Slashdot Mirror
Enterprise Getting New Aliens, Hairdos, Weapons
Steve Krutzler writes "The news about Enterprise's radical "new direction" for its third season is going mainstream on May 10th in TV Guide. Rick Berman reveals that the season finale will bring about major changes in the struggling Star Trek series for next year including new aliens, new weapons, new hairdos and a mission he calls a Star Trek "first."" I've felt like the show has been slipping all season, so here's hoping.
No holodeck.
No Q
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
what they need is new writers.
New aliens and a few hairdo's wont change the story or character dynamics which reack.
http://saveie6.com/
It's been slipping the last two seasons.
Same show, rehatched ideas, visionless direction; lather rinse repeat. Bah...it's turned into a "PC our morality is always right" and your is always wrong show. Last nights episode was a good example.
What happened to entertainment, if I wanted to be taught morality, I would goto my local public school.
Om, nomnomnom...
On the other hand, last night's episode "Cogenitor" was the first episode of Enterprise I've ever seen which actually had a reasonably original story (trigendered species and a crewmember's fuck-up with cultural interference, clearly meant to establish the principles behind the future prime directive) and which didn't do a hollyood-liberal hippocritical pussy/cop/whore-out, and have the end be all preachy, with a thousand years of injustices and hatred completely reversed with a single visit and impassioned speach by the captain (are you listening, Voyager?). Kudos on that, but the episode was still dull as an old dog's balls.
You want a REALLY fresh idea for Star Trek, something new and different? Well, they shouldn't have blown it from the get go. Come on, we're talking about the BEGINING of decent exploration from Earth for crying out loud! What is more interesting than the idea of being true pioneers?
Only one problem, everything here feels the same as every other show. They still have transporters, they just don't use them on people much. They don't have tractor beams, but that's an excuse so they can have a cool lookin toilet plunger launcher instead. Their phasers aren't as powerful as later shows, but big whoop, they're still phasers. Same shit, different smell, music by a Ron Stweart wannabe.
A show I WOULD have watched eagerly would have been one BEFORE all this technology (save the ability to travel at warp). NO transporters, NO phasers, NO tractor beams, heck no artificial gravity even (though that could be a problem cost wise and quailty wise, unless you have rotating sections like B5, though that doesn't mesh with its own "history"). And if you think that no longer makes it Star Trek, then you really are brainwashed about that show.
Give us something different instead of the same and simply changing it a little to seem different while giving writers the exact same conventions to fall back on under different guises.
This would help.
Well, that and having decent writers that don't simply add the "alien with the cigarette burn on the forhead of the week" each episode.
Oh yeah, and water polo? Who the hell watches water polo?
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
Where to begin. This is a guy who has never had the first clue about what made Star Trek successful and will never ever know it. He killed Kirk stupidly and that was inexcusable. He's had a deathgrip on the Star Trek franchise and has been intent on squeezing the last dollar out of it. It's no fun, it's Politically Correct and boring. There isn't anyone 'Boldly going where no man has gone before' - it's all the same aliens with a different rubber thing on their heads. It's all about United Nations like problems and the proper UN type solutions. It's just completely unwatchable and just plain sad. Berman- don't go away mad, just go away.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
So, I may not be loving, but I'm watching. Hopefully whatever this "new direction" is, it isn't back in the direction of more decontamination gel rubdowns.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
"Given the fact that First Contact introduced the first Earth warp ship, bar none, wouldn't you say that's pretty well established already? "
No. That ship happened before the Enterprise went back in time. The reason that the Enterprise-E was involved with repairing (not building) that ship was because the Borg Sphere attacked it.
B'sides, most of the people I've heard bitching about the continuity of Enterprise don't seem to recognize the time-line is different, even though you're pretty much beaten over the head with the Temporal Cold War that was introduced in the pilot. Either people just like to bitch or they're just plain non-observant.
"Wait a minute! They can't meet the Feringi, Picard first met the Feringi! WTF?! Damn Brannon and Berman!" -- I've seriously heard that stupid comment. They can remember a passing detail in an old ep of TNG, but they can't remember the Temporal Cold War, First Contact, or the that the NX-01 left space dock several days earlier than planned. Heh.
Okay, that rant was pretty geeky. I just find it startling that people can be beaten over the head with information and still not get it.
"Derp de derp."
First of all, just so everyone can flame me for being a philistine, I'll list the various flavours of Star Trek in the order in which I rate them: DS9, TNG, Voyager, TOS, Enterprise.
Now, given that I find watching all but a handful of episodes of TOS a painful experience, that should give you some indication of how badly I think of Enterprise.
Granted, I've only watched about 8-10 episodes of this latest show, but it doesn't take more than that to see that this latest offering is dire, dire, dire.
It's not that the show predates all other Treks per se, it's just that putting it before all the others shows in the Trek universe timeline seriously limits the writers as to what they can and can't do with the characters, races and technology available to them. Putting your writers in a creative straightjacket, limiting their creative scope and presenting the viewers with a wider story that leads them somewhere that they've already been doesn't work very well - just look at the Star Wars prequels for evidence. (So that's yes to your first question; but not for the reasons that you were probably expecting.)
And it's not just that it rewrites Star Trek history on the fly (Klingons that look like TNG/DS9/Voyager versions, rather than TOS oneS, etc), rather that it does so so badly. (So that's a yes to your second question; it's not entirely faithful to the previously established Trek universe.)
But if I had to give just one reason why Enterprise sucks it would be that it's dull as dishwater. None of the characters seem to have any depth to them, and there isn't a single one that I can empathise or admire in the way that I do Data, Worf, Picard, Sisko, Odo, O'Brien, Chakotay or Spock.
Frankly, Enterprise seems like a one-dimensional show with a bunch of one-dimensional characters.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, deserves credit for a bunch of creative new ideas... that were lifted for Star Trek.
Babylon 5 had a heavy story arc. Later, Deep Space 9 developed a story arc. Babylon 5 used CGI heavily when Trek was using models. Of course Trek now uses CGI; perhaps that one was inevitable, but they probably adopted it sooner because of the example of Babylon 5.
After Babylon 5, JMS had a short-lived series called Crusade. The ship in Crusade had a limited amount of time to find a cure that would save the lives of all humans on Earth. Now we find out that Enterprise is turning into Crusade -- they will have to go and stop the Xindi super-weapon.
And new hair styles? Given that Babylon 5 was famous for its wild hair styles, I was amazed they were hyping this.
All that said -- I'll try to hope. Stopping a superweapon is closer to "Trek with phasers" than preachy episodes like "Cogenitor". I'd like to see it be fun and exciting, with far less lecturing.
But I'm afraid that next week (the Borg prequel) is going to be the "jump the shark" episode.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely