I'm about seven episodes into season 3 of ENT and to be honest, I find this Xindi story to be pretty bland. Perhaps, it's just because the last few episodes have been really bad.
I'm intrigued by: The relatibility relative to other Treks. These guys are alone with limited resources and if they fail, Earth dies. In "Anomaly", the jeopardy feels real because they can't afford to lose that stuff. The hard Sci-Fi of bartering spices for advanced tech. Paying attention to details: "Hey a weapon! Hey a prisoner!" ("Rajiin") And then we see both. Same episode: "GD don't you guys have grenades??!...oh you do. Cool." I'm less than enthused by: For every hard decision made (torturing the guy in "Anomaly") three more go by the wayside. You have a devestating biogenic weapon in the Extinction Virus, but give that no lip service? You have a prisoner with information that you CANNOT let escape ("Rajiin") and you don't for a second consider killing her? And of course there's the forced contrivance of sending a whopping three people to guard an airlock that you HAVE TO HOLD. ("Rajiin") Yeah that goes about as well as it did in Star Wars. It's just frustrating because little things like that can easily be fixed with this that or the other. But overall (4 eps into season 3) I'm impressed by the investment they've created in me.
Dude this is Trek! TREK!! Not NuBSG. We can all list the 3 or 4 actual "hard" decisions made in 700 plus episodes. This was never going to happen.
Well at least give it some lip service. If you're going to do a post/911 analogy-thing then go all the way. Have Stephen Culp be the "Garek" (I mean in terms of being the guy who says we can't play by the rules when the entire population of Earth is in jeoperdy) Heh. I like your analogy though. I also would have accepted "This isn't '24'!!"
Now I would have loved more use of Hayes and that is just the kind of conflict they could have put him in. They would have had to loosen him a bit though, to get him yelling at the captain. They made him too wooden soldier, I guess as a contrast to Starfleet.
Hayes was made into too much of a by the book guy, even going so far as blindly following the chain of command no matter what - someone should've reminded him that that defense failed at Nuremberg. Culp has said that originally he was offered 10 episodes and then it got whittled down -the final # is 5. Per Memory Alpha - "The Xindi" - intro stuff, mainly, an inkling of the conflict with Reed. "The Shipment" - he mainly just guards Graylick and doesn't have a lot to do. "Harbinger" - fight with Reed. "Hatchery" - just following orders. "Countdown" - won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it. But he didn't get a helluva lot to do, which is unfortunate, as a character in open conflict with another senior character would have been far better drama if it had been sustained longer. Instead, the arc is incredibly short. Hayes could have been seen more, and you can see instances where Culp was probably supposed to be there, but maybe TPTB wanted Keating to have more lines/air time, so it was Reed leading MACOs into battle, which kinda doesn't make much sense. Was Hayes on vacation? Injured? In the Brig? A throwaway line, here or there, offering a smidgen of exposition, would've been nice. I would've liked to have seen him in Impulse, instead of Hawkins, for example.
Those idiots, didn't they know how hot Stephen Culp is?! How fantastic would it be to get Culp in a new Trek series. I nominate him for first gay captain.
For me the first episode that really resonated with me was Similitude in season 3. That was the first Enterprise episode I ever saw that deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as other Treks. It is a shame the show got cancelled right after it finally found some creative footing, it broke out of the stale Berman/Braga mold and became a real Trek prequel. Seasons 1 and 2 was more, they took the worst aspects of Voyager and combined them with the worst aspects of TNG. without any particularly likable characters or strong performances, or any of the best writers. T'Pol taught villagers to defend themselves from Klingons by ducking to the left, ducking to the right, and then rolling for chrissake. And the Klingons didn't catch on that they were using the same move every time! Yes, season 4 rules. Probably the best Trek season that is neither TNG nor DS9.
S3 and S4 of Enterprise are better than any Voyager season and showed the franchise finally getting back on track. Before the sickeningly bad final episode of course.
These two "another chance" threads, every time I look at this forum I have "all we are saying.. is give ENT a chance" in my head.
Haha. Yeah, I didn't realize there was another thread with almost exactly the same title. I'm enjoying ENT, but after this watch through I don't see myself going back and watching many episodes. Maybe I'll feel different after I finish.
I don't hate ENT and I liked S4. And yet... It got to be too much fanwank for me. As if they knew this was gonna be the last ST for a while, their last chance, so let's throw in everything including the kitchen sink. Mirror Universe, Gorn, T'Pau, Tholians, Andorians, Tellarites, TOS Defiant, Sehlats, Eugenics War Augments, goateed Vulcans, Pike-like facial injuries, TOS Klingons, Surak... it goes on and on. Too much, too late, too fast. I love this stuff as much as the next fan. But too often it seemed like tossing it all in at the end rather than including certain things for a purpose. Bring back the Gorn? Sure, I've been waiting for decades. As done in ENT? Gratuitous last minute no-purpose fanwank. Sounds like I'm bitching, but I do like ENT and the TOS stuff.
Personally I am not a big fan of season 4 for the same reasons mentioned above. It felt too contrived to me.
Hey hey hey of course we saw sehlats, they are like squirrels on Vulcan! That's why Vulcans are so uptight. Repressing their terror.
Just saw "Impulse" (Christ these titles suck)...I quite enjoy 'video-game episodes'. I also like how the series makes crew deaths few and far between. That way, when it does happen, it has more impact.
Very true. I want to say that Scott Bakula had something to do with that stemming all the way back to "Strange New World." Crewman Ethan Novakovich was apparantly written to die but Bakula pushed to have him recover in sickbay saying something to the effect of it being too early to start the red shirt phenomena.