Scott Bakula Star Trek Enterprise

[Wonderful Butternut]

Ah, my bad about confusing the rubbish storylines with each other. You're 100% wrong about the second bit though, cos now every bore on the internet pisses and moans about every insignificant visual change between shows. They'd be castigating DS9 for getting Trills "wrong" etc if it was airing today.

Nah, I'm 100% right, mate. Disco Klingons were not an insignificant visual change, they were a rather large one. Star Wars fans would've burned Disney HQ to the ground if a background alien, much less one of the most prominent ones in the IP, had been changed that much. So I think in relative terms Star Trek fans took it well.

[Mr Trumpet]

Well with any luck at some point we'll get a dull multi-episode storyline that "explains" it all in some convoluted and unnecessary way

[mothman]

https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies.htm#exobiology

For all your alien inconsistency needs.

[Lemming]

Just seen "Observer Effect", that was absolutely fascinating. A rare story about being on the receiving end of the TNG-era Prime Directive - the only other one I can think of is Voyager's "Prime Factors", which is still a lot less brutal than this one. Archer's speech about how "you've lost all compassion and empathy - if that's what it means to be advanced, then I don't want any part of it" genuinely got to me, knowing that two centuries later, Picard will sit in his briefing room while a planet burns below him, congratulating himself on his own enlightenment, just as the Organians do here. CHILLING

It was a bit blunt, I suppose - the Organians even directly say "we cannot interfere with your natural progress", just in case you were somehow not getting the ultra-thinly-veiled parallels with TNG at that point - but it was very effective nonetheless.

It's also compelling that tragedy is averted[nb]for the Enterprise crew, at least, if not the previous ships to stumble into the same situation[/nb] when one person refuses to follow the Prime Directive, despite the supreme bollocking from their commanding officer. Parallels with how Data and Bev are essentially the sole reasons that tragedy is avoided in "Pen Pals" and "Who Watches The Watchers", respectively.

Feels like it was almost definitely an episode written for season one and then given a very brisk rework to fit into season four, but I'm not complaining. Favourite of the season so far.

[Lemming]

Just saw "Bound". Wow, absolute rubbish. Genuinely might be the worst episode of Enterprise ever made, which is up against some stiff competition.

Still not really feeling this season on the whole. The Klingon two-parter was alright, maybe my favourite of the multi-part stories so far, chiefly due to the Klingon doctor character who I thought did a huge amount to flesh out Klingon society. I always like medical ethics stories in Star Trek, so Phlox getting pissed at the Klingon general guy and vice versa was good to watch. The completely unnecessary attempt to explain why Klingons don't have head ridges in TOS was luckily nowhere near as prominent as I'd feared.

Though it just raises far more questions than the non-question it tries to answer. 100 years later, Kor, Koloth and Kang - plus their entire crews/armies - all had the augment virus? And they all decided to cut their hair for some reason? Then, by the time of DS9, they'd all chosen to get reconstructive surgery and grow their hair out? I guess the 2260s were a weird time fashion-wise for everyone.

The Trip and T'Pol romance is really perplexing me. Totally subjective, I know, but for me, the two characters just do not go together at all. Not feeling it. Worse, both characters now pretty much entirely revolve around this romance, and they're both a lot more boring as a result. They were both the standout characters during the first two seasons too. T'Pol was my favourite character and probably the main aspect anchoring me to the show, so it sucks to essentially lose the character to this plot that's just not working for me.

Looking forward to the final couple of stories, where we'll probably be treated to a two-hour explanation of why the TOS Enterprise has orange doors. In all seriousness, I'm up for some Mirror Universe action, and the Andorians vs Tellarites stuff has been decent up until now, so hopefully it's smooth sailing all the way from here until the moment Riker's stupid chubby face fills the screen and torpedoes the series.

[JamesTC]

My thinking on the Klingons changing back is that it was a slow regression of the changes, hence the slight differences in the movies and then leading into Undiscovered Country when they are practically the Klingons we know. Perhaps a cure was found but it was slow acting. The virus was known to be fast spreading too. The Delta variant of the Klingon community. Of course Discovery blundered in and broke the neat little explanation but they fucking Armin Tamzarianed themselves so fuck them.

I do love the T'Pol/Trip relationship. Though that is partially coloured by the final two parter. A scene between the two in the second to last episode is my all time favourite in all of Trek.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Just saw "Bound". Wow, absolute rubbish. Genuinely might be the worst episode of Enterprise ever made, which is up against some stiff competition.

The "best" will be saved for last.

[Mobbd]

The Trip and T'Pol romance is really perplexing me. Totally subjective, I know, but for me, the two characters just do not go together at all. Not feeling it. Worse, both characters now pretty much entirely revolve around this romance, and they're both a lot more boring as a result.

Agreed. I see this relationship as another helping of Enterprise's lowest-common-denominator stuff, just like the "creaming each other up with decontamination lotion" scenes early in the series. They got Trip and T'Pol together to excite us with the idea that they fuck. It's just so tacky and desperate and pathetic.

It's a bit like when they introduced Seven to spice up Voyager. They got hella lucky because Jerry Ryan turned out to be wonderful and capable of all but carrying the show (with Picardo and Mulgrew of course). But you just know that the original idea was "needs more tits."

The fact that they chose Trip of all characters to get together with T'Pol for late-in-the-day audience titillation purposes reveals something else: another case of Executive Production's sorely limited idea of what might make an attractive male character. It just couldn't be Mayweather could it? Or even Archer? No one would want to fap to that, would they?

There's a history of this. Riker was was supposed to serve as eye candy in contrast to Old Man Picard: they had no inkling as to the sexiness of Patrick Stewart. They never learned from all the horny fanmail that came to Leonard Nimoy while viewers who weren't straight men generally saw 'Hunky' Shatner as a pudgy fool. The Enterprise execs really thought Trip was a snacc when he's so painfully ugly and banal and, frankly, a yokel. Trek fans are into brains and humour and gentility, you know? But the production always think they need to serve meat because that's what they imagine "women" want.

You know how much I love Star Trek; there's just a slightly creepy and normative heritage running through it and you can spot it at times like these. Star Trek is great in spite of this shit, not because of it.

[Mr Trumpet]

That's something the new shows are much better at, unpopular though they may be for other reasons.

Trip looked and sounded a bit too much like W Bush for me to ever warm to him. I believe the actor may have even played him in something.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Agreed. I see this relationship as another helping of Enterprise's lowest-common-denominator stuff, just like the "creaming each other up with decontamination lotion" scenes early in the series. They got Trip and T'Pol together to excite us with the idea that they fuck. It's just so tacky and desperate and pathetic.

It's a bit like when they introduced Seven to spice up Voyager. They got hella lucky because Jerry Ryan turned out to be wonderful and capable of all but carrying the show (with Picardo and Mulgrew of course). But you just know that the original idea was "needs more tits."

The fact that they chose Trip of all characters to get together with T'Pol for late-in-the-day audience titillation purposes reveals something else: another case of Executive Production's sorely limited idea of what might make an attractive male character. It just couldn't be Mayweather could it? Or even Archer? No one would want to fap to that, would they?

There's a history of this. Riker was was supposed to serve as eye candy in contrast to Old Man Picard: they had no inkling as to the sexiness of Patrick Stewart. They also never learned from all the horny fanmail that came to Leonard Nimoy while viewers who weren't straight men generally saw 'Hunky' Shatner as a pudgy fool. The Enterprise execs really thought Trip was a snacc when he's so painfully ugly and banal and, frankly, a yokel. Trek fans are into brains and humour and gentility, you know? But the production always think they need to serve meat because that's what they imagine "women" want.

You know how much I love Star Trek; there's just a slightly creepy and normative heritage running through it and you can spot it at times like these. Star Trek is great in spite of this shit, not because of it.

Tangentially, I always thought Hoshi more attractive than T'Pol. Does help that Linda Park was allowed act (for the comparatively limited amount of character time Hoshi got vs. the big 3, but she did do better than poor Mayweather) whilst Joelene Blalock seems to have been told to pretend she'd had half her brain removed.

So the big Ent romance should've been Mayweather / Hoshi.

[Mobbd]

the big Ent romance should've been Mayweather / Hoshi.

Hellyeah

And going back to Lemming's original point, it would have given Hoshi and Mayweather something to do while letting Trip and T'Pol do what they were already doing.

(Similarly, I always felt they gave Tom Paris too many attributes as time went on - while Harry and B'Elana and Chuckles had precious little).

[Mobbd]

Linda Park was allowed act (for the comparatively limited amount of character time Hoshi got vs. the big 3, but she did do better than poor Mayweather) whilst Joelene Blalock seems to have been told to pretend she'd had half her brain removed.

Someone said earlier in the thread that what compromised Enterprise the most was that the characters just aren't there. This is right. I'm coming to the end of a joyful TNG re-watch and the characters just have so much great design going on. Everyone has their thing, their look, their function in the show.

Could the reason be that action figures weren't a big part of the Star Trek business model by 2001?

[Mobbd]

Enterprise deserves some credit for the built-in creative obstructions along the lines of "transporters are dangerously unreliable in this period" even when, in actual deployment, such obstruction turn out to be a nuisance. I mean, transporters are really just a narrative technique that gets our lads down to the planet without our having to witness the rigmarole of getting a shuttlecraft out. But I like that they tied to do something different and that their efforts were tied to the nature of the show's being a prequel.

One such obstruction that did capture my imagination was the language-related stuff. The Universal Translator not being excellent yet kinda gave us some narrative tension in precarious negotiation scenarios, plus some good alien sound design. It should have been better but it was a good try and Hoshi was at the centre of that.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Someone said earlier in the thread that what compromised Enterprise the most was that the characters just aren't there. This is right. I'm coming to the end of a joyful TNG re-watch and the characters just have so much great design going on. Everyone has their thing, their look, their function in the show.

Could the reason be that action figures weren't a big part of the Star Trek business model by 2001?

Not sure if the someone is me, since it's hardly a unique standpoint, but I did say early in the thread that the biggest problem I had was that I found the crew unlikable. Archer & Tucker are cretins. T'Pol is a doormat and her interaction with Archer & Tucker in the first couple of seasons are genuinely painful to watch at times. Phlox is The Doctor mixed with Neelix and has less depth than either of them. And the rest may not exist most of the time. I remember reading (in something about how Rick Berman was shit and regressive. Can't find it now) quotes from Dominic Keating saying that he thought Reed was supposed to be gay and played him as such. Never noticed. That's how much of an impact Reed made on me.

An aside re: action figures and such, nice blokes on the internet who definitely haven't been obsessively releasing video after video claiming they had 'insider knowledge' and leaks saying the cancellation of all Nu Trek is imminent, claim that was an issue for Discovery. Basically the visual style was so ugly that none of the toy / model makers thought any of it would sell and declined to take on the rights. Treat the veracity of that with caution though, cos if these people were right DSC's third season would never have seen the light of day.

Enterprise deserves some credit for the built-in creative obstructions along the lines of "transporters are dangerously unreliable in this period" even when, in actual deployment, such obstruction turn out to be a nuisance. I mean, transporters are really just a narrative technique that gets our lads down to the planet without our having to witness the rigmarole of getting a shuttlecraft out. But I like that they tied to do something different and that their efforts were tied to the nature of the show's being a prequel.

One such obstruction that did capture my imagination was the language-related stuff. The Universal Translator not being excellent yet kinda gave us some narrative tension in precarious negotiation scenarios, plus some good alien sound design. It should have been better but it was a good try and Hoshi was at the centre of that.

This stuff was good in it's own right and definitely on the right track of what they should've been doing with Enterprise. But at the end of the day, if a character who is in peril because they can't just be effortlessly spirited back to the ship by Scotty or O'Brien a la previous Star Trek series, is also an unlikable cretin or has only had about 3 minutes of character development all season, you kinda lose the emotional investment in the danger their in. Poirot explained it earlier in the thread when she commented that she stopped watching after realising she didn't care if Archer and Tucker got killed in Space Afghanistan.

DSC is going the same way by only having about 4 people be relevant, btw. Airiam dying worked cos it was well directed, but the following episode where everyone's emoing at her funeral is completely flat cos she had maybe 20 minutes of character development before being killed. Although at least I'm somewhat invested in 2 of the 4 important characters in DSC. Which is 2 more than ENT.

[Mobbd]

Not sure if the someone is me,

I rather think it was!

An aside re: action figures and such, nice blokes on the internet who definitely haven't been obsessively releasing video after video claiming they had 'insider knowledge' and leaks saying the cancellation of all Nu Trek is imminent, claim that was an issue for Discovery. Basically the visual style was so ugly that none of the toy / model makers thought any of it would sell and declined to take on the rights. Treat the veracity of that with caution though, cos if these people were right DSC's third season would never have seen the light of day.

Haha, I know the sort of people you mean. I have seen a couple of those vids but I try not to be tempted by them. I dislike Nu Trek but I don't understand what changes these guys are trying to affect. I mean, if they want it all to be cancelled how does "reporting" cancellations as fake news like some sort of doomsday predictor help to bring that about? Especially when they will be proved wrong and lose any credibility they might have had. They are odd birds.

If that's true (I bet it isn't) about the action figures and Discovery, that is hilarious. I was more thinking it was the other way around though: that action figures just weren't popular enough among kids by the turn of the millennium to warrant shaping your show around things that could be developed as action figures. I could be wrong but I can't imagine kids of 2001 wanting to buy action figures in the way my generation bought He-Man and Turtles and Real Ghostbusters figures a decade or so earlier. I know there would have been (and still is) a high-end action figure market but you gotta have mass kid appeal I would think for your show to be based around that model. So I don't know about DIS and ENT not being the right quality of show to inspire toys; more that the toy market didn't exist any more to drive character and set design.

Come to think of it, I remember Voyager figures being less of a big deal than previous Trek generations. That Bridge playset and the Captain Janeway figure were really hard to get, while lots of kids I knew had a Playmates Picard or Borg or Ferengi (with energy whip!) figure just a few years prior.

(This is becoming a tangent now but if anyone liked/likes Trek toys, the Star Trek episode of The Toys That Made Us on Netflix is worth a watch).

[Lemming]

Oh no! All the Trip hate, I actually liked him overall in the first couple seasons. Fell out with him when he was all "we've got to go into Afghanistan the expanse, cap'n, these bastards killed my sister" and he's mostly just a shouty prat in season four. But he was mostly a lot of fun in the first half of the show's run, and you can see why the writers ended up giving him so many episodes.

I really liked Connor Trinneer's willingness to act basically any plot he was given, no matter how stupid. Jolene Blalock, a fantastic actor with the right material, visibly seems to start half-arsing it if the script is shit. Bakula seems to have trouble getting a handle on Archer throughout (and who can blame him). But Trinneer just absolutely goes for everything, full-force. Trip is pregnant, Trip is trapped on an alien world with a lizard-man, Trip is dying of dehydration in the desert, all acted with complete earnestness. They could have written an episode where Trip starts de-evolving into a banana or something and he would have played it completely straight. "Ah can't run the engines like this, cap'n, ah ain't got no hands!"

All the characters were a lot more likeable in the first couple seasons, IMO. Season 3/4 Archer really weirds me out. It might just be because Scott Bakula is playing against type so hard - he just can't really be this tense, tortured, intimidating figure. It just feels wrong, comically so, and you end up not seeing him as Jonathan Archer on the Enterprise, but rather seeing him as Scott Bakula struggling through his lines on a cardboard set, which is very funny as a viewer but disastrous for the show. Again, I think the earliest episodes got it right, back when Archer was generally gregarious and upbeat and kept genuinely wondering why he got his arse kicked so much when he kept blindly walking into hostile situations on the basis that everyone out here must be as nice as he is.

Similarly T'Pol used to get shat on and ribbed by the other characters a lot, but I thought Blalock skillfully played it as though T'Pol genuinely didn't give a shit, and was slightly looking down on Archer and Trip as backwards underdeveloped humans, which evened things out a little. I'm not really sure what T'Pol's doing at this stage, other than having dreams about Trip and displaying the emotional intelligence of a 13 year old. The end of "Bound" nearly killed me. "Say yah want me ta stay, T'Pawl." "I... believe you would be an asset to the crew." Soul left my body. She's a Starfleet commander and she's like 70 years old. Why does she act like this. This isn't even how other Vulcans act.

Hoshi's the character I'd really liked to have seen more of. Mayweather's kind of a lost cause, he's just somehow supernaturally uninteresting no matter what, cursed. Hoshi has flashes of being interesting. I've not seen Linda Park in anything else, but I get the sense she'd do well with comedic material. Hoshi was great in that comedy episode in season two where everyone starts to hyper-focus on trivial shit and she ends up becoming obsessive about recreating an old family recipe precisely.

Throughout this whole post, I forgot Reed existed.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Similarly T'Pol used to get shat on and ribbed by the other characters a lot, but I thought Blalock skillfully played it as though T'Pol genuinely didn't give a shit, and was slightly looking down on Archer and Trip as backwards underdeveloped humans, which evened things out a little. I'm not really sure what T'Pol's doing at this stage, other than having dreams about Trip and displaying the emotional intelligence of a 13 year old. The end of "Bound" nearly killed me. "Say yah want me ta stay, T'Pawl." "I... believe you would be an asset to the crew." Soul left my body. She's a Starfleet commander and she's like 70 years old. Why does she act like this. This isn't even how other Vulcans act.

I always read it as she was unable to deal with it. There are a handful of occasions where she gives a bit back, such as when she tells Trip to 'use logic more quietly' when he defends his ignorant yapping during the ship's movie night as trying to logically deduce the plot. But for the most part she just doesn't seem to know how to respond.

I could've lived with it if there had been proper development. A few times they'd reach an understanding in one episode, only for Archer to be jumping down her throat the next episode because he's asked her for advice and the advice she gives him isn't what he wanted to hear. Until they just kind of switched it off in season 3 cos they were too busy looking for WMDs. Spock was able to deal with McCoy's ribbing and had a plentiful supply of sarcastic retorts in his arsenal, even on the occasions when McCoy descended to straight up racism: "You green blooded pointy eared etc." which is why it worked. They were equal partners in the shit flinging. Archer & Trip v. T'Pol is usually unequal and often looked to me like someone being bullied, honestly.

[mothman]

Everything I've seen seems to indicate that Trinneer is quite a nice bloke who loves going to conventions and interacting with fans. So I kinda feel bad that his character draws so much hate.

[Mobbd]

Oh no! All the Trip hate, I actually liked him overall in the first couple seasons.

Everything I've seen seems to indicate that Trinneer is quite a nice bloke who loves going to conventions and interacting with fans. So I kinda feel bad that his character draws so much hate.

Heh, I was going to come around and say that hate is a big word and I don't feel that strongly about this, but then I remembered. And Wonderful Butternut nailed it too.

It's all those scenes in the Captain's Mess where they're teasing T'Pol. "It looks like we got ourselves a vegeritarian, boys, hyuk-yuck! Yee-haw! *fires into the air.*"

No thanks. Dimwitted hooligan.

Can you imagine the stink in that room? All those farts? Poor T'Pol. Whether she could handle it or not is almost immaterial. Fucking obnoxious behaviour.

No shade on the actor; no opinions on him whatsoever.

[Lemming]

Finished! Superb final episode, absolutely exquisite.

Interesting show on the whole, I enjoyed the first two seasons for what they were. Third was a change of direction that felt like a bad mistake at first but managed to turn it around and come up with something pretty strong by the end. Sadly wasn't feeling the fourth season much, the hyper-focus on established lore isn't my kind of thing and I thought some of the plots became so grand and high-stakes as to veer into accidental comedy territory (Robocop guy's PERSONAL DEATH-SHIP has commandeered a laser which is going to BLOW STARFLEET HQ OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH, etc). Though still nothing on par with Discovery's "the ENTIRE MULTI-VERSE will be destroyed unless Burnham can save the day" stuff.

Still giggling from the finale. What the fuck. What can improve any Enterprise scene? That's right, Jonathan Frakes' fat head phasing through the wall. The demise of Trip made me properly laugh too. Last episode, show's cancelled, bye mate!

So does the holodeck just keep records of everything that's ever happened anywhere, and allow users to alter events? Picard was able to recreate the exact conditions of a restaurant on a specific unremarkable day in "We'll Always Have Paris", and Riker can recreate the Enterpise's final mission just as it was. If he'd intervened to save Trip and then left the holodeck running for decades, would holo-Trip have lived out the life that the real Trip would have done, according to the Enterprise-D computer's best estimate? Can you literally go anywhere and meet anyone with this thing? Can anyone opt out of being featured/having their words and actions recorded for later holodeck perusal? Can you go back to any time before holodecks were even a thing (as Riker does here)? Am I being recorded right now while typing this, to be recreated as a hologram in 300 years so Riker can sit on the table across from me and nod sagely while I click "post"?

[Wonderful Butternut]

"These Are the Voyages..." is such an abject failure on every level. Despite some fine efforts from the Discovery writers[nb]Most notably the Mirror Universe double header in Season 3. Fuck me that was such pig shit.[/nb] to dislodge it, as well as Picard's misery fetish, I still think this is the worst episode of Star Trek ever made, and they'll do well to top it.

Most fundamentally, the Enterprise finale is not really about Enterprise: It's really about Commander Riker. Which is just hilarious. Imagine being an actual Enterprise fan (God help you, btw) and the final adventure of characters that you're devastated about not seeing anymore is watching a bunch of holo-versions of them act as a backdrop for Riker to sort out his personal dilemma. It's a bit shit, like. Bermega's pitiful excuse for this they wanted to give a send off to the entire IP that they'd run into the ground, not just Enterprise. Ok, so why aren't The Original Series, Voyager and DS9 featured then?

Then they stick it into the middle of a good TNG episode, and effectively ruin it by making Riker look like a shit eating gibbon[nb]I'm well aware some people here consider that default status for Riker. Riker is a big idiot ha ha ha, we get it. But the episode and his own arc within it is still compromised badly by this shit, even if you do operate from the point that Riker's useless.[/nb] who is unable to deal with demons over the Pegasus without basically playing a video game. Oh and he's playing the video game cos the ship's fucking counsellor recommended it as a way to solve indecision. What the fuck sort of advice is that? And doesn't he outright tell Troi what Pressman has done at some point?[nb]Sure as hell not rewatching this garbage to check. I'd sooner play Duke Nukem Forever again.[/nb] And she just says "Oh I'm sure you'll make the right choice." or something like that? Ok, fine Deanna, I'm sure that'll look good on his Personal Development Plan or whatever, but you are a Starfleet Commander and he's talking about the terms of a Major Interstellar Treaty being shit on by a rogue Admiral. Shouldn't you be telling him he needs to go the fuck to Picard and tell him this fucking minute, or you will for him? At least prod him in the right direction a bit.

Then they kill Tucker. Oh wait no, if only it were that simple. First they tell you they're going to kill Tucker. What is the point of that? So you spend whatever number of minutes between Troi commenting that poor old Charles Tucker III couldn't have known he was about to die, and it actually happening biting your fingernails going: "Hmm,hmahmah... oh noes what's going to happen to Trip? The suspense!!! I can't watch!!!"? Doesn't fuckin' work. And then when he does martyr himself, which falls under "Shit that no one asked for", Riker goes back to an earlier point in the program to talk to Tucker and the words he says have a really profound effect on Riker cos he just watched a holographic version of someone he never met die. How many of your actual colleagues have died over your career Will? Seeing what's effectively a video game character to you snuff it should be inconsequential.

We do get this nice little scene where holo Archer finally admits to being an irresponsible jackass. That's how you know the program is made up bullshit. Real Archer would probably find a way to make it the Vulcans' fault. And of course holo T'Pol says all his risks were all justified, even though real T'Pol probably thought he was a total cunt.

And then at the end Riker resolves to talk to Picard. But he didn't do that in the TNG episode until they'd retrieved the illegal cloaking device. Must've been immediately called to the bridge to go into the asteroid (surely he had an idea of when that was going to happen) without so much as 30 seconds aside to talk to Picard.

Garbage.

[Lemming]

Personally I like to think that all of Enterprise was Riker on the holodeck, not just this episode. We've been watching it through Riker's eyes all along. When the action direction kicks in and the camera starts flying around the bridge? That's Riker disabling the gravity so he can swoop around the place to make things more exciting. When the camera goes into extreme closeup on characters during emotional scenes? Riker pressing his face right into holo-Archer's. Exterior shots during space battles? Riker physically launching himself out into holo-space to get a better look at things.

Then they kill Tucker. Oh wait no, if only it were that simple. First they tell you they're going to kill Tucker. What is the point of that? So you spend whatever number of minutes between Troi commenting that poor old Charles Tucker III couldn't have known he was about to die, and it actually happening biting your fingernails going: "Hmm,hmahmah... oh noes what's going to happen to Trip? The suspense!!! I can't watch!!!"? Doesn't fuckin' work. And then when he does martyr himself, which falls under "Shit that no one asked for", Riker goes back to an earlier point in the program to talk to Tucker and the words he says have a really profound effect on Riker cos he just watched a holographic version of someone he never met die. How many of your actual colleagues have died over your career Will? Seeing what's effectively a video game character to you snuff it should be inconsequential.

This confused me too. I genuinely cannot get inside Bermaga's heads on this one. Trip dies for no reason in the last episode, but Troi tells you in advance so you already know the outcome of the big medical drama scene where Phlox tries to stabilise him. Baffling writing.

The manner of his death made me lose it too. After all the Xindi arc allegories for flying into the Middle East to prevent terrorism, neoliberal Trip dies by performing a suicide bombing. Against three guys we've just met, who present far less of a threat than virtually every other foe we've encountered on our voyages. And there's no crew, no security, no marines, nothing. Just Trip blowing up an entire room to obliterate himself and take three people out with him.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Spock was able to deal with McCoy's ribbing and had a plentiful supply of sarcastic retorts in his arsenal, even on the occasions when McCoy descended to straight up racism: "You green blooded pointy eared etc." which is why it worked. They were equal partners in the shit flinging. Archer & Trip v. T'Pol is usually unequal and often looked to me like someone being bullied, honestly.

If you go back and watch TOS again, McCoy would get angry with Spock when Spock was making the cold, logical decisions about who to save and who to sacrifice in order to save the most people. On one hand you have this old-fashioned country doctor who wears his heart on his sleeve and on the other a Vulcan who is not only coldly logical but has worked very hard to purge himself of pesky human emotions. That's when the speciesism comes out of McCoy's mouth. Kirk acts as a bridge between the two of them but they do come to respect each other and even think of each other fondly (McCoy is the person Spock chooses to send his mind or whatever into at the end of Wrath of Khan). I love the episode where Kirk gets trapped in subspace and Spock and McCoy listen to his secret log entry telling them to work together. Then once he's rescued they lie about listening to it.

Plus, as you say, Spock is well able to give it back. He's served among humans for however many years and he knows their ways. Check out the bit in Charlie X where Spock's idling on his harp and Uhura starts singing a song that's gently making fun of him. He turns to her and plays along and encourages her to continue. He gets it. He takes it as it's intended.

T'Pol never shows (at least in season one because that's all I could put up with) any sign of getting it. And she's facing two hostile assbaskets, one of whom seemingly hates her just for being a Vulcan. I said it earlier but Archer at least has a reason for hostility, given that the Vulcans held back his father's warp 5 engine design. Trip is just a racist. How wonderful that they start fucking later.

Archer-Trip-T'Pol read to me like the writers wanted to recreate Kirk-McCoy-Spock but had only the shallowest understanding of what made that trio work and just pasted in "captain", "Vulcan", "guy from the South" and added a bucketful of Vulcan-hate.

[Mobbd]

Very, very well said Poirot.

Fuck me, what a lot of drivel that finale was. One last gasp of half-arsed claptrap to flop the production (nay, the whole franchise!) over the finishing line and not be sued by whoever had the kindness to commission more Star Trek in spite of their doubts. Urgh.

I was really hoping to rehabilitate Enterprise into what I consider to be proper Star Trek. I mean, it's canon for sure, but it's shit canon.

Star Trek: Shitcanon.

I remember when Enterprise was first announced as the new series. All of the fans around me were devastated. They did not want a prequel. They wanted to get back to the Alpha Quadrant to see what happened "next" (post-DS9). Some of you might remember that the name "Star Trek" was removed from the first season, which got the fans' goat somewhat too. Despite all this, I remember saying that we should wait and see, holding out for it, trusting the producers to deliver something interesting with Enterprise. But now I just cannot understand this prequel mania for the life of me (was it really Phantom Menace that started this? If so, what a benchmark!) and it's still going after almost 20 years.

All this second-guessing about coolness by the way. Fucking Poochieism.

[JamesTC]

If they were that dead set on linking it into TNG, they should have set it on the Enterprise E and made it about Riker struggling with the decision to leave the Enterprise and captain the Titan. Riker can then get advice from a crew who are on their own final journey on the Enterprise.

I have a soft spot for These are the Voyages though. I know it isn't great and they kill off my favourite character and kill off any character development over the six years inbetween Terra Prime and These are the Voyages but I never really see it as an Enterprise episode. When it originally aired in the UK, I was big into TNG and wanted to watch any episode I hadn't seen. Sky advertised it as a kind of TNG episode which was what made me watch it. Divorced from Enterprise it is passable.

I believe the books retcon it to Trip and Archer being involved in a plan for him to fake his own death as he was working for the precursor to Section 31. The books are mostly well thought of so maybe it isn't as bad as it sounds.

But I won't hear a word said against the true Enterprise finale, Demons/Terra Prime. As I see Star Trek walk down a morally dubious path and I see society legitimizing xenophobes, it is a two parter I get more and more emotional about. The final scene is my favourite in all of Star Trek. It is completely lacking in subtlety but I don't give a toss. It harkens back to the morality of TOS where the moral heart was worn on the sleeve.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Here's some Spock and McCoy interaction for contrast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrVqmYzGTuM

[Lemming]

Speaking of TOS, not sure if this has been brought up before, but does anyone else think it's kind of odd for the Federation to be formed in the 2100s? As a kid watching TOS, I'd always had the impression that the Federation was relatively new, possibly formed as late as the 2240s or 2250s, hence the segregated ships, the awkwardness of having Spock aboard what's usually referred to as a "human ship", the frontier attitude where space is a huge unexplored zone, the frantic anxiety of any interactions with the Romulans and Klingons (although I do remember that Balance of Terror establishes that humans and Romulans first met about a century prior, which Enterprise later expanded on), the general sense that Kirk doesn't really know what he's doing and is just winging everything, the feeling of risk and high fatality rate which isn't present in the Picard era, etc.

Not sure if Enterprise was the one to establish the Federation's founding date, or if TNG/DS9/VOY got there first[nb]or maybe even TOS itself gave an earlier date, not sure[/nb], but watching TOS with the knowledge that the Federation is a century old doesn't quite fit for me. Then again, a lot of things in TOS don't line up well with the Berman shows.

But I won't hear a word said against the true Enterprise finale, Demons/Terra Prime. As I see Star Trek walk down a morally dubious path and I see society legitimizing xenophobes, it is a two parter I get more and more emotional about. The final scene is my favourite in all of Star Trek. It is completely lacking in subtlety but I don't give a toss. It harkens back to the morality of TOS where the moral heart was worn on the sleeve.

There was a very brief but very interesting scene where one of the terrorists talks to Trip about why he's pissed off at Vulcans. He says that the Vulcans held back the warp program and withheld technology that could have helped humanity (true), that the Vulcans failed to offer any significant aid at all in the wake of the Xindi attack (true), and that the Vulcans could have stopped World War 3 and saved millions of lives but actively chose not to (possibly true). There are counterarguments to all his points, but it did strike me as being the most engaging part of the episode because it's impossible to deny that his views are based in reality and that he's reacting in a way that might represent wider opinion on Earth, even if his conclusions are morally outrageous.

The scene is over in a second and quickly turns into a fist fight, and the guy has no credibility right off the bat given that he's a member of a faction of genocidal crazies who are about to fire a DOOM-LASER at Earth to force an ethnic cleansing to take place. But it made me wonder about the possibilities for a more complicated look at Vulcan-Human interactions in the pre-Federation world, and the role someone like Archer - who's had plenty of his own problems with the High Command's attitude towards Earth - might play in acting as a bridge between humans and Vulcans in order to find a way for both groups to move forward together.

[mothman]

You may be partly answering your own question there. There's obviously a lot of bad feeling which you demonstrate has some justification. That disconnect, between the founding of the Federation in the mid-22nd and the attitudes that are still around in the mid-23rd, bother me too, but it'd be easy to see how tensions persist yet another century further on down the line.

[JamesTC]

There was an all Vulcan Starfleet ship in DS9 Season 7.

[Wonderful Butternut]

TNG established the Federation founding date according to Memory Alpha. They just didn't overthink the background setting of TOS. Especially in the first season. I suppose you could handwave that the Constitution class was some sort of massive one off project producing 10 or 12 ships that were massively ahead of the rest of the fleet in terms of speed and how long they can support a crew without making a pitstop[nb]DSC would seem to support this. They mention at the start of season 2 that recalling all the Connies from their 5 year missions was Starfleet's last trump card against the Klingons (but being DSC, it has to engage in batshit logic that Starfleet still hadn't done that even with the Klingons on Earth's doorstep). Also when it's not using it's magical spore drive, I don't think Discovery ever exceeds warp 5, whilst the Enterprise's normal maximum is Warp 8.[/nb], meaning they can travel 100s of light years from the Federation's 'core' when other ships can't. Hence why they seem to be out on their own so much, and only encounter other Constitution class starships.[nb]In-universe explanation obviously. Obviously all other Fed ships are Connies cos they only had one model.[/nb]

The apparent segregation of crews is harder to explain in-universe though.

TNG arguably is still improbably human centric. Picard mentions representatives of something like 13 planets being aboard in one episode[nb]And if he's including Guinan in this count, then with Worf, 2 of those 13 aren't even Federation worlds[/nb], but there are 150 member worlds in the Federation according to First Contact. Does that mean 150 species, or does it include colonies? All colonies? Just some?