What I like about the show and what I don't

[UmarAlFarooq]

What I really liked about this series is the great attention to detail in how they fit snugly in between now and the original series. Especially how towards the end they introduce the original series as the "advanced" ship and design. That was fantastic and much respect.

The vulcan chic was so hot. And they had one of my favorite Padma Laxmi as the "first monarch".

LOVED the acquatics. Wish we had been given more of their history. I'd think they're much more suited for space travel than air breathers. They don't need artificial grav or air pressure. Their water tanks would naturally have pressure. Fantastic.

Wish they had covered more about the silicone based lifeforms.

The insectoids were an interesting bunch. The reptilians, not so much.

What I didn't like:

1. The theme song absolutely blew. It sucked so bad and for a minute and a half on every episode it was just so dam annoying. Electric guitar with a crappy rock song? What the heck were they thinking. Whoever came up with that idea, along with everyone who approved it should be all be put into an airlock and the vented into space. Only thing that went through my mind gritting my teeth is "that's probably Bakula's idea!" Can't say enough about how much the Enterprise theme song sucked. Whew, that's out of my system )

2. Time travel crap. Really guys? That's all you could come up with to add some excitement? This is done and overdone in every sci-fi show and it's really kind of hackey, not to mention filled with paradoxes. Like in the episode where Archer and his crew's descendants pop in from the past to help them out, resulting in them never going to the past to begin with. Then who helped them if they never went to the past (accidentally) and had those kids and grand-kids? How do they even have those memories? It never happened right? The whole time travel crap really muddied up the whole story line. The timeline is not the only thing that contaminated.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I thank you for this commentary that made me think about the series with a new perspective.

I'd like to say one little thing though. Time travel is a constant in star trek. We see it used several times in each series including the first one and even one of the movies (the wales, remember) and also the two latest ones where old Spock gets to meet his younger self. It's not like the writers came up with it out of nowhere.

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

I thank you for this commentary that made me think about the series with a new perspective.

I'd like to say one little thing though. Time travel is a constant in star trek. We see it used several times in each series including the first one and even one of the movies (the wales, remember). It's not like the writers came up with it out of nowhere.

Thank you for your reply.

You're right it's been used all over Star Trek but you know, Enterprise is supposed to be BEFORE the original series. They should have kept it out of it at least at that point. They had to force it into the plot by making a guy from the future come back to enable this in that timeline. In the original series Kirk had to plummet towards a planet at warp 10 to get that to work. The Voyager had a lot of it and the whole thing is really annoying. It's gotta make you roll your eyes "Great, another time travel nonsense". Reminds me of the kind of stories my son used to come up with when he was 5.

 

[tafkats]

Though I wasn't wild about the whole TCW thing, one thing I did appreciate about the way Enterprise handled time travel was the fact that it was almost totally beyond the crew's control. TOS made a mistake by making time travel far too easy with the whole slingshot-around-the-sun-at-warp thing. Enterprise, at least, didn't make time travel into something Archer could just do at will.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Though I wasn't wild about the whole TCW thing, one thing I did appreciate about the way Enterprise handled time travel was the fact that it was almost totally beyond the crew's control. TOS made a mistake by making time travel far too easy with the whole slingshot-around-the-sun-at-warp thing. Enterprise, at least, didn't make time travel into something Archer could just do at will.

Keep in mind that time travel gave us what is arguably one of the greatest TOS episodes: "The City On The Edge Of Forever"!

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

Yes, but also keep in mind that when TOS came out, everything was novel and new. By year 2000, the writers should have realized that this stuff is old and hackey and they had a perfect excuse to not take the low road and that was the time-frame of Enterprise series. There were just too many episodes in Enterprise based on time travel and it was a grand snore-fest.

On another note, I loved T'Pol in the Mirror episodes with long hair. Dam sexy!

 

[horatio83]

I liked all the genuine 22nd century stuff and did not like the 23rd and 24th century homages or stories like Vox Sola that felt like script left-overs from VOY, that could have been shot for any Trek series.

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

Agreed. And did anyone notice how in Enterprise they ran across the Borg, in TOS they didn't and then in TNG hey, there's the Borg again and when they saw them first, they didn't have any data on the Borg. I think there was a slip on that one.

 

[horatio83]

Well, nobody took Cochrane serious when he talked about the cyborgs from the future and while the NX-01 definitely recorded the events it was just a singular event and not an actual threat. So even if the data about the event had survived the Romulan War and made it into the 24th century it would have been 200 year old data about one incident with a bunch of cyborgs who could have come from the future.
Pretty unlikely that anybody will dig that deep into the archives when the Borg came around again during TNG.

But of course such episodes, even when they were fun, had limited appeal as they always stayed in the fanwank territory. It was more about connecting the dots like in Regeneration or revisiting old friends like the Ferengi or the Gorn.
But whenever the show added something or explored a species more in death, like in the case of the Vulcans, the Andorians and the Orions, i.e. whenever it was original it was (usually) good.

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

Right on the money about exploring the species more in detail. I liked the Andorians more than the Vulcans because of Shran.

In Enterprise, I don't think the Borg were from the future. They were from the past actually. When the humans first found them they were frozen in ice for over a hundred and fifty years and virtually dead. As they took the bodies to the lap, the nanites regenerated the body and viola, reanimation and first contact.

I was also carefully watching for times when the human crew got hold of an alien ship with cloaking technology but looks like the writers were pretty thorough about not keeping cloaking in human hands for any length of time for them to reverse engineer the tech and adapt it to starfleet vessels.

Though realistically, I'd think that would be one of the primary battle objectives if there was any war with any of those aliens. Capture at least one of their ships and study it. The Mirror episode did go into that a bit.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

If I remember correctly, in the peace treaty with the Romulans (Treaty of Algeron?) the Federation agreed not to develop (or perhaps simply not to use) cloaking devices on their vessels. That's why the whole TNG "Pegasus" issue gave Riker such heartburn.

Also, while the Borg had indeed been 'on ice' in Antarctica for decades before Archer & crew encountered them, they had originally traveled to that point in Archer's past from Picard's present. I agree with Horatio83's take that the NX-01/Borg incident report could have been lost (or at least not clearly resurfaced), buried in all the other Starfleet mission reports over the decades, so it may never have come up with Kirk & crew and those of their era...

 

[Robert D. Robot]

Though I wasn't wild about the whole TCW thing, one thing I did appreciate about the way Enterprise handled time travel was the fact that it was almost totally beyond the crew's control. TOS made a mistake by making time travel far too easy with the whole slingshot-around-the-sun-at-warp thing. Enterprise, at least, didn't make time travel into something Archer could just do at will.

While I can not deny actually enjoying most of the time travel episodes, I do agree that once Kirk & crew discovered the slingshot time-travel effect, there is no way that the secret would get out and everyone would be using that trick (IMO).

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

You're right! Good call. Though that would be a colossal putz who'd sign that treaty. Why would they agree not to develop military technology which other civilizations use? All part of the storyline I guess.

In TNG and up, in MANY scenarios I could imagine transporters being used for weapons as well as medicine. Imagine a gunfight breaks out and standard protocol is to transport everyone into individual holding cells already flooded with knock out gas. Especially within the ship so many issues could have been avoided.

Wouldn't make for good drama though.

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

Especially Captain Janeway

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Transporters could be used for immortality. Each time someone dies you can resuscitate them by using their last transporter record.

 

[tafkats]

You're right! Good call. Though that would be a colossal putz who'd sign that treaty. Why would they agree not to develop military technology which other civilizations use? All part of the storyline I guess.

It's not without real-life precedent. About 185 countries agreed not to develop nuclear weapons when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On the other hand, I doubt the NPT would have happened if one of the superpowers had wanted the other to give up nuclear weaponry while keeping it themselves. It's not a perfect analogy.

 

[eyeresist]

In Enterprise, I don't think the Borg were from the future. They were from the past actually. When the humans first found them they were frozen in ice for over a hundred and fifty years and virtually dead.

These Borg were from the future - they were the remnants of the Borg Sphere that was destroyed in First Contact. ENT actually used continuity from FC a lot, and when I think about it, it's one of the things I like about the show. The ship is in direct line to Cochrane's prototype, and Starfleet's mission is inspired by Cochrane's vision of the future. They even got James Cromwell to reappear as Cochrane a couple of times, most notably in the first Mirror Universe episode.

I don't have a problem with what ENT tried to do with time-travel, because it wasn't the usual "Hey, let's travel to some period for which the studio has standing sets, for one episode, and never mention it again." The Enterprise crew didn't have control over time travel, but were just pawns in a larger game.
(The problem, I've repeatedly said, was not the concept but the sporadic, uncoordinated execution.)

I'm pretty sure Scott Bakula didn't have a say in the choice of theme song

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

Yes and in the Star Trek world, no one is THAT immoral right? How about just spitting out a limitless army of soldiers, scientists, weapons, gold and latinum? If you build a big enough transporter you can spit out entire space ships.

I wonder if there is a technology today that we use which a thousand years ago people might have thought impossible and imagined these "what if" scenarios.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I think the Borg episode was a huge mistake. The Enterprise was no match for the borg, the Enterprise D that is. Archer's ship should have been a joke to them. A story to amuse the little borg in maturing chambers.

 

[UmarAlFarooq]

Actually, NPT is against Proliferation of nuclear weapons to countries who don't already have them. Of course US is also a signatory as is Europe but they both have nuclear weapons. Israel, India and Pakistan were countries who weren't "supposed" to have it but they do. That whole treaty is absurd not from the intent but the application. It has a huge gaping hole which is that every country has the right to develop nuclear power for "peaceful" use. The difference between one and the other is as little as flipping a switch. Another gaping hole is that if you don't sign the treaty, you're not bound by it and there is no penalty really so...weird.

"Article X allows a state to leave the treaty if 'extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country', giving three months' (ninety days') notice. The state is required to give reasons for leaving the NPT in this notice. NATO states argue that when there is a state of 'general war' the treaty no longer applies, effectively allowing the states involved to leave the treaty with no notice."

But coming back to the cloaking technology, I don't see how it would be so harmful that it requires a treaty so iron clad that it is the one treaty humans never break. Other than fitting a story line I don't see any other use for it.