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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.'"
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.
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.
They kill off Firefly halfway through the first season but let Enterprise go on for three years. Shheesh.
When Rick (*cough*-ing) Berman talks about creatively working the Borg into a pre-Picard timeline, I get worried. I'm not even going to think about the weirdness of getting Kirk back in it. Then again, the DS9 episode that I watched half of, where they have the tribbles and everything, wasn't that bad. Then again, I didn't see the whole episode, so I don't know *quite* how plausible the whole thing was.
This post made me read the article. This post also made me want there to be a "deeply frightening/disturbing" moderation. I won't comment on the line about how they have been discussing other cross-overs...
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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!
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Enterprise was my turning point. TNG was awesome, deep space 9 was OK, and Voyager was watchable on some episodes (unbearable on others).
I can't even watch Enterprise. Why do all the screens have to be flat(?) screen monitors? Looks pretty non-futuristic (ie we have it today)
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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..." :)
I agree with you about Voyager (I gave up after seeing a few random supposedly "good" episodes), but it's quite clear you never really watched DS9. It had some of the best Trek episodes ever ("The Visitor", "Far beyond the stars", "hard time" etc.), and was quite engrossing because it abandoned the "restore to status quo at the end of each episode" formula. IMO, the best of DS9 was on par with or better than almost all of TNG (which I liked most of the time - "The inner light" was perhaps the best Trek episode ever, along with "the visitor"). I saw a couple of episodes of Enterprise from the first season ("dear doctor" because it was recommended by a friend, and I thought it was awful and amoral), and I honestly have no idea what the creators of that show are trying to do. Nemesis was utterly banal and plot-free, and it wasn't even consistent with what we saw in TNG. Unless there's a new show, preferably set perhaps another 200 years in the future of TNG/DS9, with someone like Leonard Nimoy at the helm, I think we've seen the end of Trek. Star Trek 196?-200[3-4] R.I.P.
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. -
Borg ???
Your kidding right?
The borg is virtually unknown in the alpha quadrant for at least 2 more centuries until Picard is introduced to them by Q.
They are by leaps and bounds alot smaller and have barely a few dozen worlds conquered in the delta quadrant where they are more known during this time.
If the borg wanted crappy 22nd federation technology that barely works( 22nd is leaps behind the 24th of picards day and many more advanced civilizations have much advanced technology)then they could of easily been assimilated. The borg would of done so long before even Kirck or Spock are born.
I do not watch enterprise due to work and school demands. I did watch one eposide where John Archer talks with Vulcan medical experts on a controversial mind meld from a certain group of vulcans. The vulcans were highly illogical and prejudice against certain vulcans who have the gift. They acted very emotionally towards any hint or rational thought and believed in stereo types about these kinds of people.
Then I watch tos and spock mentions how he thinks humans are highly illogical because of their prejudices???
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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 suspect the Borg might turn out to be an evolution of that nasty repair station that was hooking victims up into a big neural net.
Ie. Not the Borg we're utterly sick of but a kind of proto-borg that we know the future of but the Enterprise crew don't so they can remain unknown until TNG time.
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.
Then again, I didn't see the whole episode, so I don't know *quite* how plausible the whole thing was.
The episode you're referring to is Trials and Tribbulations. Although they pretty much skipped over the time traveling part of it, the episode as a whole was one of the best imho. It has a lot of good humour (Worf's "We don't talk about it!", referring to the ridgeless Klingons of Kirk's era), and the effects were just superb. The scene where O'Brien and Bashir were in the lineup, with Kirk having a go at them all was just fantastic. The blending of old and new footage was the best I've ever seen. I'm a big fan of DS9, and this is a prime exmaple of why.
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.
Then came First Contact. What a travesty. Oh look, the Borg aren't really communists, they're actually a capitalist society taken to it's illogical conclusion (from 'the individual matters' to 'only one individual matters'). They became yet another comic book villain. Wonderful. Like we need more of them . Oh, and the fact that torpedoes fired from a high technology ship at a ground emplacement seemed to have about as much explosive force as hand grenades was just ludicrous. I'd go on, but if I stopped to pick holes in First Contact I'd be here all week. Q was a competent villain, omnipotent but not particularly evil. The Borg were original before First Contact. The Dominion? Oh look, another empire, how exciting. Species 8472? Another empire, vaguely interesting since they could defeat the Borg, and it took the doctor almost a whole week to design a super weapon to destroy them. The Cabal? Oh look, another empire...
Enterprise fails for a number of reasons.
- They have to pitch technology above what we have now by about 50-100 years (I assume a World War III would reduce the tech level of a civilisation), below TOS. Since a number of things in TOS are feasible now, this is quite difficult.
- They lack continuity with the other series'. If first contact with the Ferengi was Picard on the Stargazer, then we should not be seeing them 200 years earlier. There are a large number of races which appear peripherally in the other series' and don't have their history mentioned at all. Why not use some of them? Why invent new species' like the Suliban who are either going to all die during the series, or leave a glaring continuity hole at the end?
- A prequel really wasn't the correct thing to do. When the Time Ship Aeon appeared in Voyager I thought that this would be a great setting for a new spin-off. After a few more episodes in the same line I felt convinced. Then Enterprise came out, with the 'Temporal Cold War' which seems to be trying to do this, but as a back story, not as a series premiss. And failing, I might add.
- Their story lines are cliche. A few episodes (Ceasefire springs to mind) are so obvious you can work out what's going to happen before the opening credits.
I'm going to continue watching Enterprise for the same reason I watched Andromeda up to Season 3. I honestly can't believe that something with so much potential can be as bad as the evidence suggests.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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
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
I'd argue the whole temporal war subplot is a big clue that the universe that Archer and co. inhabit is not the same universe that begets classic Star Trek, TNG, DS9, and Voyager.
If they bring the Borg into it, that'll be the final straw - we're talking about a parallel timeline... maybe one spawned after the crew of the Enterprise E (and their Borg hitchikers) interfere with Cochrane and first contact. Remember, the Queen was trying to contact the Borg of that era - who's to say she didn't succeed?
Anyways, that's how I treat Enterprise - as a non-canonical spinoff. Makes it much easier to accept all these anachronisms they keep introducing.
GWF. Hmm. Maybe Enterprise needs a Hoshi - T'Pol subtext ala Xena.
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."
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.
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Unfortunately, he was very good in the role, asshole or not. Actually, maybe that's why he was good- he was playing himself!
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From reading the rumors, the borg episode will involve discovering part of the crashed remains from the borg sphere that was destroyed during First Contact. It wouldn't be TOO much of a stretch to have an episode where they are discovered, and then destroyed along with all evidence without any clear idea of what they were or what they represented. As long as they don't bring the borg into TOO many episodes.
The temperal cold war will probably involve several interactions with the events from other series. Voyager had several encounters with Time enformcent from the future, and there's the timeship from TNG that was stolen by the guy who used it during the episode. These are events that could be developed further.
But if they try to do ANOTHER hack on The Trouble with Tribbles, now with the characters from THREE series in it, that just might start to get silly.
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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-
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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.
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I agree... I really like Enterprise. I also liked Voyager but rank Enterprise higher. TNG was also quite good. DS9 is the only one I couldn't get into.
I haven't seen the episode "Dear Doctor" but I just read the text about it on startrek.com wondering what was awful and amoral and found out that what was awful and amoral is the genesis of the oft talked about prime directive. Now you can think what you want of the prime diretive (that it is awful and amoral to you apparently) but I am surprised that you seem to have developed these feelings watching that episode and not by watching one of the countless episodes where they have dealt with the prime directive in the preceding series.
Also, don't forget that the different crews of each series have quite often broken the prime directive and that if they hadn't they would have had to do awful and amoral things too so try not to judge the Enterprise crew any differently than you would have judged the TNG crew or the DS9 crew.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
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.
This sounds like a good way to buy into the series. Unfortunately, deciding it's a parallel universe doesn't help me to ignore the hackneyed writing. Considering the number of Trek fans out there, and assuming there are some in the movie/television industry, why can't they bring in some GOOD writers?
Whatever bad things might be said about Voyager, and to a slightly lesser extent DS9, at least they tried to take things into different directions at times. For all its faults, Voyager was a starfleet vessel with no contact with starfleet (until near the end) and a non-starfleet crew - at least an interesting concept that was only ruined by the apparent insistence on letting that ship get by too easily, IMO. DS9 showed that the Federation isn't pure goodness and light (for example, by showing starfleeters at their worst while in a "real" war as opposed to capital ships throwing broadsides at each other) and brought religion into the mix.
What fresh ideas has Enterprise given us? I haven't noticed any myself (a temporal "cold war" just seems dumb, especially the way they've handled it). Good Lord, they even made the first officer VULCAN - the antithesis of originality. Enterprise, to me, is Rick Berman trying to do ST:TNG again - and not the good episodes...more like the first season of TNG which was filled with rip-offs from the original series.
Ah well, I shouldnt be saying anything at all since I'm not watching it anymore (the last three episodes before they started reruns again finally convinced me they had nothing original). I'll take a look at Enterprise again in two years or so, assuming it's still on, and see if it's managed to become interesting. That method worked for me on DS9.
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.
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.
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
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Imagine a hack on "City on the Edge of Forever," though. Fits right into the temporal cold war.
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
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.
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.
Why do all the screens have to be flat(?) screen monitors?
Because LCDs don't scan like CRTs, thus you don't have the same problems filming them. LCDs are more cost effective in TV or film due to reduced post-production work. They've really revolutionized sci-fi consoles and displays since you don't have to matte them in post. Woo-hah.
Actually I'd fancy Archer and T'Pol really will have a baby together...
I seem to remember that there is one very famous vulcan who is half human...
Spock.
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."
Considering the cost of the sets, and considering there's only a handful of sets used, one would think they could afford genlocked CRTs.
However, since TOS didn't really prove they were using CRTs (even in the movies -- they always made sure they were inset, and Kirk couldn't crush a CRT the way he crushed his set with his fist in TOS), hey, Enterprise can get away with what they're using. However, I do hope the electronics are using vacuum tubes, as that's required by the ST timeline.
I'm not sure if they've shown the guts of the ship yet... Which is it? ICs or tubes?
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
Follow my reasoning here:
They concieve Kirk, not Spock.
T'Pol & Archer are killed in final episode.
Kirk is raised by kindly couple on Mars colony.
TOS begins.
The reason why Kirk has such a fixation on breasts becomes obvious.
If you can set aside the gel-showering hot chick, then YOUR nuts have been in space too long.
I like the series. Unlike TNG (which went back to the regimental style of the first TOS pilot which didn't work so well), to DS9 (which ended up a religious space opera with bad actors) to Voyager (which had potential, right up to the second episode), this seems to capture the whole "we're exploring the unknown" thing that I felt made the TOS series so popular.
Yeah, they're obviously hurting for good writers, but there is enough newness for me to keep watching.
But, seriously, bringing in the Borg? They killed TNG when they brought them in a regulars. Does this mean we're gonna have two seasons of Archer getting his a$$ kicked all over the place, only to find some "miracle" weapon to combat the borg that never shows up in later series?
Heck, I could almost forgive them for bringing the Ferengi in. I mean, there might be a finite number of intelligent, space-faring people, and the chances of meeting them aren't impossible, just unlikely. And we didn't stop to talk to much with them (which was interesting if we were supposed to be out there to meet peoples).
But leave TNG super-villans alone. They have no business in this series.
And the Klingon head risge thing...
I think this was explained in one of the DS9 episodes (one of the miraculous ones where Worf wasn't getting his butt kicked) about them being genetically altered to match humans, or a sub-species they don't like, or some crap like that.
And you'd think, with technology today, they can make aliens that aren't just painted people? C'mon, even George Lucas could make Jabba, Yoda, and other not-human aliens. Couldn't someone in Paramount borrow a computer, or at least Jim Hensen studios?
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 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 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.