Slashdot Mirror
Enterprise Finale Airing Tonight
Tycoon Guy writes "Be sure to tune in to UPN tonight, where they're going to show the 'true finale' of Enterprise with the episode Terra Prime, followed by the post-season coda, These Are The Voyages. The latter will feature appearances by Troi, Riker, and a completely CGI Enterprise-D."
I have been a long time devotee of ST:TNG. I, like many others, never got involved with Enterprise. And from what I hear, that's a shame, as by all accounts, the show has really become much better toward the end. I do admit I had very high hopes to begin with, but found it stilted and uninteresting during the first four episodes and gave up. But I know I won't be alone watching the finale just to get a glimpse of "new" ST:TNG cast action and the familiar Enterprise-D, no matter how brief.
This will be the first time in almost two decades that a first-run Star Trek hasn't been on TV...the end of an era. Here's hoping that the Star Trek franchise can be revived at some point, even better.
Poor Scott Bakula. He was so brilliant on Quantum Leap, but Enterprise just sort of floundered in the shadow of its predecessors.
At least this show will get a proper ending and avoid the Farscape treatment.
You must be joking.
It was Sisko by a long shot. He wasn't afraid to disipline people that needed it.
>
> Who's the creative genium behind that one?
Data: The creative "genium", as you put it, appears to be the source of the problem.
Troi: Yes, Data. And I'm getting a senation of bad scriptwriting and an utter lack of focus, Captain.
Picard: Worf, target all weapons on the temporal rift and fire!
Riker: Berman and Braga will finally get thier just desserts.
Worf: I couldn't agree more. Firing.
Wesley: I'm not touching this thread with a ten-foot warp nacelle. If our weapons can hit them the 20th century, Paramount's lawyers can damn well hit us.
Sisko was cooler than either of them, but he not a starship captain. He was a base commander.
Between Kirk and Picard: Kirk, obviously.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
what most Sci-Fi still hasn't. That is that writing and telling a good story is still the most important element. They've gotten it right this season, but it was too late to save it.
Given the setting of this series, the logical place to start in the story was getting Earth established in the space of the era, meeting other species, forging alliances, making enemies, forming the beginnings of the Federation, etc. This is exactly what they've done this season and it's been brilliant. Had they started this way, the show would still be on the air.
But no, for the first two seasons we had Andy Griffith in space (yes it really was THAT boring), and then they had to trot out such over the top monstrosities as a war through time and huge insect aliens that wanted to annihilate earth. It didn't help that they broke continuity a lot with the other series (introducing the Borg, etc.). This is not the Trek that the fans came for and many of them left, never to return. Unfortunate but it reinforces one of the basic requirements of any fictional narrative that many people still don't grasp. If the story isn't compelling it won't be a success. Given the past success of Trek, you can't just slap the name on any piece of work and expect that alone to carry you.
But he DID hold a Captain's rank.
Picard: Accomplished Shakesprean Actor
Sisko: Threatened, or performed, violent action on omnipotent superdimensional beings regularly.
Winner: Sisko, because he clangs when he walks.
By the end of DS9, Sisko did achieve the rank of Captain, so I think that qualifies him for consideration. Besides, he did something Jean-Luc never did: he punched Q and put him on the ground. Picard did yell at Q, maybe he even grabbed him by the uniform and pushed him against a bulkhead (I don't remember) but he never actually struck Q.
Y|
I did see a few episodes involving a terrorist attack on Vulcan, and I liked what I saw. However, it wasn't compelling enough to pick it up and try to get into it. I liked the scene where they were playing basketball on the ship, it really connected "us" with "them".
I might check out the coda.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Although Enterprise has been a downright awesome show this last season, even ressurecting some of the philosophical and mysterious tendancies that made TNG so great and bringing in some elements linking with the original Trek (and not just those Orion slave girls ;) ), we will certainly be dissapointed with "These are the voyages" for the obvious reasons...
:)
However, season 4 proved a fantastic point for a lot of Trekkies out there; that with enough good, fresh writers a show can improve again. As soon as Berman and Braga were hastily ushered out (after THREE seasons of the most gut-wrenching awful Trek we fans have ever been subjected to) the show became a heck of a lot better.
Since Star Trek has a timeless nature and a huge fanbase we can always count on new, fresh and innovative fans coming forward as writers with some brilliant material...and who knows? In a few years we might have another TNG that even the most cynical fans can enjoy...if not, well theres always re-runs.
Kind of like seeing the "progress" between Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy and the 500-years-later new Foundation novels mirror the 40-50 years progress in our world between the writing.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
As groundbreaking as the original series was, it was still based on '60s concepts of how the future would look. Even the later series, which did a great job trying to keep continuity with the original, had a few huge problems to overcome. One of the best episodes ever, DS9's reprise of "Trouble With Tribbles" had to contend with the fact that the original Klingons looked more like Ming the Merciless than they looked like "modern Klingons" with the riged forehead and larger muscles. There was no way to reconcile that, so they just had Warf say "We Klingons do not talk about it." How could Enterprise possibly make technology that looked more advanced than ours, but less advanced than the original? (Maybe they could have it look like current military technology, which already looks pretty high tech--HUD's and virtual controls on a multifunction touch screen--you know, like they used in later star treks, but more "today looking" so it naturally looks less advanced.)
btw, I never watched Enterprise, I was already tired of the Star Trek universe by then (a few episodes of STV did that for me) but I hear that some of the actresses were pretty hot.
More music, fewer hits
You're kidding, right? That's a serious no-brainer.
7 of 9. As if there's anyone else that even comes close.
-- Gary F.
... we've been left with all the briliant reality tv shows....
M$ it's whats for diner!!!!!
Four more words:
Denny Crane.
Nansy Pansy.
I always looked at it thusly, to say who was the better captain goes like this - "If I had to choose which captain? If I was serving on the ship - I'll take Picard, if I had a choice which captain I'd be? Kirk - all the way...."
As for the series final of "enterpoop"?
Waiter? I'll take a pitcher of Pan galactic gargle blasters and a funnel..
and make that two lemons on the brick please...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
The Mirror universe was clever, but I wished they'd put as much energy into the rest of the series. It was a brilliant premise and they botched it from the start.
The right use of the mirror episode would have been to pull a Dallas and just erase the entire series by admitting that all the preceding episodes were the mirror version. They could have a version of T'Pol enter and find herself horrified to see that there's a universe where she's just a sex object with emotions and pointy ears and not a regular crew member, a scientist, and a practicing emotionless vulcan. Then they wouldn't have to worry how they were going to link up all the temporal inconsistencies with the subsequent series either. We could have gone back with the good guys to our universe and lived happily ever after.What I liked about the original premise of the Enterprise series was the notion of putting some humor and adventure back into Star Trek. For as much as TNG was brilliant, it suffered in the end because it appears they had no more places where no man had gone before, and they turned inward to the mental. A lot of us think Space is about new starts, things that don't always work, a chance to rebuild and make up for past mistakes, etc. Here was a series where transporters didn't quite work, the universal translator wasn't debugged, people were not experienced diplomats, and there was a big chance of things going wrong, sometimes comedically and sometimes tragically.
It was to be a show about real adventure and uncertainty, showing how hard it was surviving in Space before the invention of the red shirt for expendible crewmen. Maybe with characters that came and went on shorter timelines than the whole series, if that's even possible in modern television qua business. My generation grew up with Star Trek to teach us about optimism and hope for the future. Those are things people needed to get the Space program going. But recently, we panic in real life when the space program loses even one life. That's not realistic. We need Star Trek to be brave enough to teach us that good lives will be lost, and that this is acceptable. I think we are losing that sense, and insisting on a completely planned experience both in real life and on the show.
Other than venue, the show has mostly just converged on the same old formula, made worse only by intensive pushes for a love story with T'Pol and the need to constantly be pushing to undress her, just as killed Lt. Yar's hope for being an equal. Yar's only really good episode was Yesterday's Enterprise, and it's probably not a coincidence that she had to be dead to do it. I grew up on the original series and loved its characters, but sad as it was, I really thought it a genius stroke to kill a main character in one of the movies (you know which one, but I'm trying not to spoil it). I thought "Yes! Finally we know they're playing for keeps. Now the uncertainty will be real..." This was to be a show about uncertainty, but it didn't deliver.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
IMHO Terry Ferrel is way hotter than Jeri Ryan. But then, I prefer exotic natural beauties over silicone-enhanced bleach-blonde barbie dolls.
Besides, Jeri Ryan is a prude.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Huh? The writing on DS-9 was fantastic. But yeah, Voyager was 100% cheese.
/. are just ads for BSG which while very good is not Star Trek, period. So it is no more relevant in the context of ST than Star Wars, or bloody Firefly or Buffy, etc.
Enterprise was always decent and in the last season, really good.
Most of the comments on Enterprise stories on
My personal opinion is that it wasn't the writers that killed Enterprise, but too many of the actual fans gave up on it too early. Come on-- TNG totally sucked when it first started, but picked up as it went on. DS-9 was the only series to really get off to a running start. Watch the first few episodes -- these guys knew their characters, and the writers in general knew where they were going.
-- John.
Captain Sheridan is indeed still the supreme commander to me. Politics, diplomacy, internal strife, war design, battle strategy, and in-the-heat-of-the-moment battle tactics. He could do it all. Man, I have to get Babylon 5 on DVD.
Ranking the captains by their displayed ability:
Sheridan > Sisko > Sinclair > Picard > Kirk
That's for sure. Picard was a geriatric weener.
Kirk is J.T. Fucking Kirk. Unless you're a homo or a retard there's no way you could think Picard's better.
The 23rd century ships were actually sleeker and more high-tech, with more tactile gems instead of flat-panel displays. They employed three senses: visual, aural, and tactile, instead of two: visual and aural. The extra tactile dimension made them easier to use and a superior interface, particularly when dealing with many different species that might have different levels of one of these three senses (they have the other 2 to fall back on).
The ships were brighter, too, which I think you really need in deep space (Enterprise D was good for this too, though). Bright colors and brightly lit hallways will lift spirits. I can't defend the tricorders (those just looked bad), but as far as the bridge goes, in a way, I like 23rd century design over 24th/22nd. Sure, the special fx weren't the same, but consider the usability.
So the first few seasons sucked but when they realized they were in trouble they started to get their act together and when they were cancelled they got even better? When I hold up this information next to the politics surrounding Firefly a theory emerges: The way to get good sci-fi is to give them the budget they need but keep them thinking they're about to get canned unless they make tv gold.
This has two benefits. I keeps everybody hungry and desperate which brings out the best effort. It also unites the fans and mobilizes them to do a lot of grass roots marketing.
According to the court documents, Ms. Ryan claimed that her husband attempted to pressure her into having public sex with him in front of an audience.
I think Terry Farrel is cuter too, but calling Jeri a "prude" because she didn't want to screw her husband in a club where there were "cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling," is a little unfair.
Andy Griffith's like a lot of other classic TV
Classic TV and Sci-Fi are two very different genres. I just don't think Andy Griffith is a good model for a Sci-Fi show.
Sisko punching Q upside the head was the highlight of Season One!
This sig intentionally left blank.
In the interests of fairness, I must interject that Picard's characterization in Nemesis is extremely spotty. There's no real reason for him to behave as he does, nearly destroying the ship and killing his entire crew. The "action-hero" machismo gives way to resignation, with no attempt to stop the death-ray maguffin after his clone dies. No matter what you say about Picard, I hardly think he'd give up if his crew was on the line.
That whole story was thrown together just so they could kill Data and rip off Wrath of Khan. The box office take reflects this.
I just wanted to make the comment that I think it is quite fitting that the 'late great one' (i.e. TNG) is in Enterprise. I think it is appropriate, in the same way that a 19th century father on the farm, sturdy strong and powerful of body and mind, when finding that his son has foregon his chores and let the family down and skipped church for the evening, takes his mighty hand and crashes it upon the face of the insolent youth both as a lesson in love and in respect.
lol. Without the extended metaphor: ENT fu**ed things up quite nicely for the dynasty for most of its 4 years. It deserves to be in the presence of the greatness that was TNG, if only as a reminder to fans of what a great show we once had.
Ah. Respect is a powerful word
You obviously haven't seen Army leadership manuals. Read FM 22-100 (the core Army leadership manual) and SH 21-76 (the Ranger Handbook), then we can talk rationally about this.
Innocent bystanders always get killed in war, and sometimes it's deliberate. Some armies inculcate a wanton disregard for human life in their soldiers, while others try their best to impress upon soldiers the importance of safeguarding the lives of noncombatants. You would more than likely be amazed at the risks we took in Somalia so we could be sure that we were not putting civilians in danger. I'm not in Afghanistan or Iraq, but my guess is that the situation is not uniform for every unit, and that in some cases there are commanders and soldiers who are acting with wanton disregard for human life. Then again, if you took random group of people and put them in a situation where combatants and noncombatants were closely mixed, you might very well find that the majority of them made mistakes and killed civilians. The Bush Administration went into Iraq ludicrously unprepared for a long-term occupation, which has led to a situation in which soldiers are spread too thin and are under tremendous stress, fighting an enemy that is willing to kill its own people in order to kill Americans.
As to your statement about other crimes, rape and killing of POWs is not condoned in American military manuals. People in your town all know that murder is wrong, but some people do it. That doesn't mean that your town is teaching people to murder.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
And vice versa.
Which is probably the pith of the arguments presented by the homosexual movements.
But also, conversely, probably the entire reason for sex.
(I say as my wife expresses disgust that I would be reading /. and laughing about this Star Trek thread.)
I agree it was terrible. An insult to the cast and the fans.
It was a crappy episode of STN:TNG.
It should have been about Enterprise and not about Riker.
To the cast: You did wonderful, you deserved better, and I and others will blot out this travesty and remember you for the good work you have done.
Cheers
Wax on, wax off baby!