Naah. Then Chekov would've been bragging about all different things. 
Is Enterprise the most US-centric Trek series?
- Thread starter Ragitsu
- Start date
Between the country music theme song, Trip Tucker, Captain Dubya, the Klingon in the cornfield, and the over-the-top attempts to sex-up the franchise, "Enterprise" almost feels like a parody of American scifi. I say this as an American.
V
Vale
Guest
Minsk is in Belarus, not Russia.
Correct, but pre-1990 "Russian" tended to cover the entire Soviet Union. Did Worf's family ever say they were from Mink?
There is a Canadian accent (I'm referring to native English-speakers here instead of French, First Nations, or Inuit) and there are regional variations to be sure, but those unfamiliar with it could have difficultly in distinguishing it from American accents - differences can be subtle and even Canadians sometimes have difficulties to tell.
It seems to me there is more regional diversity in American accents than in Canadian ones. I don't feel I have a particularly distinctive Canadian accent (I've spent a lot of time living outside Canada and I tended to "flatten" my speech to make it more comprehensible to non-native speakers). When first meeting them some of my foreign friends could tell I wasn't American and others couldn't. I used to tell them that Canadians are the only people who speak English without an accent but they didn't buy it!
Sometimes I like to think I speak English with a Vulcan accent.
Many Canadian actors have been in Star Trek but has there ever been a character who was identified as Canadian in-universe? There are not very many references to Canada in Star Trek.
One television show that helped me to discern the differences between an average Canadian accent and most any United States accent is Stargate SG-1; I was initially surprised to learn that Michael Shanks is Canadian, but, having rewatched certain episodes many times over, I can now easily pick out those instances when his mostly-suppressed native accent manages to slip through a given performance.
Depicting Vulcan as a complex culture that went through a neocolonialist phase of its history is not the same thing as treating Vulcan poorly on a metatextual level.
I would much rather imagine that it went back to the indigenous peoples of Alaska than that it was handed between different colonialist powers.
No. This is an oversimplification, but the bottom line is that after the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was established, and then both the Byelorussian SSR and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became founding constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the Soviet Union).
The Soviet Union was often informally conflated with Russia because the Russian SFSR dominated the USSR in spite of all of the republics nominally being equal (similar to how the United Kingdom is often informally conflated with England because England dominates the U.K. in spite of all the constituent countries of the U.K. nominally being equal). But the Russian SFSR never "covered" the entire Soviet Union, and the Byelorussian always remained a separate republic within the USSR until the collapse. The Byelorussian SSR declared independence from the USSR on 25 August 1991 and renamed itself the Republic of Belarus on 19 September 1991.
Russia, in fact, also declared independence from the USSR. The President the Russian SFSR signed the Belovezh Accords on 8 December, and then the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR ratified it on 12 December, thereby declaring that the USSR had ceased to exist and de facto declaring Russian independence from the USSR. The President of the Soviet Union then resigned on 25 December and the USSR's Soviet of the Republics passed its final act on 26 December declaring the USSR officially dissolved. The Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation on 25 December.
Looks like this has never been explicitly established. Canonically, we know that Sergey and Helena Rozhenko adopted Worf and raised him alongside their son Nikolai. We now that they were all living on the farming world of Gault in 2347, and that Gault is where Worf accidentally killed a Human child when both were playing soccer in 2353. We know that some time after this, the family was living on Earth, and that Sergey would take Worf and Nikolai camping in the Ural Mountains.
Given Worf's insistence that O'Brien consider living in Minsk upon moving to Earth in "What You Leave Behind," and given the relative proximity of Minsk to the Urals, it does seem probable that the Rozhenkos settled in Minsk, but it is not canonically definitive and other interpretations are just as valid.
Isn't that what I said????
Well, you said "Correct, but pre-1990 "Russian" tended to cover the entire Soviet Union," which I took to mean that you believed the Byelorussian SSR was part of the Russian SFSR. Apologies if I misunderstood your intent.
Then I misunderstood your intent. Apologies.
For the first humans to explore the galaxy the main bridge crew should have less North Americans and more staff from other continents. As for the Starfleet admiralty all of them were white American males. Not very diverse for the 22nd century.
If they ever reboot Enterprise, Archer's background would look more futuristic if his father was a different ethnicity due to adoption, surrogacy or have his non white American stepfather raise him.
If they ever reboot Enterprise, Archer's background would look more futuristic if his father was a different ethnicity due to adoption, surrogacy or have his non white American stepfather raise him.
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Yeah, under-representation of people who are not white has always been a weakness of Star Trek, but it's a particularly egregious weakness of ENT. Especially the way the only two non-white actors were almost completely side-lined and ignored, and especially given the era in which the show was produced.
Weren't they all American Centric?
Some more than others?
Some much more than others.
The most basic problem is that ENT bills its characters as representing Earth in a way that previous ST shows did not; the NX-01 is literally a United Earth ship, sent out to represent United Earth interests in opposition to prior alien domination of Earth politics, and the opening credits purport to tell a story about the evolution of Earth's space age... but the opening credits only show the U.S. space program; every actor in the cast but one has an American accent -- one character is purported to be from Japan but has an American accent. And the only non-American is an Englishman -- someone from a culture extremely closely allied to the U.S. The overall effect is to give the impression that "American" is the default setting for the human race. The prior shows had a lot of American presence, too, but it wasn't framed in such a way as to equate Earth with America.
Season 3 should have had the Team America song as the theme music
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Gul Sengosts
Guest
Speaking from a European (more specifically: German) perspective, Trek has indeed always been US-centric, but it didn't feel to us like it made a point of it (with some notable exceptions like The Omega Glory). It felt American because it was an American TV show with mostly American actors. Most shows on TV were, and actually it felt like Star Trek attempted a more international feel than others--most notably perhaps with Captain Picard, who was so European he felt deliberately un-American.
What made ENT different was that it felt like a conscious effort to emphasise the American-ness of Trip and Archer, as if to tell the American audience "these are our boys!". The way they talk, the baseball caps, etc. That the series starts in an American corn field is probably no coincidence either, the whole admiralty thing felt like straight out of an American military-themed movie, and then of course there's the theme song.
The contrast between Faith of the Heart and the theme tunes of previous shows couldn't be greater. It's just so distinctly American, few people here listen to that kind of music, and those who do are likely USA fans. It may seem a little silly to put such weight on the theme song, but back in the day it epitomised everything people hated about the show so in people's heads it almost defined ENT.
What made ENT different was that it felt like a conscious effort to emphasise the American-ness of Trip and Archer, as if to tell the American audience "these are our boys!". The way they talk, the baseball caps, etc. That the series starts in an American corn field is probably no coincidence either, the whole admiralty thing felt like straight out of an American military-themed movie, and then of course there's the theme song.
The contrast between Faith of the Heart and the theme tunes of previous shows couldn't be greater. It's just so distinctly American, few people here listen to that kind of music, and those who do are likely USA fans. It may seem a little silly to put such weight on the theme song, but back in the day it epitomised everything people hated about the show so in people's heads it almost defined ENT.
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