what always irked me was how much Influence the VHC had over Earth.
Do you like ENT or not,why?
- Thread starter SS.Scientific
- Start date
It's the only Star Trek I've ever bothered to watch to the end (not including the first 6 movies).
That's interesting, what made you bail on the other series?
I've said this about a thousand times
but I have always believed that the Vulcans helped Earth clean up and rebuild after World War III. I don't see any other way Earth could have recovered so quickly. I mean, only like 50 years to recover from a global nuclear war? It should have taken a thousand, at least.
And, naturally, the Vulcans would want payback for services rendered, in a way. So they felt entitled to lord it over Earth for so long precisely because they helped Earth recover.
I've said this about a thousand times
I don't see any other way Earth could have recovered so quickly. I mean, only like 50 years to recover from a global nuclear war? It should have taken a thousand, at least.
And, naturally, the Vulcans would want payback for services rendered, in a way. So they felt entitled to lord it over Earth for so long precisely because they helped Earth recover.
It's hard for me to imagine the Vulcans "wanting payback", but they probably felt that if they were going to help Earth recover and become a spacefaring race then they had some responsibility for what the humans would do once they started venturing into the final frontier.
Given some of the things humans did end up getting up to, I have a hard time blaming them for that attitude.
That 'global nuclear war' could have been relatively localized. 600 million dead sounds (and is) horrendous, but it's still less than 10% of the human population today. Some high-yield hits on a few megalopolises probably could have achieved that.
And if the damage was relatively localized, recovery time could perhaps be measured in decades rather than centuries.
And if the damage was relatively localized, recovery time could perhaps be measured in decades rather than centuries.
Last edited:
I really like the idea of the Temporal Cold War, but I agree it wasn't terribly well executed and was often confusing (didn't Daniels have a line where the Xindi attack never happened in history? That never came up again). I think it's been said it was going to be a focus if they got renewed for Season 5, but alas...
I'm being pedantic here but 600 million is less than 0.1% of today's population.
I'm being pedantic also but the estimate today is about 8 billion (8,000,000,000)
ten percent of that would be 800 million (8,000,000,000 / 10 = 800,000,000)
600 million slots in here
one percent would be 80 million (8,000,000,000 / 100 = 80,000,000)and one tenth of one percent would be 8 million (8,000,000,000 / 1000 = 8,000,000)
So no, 600 million is not less than 0.1% of today's population (8 million)
Last edited:
Shit, I hadn’t had any coffee yet. My soggy brain read 6 million, not 600. I used to be good at math.
I found it very confusing and annoying.
I do enjoy ENT very much.
Now saying that, I do wish it had some things differently. Some of these things they WANTED to do, but ENT was plagued with executive meddling, or otherwise it was just impractical.
I wish the ship was more cramped, more like a submarine. Apparently they toyed with the idea but it was too difficult to film. I think it would have gone a long way to making it feel less advanced.
I wish the NX-01 looked a bit different. I actually like the design, but the comparison to the Akira is undeniable. Real world, the executives like the Akira and literally just wanted them to use that. Doug Drexler fought them enough to get what we got. I wish the ship was able to be a bit more visually distinctive and perhaps a bit closer to the TOS look. (I LOVE NX-01's warp nacelles, though)
I wish that they had embraced being lower tech and just immediately throw in "Phase Cannons" and "Photonic Torpedoes". Use lasers, rail guns, and nukes. Don't have the transporter yet... or maybe make it an EXTREMELY prototype technology.
The early D7 was kind of a mistake, but I wish they could have made convincing earlier ship designs all around.
Overall though, the show is great. I'm sad it only lasted 4 seasons. There was still so much more to do with it, but overall i'm happy we got it.
The hill I WILL die on is that... "These are the Voyages" was not a bad episode, nor was it a bad finale in context. It was not just the finale of ENT. It was the end of 20 years of continuous Trek on TV. It was the end of the 90's Trek-era. I think it did a fine job of closing that out, and it made perfect sense it would end where the whole era began, in TNG. My only change is that rather than a holodeck simulation, rework it to include Q giving a final judgement on humans. Q sent Riker to these events for Q reasons, which led Q to close it out with deciding that humans are actually alright.
Now saying that, I do wish it had some things differently. Some of these things they WANTED to do, but ENT was plagued with executive meddling, or otherwise it was just impractical.
I wish the ship was more cramped, more like a submarine. Apparently they toyed with the idea but it was too difficult to film. I think it would have gone a long way to making it feel less advanced.
I wish the NX-01 looked a bit different. I actually like the design, but the comparison to the Akira is undeniable. Real world, the executives like the Akira and literally just wanted them to use that. Doug Drexler fought them enough to get what we got. I wish the ship was able to be a bit more visually distinctive and perhaps a bit closer to the TOS look. (I LOVE NX-01's warp nacelles, though)
I wish that they had embraced being lower tech and just immediately throw in "Phase Cannons" and "Photonic Torpedoes". Use lasers, rail guns, and nukes. Don't have the transporter yet... or maybe make it an EXTREMELY prototype technology.
The early D7 was kind of a mistake, but I wish they could have made convincing earlier ship designs all around.
Overall though, the show is great. I'm sad it only lasted 4 seasons. There was still so much more to do with it, but overall i'm happy we got it.
The hill I WILL die on is that... "These are the Voyages" was not a bad episode, nor was it a bad finale in context. It was not just the finale of ENT. It was the end of 20 years of continuous Trek on TV. It was the end of the 90's Trek-era. I think it did a fine job of closing that out, and it made perfect sense it would end where the whole era began, in TNG. My only change is that rather than a holodeck simulation, rework it to include Q giving a final judgement on humans. Q sent Riker to these events for Q reasons, which led Q to close it out with deciding that humans are actually alright.
Sorry for the double post.
I've long theorized that the the worst of the nuclear war happened in Asia. It kind of explains why in the west, people are building warp colony ships a few years after Cochrane's flight, while ALSO the world is going through the "Post-Atomic Horror". I think the Eastern Coalition got hit hard with the nukes.
The west, especially the US, probably caught a few but overall the devastation there was more economic. Also just based on what see (or don't) in canon, i've always thought New York got cratered in the war. We see many other cities. We never see NYC. I think it's gone. I think it's also why San Francisco became so important... it managed to get through the war essentially unscathed and served as a rebuilding point for the west.
(Post-SNW showing us that Paris got hit, despite Paris very much still existing later on, my conjecture is that the world decided to rebuild a destroyed city as an international effort as part of the formation of United Earth. Rather than make a surviving city the capital, they rebuilt a destroyed one. They picked Paris, for whatever reason.)
Imperialists and colonialists always have rationalizations for their desire to dominate foreign cultures.
Bear in mind that the pilot episode of SNW retconned the World War III death toll. WW3 is now stated to have killed 30% of the planetary population -- so, a minimum of 2.4 billion people. We can probably speculate that that number included indirect deaths and included both the Second U.S. Civil War, the Eugenics Wars (which SNW implied that the lines between these conflicts are all fuzzy), and the Post-Atomic Horror so as to plausibly get the number of direct nuclear deaths and direct conflict deaths down if we want.
The nuclear exchange would almost have to be relatively limited in order for there to be even a 70% survival rate.
I cannot begin to express how much I object to finding an in-universe explanation for Star Trek's Eurocentric biases in its depiction of the future. If Star Trek is supposed to be an aspirational future, we should simply assume that Asia is just as well off as "the West" and that the proportion of Asians who survived is the same as anywhere else.
We have no idea whatsoever what the Eastern Coalition is, canonically. The canon has never once established that it was based in Asia. For all we know, "the Eastern Coalition" might have been faction based on the East Coast of North America after the Second U.S. Civil War.
Similar threads
