Branna Braga's VERY candid interviews on the Blu-ray sets

[t_smitts]

One of the things I liked about finally getting to see the Blu-ray sets for "Enterprise" (they're a little out of my price range, but the library finally got them in) is that we get some REALLY candid interviews with some of the folks involved, foremost among those being Braga.



I know bashing him and Berman is kind of fashionable, but I kind of gained some measure either sympathy or respect for him from those.

He was pretty blunt in saying if he thought an episode sucked (Acquisition, Oasis, Two Days and Two Nights, and especially Precious Cargo in season two, and also Exile in season three).

Actually, there was one I kind of liked that I thought he was a bit hard on. He mentioned that the idea of Travis being a "space boomer" didn't really translate into much story material because it turned out people born in space weren't all that different from people born on Earth, so he wasn't fond of "Fortunate Son". I actually really liked that one, though, because I thought they did a good job of making freighter crews interesting by making it sort of a dying way of life, kind of like sailing ships being overtaken by steamships. (I didn't like the sort-of follow-up "Horizon" in season two, however).

What did you think?

 

[T'Girl]

the space boomer thing might have worked better if TPTB had used the concept after introducing it. If the boomer ships existed by the hundreds (or thousands) and had form a community, and became a source of information and supplies for the NX-01.

 

[Christopher]

Hell, they should've made the whole series about the Space Boomers.

Of course, the problem with making the Boomers a sufficiently different human culture is that the Federation humans in subsequent centuries are so monolithically Terran -- let's face it, monolithically American -- in their culture. Aside from the odd "Enterprise assists a space colony" episode, virtually all humans in Trek are assumed to be Earth natives by default, and no colonial human cultures were ever really established or explored. Which was a terribly missed opportunity.

 

[t_smitts]

I dunno if that'd be such a good idea. Constantly running into Earth ships would kind of undercut the premise that the NX-01 was Earth's first deep space ship, largely on its own out there.

 

[Kor]

Wasn't there some ridiculous lost cowboy colony, or something like that?

I think it would have been good for them to run into isolated pockets of humanity occasionally, but not all the time, and maybe not some whole unified "boomer" culture that exists across the galaxy.

Also, I believe Mr. Braga's first name is Brannon.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

I dunno if that'd be such a good idea. Constantly running into Earth ships would kind of undercut the premise that the NX-01 was Earth's first deep space ship, largely on its own out there.

I didn't say anything about a Starfleet vessel running into Boomer ships, I said make the show about the Boomers. As in, have them be the stars. I'm not saying accrete them onto the established Enterprise premise, I'm saying do a show about them instead of Enterprise. Develop a different backstory/timeline for warp development so that the Boomer ships are the ones going out there and making the first contacts. Instead of a planet-of-the-week Starfleet show, do a community-based civilian drama about the crew of a Boomer ship, with stories exploring their evolving society and their occasional contacts with aliens -- and perhaps how the ideas they absorb from aliens and their need to accommodate the values of the aliens they seek to trade with influences the development of their society into something new. Really explore the development of the human community in space as a distinct society from Earth. There's potential there.

Wasn't there some ridiculous lost cowboy colony, or something like that?

Descendants of 19th-century Americans abducted by aliens as slave labor. No more ridiculous than the parallel-Earth TOS episodes that it was an homage to. Alien abduction is a better justification for it that Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development, or a few books about gangsters being left behind, or the total lack of explanation in "The Omega Glory."

 

[t_smitts]

I dunno if that'd be such a good idea. Constantly running into Earth ships would kind of undercut the premise that the NX-01 was Earth's first deep space ship, largely on its own out there.

I didn't say anything about a Starfleet vessel running into Boomer ships, I said make the show about the Boomers. As in, have them be the stars.

Actually, I was responding to the person above you, but the quote didn't appear, because of a board glitch.

 

[Kor]

^ If you are using Firefox, that keeps happening whenever the post (or the username of the poster ) contains any special characters. I don't think it happens with other browsers.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

I guess that's one advantage of the fact that I've had to switch to Chrome lately because Firefox is making my computer freeze for some reason.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Hell, they should've made the whole series about the Space Boomers.

Man, I would've loved to have seen that show!!!

The Boomer aspect could've thrown up some things for Travis to do, he would've known more about the practical aspects than the likes of Archer, may have met more aliens than any of the other humans, could have a few useful contacts to draw upon, seen phenomena that no one else has. Missed a few opportunites to do something interesting with poor Travis.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Hell, they should've made the whole series about the Space Boomers.

I believe Mr. Berman tried a series with a significant sub-culture of mostly humans, and the differences between them and the regular Federation humans were watered down to the point of being meaningless.

 

[eyeresist]

Hell, they should've made the whole series about the Space Boomers.

Man, I would've loved to have seen that show!!!

In theory they still could, I guess. It could be the true "back door" Trek show that the suits apparently wanted "Enterprise" to be (some of them, when they weren't insisting it should be an exact clone of previous shows).

Firefly was sort of it, but that was such an overt "space Western" that I think there's still room for a more science-fictional approach to the idea.

 

[SPCTRE]

virtually all humans in Trek are assumed to be Earth natives by default, and no colonial human cultures were ever really established or explored. Which was a terribly missed opportunity.

Well, there were the Space (Faux-)Indians.

 

[Christopher]

Firefly was sort of it, but that was such an overt "space Western" that I think there's still room for a more science-fictional approach to the idea.

I like to say that Firefly was kind of like a Star Trek series told from the perspective of the Maquis. People tend to assume the Alliance was just another stereotypical Evil Empire, but that's not the kind of story Whedon usually tells. The Alliance was actually pretty benevolent and fair for people who opted into the system, like Inara and Simon before misfortune befell them. But it didn't look so good from the perspective of the people who rejected or stood outside the system, and it had its share of corruption within the system. If you only saw the Federation from a Maquis point of view, and if those Maquis characters were being hunted by Section 31 agents, and if the focus of the stories were on events like Admiral Leyton's coup and Admiral Dougherty's exploitation of the Ba'ku planet, then you might perceive the Federation as an evil empire.

 

[eyeresist]

Yes, I was thinking of that. I imagine the boomers would be resentful once Starfleet started to spread its wings, but this being Trek they would eventually realise the benefits, in terms of protection and new opportunities. There would be a mutual grudging respect and admiration.

 

[Go-Captain]

Boomers could have been much more interesting but none of the world building was in place for it to make sense, and no one gave them deep enough thought in regard to how they would be different from planet born people. If Boomers were just like planet born people, it's because that's what we were given, and not necessarily what is true.

Enterprise has absolutely no background in regard to Earth's economic position, for instance why did Earth never just buy a better warp engine design from another species? Could the Boomers have helped explain why Earth seems to live in a political vacuum except for Vulcans, and improbably the Denobulans? Maybe Earth is too damn poor and uninsteresting? So, what does Earth have which is valuable enough to haul for years at a time, and what do aliens have which is so valuable a return trip is worthwhile? What kind of mindset does it take to become a nomadic merchant? Space is harsh, what kind of mindset and manners does living in space take?

Shouldn't Travis have been something of a Neelix, in that he could have known the neighborhood. Even if that knowledge were mostly rumor and hearsay he could have occasionally given advice on different civilizations? Now I think Travis might have been more interesting as a first officer, if Boomers had been handled with more thought and imagination.

Here's another question, Starfleet in Enterprise comes off as only an exploratory and plenipotentiary style organization for Earth, rather than having any sort of police or military leanings. The exception are the admirals. We never get the ground work to establish what Starfleet really is, and who they answer to. Were they just the coast guard of the solar system before the NX-01, as in a military police force which does some science? Without that, Archer being the face of authority in deep space doesn't quite make sense in regard to how the boomers react to him, and his actions in return.

 

[Christopher]

Enterprise has absolutely no background in regard to Earth's economic position, for instance why did Earth never just buy a better warp engine design from another species? Could the Boomers have helped explain why Earth seems to live in a political vacuum except for Vulcans, and improbably the Denobulans? Maybe Earth is too damn poor and uninsteresting? So, what does Earth have which is valuable enough to haul for years at a time, and what do aliens have which is so valuable a return trip is worthwhile? What kind of mindset does it take to become a nomadic merchant? Space is harsh, what kind of mindset and manners does living in space take?

We know that the Boomers had encountered a few other species, like Draylaxians, but only a few because their ships were so slow. So the idea was that they didn't get far enough to encounter the more advanced civilizations with faster warp drives. (Although that's presupposing that worlds like Vulcan and Andoria are relatively far away, which later seasons kind of contradicted.)

Shouldn't Travis have been something of a Neelix, in that he could have known the neighborhood. Even if that knowledge were mostly rumor and hearsay he could have occasionally given advice on different civilizations?

No, because the premise was that NX-01, with its faster drive, was going beyond where even the Boomers had reached before. Although that's another concept that was inconsistently handled as the series went on.

 

[mswood]

Boomers would have had access to only the planets that are at tops ten light years away from earth.

i mean when they actually meet the fortunate they have to backtrack to get to them. The Fortunate roughly ten times the speed of light travel, the Enterprise roughly what 200 plus times the speed of light.

I would assume most of the local alien interactions would have been done with some fairly close observations even restrictions from vulcans.

 

[Cronus]

At least a show based on the space boomers would give more information about starfleet colonies and what they look like. They'd have to run freight here and there, so we'd get to explore more profoundly the inner workings of the Federation before the Prime Directive was instituted.

 

[eyeresist]

Here's another question, Starfleet in Enterprise comes off as only an exploratory and plenipotentiary style organization for Earth, rather than having any sort of police or military leanings. The exception are the admirals. We never get the ground work to establish what Starfleet really is, and who they answer to. Were they just the coast guard of the solar system before the NX-01, as in a military police force which does some science? Without that, Archer being the face of authority in deep space doesn't quite make sense in regard to how the boomers react to him, and his actions in return.

I think Starfleet at this time were really like NASA, largely concerned with progressing the science and building better spaceships. Once the NX-01 under Cpt Archer actually got into deep space, they found themselves having to act as "official" representatives of Earth, and they also found they needed bigger guns in order to take care of themselves (as dealt with in Silent Enemy). I think the events of ENT would have led the Earth government to rethink Starfleet's basic mission, making it officially military and ambassadorial, as well as exploratory and scientific.

Perhaps Picard's line from INS, "Remember when we used to be explorers?", was nostalgia not for TNG but for pre-Federation days, the days of "pure" exploration (as seen across several centuries through Picard's rose-tinted spectacles).