I am usually iffy about time travel episodes too. They are usually implausible and don't add to the show overall. However, I did enjoy the times when Daniels would suddenly transport Archer to the future. They usually weren't the focus of the episode, just part of it. And, at least in ENT, time travel has consequences, whereas in Who the timeline basically stays fixed no matter what anyone does (temporal determinism). So you didn't like the DS9 mirror episodes?
I did enjoy them after I watched the entire series. When I'm trying to make it through a series though, I feel like they get in the way of the plot. I want to know what is going on with all my favorite characters in their original time/universe. Once that's out of the way, I feel like I can enjoy them more. I still do find a lot of the mirror universe characters extremely frustrating - probably just because I grow to love the main characters so much and seeing their opposites is rather disconcerting. I suppose I love Doctor Who time travel more because it's so "neat." I realize there are a lot of plot holes at times but everything gets fixed and the Doctor knows what's okay and what isn't. Star Trek time travel, for me, is like Doctor Who but without the Doctor. The margin for error is so high! Some might find it thrilling but I find it a bit anxiety-provoking haha.
The mirror universe episodes arguably only work when you already know the characters, because a lot of the fun is seeing how differently people turn out. I imagine the actors find it interesting.
I would have loved to have seen the full Romulan War. Real different technology hat led to the development of the Federation's standard. An explanation of how the Federation got a hole of the Klingon's photon torpedoes. New material that expands and adds to the Star Trek universe that doesn't change anything. I don't understand why writers have to change everything all the time. More good looking lady contestants in a wet tee shirt contest without the wet tee shirts.
Lost me at greys and pliedians. Seriously, no. Not in Star Trek. We have enough odd alien species without going there. Also no need of a Human Origins Arc. Seriously, there is no point to that in a Star Trek based series by the time of Enterprise. it is something that does not need to be explored that hasn't been done. As for things that did happen in show, like the Ferengi and Borg. The Borg is basically a story that cleans up Picard's mess left behind from First Contact. Regardless of if Archer reported that or not, things get lost over time. The Ferengi could be listed as some odd group of pirates, and the old Ferengi Alliance decided to not go to that region again (lack of profit plus too far away.), but kept the ideas from the mission to make the classic Vulcan Love Slave series of novels.
There are some nice, intriguing ideas here about rebooting Enterprise. The benefit of hindsight. So, combining bits of all these ideas together, we could have UESPA as the organizational authority of the Enterprise. A civilian government organization similar to NASA today. NASA is not military, it's a government agency. It just uses military personnel as astronauts. Likewise, there could be a separate Star Fleet, Earth Fleet, Space Fleet, Stellar Navy or whatever be a separate military arm and UESPA be the exploration arm of the United Earth. Some military officers can be assigned to UESPA the same way military people serve in NASA. UESPA and the military both have armed starships. UESPA ships just aren't as armed as the military. Or they are equal and there just aren't that many UESPA ships. Archer could be retired military who is pursuing the second half of his career as a civilian captain in UESPA. He brings his military experience with him. Reed is straight up military on loan or whatever to UESPA. Hoshi and Tripp are civilian scientists/engineers. Mayweather is still a Boomer who grew up and joined or is loaned to UESPA. T'Pol is still an exchange officer from the Vulcan Science Academy. This finally realizes a nice compromise in harmony with the whole "is Starfleet military or not?" UESPA and the military were separate. UESPA was charged with exploration while the military was solely for Earth defense. With the founding of the Federation these organizations will slowly, over the next 100 or so years, become a "combined service." This combining and unifying is still going on in Kirk's TOS era, since we here references to UESPA from time to time. The complete integration of all various entities into Starfleet is completed by the Kirk Movie era. I hated the idea of a prequel series from the get go. I knew they wouldn't be able to avoid contradicting canon. I viewed the introduction of major aliens as also a violation of canon, since we never saw such important species in any later Trek. I don't necessarily have a problem with the Denobulans, since each series introduced 1 off cultures that really didn't cross over with the other series. However, the Xindi were just too much for me. It's one thing to introduce a species and their homeworld, and another to introduce an entire civilization with multiple star systems. They couldn't resist going to the same, tired tropes and storylines that were stereotypes for Trek. We had a holodeck episode, phase(r) pistolsm PHOTONic torpedoes, transporters, Borg, Ferengi, Klingons that included the evil Duras family, etc... Ugh. Broken Bow could have worked just as well with another alien species instead of the Klingons. Naussicans? Andorians? Tellerite? It would even have been more conceivable to travel from Earth to one of these other homeworlds in such a short time period. The Xindi could have been Klingons. That would work a little better with the "disastrous first contact" line. However, that idea couldn't work since the Klingons were introduced in "Broken Bow." Romulans would have worked, but that doesn't fit quite as well with the established history of the Romulan-Earth conflict. Still, it would have been a little easier to accept. Actually, the whole Xindi arc was just a knee jerk reaction inspired by 9/11. There really wasn't any need to do that. From what I remember at the time, the whole alien Nazi space vampires that reminded people of the Remans were a big "writing you into a corner" by Berman and Braga at the end of Zero Hour. There was a big shake up at the end of that season and a different writing staff picked up starting in Part 1 of Storm Front. B&B resented being replaced and so intentionally delivered a mess for the new writers to clean up. At least, this was the impression I had at the time.
I seem to notice several patterns that appear over and over again, and I've noticed several recurring patterns (I actually wrote most of this prior to Shawnster, except I kept getting logged out; then I created a text-document which I accidentally deleted). I: Temporal Cold War & Temporal Anomalies It was a bad idea, and was evidently based on some stuff from Voyager. In my personal opinion, it just threw a monkey-wrench into the timeline and probably made damned near everything afterwords unworkable. Another thing that's troublesome about time-travel is the issue of temporal paradoxes: Pretty much any explanation of how they wouldn't affect the time-warpers is either something the writers pulled out of their asses in an inconsistent manner, or dependent on parallel realities. While, it wasn't part of the Temporal Cold War: The Borg-sickles was a really bad idea as it effectively undid everything post 2063 The Borg go back in time and try to blow up Bozeman, Montana to prevent Zefram Cochrane from making his first manned Warp-flight, so as to prevent first contact with the Vulcans The Enterprise-E goes back in time with them and blows up the Borg cube, but Cochrane's crew are killed. The Enterprise-E's F/O and Engineer are effectively forced to impersonate the original crew, and get Cochrane to make the flight so as to "right" the timeline If the Borg were discovered in the 2150's and they assimilated a few people, and could adapt to energy based weapons: The Federation would have developed the means to counter such a threat. By 2365, the Federation would have probably been able to deal with them much better, and it's likely the Borg would have either: Been unable to make Earth in 2366-67 (which means the events of 2373 would never have occurred, thus effectively meaning that the Enterprise-E would have never had to impersonate Cochrane's crew and *RESET*); or would have become more devious and made Earth and assimilated everybody through some other method (Early time-warp, undermining the Federation; aerially dispersed assimilator-nanoprobes as proposed in Voyager: This would have kept humanity fairly grounded) I'm not, admittedly totally averse to a time-warp occurring, but it would be preferable if it was unintentional If a person went back in time to change something; when the timeline changed, provided it did: Their reason for changing it would be eliminated effectively undoing the change An unintentional warp would be unaffected by this For example an alien species do something which initiate a time-warp, and they go out of control and crash into earth somewhere between 2073 and 2124 (explaining some technological differences) without having to retcon as massively. (Note: I am surprised that nobody ever thought of the fact that if you went back in time, you'd be moving backwards as you did, and you'd crash into yourself ) Generally, I agree with Kathryn Janeway's sentiment to avoid temporal paradoxes whenever possible! II: The name of the Enteprise In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there were several vessels depicted, all named Enterprise. While it would be unreasonable for the people in Paramount to predict that in 22 years somebody would create a Star Trek series based on an Enterprise that existed 103 years before the TOS Enterprise flew. It is also unreasonable to create a story around a ship that was never before in the timeline before. Every vessel shown the Enterprise's rec-room either was canonical, or existed in real life. Real life examples would include USS Enterprise (Frigate): Originally a British ship, renamed Enterprise in 1775-1777; played a role in the Revolutionary War USS Enterprise (CV-6): The most decorated US Aircraft Carrier of WW2; served from 1938 to 1947 USS Enterprise (CVAN/CVN-65): First nuclear powered aircraft carrier; served from 1961 to 2012 in many conflicts including Vietnam, and the War on Fr.. I mean Terror USS Enterprise (OV-101): First shuttle to take to the air, was originally to be named USS Constitution, but Star Trek fans wrote a massive letter-campaign in and it was re-designated USS Enterprise. It flew the first time in 1977, and it's last in 2012. Fictional Examples include XCV-330: Flew from 2120-2143 NCC-1701 (Pre Refit): 2245-2270; one of the most famous ships in Star-Fleet. Being that this ship was not trivial, and the fact that it never appeared on the wall: It would have been best for it to have been named something else. Off the bat I can think of several good names Cochrane: Duh Phoenix: Duh Challenger: Challenger was ordered the same time as the Enterprise and actually had the hull-number 099 (less than 101). Columbia: First space-shuttle to take to space Apollo: It was the name of the program that put man on the moon. This was the first time in history, far as I know, that man has actually landed on another celestial body. Explorer: It was the first first-world (1st World: Non Communist; 2nd World: Communist; 3rd World: Non Aligned) artificial satellite. Mercury: The name of the first United States manned space program. Dauntless: NX-01 (J/K sort of) My favorites are Apollo (significance: First to ever put a human on another celestial body), Challenger, Columbia. III: Characters Jonathan Archer: I'm not really opposed to Scott Bakula. I just think that Archer's character would have been better off if he was more level-headed: He made all sorts of stupid decisions that could have seriously gotten everybody killed. At other points: He made decisions that may have been logical, but were fundamentally amoral. His rationale were basically "ends justify the means". Malcolm Reed: Frankly, somehow it seems wrong that his name is spelled Reed instead of Reid: Admittedly, I won't hold that against them; I think he'd be better off as the ship's second in command due at least partially to his age, and the fact that his sense of discipline is good at holding a ship together. T'Pol: First of all, why don't Vulcans have first/last names? Secondly, she should really be outside the chain of command as a liason officer, irrespective of her rank. The fact that they had her character soften up a bit was something I didn't like. While Spock did, he was an exception to the rule. Charles "Trip" Tucker III: I don't mind the actor, I don't mind his hokey accent. I do think it's absurd that the guy didn't go to college, and managed to learn about space-altering engines from fixing boats. It might have been mentioned in TATV, but it was mentioned. The Doctor: Replace Phlox with a Vulcan doctor. Sounds silly, but the fact is that the Vulcans are often more knowledgeable at this time in the plot than people and people have interacted with them before. Sometimes better to keep things simple. Security: A team like the Marine Detatchment's (MARDET) would be nice -- remember every single torpedo *is* a nuclear bomb and though in Star Trek every weapon is like a firecracker -- nuclear bombs are HORRIFYINGLY nasty. Somebody's gotta guard the weapons and the anti-matter (one gram of that stuff would produce a 22 kt explosion) Mayweather: I have no problem with him except there needs to be several helmsman (3 as a start) for obvious reasons. The shuttle's need to have pilots as well (4). Sato: While I understand linguists would be very, very important -- her linguistic abilities seem more like Arturis than anything human. There also need to be several linguistic crew onboard for obvious reasons. Other Notes: Speaking multiple languages is a virtue -- considering that Vulcans are our allies, it would probably be good if both Federation and Vulcan can speak each other's languages. IV: Design of the Ship Almost everybody seems to object to the fact that the vessel looks like an Akira class: This actually includes me. Honestly, my favorite design so far seems to be a design called the XCV-770 Aachen with the following modifications Four engines instead of two Redesign the Nav-Deflector to be more flat Different Shuttlebay like NX-01 The Daedalus would sort of be a bigger brother that had the advantage of being cheaper and quicker to build. V. Organizations Frankly, since Starfleet didn't form initially with the Federation (2161), it would be preferable to have some kind of set-up that reflects this. Terran Defense Force (TDF): It's basically the military of Earth, and the Marine Corps all rolled into one. Their job would entail jobs similar to the Coast Guard, and Navy in terms of protecting the border, the Marine Corps in terms of deploying armed forces to planets, as well as protecting transports and convoys (i.e. the Boomers). Earth Convoy Service (ECS): Similar to the Merchant Marines -- home of the Boomers. United Earth Space Probe Agency: Responsible for the deployment of long-ranged probes from the 2070's. Starting in the early 2100's, their missions included manned vessels (previously handled from another agency) United Space Exploratory Services (USES) All would eventually become Starfleet. These ships would have different designations because of the nature of their missions. I have no idea what you'd use for UESPA and USES vessels though they'd probably have a common system. The Uniforms used by USES would effectively be the same as in ENT except ditch the colored piping, and put some kind of qualifier badge on the left breast; and use Navy Stripes. The Vulcan uniforms should be very functional: Logic after all... VI. Technology The Warp 5 capability is not in accord with early canon, but it doesn't really bother me as the Enterprise (1701) often went faster than 512c (Warp 8). While 100c would definitely make it possible to explore space, it would be stupid to claim that only at 100c could long ranged manned exploration be do-able. It's possible that it would really start to light off at this point however. Subspace Communications are beyond what they were stated to be early on: Admittedly, I'm not sure how big a deal it is. It would be an interesting plot device if it failed on a routine basis. Universal Translator: While it would definitely streamline interaction with other species; it would still be useful if for ship-to-ship communications that they would use linguacode (similar to Future's End), as well as other things that could be useful to a sentient species so as to establish a base to work with. For planetary service interactions: It would be useful if they actually had to have a device on them and/or an ear-bud that they could hear the corrected audio. Directed Energy Weapons: The ship should use some kind of laser weapon; the hand-held weapons should be a variable frequency laser and an electron beam of sorts. In the stun setting, the idea would be to set a frequency that would ionize the air; then conduct the electron beam down it and ZAP! Torpedoes: Just call them anti-ship missiles. They could use fusion or matter/anti-matter and would be sublight only (at first). Probes: There should be a good cache of them onboard, and maybe a few would be warp capable? I'm ambivalent on the transporters; I like the sickbay, and the decontamination facility. The space-suits, I think they could be made a little more advanced actually. I'm thinking somewhere between ENT and TUC/NU The ship should have shields!
I think that the Daedalus class would have been a good choice. It looks like an early, primitive version of the Enterprise lineage.
I never really realized the similarities between the NX and Akira class until someone pointed them out to me. That said, it doesn't phase me (no pun intended). As the NX is actually a pretty sexy design. I'm not one to nit pic about such things either. If a show is otherwise good, I can deal with a dopey theme song and a little bit of derivative plagiarism/borrowing when it comes to ship/weapon design. However, if you were a Trek fan prior to ENT, and had seen TNG, DS9 and VOY, the very first thing that probably hit your mind when you watched a few episodes of ENT was "OK, this is very familiar/has been done before..." It probably didn't help that those other shows were on TV 24/7/365 at the time either. Regardless, if the writing had been better from the start, I think ENT would have fared better. Re-doing it would entail a new writing/directing staff and gearing the show for today's audience. They can never make everyone happy, but I think they could turn enough heads with a tweaking/retooling of the franchise within a TV format.
I liked how it was personally. Maybe remove the temporal cold war and the xindi though. Then again it added some flavor and danger. But I dunno if I got a chance to reboot Enterprise they would have left space dock with the weapons they should have.. not those crappy spatial torpedoes and no phase cannons for one. But the rumored Romulan Earth war season would have been amazing.
In defence of the Xindi arc, it was the closest Trek has gotten (so far) to modern TV style. I'm glad we got to see something like that, as opposed to the Dominion War, which was broken up by (progressively lamer) stand-alone episodes all the way through. I'm not quite sure what you mean about the weapons. Are you saying they should have been powered up from the beginning, or that they should never have upgraded? I did like that aspect of the episode "Silent Enemy", when they upgraded on the fly. Unlike other series, you felt these upgrades would make a serious difference to their chances of survival.
Kirkfan Female nudity is a bizarre animal: I don't get it really. If I go outside and am topless, it would be indecent exposure; but if I wore a sticky that covered just the nipple, but otherwise left the entire breast exposed (and most guys like the fundamental shape of the boob) it would be acceptable! Correct, and as for the ship's cruise speed (warp 4.64), and maximum speed (Warp 5.2?) being faster than ships of the era: The fact that the Enterprise from TOS's era often traveled well in excess of the listed speed NCC-1701's top speed was around warp 8, or 512c NCC-1701's cruise speed was around warp 6, or 216c In "Doomsday Machine" the ship traversed several star systems in a day In "That Which Survives", the ship traveled at a speed of 765,000c In "Star Trek Is…", Gene Roddenberry listed the vessel having a maximum speed of 0.73ly/hr (6,399.18c), which assuming the cruise speed is 75% the maximum speed like NX-01, that would yield a speed of 4799.39c. That would allow one to traverse a system or two in a day… I thought I was the only one who noticed that… Count Actually… we have automated doors today Well, I think they might have taken them a little too far, but fundamentally one has to take into account A species able to explore space would likely be the top-dog on it's planet Top dogs don't become top-dogs by being nice; even if they later learn to become nice: They will place themselves above others if pushed Particularly if they see us in themselves… the ugly parts. They did nearly get bombed back to the stone-age… Agreed Makes sense Tim Walker Do you have the URL for that… that I'd like to read.
Enterprise had a lot of issues, most of which have been covered. The primary one was Berman's typical lack of urgency -- the mentality that it's perfectly OK for a Trek show to filled with medocire episodes and take three years to find it's stride, even while the ratings go down down down. I also think the casting of Bakula was a huge mistake. Maybe he's more of a comedic actor, but he seemed to have only one primary expression: "befuddled", or maybe "stupefied", I never really could take him seriously. Given the context of the show, it also would have been better to have a younger Captain closer to 30 than to 50.
That is a valid point: The show should have had more exploration which in itself can be very interesting. Consider the following You're seeing planets up close that have never been seen before You're seeing life that has never been seen before You have to deal with dangers on a planet: Predatory creatures, poisonous plants and animals, bacterium and viruses which you have no immunity to There could be extinct species on a planet that raise all sorts of questions: What the hell happened!? Could the same thing that killed them kill you? Who would you have recommended? Kirk was the youngest captain, at 32 so the guy would have to be over 32...
"Exploration" is kind of overrated in STAR TREK. Some of the best episodes in this entire franchise have had nothing much to do with that, really. "Space Seed," in TOS, for example. "Measure of a Man" in TNG. "Duet" in DS9. "Scorpion" in VOY ... even the STAR TREK movies kind of left "exploration" by the wayside, for the most part and were often very entertaining, as a result ...
Every series will have a shakey start as the PTB figure out what works and what doesn't, whilst writers discover what actors can handle, and actors get more comfortable with their characters. S1 was dross and S2 wasn't much better, there was far too many weak episodes for it to really recover. I do agree Bakula was a terrible bit of casting. I'm not sure who I would've had in his place, but the character doesn't have to be a straight, white, male American. As for his age, I'm happy with a more mature individual, but have them actually act their age, whose had a life of experiences to shape them into a more sensible and level-headed leader.
I would simply remove the Xindi from Enterprise. If they had focused on exploration and building the links between the Andorians, Vulcans and Tellarites there was enough potential there without a story arc that was essentially a middle finger to existing canon.
Do it like Phase II and Continues. TOS neo-retro style all the way. It would have been a hit for being so bold in its deliberate retro-ness. They wimped out by making it too TNG/First-Contact-like.