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March 28, 2024, 03:20:45 PM

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Scott Bakula Star Trek Enterprise

Started by Virgo76, March 22, 2021, 06:56:28 PM

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Mobbd

Quote from: Mobbd on March 26, 2021, 05:39:54 PM
Anybody want to do a review thread for it, like Lemming's one for Red Dwarf? ;)

Or maybe James' one for late The Simpsons is a better comparison! The sci-fi was a red herring.

Lemming

I'd love to be part of a review/watchalong thread if people are interested!

I'll continue watching the series since it's done nothing to alienate me so far. At this very early stage in the show, I'm not entirely sure why it has such a negative legacy surrounding it, so it'll be very interesting/amusing to see if it all goes to shit later on in the run. Should be a laugh.

Then again, Voyager might just be favourite Star Trek series, and the amount of shit people give it seems absolutely insane to me, so at this rate I'm probably on track to become the world's foremost (and only!) Enterprise fan. Scott Bakula poster on the wall, the fantastic theme song playing at max volume 24/7, T'Pol action figure, the works.

JamesTC

Quote from: Lemming on March 26, 2021, 06:33:32 PM

Then again, Voyager might just be favourite Star Trek series, and the amount of shit people give it seems absolutely insane to me, so at this rate I'm probably on track to become the world's foremost (and only!) Enterprise fan.

Enterprise is my favourite Star Trek.

Lemming

When I inevitably join you, we'll form a cover band that exclusively performs the theme song.

JamesTC

I hope you've gone onto YouTube and listened to the full length version.

And much as people want to make fun of that opening theme, consider that their first choice was Beautiful Day. Fucking dodged a bullet there.

Malcy

Quote from: Lemming on March 26, 2021, 06:33:32 PM
I'd love to be part of a review/watchalong thread if people are interested!

I'll continue watching the series since it's done nothing to alienate me so far. At this very early stage in the show, I'm not entirely sure why it has such a negative legacy surrounding it, so it'll be very interesting/amusing to see if it all goes to shit later on in the run. Should be a laugh.

Then again, Voyager might just be favourite Star Trek series, and the amount of shit people give it seems absolutely insane to me, so at this rate I'm probably on track to become the world's foremost (and only!) Enterprise fan. Scott Bakula poster on the wall, the fantastic theme song playing at max volume 24/7, T'Pol action figure, the works.

Go back and watch the opener if you want to continue with it. Not that it holds anything vital for understanding anything to come but the completionist in me is bothered!

It's a great series. Not exactly bringing much new to the franchise but it has some great ideas, S3 is great, and it makes sense that the characters are the way they are at times. It's early days. Not the everyone is friends of latter shows. It's great to see the crew be so optimistic to then being like "fucking hell, some amount of arseholes out here"!

And such a shame it was cancelled. They had great plans for the future which were partly explored in book format. In fact when you look at the unmade episodes in Memory Alpha/Beta you see a lot of stuff that went unmade across the whole franchise whose one or 2 sentence description shots on everything DSC/Picard have gave us.

mothman

I read the continuation novels that cover the Romulan War and, well, they're not great. They never really convincingly cover the reason nobody ever sees a dead Romulan and this things, gosh, don't they look sort of... Vulcan? And there's a lot of tedious internal proto-Federation politics.

Of course there's part of it fudged:
Spoiler alert
Turns out Section 31 knew full well the truth about Vulcans and Romulans. And they also - this is following-on from books preceding the RW ones - S31 kidnap Trip Tucker for some reason and surgically turn him into a Romulan and he spends the whole war undercover. His death in "These Are The Voyages" was all a cover, and he ultimately comes home having helped to stop the war and lives happily ever after on Vulcan with T'Pol.
[close]

JamesTC

Quote from: mothman on March 26, 2021, 07:44:46 PM

Spoiler alert
and he ultimately comes home having helped to stop the war and lives happily ever after on Vulcan with T'Pol.
[close]

I approve of this.

mothman

That's the best bit and the least they could do for us after having us slog through literal chapters of Vulcans deliberating over whether any war is logical, or press ethics on reporting Federation defeats.

Malcy

Quote from: JamesTC on March 26, 2021, 07:55:15 PM
I approve of this.

Yeah that made them worth it because that should have been how it went originally.

Wonderful Butternut

Quote from: Malcy on March 26, 2021, 09:40:08 PM
Yeah that made them worth it because that should have been how it went originally.

Instead of
Spoiler alert
cringe attempt at giving him a heroic death that no one asked for.
[close]

Mobbd

Quote from: JamesTC on March 26, 2021, 06:49:17 PM
I hope you've gone onto YouTube and listened to the full length version.

And much as people want to make fun of that opening theme, consider that their first choice was Beautiful Day. Fucking dodged a bullet there.

Random memory. The first I heard about that theme tune was on a Lily Savage TV series. She had a cutaway section of the show where Lily would go and chat to some other old woman about topical subjects in a chatting-over-the-fence sort of way. Essentially a sideways look at the news section incorporated into the world of Lily Savage. She mentioned the news that Russell Watson was to sing the theme tune of the new Star Trek series. I remember sitting up and saying "what?"

I didn't like the idea that it would have lyrics. I didn't even know at that point that it was recycled from Patch Adams! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_of_the_Heart

Mobbd

Quote from: Malcy on March 26, 2021, 07:06:43 PM
Go back and watch the opener if you want to continue with it. Not that it holds anything vital for understanding anything to come but the completionist in me is bothered!

Yeah-diggity. If this is too much for one human to handle, maybe we could alternate who does the reviews? I am not chomping at the bit to do this or anything, but I like the plan enough to help out if needed.

Mobbd

Quote from: Mobbd on March 27, 2021, 10:30:34 AM
a Lily Savage TV series.

Aside. I just looked it up and it must have been Lily Live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Live!

Weird digression from a Star Trek thread, I know.

Blumf

Quote from: Mobbd on March 27, 2021, 10:30:34 AM
I didn't like the idea that it would have lyrics.

TOS's theme tune technically had lyrics, mainly in a dick move by Roddenberry to grab royalties of the composer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_from_Star_Trek#Lyrics

Considering he created such a nice utopian vision of the future, old Gene sure could be a right cunt.

greenman

Quote from: JamesTC on March 26, 2021, 05:15:26 PM
All the multi parters are really great that season.

Augment Arc (Borderland, Cold Station 12, The Augments)
Vulcan Reformation Arc (The Forge, Awakening, Kir'Shara)
Romulan War/Federation Prequel Arc (Babel One, United, The Aenar)
Klingon Virus Arc (Afflication, Divergence)
In A Mirror, Darkly Part 1 and 2
Xenophobic Humans Arc (Demons, Terra Prime)

Even the opening two parter is fun as a way to end the temporal cold war stuff in a light way. Just generic Nazi aliens stuff. I like the single episode that follows which is kind of Enterprise's attempt at the TNG episode Family. The three singular episodes scattered throughout don't quite hit the mark but they do act as a breakwater for all the big storylines.

Part of it is likely just better running of the show but also I do think that format suited such a series. Basically allowed them to reference parts of Trek lore but gave them enough time to actually add a bit of substance to it.

Mr Trumpet

I think the Klingon virus storyline turned out to be one of the worst creative decisions in the history of Star Trek, as it created an expectation among fans that any future show should account for all redesigns, visual updates etc rather than just accepting it's a TV franchise that's passed through many hands over several decades. Responses to the newer crop of shows are blighted with this sort of meaningless nitpicking.

mothman

I'm not sure I agree. For one thing there have been plenty of things that went unexplained. The clamour over, say, the Discovery uniforms or the Enterprise were more over how crap they were, there's not been any demand for episodes explaining them. Sure there are a list of plot lines people wish could be resolved ("What happened to Ensign Sito? Or Tom Riker?" that sort of thing). And despite the Klingon Forehead Two-Parter (good John Peel name there), the existence of humanalike Klingons was totally ignored by DSC.

Lemming

Just seen Terra Nova. Again, all you can really say about it is that it's fine - not good or bad, just fine - and it feels like Star Trek, albeit very standard, factory-produced Star Trek. The crew finds an abandoned Earth colony, and then descends into a cave network where they find a group of blue-skinned people with scales. After a few teething troubles in which Archer's party gets shot at, they establish contact with the people and learn that they believe that humans attacked their colony decades ago. A little investigation reveals the truth - these are the human colonists, mutated by radiation. One of the elders of the community proves reasonable enough to hear Archer out, and manages to remember her childhood as a human, pre-mutation. Archer's eager to tell the mutants the truth and offer them the chance to leave, T'Pol objects by accusing him of cultural imperialism because the mutants are happy in the caves, and therefore... shouldn't even be offered the chance to leave, I guess. In the end Archer wins over one of the leaders through various acts of humanitarianism, and the people agree to be relocated away from danger (forgot to mention, their water supply was killing them) and presumably reestablish contact with Earth.

There was nothing to really get stuck into - the situation really was straightforward and T'Pol's token objection felt like it was only even in the script because there had to be a bit of conflict and because T'Pol's duty is to challenge Archer, but it didn't make sense and instantly slipped towards the dodgy arrogance that occasionally popped up in Berman-era Trek (of the "we must withhold factual information from these people because they're just too stupid to handle it" variety - see TNG's Homeward for the worst ever example).

In 2001 I suppose it would have felt pointless and completely superfluous - Voyager had only just finished airing, and generally did better stories than this, and there'd been over a decade of continuous Star Trek on TV up to this point. Nowadays, I'm happy to watch this, even if it's basically on the quality level of the average mid-season filler episode of TNG/VOY.

Quote from: Malcy on March 26, 2021, 07:06:43 PM
Go back and watch the opener if you want to continue with it. Not that it holds anything vital for understanding anything to come but the completionist in me is bothered!

Definitely will at some point! I'm a completionist too and leaving a two-episode gap there would wind me up.

JamesTC

Quote from: Lemming on March 27, 2021, 02:34:27 PM


Definitely will at some point! I'm a completionist too and leaving a two-episode gap there would wind me up.

There is a very loose ongoing Temporal Cold War arc throughout the first three seasons (resolved completely in the opening of the fourth season). It would be wise to watch Broken Bow before you get to the episode Cold Front.

Pranet

Enterprise is currently showing on two freeview channels, which seems like one too many (Pick and the Horror Channel).

They are also showing it in the same time slot, 6pm weekdays. I wish they both were showing the same episode but is seems not.

Lemming

The Andorian Incident was great, albeit very predictable. The ship finds an ancient Vulcan monastery and, despite T'Pol cautioning against it, Archer wants to go down and look around. Inside, they find that the place has been taken over by Andorian soldiers who accuse the Vulcans of operating a listening post from inside the monastery. After getting the shit kicked out of him, Archer and his pals are taken captive, then he gets the shit kicked out of him again, and then again, before eventually the world's shittiest rescue party beams down. Cue a running firefight into the catacombs, whereupon everyone discovers that there is indeed a listening post down here. Despite them spending the better part of a day torturing and beating him, Archer takes the Andorians' side against the Vulcans, as the Vulcans have broken their treaty. The Andorians thank him and piss off to report back to their government. Another improbably upbeat and peaceful ending, which I'm absolutely loving. Perfect antidote to modern Star Trek, and a lot of modern TV in general.

Funniest part has to be that the rescue party decided to blow open an ancient Vulcan monastery wall, and doing so put them at a disadvantage. I can't even figure it out. They were undetected, had stun phasers locked on the Andorians, could fire at any time... and instead blew the wall up, ran in, missed every shot, got shot at, and the Andorians escaped. Incredible.

I'm liking the Trip-T'Pol-Archer teamup so far. Everyone else is quite flat and boring, but there's a good dynamic developing among those three.

Also enjoying the show's reluctance to kill people, both antagonists and crew members. There's been a couple of characters who would have 100% died if this had been TOS - the guy who goes apeshit in Strange New World and the nameless security guy who gets shot in this, but they both survived. I suppose it can get a bit too safe when everyone manages to keep surviving ridiculously dangerous situations, but I never liked the casual way crew deaths were treated in TOS, so I'm glad Enterprise has so far refused to kill off people as a cheap way to ratchet up the tension.

Quote from: JamesTC on March 27, 2021, 02:55:10 PM
There is a very loose ongoing Temporal Cold War arc throughout the first three seasons (resolved completely in the opening of the fourth season). It would be wise to watch Broken Bow before you get to the episode Cold Front.

Noted, I'll probably go back and check it out next.

Virgo76

Quote from: Pranet on March 27, 2021, 05:00:23 PM
Enterprise is currently showing on two freeview channels, which seems like one too many (Pick and the Horror Channel).

They are also showing it in the same time slot, 6pm weekdays. I wish they both were showing the same episode but is seems not.

It's also all on Netflix.

Lemming

Watched a couple more:

Breaking the Ice - nice relatively low-stakes affair, with some good Trip and T'Pol stuff. Archer is an idiot. Like every Star Trek captain, he's already being very inconsistently written, but it's especially jarring as Bakula's performance changes to accomodate the scripts, unlike Shatner, Stewart, Brooks and Mulgrew who all seemed to play their characters consistently even while the actual scripts were making them say and do wildly inconsistent things. Not sure if that means Bakula is a better actor than the others or a worse one, but either way it's really hard to get a handle on Archer at this point in the series.

Civilization - very mundane and predictable episode, total throwaway script. Nothing wrong with it as such, though. What's cool is the Prime Directive situation - a return to TOS-style stuff, where you can actually go down to planets and talk to people, unlike in TNG where you have to just sit in the briefing room watching their planet burn while saying "well, nothing we can do, natural order of things and so on and so forth".

Lemming

Been steadily watching this but not posting anything since I don't have a great deal to say about any of it (and I'm much more invested in the ongoing CaB Voyager rewatch), but I just got to Dear Doctor and wow, christ. Hated that. Reminiscent of the most objectionable moments of TNG.

JamesTC

The studio made them change the ending. Originally Phlox discovered the cure but kept it a secret as he didn't want to change the evolutionary path of the planet and didn't feel that Archer would agree with him.

Lemming

Interesting. That's what I thought was going to happen while I was watching, since the episode was going to such great lengths to suggest that Phlox has a very different ideology and worldview to Starfleet/"human" ideology. I was bracing for a potentially problematic but equally potentially interesting moral of "be careful letting aliens onto your crew, they'll fuck you over", but I really didn't expect the borderline pro-eugenics moral that the episode ended up landing on.

Lemming

Still slowly making my way through this. For the most part, much more enjoyable than its reputation suggests, but every now and then there's an episode that's just shocking. I've just watched "Cogenitor" and my blood pressure won't be going down for about three days at the least. Along with "Dear Doctor" and a few others, this episode makes me think that Berman and Braga just see the world in a rather different way than I do.

JamesTC

I can at least appreciate that they were trying to do something noble with Cogenitor even if they ended up missing the mark.

Lemming

Archer's speech at the end is what really wound me up - he blames the death of the cogenitor on Trip, even though the suicide was brought about by Archer's own decision to return the cogenitor to quasi-slavery. Felt like Archer was trying to dump the consequences of his own decision onto Trip, who didn't even do anything out of line at first, given that he was granted permission to speak to the cogenitor.

The aliens in this episode were warp-capable and of a higher tech level than Enterprise itself, so Archer's Picard-esque "talking to people is unacceptable, how dare you disagree with these people we just met" stuff seems even more bizarre, to an area that even TNG didn't often go to.

I liked the idea of Trip's good intentions backfiring somehow, and of the situation being far more complicated and messy than just a case of introducing aliens to liberal egalitarianism and everything fixing itself then and there. But as the episode sets it up, Archer's rant at the end - which I'm guessing we're meant to agree with - doesn't come across as an accurate response to what actually happened.