I thought they did that. Though at times it was a bit clumsy. We met the Andorians, the Axanar, the Tellerites and other species. We saw the ground work for what would become the Federation.
Age of the Federation....
- Thread starter Warped9
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I agree. The first season laid the foundations in a subtle way, showing humanity testing the waters, learning the ropes of space exploration, experimenting with new technologies, and beginning to establish relationships with other major civilizations. I think it did the best job of any incarnation of Star Trek of capturing the spirit of exploration and discovery, and it had a seasonal arc that very much laid the groundwork for the future by showing humanity earning a place on the galactic stage alongside the Vulcans and Andorians. The second season kind of meandered, but it did show the first tentative contacts with the Romulans and the Tholians and the first face-to-face contact with the Tellarites, and a couple of its episodes dealt with the kind of cross-cultural mistakes and tensions that would eventually lead to the Prime Directive. And "Judgment" did a terrific job not only setting up future events with the Klingons (their trial system, Rura Penthe, Duras) but fleshing out their past as well. The third season got sidetracked by the Xindi arc, but then the fourth season was basically unadulterated continuity porn all the way, setting up the TOS era in a much more blatant manner.
Honestly, I don't agree with Poltargyst's assertion that the whole point should've been setting up TOS. No series should exist purely as a supplement to something outside itself. Every series needs to be able to stand as its own entity, able to attract its own fans who value it for itself, even when it's part of a larger whole. Continuity links are a nice bonus, a fun way of fleshing out a universe, but they aren't the exclusive priority of fiction. Tying things together into a larger whole doesn't do much good if the individual pieces can't stand on their own merits.
Yep. Well said.
The idea of having some sort of temporal war with some time-travelling enemy could have been amazing. I was looking forward to a lot of bouncing around the centuries week after week, making use of characters and events from the four previous series, and the films. Time would have been our playground... Archer enlists Picard to stop this or that time incursion... etc...
Since they never did anything like this, I'm utterly stumped as to what they expected to do with this Temporal Cold War idea. They established time travel as a basic part of the show, upfront, episode one, then making little use of it.
Apparently they didn't want to do it at all. It was at the network's insistence, rather than being a story they wanted to tell, so they never really had a plan for it. Or so I gather.
Maybe it would've been better to start with just a straight 22nd-century narrative and gradually ease in the time-travel stuff later. But again, the network didn't trust that audiences would go for that, so they insisted on the "future" stuff being set up from the start.
That makes sense. Think of that, a network, trying to come up with science fiction ideas and insisting they be used.
I could have gone for a variety of different types of stories on ENT. Straight exploration stories--go see what's out there are fun. Battle stories are fun. I think I wanted to see some stories too in a Journey To Babel/Babylon-5 vein, seeing representatives of the different races coming together, the arguing, political intrigue, stabbing each other in the back. I mean THOSE kinds of Federation-building stories.
For all my complaining about ENT, I basically liked the show. I liked the actors, I liked the characters, I liked the premise. I just often felt disappointed like they could have done SO much more and SO much better with what they had to work with. Anyone want to argue with me on that point?
And don't get me started on the TNG final episode of ENT. Grrrrrrrrr.
For all my complaining about ENT, I basically liked the show. I liked the actors, I liked the characters, I liked the premise. I just often felt disappointed like they could have done SO much more and SO much better with what they had to work with. Anyone want to argue with me on that point?
And don't get me started on the TNG final episode of ENT. Grrrrrrrrr.
There were multiple examples of all three types of stories in Enterprise. The first two seasons had a ton of exploration stories, and the last two seasons had a ton of battles. And there was plenty of political intrigue and coalition-building in season 4. Everything you're saying Enterprise didn't have is stuff that it definitely did have. Sure, it could've done better at a number of things, but it's total hyperbole to claim that it didn't have any of this stuff at all.
I didn't say it didn't have any of that stuff. I'm failing to recall, though, the episode where human, Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellerite ambassadors are all in a room together arguing policy. Or have I forgotten an episode somewhere?
Obviously an hour of policy debates wouldn't make good television outside of C-SPAN, so it's rather unfair to pose the question so narrowly. But "Babel One," "United," and "The Aenar" were about the beginnings of alliance between Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar. And that process culminated with the establishment of the Coalition of Planets in "Demons"/"Terra Prime."
Well the show was called Enterprise, not "Conference Room".
On the other hand, if they had done a version of 1776 they would have my favorite episode of all Trekdom.
Archer and Soval singing and writing the "Declaration of Federation"? Will the Vulcan delegation sing "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men"?
"For God's sake, John (Archer), sit down!"
It's like someone said earlier on in the thread that they saw ENT as a prequel to TNG rather than TOS and I agree with that theory! It almost seemed to me that the feeling was that TOS was a bit of an embarrassing 60s kitsch thing and best avoided and also that Berman had had absolutely no working experience of!
JB
JB
I don't know how you could come to such a completely backward conclusion. In fact, ENT drew far more heavily on TOS concepts than any of the 24th-century series did. There was a ton of stuff in ENT that came exclusively or almost exclusively from TOS: Axanar, Malurians, Andorians, Coridanites, Tholians, Tellarites, green Orions, Rigelians, the Horizon (complete with a book about Chicago mobs on Travis's shelf), Ceti Alpha V, the Augments, T'Pau, Organians, Babel, smooth-headed Klingons, the Terran Empire, Colonel Green, etc. Not to mention a more in-depth exploration of the Vulcans than any series since TOS (or including TOS, really) had undertaken. They even did "North Star" as a tribute to TOS's parallel-Earth episodes. ENT actively embraced the kitschiest parts of TOS that the 24th-century series had generally avoided.
From a design standpoint you might be right. Many visuals had a TNG feel. But storywise it was.clearly a TOS prequel.
In terms of the advancement of the techniques used to create the visuals, sure, but that's extradiegetic. ENT's design sensibilities were a lot different from the TNG era's, much more low-tech and NASA-like and realistically detailed. I always found the TNG sets a bit bland, but I loved the production design on ENT, the way the Starfleet tech felt so believable and functional.
Except their equipment was far superior to what we saw aboard The Enterprise of TOS!
JB
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