I actually really liked that movie.....
"Enterprise" too advanced for 22nd Century
- Thread starter CaptainSpirk
- Start date
I actually really liked that movie.....
Me too.
I continue to hope (against hope) that there will one day be a companion piece which takes place in a "retro future", i.e. one with those huge gleaming cities with elevated roadways and searchlights and all that.
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The problem for me isn't really that they were too advanced per se, but that they seemed to advance pretty quickly to a point where there was virtual parity with many of their neighbours and the next century, which should have represented a period of massive technological progress, seemingly resulted in a ship which was incrementally more powerful but fundamentally similar.
The Romulan War, the Founding of the Federation, the technological exchanges that followed, the en masse scientific research driven by the seminal intervening years should be what led to the level of tech we see in TOS, whereas what in fact we see is something approaching that level in the ENT era with a larger, more polished version in TOS.
Note this has nothing to with "looking retro" or reflecting the feel of the times in which the show was made, it's about an in universe technological trend which seems to have surged in order to meet the needs of the plot in the ENT era and then levelled off somewhat afterwards.
For me I wanted ENT to be much more primitive than it was and more so to maintain that throughout, with just occasionally the odd mention of "theoretical" tech we see reach maturity in other series.
Oh for sure... on Enterprise, they should have had plasma pistols, not phase pistols... MAYBE give them phase cannons in season 2 or 3 for the ship itself, and no photonic torpedoes, just the regular high velocity missiles they started off with.
The huge leaps in tech should have only come after the founding of The Federation and the exchange of technology and ideas that would have resulted.
Well, some of them did. Earth Starfleet didn't have deflectors or tractor beams, but the Vulcans and Andorians did. So Federation Starfleet ships must have them as a result of just such a technology exchange.
This is the assumption I've made in my Rise of the Federation novels. UFP Starfleet ships look like Earth ships because it's a good design for multi-function, adaptable explorer ships (whereas pre-UFP Vulcan and Andorian ships were designed more for combat), but under the hood, there's a lot of tech of nonhuman origin -- shields and improved sensors and computers from the Vulcans, tractors from the Andorians, more advanced life support from the Tellarites, stuff like that.
Also -- look at the configuration of the Andorian bridge in "Proving Ground." Unlike NX-01, it has twin helm and navigation consoles at the front, and its side consoles are oriented outward instead of inward, so all their displays are visible from the captain's chair. In other words, the TOS bridge layout owes more to Andorian Imperial Guard design than Earth Starfleet design!
I agree!
One of the things that did put me off the series, other than my initial dislike for a pre-TOS series and the screwing up of established Trek history was that it did ooked too advanced.
If they wanted to do a pre-TOS series, then it should have looked more like TOS, the same computers, replicators, uniforms, yes EVERYTHING should have looked like TOS, maybe even more primitive.
Instead we got a ship which looked more like 24th century Voyager than a pre-TOS ship.
Definitely, many of the leaps we did see seemed to make little sense from a tech development point of view, rather serving to avoid a lot of story telling problems, particularly the fact that it would be hard to imagine other factions taking starfleet seriously in the manner they were presented throughout season one.
Personally I'd be fine with that model, humans could eke out their little corner of the galaxy and advance uneventfully for years or decades without amounting to much in anyone's books before coming into conflict with the Romulans, then receive serious outside assistance in order to go on to the victory we know must come, but timeline considerations would make that problematic, as would telling too many stories of great consequence outside of their immediate (limited) sphere of influence.
Deliberately "dumbing down" Romulan capabilities to meet starfleet's as an alternative hardly seems worth considering they are meant to already be a major player at this stage and frankly we'd be scaling down the conflict to the point where it hardly merited the term "war" at all.
From that point of view it makes sense that ENT portrayed such a rapid development, as the only other alternative would be to leave much of the credit for the Earth Romulan War with a third party using humans as proxies, but it just jars whenever I watch it how readily technology, particularly of the tactical variety, became readily available as and when needed.
It demonstrates a flaw in the series. It had a major identity problem from the outset. Either you want to be The Right Stuff in space with the pioneering spirit(Which really, really needed work because a lot of the "pioneering" aspects of earlier Enterprise come off as stupidty on the crew's part.) Or you want to do what they did in season 3, which was a story arc about war.
So on the one hand, you have a ship launched that is virtually unarmed by comparison to what they will eventually come up against, filled to the brim with science equipment, probes, shuttles, robot drones, and the stories would revolve around science and discovery and the hardships and drama of living in space. Which would have been something very new for Star Trek, and you only begin to hint at much bigger threats as the ship pushes towards neighboring alien species like Romulans and Klingons... But there's all that space in between that we hardly ever explored in any of the other series... All that stuff that became "the Federations backyard" basically. Like others have said before, we had a lot of one-off or background alien species over the years that hardly ever got any fleshing out, which would have given us ripe opportunities to explore. The Rigelians, The Andorians, First contact with the Tholians! Tellarites, Caitians... We could have spent the series getting to know those lesser known species in greater detail as if they were brand new, because they were hardly untouched.
On the other hand, If you were going to do a story about war in that period, the logical course is the Romulan conflict, and the best way to have the Romulans come off as threatening is to have them launch a surprise attack that does devastating damage. Bomb Vulcan, destroy their orbital drydocks. Have attacks heading towards Earth and the young Earth Starfleet valiantly manages to curtail an assault on their front door step. The war begins. The story would be about a ship going out to make alliances and forge a fleet to help stop the Romulan's from attacking their neighbors. The United Federation is born.
In both instances, there is drama to be had from limited resources and not having all the near "magical" technology of later shows.
So on the one hand, you have a ship launched that is virtually unarmed by comparison to what they will eventually come up against, filled to the brim with science equipment, probes, shuttles, robot drones, and the stories would revolve around science and discovery and the hardships and drama of living in space. Which would have been something very new for Star Trek, and you only begin to hint at much bigger threats as the ship pushes towards neighboring alien species like Romulans and Klingons... But there's all that space in between that we hardly ever explored in any of the other series... All that stuff that became "the Federations backyard" basically. Like others have said before, we had a lot of one-off or background alien species over the years that hardly ever got any fleshing out, which would have given us ripe opportunities to explore. The Rigelians, The Andorians, First contact with the Tholians! Tellarites, Caitians... We could have spent the series getting to know those lesser known species in greater detail as if they were brand new, because they were hardly untouched.
On the other hand, If you were going to do a story about war in that period, the logical course is the Romulan conflict, and the best way to have the Romulans come off as threatening is to have them launch a surprise attack that does devastating damage. Bomb Vulcan, destroy their orbital drydocks. Have attacks heading towards Earth and the young Earth Starfleet valiantly manages to curtail an assault on their front door step. The war begins. The story would be about a ship going out to make alliances and forge a fleet to help stop the Romulan's from attacking their neighbors. The United Federation is born.
In both instances, there is drama to be had from limited resources and not having all the near "magical" technology of later shows.
As a deep space explorer that will get into trouble ever other week in a TV show, NX-01 Enterprise is just barely capable with its Warp Five drives and rudimentary weapons and defenses. For just exploration, the Warp Five drive is realistically the slowest the ship could be as still be able to visit a wide range of planets within the constraints of a weekly show. Warp Two or Three is far too slow, and you'd have to start aging the cast if they had an adventure on a different planet every week, but it takes six months to get to the next system to explore. A Warp Four engine is possible, but that's still a month or so between star systems.
At which point you have to ask if their is an audience for a Star Trek TV Show that wouldn't be High Adventure every week? Because if you tech them down more than they already are, they can't go to strange new worlds every week. In fact they might be at the same world for several weeks in a row to tell a few stories that take place over the course of only a few days, than take off, getting to the next world effectively a month or two later (from when they arrived at the previous planet) so that the next story start is more or less in time with the passage of days in the real world (or the old idea that every show was set about two weeks apart in a 22 - 26 season series). Is there an audience for a Star Trek show that isn't like Star Trek? I know they wanted to make the show where the first year or so was the crew on Earth getting prepared to launch their starship by the end of the year, but that didn't fly with UPN.
At which point you have to ask if their is an audience for a Star Trek TV Show that wouldn't be High Adventure every week? Because if you tech them down more than they already are, they can't go to strange new worlds every week. In fact they might be at the same world for several weeks in a row to tell a few stories that take place over the course of only a few days, than take off, getting to the next world effectively a month or two later (from when they arrived at the previous planet) so that the next story start is more or less in time with the passage of days in the real world (or the old idea that every show was set about two weeks apart in a 22 - 26 season series). Is there an audience for a Star Trek show that isn't like Star Trek? I know they wanted to make the show where the first year or so was the crew on Earth getting prepared to launch their starship by the end of the year, but that didn't fly with UPN.
ENT did plenty with the Andorians, and also developed the Vulcans more fully than any series since TOS at least. They featured the Tellarites starting late in season 2 and more prominently in season 4. Rigel X was visited in the pilot episode, although we didn't see a species identified as Rigelians until season 4. The Tholians were briefly encountered in season 2 (and seen in the Mirror Universe in season 4, along with a Gorn). No Caitians, but season 1 gave us several species only named and never seen in TOS, including Axanar, Malurians, and Coridanites, and season 4 introduced the Orions. (Also the Organians, supposedly, although its Organians didn't act anything like the ones from "Errand of Mercy.")
I'm aware of that. I'm speaking of specifically how they were integrated into the storytelling. As such they were often, with the exception of the Andorians, Tellarites, and Vulcans, completely interchangable aliens-of-the-week just as with Voyager. We also spent an entire season dealing with an alien race we had never heard of before, along with a conflict (TCW) that we had never heard of. Lot's of wasted potential for the era they were in.
I don't understand this complaint.
It's usually the recurring aliens that have less unique/more generic storylines and the "Alien of the Week" that are really fleshed out and tie into a special story.
The recurring Aliens have many episodes to build upon. The one offs only have....one. Episodes like Distant Origin, Dragon's Teeth, Living Witness, etc spend more time with the aliens than with the cast, and really develop them for a single episode.
The recurring Aliens have many episodes to build upon. The one offs only have....one. Episodes like Distant Origin, Dragon's Teeth, Living Witness, etc spend more time with the aliens than with the cast, and really develop them for a single episode.
I'm sorry but I would not have liked that at all.
Well, that's the thing about a prequel. Yes, it's fleshing out the past of something, but it can't be just about rehashing familiar ideas; it's still a new show in its own right and needs to add some new ideas to the mix.
After all, if ENT had told all its stories about species that were known in the future, that would've imposed limits on what it could do with those species, because we already know where their stories end up. The advantage of original species is that anything can happen -- including closure. The TCW ended (at least from the perspective of the 22nd century). The Xindi conflict ended. The show was able to take those storylines all the way to their conclusion, something they couldn't have done with the Klingons, say. Yes, there was value to be had in showing how the Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, etc. evolved toward where they were in TOS, but they couldn't do all their alien stories like that.
Besides, TOS, TNG, and the others established tons of one-shot aliens-of-the-week who were never heard from again. It's an established part of the Trek universe. So ENT didn't do anything new in that respect. Sure, we never saw the Suliban or Denobulans or Tandarans or Vissians in later Trek, but we never saw the Gorn or Horta or Argelians or Melkot or Troyians or Medusans in later Trek either.
My main complaint with the TCW is that it wasn't handled well. It was set up and then had no pay off, just different factions that the audience doesn't know about fighting over (fill in the blank). I mean, the leader talking with the Suliban didn't even have a name-just "Future Guy."
Beyond that, time travel would make perfect sense as to why we never heard of it. Everything was restored back and no one is the wiser (See "Year of Hell").
To be fair, that's because the producers didn't want to include that element at all; it was pushed on them by the network, which mistrusted the idea of a prequel and wanted the show to have some connection to Trek's future. So since they did it under protest, they were half-hearted about it and tried to use it as little as possible, and they didn't really have a clear idea of what to do with it. So they used it here and there in season 1, mostly avoided it in season 2, revamped it into a whole different story in season 3, and hastened to tie it off for good at the start of season 4 so they could finally put it behind them.
They don't look similar at all.
Where are the touch screens? Smooth corridors? Smooth hull?
Enterprise looks like something built by hand, not mass produced. Primitive.
And that's completely fair, and I should have acknowledged it. But, it was half-hearted and it came across in production. But, one of the things that would have been nice is just to give the bad guy a name.
I did that in my first Department of Temporal Investigations novel, Watching the Clock. It was pretty damn hard to come up with a coherent, unifying explanation for all the Temporal Cold War stuff in ENT, and I'm still not entirely satisfied with what I went with, but at least I tried.
