen to what he thinks will do well with the franchise?
In other words... HEAD FOR THE HILLS FOR SEASON THREE!
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I like long story arcs (multi-episode/season), but a huge part of what made DS9, B5, or TOS successful was some consistency of character, which usually took a few seasons to develop. I'd given up completely on DS9 for seasons 2-3 before someone told me to give it another chance, by which time they'd developed some character depth.
As good looking as Jolene Blalock might be, I really appreciate that they've cut back on the gratuitous scenes with her. I want a show with some intelligence, not tits and ass bouncing in a jumpsuit. If I want T&A, I'll flip over to the comedy channel for "The Man Show" or something like it, or just go buy a magazine. (I hated the last few seasons of Voyager for the same reason -- too much focus on borg breast pads and not enough on characters.)
I'm not saying you can't have the occasional bit of sexual innuendo (ala British humour) or tension, but they really did overdo it in the first season.
As with every other Star Trek series to date, I hadn't really expected much of the first season or two. I think it's coming together quite well as a series, unlike crap such as "Firefly" (good riddance to that drek!)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's obvious if you read the article and the one it links to what the new story line will be - war with the Klingons, including major attacks on Earth. Archer and Enterprise will undoubtedly have to go into action both to reconnoiter, to enlist allies, and where necessary to go into action against the Klingons. This will be the birth of the Federation of Planets.
it is nice to see humour on slashdot.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
A perfect example of the shows purpose as propaganda can be seen in the "AIDS awareness" episode called Stigma.
Why didn't the doctor just invent a Mind-Meld Condom?
TNG had a "gay rights" plot in disquise, BTW.
Table-ized A.I.
This franchise jumped the shark when Data got laid.
You think it jumped the second episode of TNG?
We jump to the year 2258, 10 years after the Earth-Klingon war. Earth is enjoying a period of peace, albeit a fragile one.
A coalition of governments, led by the humans, have constructed a space station, let's call it Beladon 6. It is located in nuetral territory orbiting a planet called Eksilop 2.
The purpose of this station is to provide a place for humans and aliens to work out their differences in peace. It's a home away from home for diplomats, officers, wanderers, business people and others.
Jonathan Archer is put in charge of the station, at the request of the Klingons, which is kinda strange.
By the end of 2258, nothing is the same any more. The Klingon ambassador names Volann, has put herself into some sort of cacoon, and a mysterious alien presence has made an appearance. These aliens appear to be immensely more powerful than any other race around.
We then jump ahead to 2259, where captain Archer has, mercifully, been reassigned to duty on the Klingon homeworld. Strangely, the series seems to improve considerably after that. To replace him is captain Sherinnian, a war hero of the Earth-Klingon war.
About this time, Volann comes out of her cocoon and is a human-Klingon hybrid named Torres (no relation). We also meet a species called the Suliban who use technological means to simulate the effects of magic. We learn in a spin-off series of books that they were created by the mystery race to be weapons.
Sherinnian and Volann fall in love, get married and have a child, but who really cares about that crap anyway.
The mysterious alien race send an agent to speak to all the ambassadors on the station. Along with him are invisible members of the alien race, who we later find out has a name so long we could never pronounce it, so we just call them species 8472 (again, no relation).
Aaaanyway...
Sherinnian leads a coalition of the will... no, an army of light... no, a FEDERATION!, in a war against species 8472. We finally beat them by not fighting at all (don't ask), but we later find out that they had dark allies serving them that are just as dangerous, called the Borg. We'll be dealing with them for a LONG time.
There's also some crap a few seasons down the road about people with telepathic abilities, and Berman and Braga expertly set up a war between them and mundanes for the NEXT Star Trek series, which should start some time around Enterprise' fifth season.
Hmmmm... this all sounds kinda familiar actually...
Don't worry... at the end, Q shows up, resets the timeline and Enterprise goes back to sucking hairy moose cock again.
All I keep watching for is the slim hope that one of Hoshi's tits will pop out during a gel scene and the editors and censors will miss it.
God this show sucks!
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
I really wanna hear from CleverNickName.
Can I ask why? I mean, I'm sure he's got an opinion on the subject but why do you assume that's going to be more Insightful or Interesting than the typical slashdoters? I get tired of seeing any and all comments that he posts here automatically get modded up to +5 because of his celebrity status.
*Geek Orgasm*
There are some problems. It is not as interesting as I'd hoped it would be, and there are so many re-runs that I can't bring myself to feel excited about next week's episode, especially since the teaser-trailer isn't played after the show. In some ways that is a blessing, because the teasers often give away important parts of the plot!
I like the pilot a lot! It had Earth and time travel, and everything that makes a really really good Trek show. But then they left Earth behind, and their potential story lines went away. They have to focus on Earth to make this a new and exciting show. Show us the problems at home, and that everything isn't as rosy on Earth as they make it seem. There are bound to be splinter groups unhappy with Starfleet, and they should get the ball rolling faster into making a "Federation" with people they are meeting. They are trying so hard to stay away from catching up to the other Trek show's timelines, that they are stagnant.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"Sherinnian leads a coalition of the will... no, an army of light... no, a FEDERATION!, in a war..."
Hey, do you write for CNN most of the time?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
One of their agents beamed into Bashir's quarters undetected, so there's your hint that they have capabilities beyond that of Starfleet themselves.
This might have been a really cool topic to dwell on, as it takes place in modern star trek(somewhere during the end of the DS9 saga). That way, they can keep their Borg and their ablative armour and whatnot. They can make up as many new things as they want without polluting the Star Trek timeline the way Enterprise is doing(They're doing a Borg episode next season for christ sake). They really blew the chance to do something different by spinning off Section 31 into its own series. The problem is, they would have likely used the same writers that butchered recent Star Trek movies and Enterprise.
One thing is for certain. If the Star Trek franchise ever plans on redeeming itself and writing something fresh, brave or even original, Berman and Braga have GOT to go!! Get some fresh lifeblood to write the damn scripts. If I see one more Holodeck adventure, or time travel episode, Imma shoot someone!
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
Just how F'ed-up is a show when even fanfic writers can do better?? FANFIC WRITERS. Good god!
No, but I should though, right?
"Today in Iraq, 6 coalition soldiers were killed by dumb fuc... no, accident... no, friendly fire."
"The vegetab... no, the goob... no, the president of the U.S. stated..."
"Evidence suggests that Saddam Hussein in dea... no, mortally wound... no, slightly injur... no, again delcaring that God will destroy the infidels and assure Iraq of victory!"
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Hey TNG is -the- trek series IMHO. Enterprise, however, has been growing on me and has become a close 2nd. As for growing, I predict the Borg will arise from some extension of the Vox Sola episode where everybody trapped in that creature was sharing each others thoughts.
/* No Comment
Put me on the writing team!
1) The show will involve some element of reality programming. Each episode will end with a critical decision to be made by one character or another; after the show "america" will vote on which choice said character should take. It will work just like the "choose your own adventure" books we all used to love as lil kids.
2) The senior staff will become marooned from their ship, but still have a shuttle to fly around in. They'll pick up an android. They'll develop british accents and their will be more of an emphasis on humor.
2) The ship will be hit by some sort of 'terrorist' type of group, and spend the next season (the next *4* seasons) hunting down and attacking everyone but the actual terrorists!
Sadly, only one of these options can safely be bet against.
Well, never one to keep my opinions to myself, I hereby bravely head in to the breach.
Until Enterprise came along, I hated Star Trek. I didn't find ANY of it entertaining, from TOS, DS9, and whatever else was out there. I gave every new series a shot because it was considered the 'geek-correct' thing to do. For years I hid my shame, and hid my disdain for ST.... No longer!
Yes, you read that right - I'm a geek, I hate Star Trek, and love enterprise... Mod away!
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Actually watch the episode. I almost stopped watching at that episode. As far as I am concerned that episode never happened because I wouldn't be able to watch a show with a criminal at the helm. It had nothing at all to do with the prime directive. The inhabitants already had dealings with other races and while their own tech was pretty primitive they came out and met Enterprise.
No, Archer condemmed a race to death because of some obscure rule of Political Correctness I still haven't been able to grok. In a just universe a couple of seasons later the agrieved race would manage to find a solution to their problem, realize just what a scuzbag Archer was and set out to destroy him, Starfleet and the degenerate planet that spawned such a monster. (And before anyone blames it on Flox, Archer sits in the comfy chair, he is responsible.)
Democrat delenda est
Is this going to be like adding 7of9 to voyager?
Wait... they already have big boobs... now what... Oh I know!!
I got the twist: T'Pol explores "emotions" and becomes a nudist, running around the ship naked and stoping in provocative positions.
Ratings go through the roof as millions around the globe begin to embrace Star Trek rather than mocking it and its fans.
Oh, and they assimilate an earth transport and [RUMOR!!] Phlox. [/RUMOR!!] Archer and Reed get aboard the borgified transport, where they come in contact with more drones (presumably assimilated somebodies) - but, like the Ferengi earlier in the season, never bother to ask them their name.
In case you think i'm bs'ing, read the following link for a spoiler-filled synopsis:
http://www.trektoday.com/news/200203_03.shtml
Enterprise sucks because they keep do ing the same Liberals In Space BS story line from TNG/Voyager. It was boring then, its still boring. A spacecraft commander is going to risk his/her ship and his crew for some obscure philosophical point, like a gillion miles away from help? With the directions back to the Earth sitting in his computer for the enemy to take if he gets beat? Nuh uh. So if Enterprise starts being run like a -real- exploration trip in what is obviously hostile territory, THAT could be interesting. Borg? Come ON!
that is all.
Nested comments DON'T WORK
This has been a problem for WEEKS now. It is especially broken on Mozilla > 1.1 Please fix this, as it makes it impossible to conveniently read articles with more than 100 comments.
"New direction," huh? Well, when Voyager was in ratings trouble, they brought in Seven of Nine. So it's obvious what the season finale must be- this episode will have Starfleet introducing miniskirt uniforms, the ones we saw in TOS!
Mainly bc its on UPN. Since UPN is a smaller network, i dont see it on the normal time. Its on at like 6 PM on saturday night on our local WB affiliate. (barely better than what voyager became after our FOX station stopped being a secondary UPN affiliate-MIDNIGHT showings...) but 6PM on sat night is actually worse for me.. i have much better things to be doing, things that i have to be at.. school things, work things, etc.. they shouldve just done syndication from the start..
Starfleet headquarters in Frisco doesn't get nearly enough attention, all the eps where they've been there in any of the series have been pretty cool. It'd be interesting to set a show here on earth and not on a ship/station who the hell knows where.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
>TNG had a "gay rights" plot in disquise, BTW.
Accessing... Accessing... Accessing.
You mean this one, right?
Man, trek trivia is fun.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The job of television programming is to entertain. It is NOT the job of television programming to propagandize.
Their job is to keep an audience glued to screen so they watch the commercials so show gets credited with people buying products/services thus making their commercial time more valuable and increasing the flow of money to their pockets.
They produce what will make money. If they can make money propagandizing, then that is what they'll do. If they can make money by bringing up issues of sexuality, race, etc (hinting at and/or innuendos) then that is what they'll do.
I have only seen one Enterprise episode in my life I want those minutes back. Archer, chasing a bat with butterfly nets along with the doctor guy then crying over his goddanmed beagle beacuse of some alien shit made me want to punch him in his fucking face until my fist hits the floor thru his skull. How in the world is this show even tolerated? The commercials were way more interesting.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Some people have commented on how good it would be if there were other writers working on Star Trek. One writer I would love to see involved either in Star Trek, or in adaptations of his own works, is Ian M. Banks. His "Culture" books are witty, entertaining, meaningful ... the kind you read till 4 in the morning. He could make Star Trek good.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Really, once they went ahead with this whole "hive" setup they stole all of the awsome, unfathomable nature from the Borg. Never mind how the f*&ked up the whole thing with the -- idiodic in my opinion -- series finale of Voyager. Now that was a show that started out great, and turned out pitiful.
This isn't directly relevant, but has anyone else noticed that Vulcans now suck? Whereas Spock would have said "the probabilities of that occuring are one in thirty-three-thousand-five-hundred-six", there was one episode where Tuvok said "the chances of that are high unlikely" or something.
Also, every episode of Voyager, after the first season, that focused on Tuvok had a storyline where he goes insane or contracts some rare disease. I don't think that's cool.
T'Pol is always looking mean and sounding upset. I'm not convinced that she is in control of her emotions.
Also what ever happened to Spock's claim that Vulcans cannot lie? This clearly hasn't been realized by Vulcans in the Enterprise universe, since a sizeable chunk of the storyline has been devoted to how they've lied, especially in regard to the Andorians.
Spock was cool.
Only two changes are needed to "Enterprise" to make it first rate science fiction.
1) Rename it "Firefly"
2) replace Berman and Cast with Whedon and cast.
The thing is, propagandizing isn't what keeps people glued to the screen to get those advertising dollars. Creating programming that people want to watch is what does that.
Incidentally I've just found out that you can thank the screen writer's and screen actor's guilds for the prevalence of propaganda shows. These guilds are largely made up of left-wing loonies.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Rick:
"I think our final episode of the season is going to be quite startling because we're going to do a cliffhanger"
Mullet:
"Um, Rick, what series season finale doesn't end with a cliffhanger?"
Rick:
"We're talking about a change that is going to, to some degree, alter our mission and, to some degree, change the tone of the series"
Mullet:
Oh, I see. So we're moving away from seeking out new life and exploring new civilizations now? Gotcha. Good call. That was overrated anyway."
Rick:
"The Expanse" will continue a Klingon story arc beginning in "Judgment" and also introduce an attack on planet Earth
Mullet:
"Ah yes... I heard about that VERY SIGNIFIGANT EVENT from the other Trek series... Yes, so memorable it wasn't mentioned by anybody before this series... Very sneaky. You should get a +1 Insightful."
Rick:
"One of [the last four episodes] is going to be a fascinating Borg encounter," he told the mag. "Which is interesting in that Starfleet had never heard of the Borg before Picard. So we have managed to deal with that in what I feel is a very interesting fashion."
Mullet:
"The Borg! Wow! Wait, let me guess-- The crew will A) Forget of their existance by the end of the ep or B) Not recognize them as Borg and feel their presence so insignificant as not to report it in the chain of command thereby filling Picard with COMPLETE surprise three centuries later when he encounters them. Like the Ferrengi. I'm sensing a trend here, Rick."
Rick:
"We've discussed everything from a young 'Sarek' to 'Q' [John de Lancie] to 'Kirk' [William Shatner]."
Mullet:
"I understand, Rick. That's kinda what happens when you have the creative genious of a rock. Gotta fall back on something, and far be it from me to suggest that something be original..."
You know, I can already see it... By the time Rick is done with this series, it's going to look like it's been through a blender on frappe'. It will be like the Star Trek V or Highlander 2 of the trek series-- Universally maligned and disowned. Many will pretend such a mistake simply never existed. The Borg? Serek? Q?! As if the time travel crutch weren't enough, you have to rape all of the other series for their creativity as well? Somebody picked AT RANDOM with absolutely no directing experience from the Slashdot crowd could do a better job than this spider monkey... I move we file Intent of Assination. All in favor?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
There was - Space: Above and Beyond, which was an excellent show that was cancelled after one season. It was created by the Glen Morgan and James Wong (who wrote the good episodes on X-Files). The cool things about the show were:
1. Nobody saw the aliens
2. It started out as a bunch of newbie Marines that eventually turned out to be one of th efinest units
3. It had an excellent arc, that unfortunately didn't continue the amazing season ending.
4. It mostly told WWI and WWII stories and not 'we have a new technology' stories
By the way, there was no Federation in ENT days. That comes later.
If you really like Rambo, I know some movies you would like: Rambo 1, 2 and 3. Go watch those. Or, for the time being, I guess you can get your fix from the networks, watching some real heads blow up.
But since you got me started, I'll share my "counter-fantasy" for ENT with you:
Season 3:
The crew realizes that since this is their first expedition to deep space, just about every single ship there is far more advanced than theirs. Since they have what is basically a science vessel, every Tom, Dick and Harry outguns them. If you want realism, this is the place you have to start. I mean, nobody with first generation technology is going to challenge people who have been fighting in deep space for centuries, like the Suliban and basically any other warp-capable race the Enterprise encounters.
I think they should be regularly plundered, held for ransom, ripped off, made to pay "protection money" and in general, made to grovel at the green feet of everyone they meet. If anyone thinks a first, exploratory mission into deep space which is densely populated with hostile, technologically advanced civilizations would be any different must be on drugs.
Basically, I too am picturing an "Iraqis vs Americans" scenario, but it's obvious that the Enterprise crew would be playing the Iraqis. They'd be getting slapped around like bitches. It would be a much more interesting (and realistic) show, and maybe it would teach us some humility, which we badly need these days.
Wonder if Archer's vision of a Federation includes building a "coalation of the willing" to preemptively attack every possible alien race.
Seriously tho, there's some things I really look forward to. For example I wonder if we will hear of Section 31 again. You know, that secretive starfleet organization from DS9 that is rumored to have been founded at the same time as the federation itself, in fact to have been part of the original starfleet charta.
And I also look forward to more Romulan action. Romulans are sneaky. And what's with the vulcans? This couldn't be further away from the romanticism of "Vulcan Love Slave - Pon-Farr à trois"...
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
is Rick Berman. Pure and simple. Ever since he took the reigns the entire franchise has been spiralling down the toilet. How can there be $500,000 episodes that are a hundred times better than a $70 million movie? Easy: f**king retard producer hires f**king useless writers cranking out f**king crap recycled tripe, greenlights the f**king garbage, and runs the rest of the show by counting beans. Here's an idea Berman: wanna to make some real money? Get some decent writers and make a (gasp, shock, horror!) _good_ episode or movie once in a while... Christ almighty, the world is terribly unjust that schmucks like this actually get *paid* to squander such potential.
Good Sci-Fi is a niche market. Babylon 5, S.A.A.B. Farscape, all great Sci-Fi but they never had a mass audience. You really can't have your cake and eat it too when it comes to Sci-Fi. The vast majority of viewers are happy watching soap operas where you don't have to think. Sci-Fi on the other hand (or at least good Sci-Fi) requires a modicum of brain power and is generally the preserve of geeky\techy types.
Yeah to hell with principles.
Have them pre-emptively attack a weak enemy to ensure their 'interests' arent harmed in any way. Even though the weak enemy cant even get into space to damage their interests. And make the enemy home planet the second biggest reserve of dilithium crystals.
I found Enterprise to be quite excellent, actually. Given that the only other Trek I'd call that, DS9, has suffered from the flaw all Trek shows prior to Enterprise had, namely a crappy first season and an outright painful pilot, Enterprise might even be "the best Trek show so far."
In other words, this show seems much less in need of change and adjustment than the previous Trek shows were at a comparable point in their respective histories -- YMMV.
When I first read that they wanted to introduce the Borg in Enterprise, my immediate reaction was "oh , please, NO!". But then I started thinking about it ...
So, we're several hundred years before the timeline where the Borg were first introduced to the Star Trek universe. This means that the Borg themselves may not be that highly-evolved yet.
So what if Archer and crew came across some pre-Borg civilsation, not realizing that these would end up being Star Fleet's worst enemy in the future? They could even HELP them in some way or another. That would make an interesting twist - Star Fleet being haunted by its own creation.
I like that idea. Of course, the writers will have to refrain from ever mentioning that episode again in any of the future plots (and I somehow doubt that they can resist the temptation when rates are going down next time).
bye, Dirk
I'm hoping it's going to turn out to be a different timeline. That way they can throw out all of the pinikity continuity they've had to adhere to and have another go at the universe. One of the joys of Doctor Who is that for the most part they don't care when and if most of the events occur to the Doctor. They just sort of do and it really doesn't matter about the dating of the UNIT episodes / how Atlantis fell / if William Hartnell really was the first doctor. It's about the story telling. When Voyager did that really good episode set in 1996, fans were bleating about how the Eugenics War was supposed to be happening then. Why didn't they mention the Eugenics War. Get over it. Doesn't matter. Did you enjoy the show? Was it dramatic? Did you want to see it again? Good. That's all that matters.
> As good looking as Jolene Blalock might be, I
> really appreciate that they've cut back on the
> gratuitous scenes with her.
Actually, they need to do two things:
1. Change T'Pok's hair. It helped on the Pixie on Voyager. Sadly, that was about 2 episodes before they got rid of her.
2. Put Hoshi in an Uhura-like miniskirt. More Hoshi. More Hoshi. More Hoshi!
Seven made Voyager a lot more interesting. Scrawney isn't built enuf to save Enterprise, so they'll have to pull Hoshi out more. She may be a bit slender, too, but at she's a lot prettire than T'pot anyhoo.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
This sums up Nemisis: I took my 12 year old to see it. I watch the buggy shit, about to cry at how lame it was. Later on, the 12 year old says how dumb the movie was, but the buggy chase was "kinda cool."
Reminds me of the nameless director in charge of Jurassic Park II, stating something like "Kids tell me don't take so long to get to the dinosaurs, so we're GETTING RIGHT TO THE DINOSAURS!"
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
It sounds like I'm very much in the minority here that likes the show as it is. It does take time for the characters and stories to develop but I think this series has done the best job of that since TOS. And it had all the feel of a show that was ready to take on issues of our day, like TOS.
So now they want to make some drastic change to impress non-fans. Wonderful. Anyone remember Sea Quest? There was a show that was off to a good start but once it got on track and just started building up steam they just had to screw with it.
Ever seen Andromeda? I doubt you have but it was another Roddenbery show that was just getting good when WHAM! they decide it needs a little more pep.....so they turn the damn thing into a freakin soap opera!
What made Star Trek TOS so good was that you didn't have to see every episode. You could see a single show and figure out the relationships of the crew and the jist of the federation of planets. Each show was its own story and that story dealt with some social or political issue it a way that didn't make a statement but got you to think of a statement of your own. At the end of the show it was done and if you came back next week it was because you liked that, not for some cliff hangar. I only remember a single episode that was a two part, and that had to be done because there really was no way to tell that story in an hour, not just for the sake of cliff hanging.
And there's the problem. Berman seems to want drama for the sake of drama, not for the sake of a good story.
IMHO, I like the show the way it is and wish they wouldn't fsck with it too much.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
They could change that damn electric guitar theme song.
Most of you people are just like the fat comic book guy from the Simpsons. Take a step back and read some of your posts, from any topic. Does anybody in real life take you seriously? I wonder.
Given the last few episodes appear to have been written by one of the many script-generation-scripts, I'm skeptical at best....
Let me describe some of TNG cast members for you:
bald-headed guy
big klingon
android
teenage hensen
great looking counselor
The thing is, with all these people, they look quite different. Now let me describe some of STE cast.
middle aged guy, squarish jaw, short hair, caucasion.
middle aged guy, squarish jaw, short hair, cauccasion.
middle aged guy, squarish jaw, short hair, caucassion.
OK. I just described the captain, trip, and malcom to you. I HATE THAT. I CAN'T TELL ONE FROM THE OTHER. EVER.
Is this the caucasion bro's club or something?????
what's up with that.
I think all 3 of those guys should die off.
I think I've figured it out and its all so simple. Star Trek was cultivated during and after the cold war, a time of great hostility and pressure. Star Trek was an expression of people's hope for the future. They looked around and honestly weren't certain there was any chance for us. What they needed was a Picard, a morally righteous person, a kind of father who they could count on to make wise decisions. And a great leader for the nation.
But now times have changed. America is now the sole superpower of the world. We've grown arrogant and cynical. That star trek of the past is no longer suitable. Deep Space 9 had the right idea. It was dark and more disturbing. You have a crew with all these conflicting alliances. You have a looming war on the horizon. And you have a captain a bit more Machiavellian than Picard.
But Enterprise is trying to pick of up them people who used to watch the original show. Captain Archer is just a more naive version of Picard from our viewpoint. But them people who watched the original show have also changed. Its a shame that Rick Berman and friends have not.
I was on my way toward liking the show during the first season. They looked like they had some potentially interesting story arcs brewing, and also jeffrey combs.
Unfortunately, for season 2 they seemed to be pursuing the nothing ever fucking happens angle. This news about season 3 isn't very promising, and here's why:
Berman is a fucking idiot
Whenever they've had to fall back on the borg plot device on Voyager, it was fucking dumb even compared to Voyager's usual level of fucking dumb
The klingon political episodes were the ever so boringest episodes of TNG.
Combining these elements doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that would improve the show.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
Does anyone think that the Star Trek franchise has failed to explore the benefits and constraints of the Prime Directive adequately? How many episodes have they devoted to this?
...Look at me, I traveled through time, and we still suck at History in the future, so I don't know how to act, but hilarity and drama will ensue.
Does Someone out there think that they have failed to get people interested in space exploration? Maybe it doesn't seem like it now. That's because they already did it.
Haven't they challenged stereotypes and social hang ups? But remember when it was more sophisticated instead of being insultingly spoon fed to you? And aren't these the same lessons they repeat over and over again?
Haven't they already made exciting suggestions about technology in the future? And didn't it use to be more thought provoking or interesting ideas? More things seem possible now. The changes in technology they challenge us with now, are hard to swallow, and difficult to fit into a reasonable timeframe. Aren't we basically beyond the level of computing used in the original series?
And I have stopped watching any Star Trek to avoid seeing one more boring, reaching for ideas, TIME TRAVEL EPISODE. The people in the enterprise have traveled through time so many freaking times that I can't believe the universe would have not been destroyed by now. Really, how many Federation officers must be their own great grandfathers by now?
In other words, their plot devices are used up, their technology is outdated and irrevelant, their moral lessons are dumbed down and insulting, and in an effort to make a timeline justify itself with the obvious problems based on a 30 year old prediction of the future there are ludicrous attempts to redefine technology.
Now there was a show.
Yes, a chain of command can be thrilling and frustrating and when the crew have different points of view, you get tension.
When Berman ordered an episode re-written because the doctor disobeyed Archer--something the crew is never allowed to do apparently--they eliminated a source of plots.
If you've never seen the Sandbaggers, look it up.It was with Roy Marsden and the cheif writer was apparently rubbed out by the Brits.
I saw him at a convention once (yeah, I was a Trekkie geek) and he was truly a complete asshole. He downplays his role as "Q" because he wants to be recognized for his other work...
I guess you also hated that other "complete asshole," Leonard "I Am Not Spock" Nimoy.
However. .
I think Enterprise does a fine job. The writing is (mostly) smart, and I've really enjoyed the Temporal Cold War episodes I've seen. They remind me of the Matrix in that the metaphor is barely a gauze curtain away from how things really work. I find the show especially fascinating for that reason alone!
Plus you've also got the Bad Guys chanelling their messages through the writers. As a result, I think, we have seen the Vulcans, (the metaphoric stand-ins for today's humans who meditate and think in more spiritual terms), acting like dangerous assholes. Plus I remember a weird episode where the crew introduced an alien life form into another biosphere without any thought of consequences. Creepy stuff like that. .
In any case, I find the battling positive/negative messages in the war for the American mind quite amazing to watch. Star Trek, being built almost entirely upon fantasy and metaphor, provides an interesting view of the battle field which other television does not.
The problem is that Enterprise does not do as much to continue the Star Trek tradition of everything looking and feeling like a comic book adventure universe. --Where everybody is dressed in primary colors, (or those cynical, 'new and cool' dark and gritty colors on DS9.) In any event, Enterprise just isn't as escapist as previous efforts. And people do love their escapism, particularly during times like these!
Where the show does fall a little short, however, is that it is not as expansive as DS9. It's a repetition of an old theme. Astronauts doing stuff in a big space-submarine. Military command structure and all that. These days, I'm more interested in the story universe than in the doings of a singe ship. TNG was good in its time, because it was New and Interesting. We, as viewers, were exploring a new universe, and what better way than in an exploration vessel? DS9 was a reasonably good expansion, in that the universe had been established and the viewer having been familiarized, was taken to a hot-bed of cultural activity where more complex stories could unfold.
Voyager was something else again, though was pretty painful to watch until Jeri Ryan (sp?) found her way into the cast. (D-cup jokes aside, I think everybody was surprised by just how much she improved the show.)
I think Enterprise is quite engaging. I'll watch it when its on and I happen to have nothing else to do, and I'll probably enjoy it. For me, that's saying a lot. The problem is that these days, television as an entire medium is losing its appeal. The world is just too interesting to want to miss in favor of television.
In any case, if I had my choice and it had to be television, I wouldn't mind dispensing with the Starship/Starbase conceit in Trek altogether. I'd rather simply follow a number of interesting characters through their lives in a big and fascinating universe.
Of course, that's already been done, I suppose. In a galaxy far, far away. .
-Fantastic Lad
A teenage cheerleader who runs around killing vampires in a large, modern day city. Space exploration. Tough one.
The movie at least didn't take itself too seriously. I don't know when the show failed to do so. I could never understand its appeal. Maybe's there only so much disbelief I can suspend. Eh, to each his own I guess.
Both shows are pretty silly when you think about it.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
OK, maybe Enterprise sucks now, but I really think that Enterprise got off to a good start. I found the temporal cold war concept an intriguing idea, and I was relieved that the caliber of the writing seemed to have rebounded from the abysmal depths of Voyager. The first few episodes bore out the hopes raised by the pilot.
One problem I did see in the pilot, however, was the casting. Even many Quantum Leap fans commented that they really didn't see Scott Bakula as a "captain" type, and most of the rest of the crew came off as pretty bland. I'd thought that the actors on Voyager, even if not up to the level of TNG and DS9, would have been sufficient had they been supported by good writing. But I was dismayed by the mediocrity of Enterprise's cast. It's not that they are outright bad actors, it's just that they aren't charismatic actors, Jolene Blalock excepted. Dr. Flox isn't too bad either. The rest would be OK as bit players, but they simply can't carry the show.
I did remember that TNG's cast hadn't impressed me that much at first either, and that Dr. Bashir had been a really annoying character at the beginning of DS9 (this was toned down, though I never really came to like him). So I held out hope that the cast would "grow" in time. They haven't.
Then the writing began to go downhill. The first crack was the episode when the cargo ship captain went after a pirate base, using nformation
tortured out of a captive. It would have been fine if Archer had gotten moralistic about the prisoner not being treated in Geneva Convention style, but instead Archer demands to know what right they had to take prisoner a pirate who was attacking their ship, and to take off after the pirates! And the other characters agree with Archer! This bizarre
moralizing was a turn-off.
The next big mistake was the episode where Dr. Flox decides to let a race continue to die because another species on the planet had the potential to take their place. Not only did I find the morality of that episode questionable, it was also the episode where Enterprise started falling into the Voyager trap of forgetting its premises. What was supposed to make Voyager different was that you would have two formerly hostile crews having to work together, on a vessel stranded far from home. But the crews were quickly melded into one, Voyager stopped to study scientific phenomena instead of hightailing it home at max warp, and eventually they stopped worrying about running out of torpedoes, shuttles, or other supplies. Voyager turned into just another Starfleet ship.
What promised to make Enterprise unique was that it was set in a wide-open time, and could show humans making the mistakes that led to the Prime Directive. That's why that episode was a major wrong turn. It has Archer showing the same devotion to non-interference that post-Directive Starfleet did. (Arguably, even more than Kirk!) After that episode, the crew behaved like they were already under the Prime Directive, instead of barging in on alien affairs and making a mess. Enterprise is turning into just another Starfleet ship of a type we have seen before. They simpy "polarize the hull plating" instead of "raising shields."
But there's still hope that Enterprise can get back on track. The episodes about the temporal cold war continue to be interesting and well-written. Other episodes have been pretty sharp too. The promise hasn't been completely lost. If the season finale kills off a couple of characters so that some more charismatic actors can be brought in, that would be good. I'll tune in.
...and in the conclusion, Phlox is pulled out of the transporter and transformed into a slinky female Vulcan who immediately embarks on a lesbian love affair with Tpol.
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IMO, TOS was not very good as science fiction. It works because it is the classic voyage plot with with Kirk, Spock and McCoy as characters in conflict , meeting powerful and strange enemies. The main innovation was the concept of allied aliens (the Vulcans), and the multinational crew gave hope for humanity in times of cold war.
TNG successfully built upon this concept, and with Picard as benevolent, polically correct dictator there was room for a lot of good drama and SF, with a lot of great episodes in seasons 4 to 7.
DS9 was basically people hanging around in a shopping mall waiting for aliens to show up. It seemed to be a soap opera, and it started to be boring soon, but I know some people who liked it very much for this reason.
I also did't like Voyager very much; the characters did not bring anything new, the ship was too small and too far away from home to be able to survive without miracles. And if there is something forbidden in SF, it is miracles. If they were a whole fleet and had some weapons of mass destruction, it might have been credible, but probably the budget wasn't there for a whole fleet. I always had the feeling that it would not matter very much if the Voyager would be destroyed; they were MIA anyway without any hope of getting back home. It really sucked that they couldn't die or succeed in getting home. So far from home, nothing seemed to matter.
Enterprise, OTOH is on the most important mission for mankind that has ever been undertaken. They are true explorers, live in constant danger but have powerful allies who save them from time to time, giving them credibility. And there are a lot of nice details; the ship looks really cool and serious, not like a passenger cruiser asall the other Enterprises. The cartridges to reload the Phasers, the communicators, and the computer screens are all much more realistic with more details than in all previous series. And I also like the humor. Maybe many americans don't like Enterprise because the people their are no perfect american superheroes, but more like european loosers who think and talk before they shoot, and in contrast believe there are very *few* problems that can be solved by blowing things up.
p.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
They're flat screens because they can't have the technology look too far ahead of what was in TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY.
Maybe they should let the whole franchise lie fallow for a few years (like between TOS and the first movie) so they can make a clean break from the the older series, technology-wise if not for overall timeline as well. Or, just tell the fans that anything and everything regarding the older series may be subject to change, or explain it away in-series with time-travel/alternate history.
Another option: re-edit, film new scenes, insert new special effects, etc. into 'special editions' (the George Lucas Method). But that would be prohibitively expensive for ST, considering the volume of old material.
Besides, unless you're displaying something where 3D would be useful there's no reason for a holographic screen.
There could be an omnidirectional display, that shows the same 2D image from every viewing angle, like the billboarding technique used in games. Even if it was 3D, you still might everyone in the room to see the visuals from a certain angle. The effect may look odd and cheap rather than futuristic (as in games it's used as a crude analog for true 3D), however useful it would be for circular meeting rooms. Heck, if it's possible with today's technology, there's got to be market for that.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the two biggest criticisms being leveled against Enterprise/Berman are...
1. They're rehashing old ideas/characters/plotlines
2. They should make it just like B5/Farscape/insert my favorite sci-fi universe here.
I dont get it. I love Star Trek. I like the "universe" of the future and how the many shows and movies intertwine. Out of all the shows I dilike are TOS, and the first few years of TNG.
I never got into DS9, but I did watch the full last season and I liked it. I loved Voyager and Enterprise and the later years of TNG.
Gene had a good vision but the shows sucked under him. I seen to be only one in the world to actually like the whole Voyager series and totally dislike TOS, The Original Series had bad sets, bad acting and lame stories. But I dilike anything old, maybe that was just Sci-fi in the 60s... crappy.
Of course I dislike Buffy and SG-1 as well, so maybe I am differnet breed od sci-fi freak. FYI, I love Lexx and Farscape, both gone, time to cancel TV service.
Slashdot had the news about this almost a year ago!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Why?
Because I realised the only thing that makes sense. Archer is Kirk, T'Pol is Spock. The whole time travel mess is setting up time line compression. Where the backward leaked future tech results in the history of our region of space and humans accelaratin and in paradox chucking the teck back sooner until boom man kind in an afternoon passes through the development of hot cups of tea and makes it to becoming the Qtea2.
Ok for those who don't get it try QE2, or the Queen Elizabeth II... that's all the explanation you get.
Well, it IS better then Voyager :|
The doctor on this ship ackowlages the existance of the Nelix Syndrome and has stated that he doesnt want his character to fall victim to it.
And are they gonna change the god damned theme song yet?
(Score:0, Interesting)
When Enterprise began, it had so much going for it (IMO). It had an interesting concept (pre TOS), and a good cast lineup. It also wasn't going up against an established and current Star Trek series, as DS9 d (started while TNG was at its best) and Voyager (started when DS9 was near its peak) did.
One thing I have to say about all post-TOS Star Trek: the first season or two usually wasn't indicitive of the quality of the series as a whole. TNG, DS9, and Voyager all had fairly poor first (and often second) seasons compared to what would come later. In TNG, the characters in the first season weren't fully developed, and differ greatly from subsequent seasons (Troi was bound up in those bad costumes with bad hairdos, Worf had very little personality, Wesley was annoying, Tasha Yar was still around (and also annoying), Jordi was just a helmsman, etc.). With DS9, they tried to make everyone at odds with each-other all the time -- the series didn't pickup until the characters settled down into a more Star Trek role (ie: Kira became pretty much a part of the crew, and no longer distrusted Star Fleet). Voyager had to have some crew and alien races shakeup before it got really good (lost the Kazon, took on 7 of 9, etc.).
Thus, when it started I was ready to give Enterprise a chance to have the characters grow into their roles. I feel that this could still happen, but that there is simply too much wrong with the series at the moment to have this fix its numerous problems.
The first episode of Enterprise was, IMO, extremely good, and setup a vast universe of possibilities that the writers could have taken advantage of. Trek fans have long taken the Federation and Starfleet as a given, with only extremely cursory glimpses at how it was formed, and where it came from. We know from First Contact and TOS that Zefram Cochrane invented the first warp drive, and his first flight attracted the attention of the Vulcans, who then made first contact. But we're left with a big gap -- how did we get from that to forming Starfleet, and a Federation of Planets with Vulcan? Enterprise has the opportunity to explore the politics and mechanics of this, but has thus far only done so in a very cursory manner. As it stands now, we went from Cochrane's flight, to having a Starfleet, with nothing on its formation.
Next, we have the "energy-cloud-du-jour" already being added as a major plot device -- the "temporal cold war". Time travel has always been a tricky thing in Star Trek, and has usually been used a bit sparingly. The concept behind Star Trek has always been to explore space, with the exploration in time usually being more along the lines of studying history. Every Trek series has used time travel to a certain extent, but it was generally as a plot device for individual stories, not as a major plot device for the entire series. Humanity makes its first steps into a vast universe, and before it encounters some of the most basic species to the Trek mythology, everyone is suddenly using time travel. It's tired, it's been done better in other Trek series, and it's a way to avoid having to actually write compelling stories.
Then we have the Vulcans, whose history as we know it appears that it's being rewritten. From TOS and the movies, things like the Vulcan mind-meld are made out to be ages-old practices that the Vulcan people have always procticed. Now we're supposed to believe that these ancient abilities didn't exist during the Enterprise era.
Next, we have the extremely fast evolution from torpedo-based weapon technology to energy weapons. One episode in the very first season they don't have phasors, the next they pretty much invent them on their own. Yeah, right.
Next, we have a major race that has never before been introduce in the Star Trek universe, the Suliban. A race that uses time travel, but that somehow disappears by the time TOS comes around. Perhaps they'll come up with a good explaination of why they aren't a pain in the rear to future Federation ships
And MOST of the main characters were killed off
by the end of the season!
That felt like war.
Anyone could buy it at anytime!!
ac
Earth: Above and Beyond.
Actually, that was a pretty darn good series. Some of the episodes about the 'Tanks were downright cool.
Scene: A bunch of students watching a slide show.
1st Slide: There are 102 ways to kill a human being with you bare hands.
2nd Slide: Method 1
Scene fades out...
Also the speach by McQueen before he went out after Chiggy Von Richtoven was really cool too.
This is probably the way to do the war-type thing. The only problem is the need/want to have a core group of people for you to follow and develop which means that a small squad needs to survive an inordinate number of battles.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Hell, remember the black/white episode of the original episode?
Kirk: I'm sorry, I don't see a difference; you're both black on one side, white on the other.
Alien: He is black on the LEFT side.
Kirk: So?
Alien: Can't you see? I am black on the RIGHT side. Clearly superior.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Yeah, right.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
This is what I liked about Voyager when I started watching it: the characters actually grew and evolved over time. TOS, which a lot of people seem to hail as some of the best Trek ever, doesn't have this. The characters are so cookie cutter and unbending and doesn't change until the movies. The character development and the overall acceptance of technology (ie technobabble, even though it means absolutely nothing it fits with the age that the series is in) with TNG is what started making Star Trek more interesting for me.
It's interesting to page through the threads and see that no one really comes up with a good explanation of what would make "good Trek" other than "not what Enterprise is doing". I think a lot of the nay saying fans want big galactic battles with lots of explosions. Or perhaps personal phaser combat with lots of casulties. As for "something different", how can a Trek show do something different? What else can be "controversial" that TOS didn't do or MTV doesn't do? Does a Trek show NEED controversy? Does a Trek show NEED to "push the envelope"? Would some of these whiners like it if Malcolm became gay and Hoshi and Travis were gettin' it on? Crap like that doesn't make a good show, it just sells the shows to the lowest common denominator viewer that thinks The Real World is the greatest show ever.
Keep Enterprise as is, I say.
Well, according to Gene Roddenberry, Klingons always had ridges. DesiLu just didn't give them the budget to show them back in 1967.
They screwed that up in the otherwise excellent DS9 tribble episode, unfortunately. What they should have done was had Michael Dorn without the snapping turtle shell on his forehead in the "past" scenes, and nobody notices anything different. Better, given mondo bucks, digitially bumpify the foreheads of all the Klingons in the old episode.
...insert obligatory 'bag over the head' joke here
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Except if you have highly (and expensively) trained combat fighter pilots you don't voluntarily use them as grunts. No disrespect intended to ground troops, quite the opposite.
Some people don't have the aptitude (or intelligence/education) to be combat pilots. Others aren't suited to be infantry. Pilots cost too much to send 'em off in an APC with a M16. Unrealistic.
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I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.