Roads not traveled....
- Thread starter Warped9
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Shoulda used my idea: http://www.geocities.com/comike1/synopsis.html
That's the gist of it really. There once was an impromptu Q&A session with Brannon Braga and that came up. I don't know whether its worth doing some digging over at Trekmovie.com for. The response was brief and stated that he and Berman wanted to base the whole of Enterprise's first season on Earth, while the ship was being built and Archer set about assembling his crew. Like you Number 6, I thought that sounded utterly fantastic and my jaw hit the floor that this was discarded. It's frankly a million times fresher an approach to starting a series off, especially in the wake of Voyager... wasting 7 years wanting to be back home. Audiences get little rewards here and there during the arc, as the characters backgrounds are fully fleshed out, then finally seeing the ship launch. Paramount Executives at that time vetoed the idea, for not being recognizably Star Trek enough. More or less the same thinking that got the NX-01 a transporter capable of getting humans around within the first 2 hours.
Maybe it's a feature-film mentality that everything has to be rushed together... wanting everything and wanting it all in place now. Something JJ Abrams' Star Trek suffers with to a rather large degree imo, while Christopher Nolan's Batman pictures didn't. Benefiting as they do from a leisurely pace... stripping away as many icons as possible, getting by on bare essentials.
My other favourite and Memory Alpha covers this in their main entry for Enterprise.
Not technically ENT, but there is Star Trek The Beginning written by Eric Jendresen and supported by Rick Berman. That story would've featured the Romulan War and Kirk's Great Grandfather (or a progenitor at any rate) called Tiberius Chase. My disappointment with this was its rival 22nd Century status and how such a major event in ENT's historic backyard couldn't involve Archer. Ironically Shran would've featured in the script, while the NX-01 was consigned to a vacation on Risa, of all places... Presumably during a whole fucking conflict with Earth in jeopardy no doubt! No, just no. A proper season long arc during a fifth season was the way to do the Romulan War any justice... Sad to think Rick Berman might've been witholding this event from Enterprise, for a pet project that was never going to work with what cinema audiences associate as being Star Trek. It really needed to be incorporated into the show, where fans were patiently waiting for that rather massive landmark in this prequel setting.
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Shameless self promoter will go far.Shoulda used my idea: http://www.geocities.com/comike1/synopsis.html
Yes someday... they should go down that road with an honest to goodness, boné fide TOS prequel... with concessions made to set redesigns where desirable. Alternate realities need not apply. It struck me while watching The Dark Knight for the first time on DVD yesterday (yes, I'm officially the last person on the planet to see it) prequels aren't evil and can work. The trick is subvert audience expectation, ironically exactly like the line used in that Batman movie. Wow, they just killed Gordon. They can't do that can they? Well it is reimagined, so maybe they can? Then an hour later, actually no... he's part of the ruse and he gets promotion to Commissioner, a final destination everybody with the slightest knowledge of Batman knows he arrives at. But within that moment, I totally bought into his assassination. For a Star Trek prequel to work, it needs to be that good. Where even hardcore fans aren't exactly sure whether history has just been rewritten. Those are the kinds of twists and turns I'd have preferred Star Trek to take, in a way that's a more satisfying and rewarding experience than a thousand imploded Vulcan homeworlds.
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I kinda like the idea Doug Drexler tossed around on his blog entry on the ECS Horizon:
I don't like that idea at all. The best thing about Enterprise is the Vulcans. From the initial help turning into distrust to the three part arc in season four they were great. If anything I would spend more time showing how a helping hand came to be distrusted and unappreciated.
Most of all, I would show early days of alien visitors on earth. How they were accepted, and how people accepted the idea that we are neither alone in the universe or the most advanced.
Most of all, I would show early days of alien visitors on earth. How they were accepted, and how people accepted the idea that we are neither alone in the universe or the most advanced.
I'm not sure it would have been more successful if it had done that. I mean, people were up in arms because it had a song instead of an instrumental theme and about the Vulcans being different.
For my taste, they rehashed already established ideas and concepts too often. On the other hand, if done well that can work very well. Blake's 7 probably did every Sci-Fi cliché but in very interesting and unexpected ways and it was one of the best series I've seen.
So, I would have liked a radical departure but I doubt the show would have been better received. And whether it would have 'worked' depends on the writers. At the end of the day, it's not really the concepts and ideas, but a well-crafted, compelling story that keeps the viewers' attention.
For my taste, they rehashed already established ideas and concepts too often. On the other hand, if done well that can work very well. Blake's 7 probably did every Sci-Fi cliché but in very interesting and unexpected ways and it was one of the best series I've seen.
So, I would have liked a radical departure but I doubt the show would have been better received. And whether it would have 'worked' depends on the writers. At the end of the day, it's not really the concepts and ideas, but a well-crafted, compelling story that keeps the viewers' attention.
I like parts of that.
Again, I feel like ENT had the greatest potential to be something different, while still being a sequel of sorts to TOS and TNG (I see DS9 and VGR as spinoffs). The devil, as usual, was in the details and the lack of follow-through on some really clever ideas.
First, no time travel. Just no. It's a prequel. Time travel demeans it. One might argue that time travel offers the potential that things might turn out differently than the history of TOS and TNG, but, honestly, did anyone think that would happen? No? Okay. So no time travel. There should be enough interesting stuff there without a TCW that had no plan.
Second, have a damn plan, even the most bare bones one. When you're writing a prequel, you've got to have at least some bare bones idea of where you're going and how you'd like it to bookend with what is supposed to come after.
If I'd made "Enterprise" (and yes, I'd have called it "Enterprise," with no "Star Trek" before it; to me that nicely says it's a prequel to "Star Trek" while also saying that it's a different show) I'd have set it a few years earlier - say 2145, to coincide with 100 years prior to the launch of the NCC-1701. I'd have still included the Warp Five program, which would involve the development of the first matter/antimatter engine. Humanity would just be dipping their toes into the waters of space, having only relatively slow ships. We would have contact with the Vulcans (who would neither be holding our hands nor holding us back) and maybe a few others, but the goal of this show would be to show most of those first contacts. Alien races, be they protagonists or antagonists, would not just be random throwaway races. They would bookend with what comes later.
I draw a lot of inspiration (and two characters in particular
) from what The Badger has done in his fanfic here; the main conflicts would be internal; human explorers vs. human soldiers vs civilians, as well as some bigotry (in the form of anti-alien Terra Prime) that we haven't quite gotten over yet. Again this show would let us see ourselves getting past these things.The Crew: A few changes - the crew would be entirely human. They operate for UESPA, a neo-NASA type organization that absorbed the world's militaries post WWII and directs human space exploration and policing. Their partner group is the UEMA, which operates the MACOs, essentially a type of Marines/Army.
Captain Jonathan April: UESPA. (Yes, April.) He would be older, a veteran space captain who'd previously commanded low-warp ships close to home. Unlike previous captains, he'd be British, and would leave a wife and several relatively young children at home with his pet beagle. He would still lead landing parties, and is still filled with wonder.
Commander Erika Hernandez: UESPA. First officer/pilot. She would share a pedastal console in the center of the bridge strikingly similar to that of the TOS Enterprise, and would sit in the Sulu seat. (Mayweather would sit beside her.) In summary: a firebrand, the "heart" of the lead trifecta.
Lt. Commander Trip Tucker: UESPA. More or less the same, except he now gets the Archer backstory of his father having worked on the original Warp Five project and has something of a chip on his shoulder about it. A southerner, he is constantly at war with his engines, and often underestimated by the crew. He is nonetheless charming, gentlemanly, and disciplined - the pragmatic, logical one of the trifecta.
Lt. Hoshi Sato: UESPA. Japanese translator and interpretor. A prodigy (and possible descendent of erstwile leftovers from the Eugenics Wars) she must translate alien transmissions herself in real time, and interpret them for the bridge crew, and then interpret back their comments for those they are communicating with.
Ensign Mayweather: UESPA. Ship's navigator and fire control officer, a "space boomer." Mayweather often offers a dissenting opinion when it comes to aliens, havng been more well travelled than any of the other crew. Gets more than two lines per episodes. Sits at Hernandez's right.
Major Murari Rao: Indian chief of the ship's MACO contingent. Doesn't really get along with the non-MACO members of the crew, but is in charge of tactical matters and ship's security. Rao is a practicing Hindu.
Dr. Polly Partridge: T'Pol surrogate. Brilliant but buxom civilian science officer assigned to the ship, often underestimated because of her beauty. A force to be reckoned with.
Dr. Jonas Locke: Curmudgeonly ship's doctor who has been married a few too many times and relies a bit too much on trendy alien medical treatments.
The Ship:
As much as I've grown to love the NX-01, here's another opportunity to be different. I'd have used a version of the ringship designed, probably inspired by the one created by BBS poster Cary L. Brown. The ship itself would be big - longer and taller than the 1701, but most of this would be the rings, which are two big warp coils and the main part of the warp drive, the other being two (what I call "solid state") nacelles. These are essentially field generators which would use Cary's idea of a static warp bubble (powered by M/AM0 that lowers the ship's mass to let impulse power push the ship. The ship's habitable volume would be small, and the crew would only number in the 50s. The ship would have to return to an Earth base (or Earth itself) at the end of each season for resupply. No real-time communications would exist.
Weapons would be quite different. No shields, and no polarized hull plating. The plating would offer some protection, but most protection would come from the ship's powerful navigation deflector and from defensive pulse cannons, which are used to shoot down the offensive weapon used by most races: torpedoes. Torpedoes are the "kill" weapon in this era; unlike later eras, it is virtually impossible to target a specific system for disabling with any chance of success. Torpedoes are nuclear in nature, and sub-light only, affording a fast ship a good chance of outmaneuvering them. (Tractor beams might also be utilized to deflect incoming torpedoes.)
The ship would be in an almost constant state of repair, and would show that man has yet to master all the nuances of space travel: weightlessness would still be present in some areas of the ship, elevators only go up and down, and there are no transporters. Shuttlepods are used for ship to planet transit.
The Pilot:
I actually really liked "Broken Bow," but I'd have eliminated the TCW elements, replacing the Suliban with Orions, Klaang and the Klingons with Shran and the Andorians. This would be Earth's first contact with the Andorians, who we learn are in an uneasy truce with the Vulcans that is threatening to escalate into an armed conflict. (The Vulcans, in this version, operate saucer-like spaceships, and will be tongue-in-cheekly said to have visited Earth in the 1950s.) By delivering Shran back to his people, Earth hopes to mediate the conflict and establish friendly relations with the aggressive Andorians. The Orion Syndicate, meanwhile, seems hell-bent on destabilizing the situation. What we don't know is that the Orions are acting as proxies for the Romulans, who are aware of their ancestry, and are seeking to destabilize the Vulcan power sphere in order to invade.
As the series progressed, the Enterprise would explore and seek out new worlds, but also deal with the tenuous political situation. The Orions seem to lurk behind every asteriod, and the Romulans also employ other agents, such as the Nausicaans and the Malurians, to do their bidding. We would be vaguely aware that someone was pulling everyone's strings, but would not know who for a long, long time, and Our Heroeswould not see them. Enterprise would make contacts with the Tellarites and other races, and would begin formenting treaties with their new friends. I'd like to see this all culminate with the formation of a NATO-type Coalition that would be a Federation precursor.
Eventually, we might see an altered version of the Xindi arc, with the Xindi replaced with the Romulans, and no time travel, in which the Enterprise seeks to uncover the identity of those coordinating the attacks against Earth and her allies. Someone would eventually see a Reman and believe that to be the true appearance of the Romulans.
I'm torn as to whether I'd like to see the Romulan War or not. I think maybe - but not in the type of Total War context that the Dominion War was. The Romulan War would be one of isolated engagements - the Romulans would target colonies and supply lanes at first, and skirmishes would be remote and brief, owing to the primitive nature of the weapons. Not only would their be little room for captives aboard Earth vessels, but Romulans would employ baiting tactics upon defeat, drawing in Earth ships to help their wounded ships in order to self-destruct and take the Earth ships with them. This would cause Earth to issue standing "kill" orders against Romulan ships, with no surrender. The Romulans, also, would employ kamikaze attacks, and neutron bombardments on enemy targets, culminating in the necessary development of the first defensive shields.
Eventually, the Coalition would come together to defeat the Romulans. I think a fitting way to end the series would be an epilogue of sorts, in which we see the end of the War, the creation of the Neutral Zone, and the forming of the Federation.
Of course, again, it's all in the implementation.
^^ There's a lot of this I like. So much of it seems more dynamic and more potentially interesting.
That bit about Jonothan April is a cute tip-of-the-hat. I'd perhaps suggest tweaking it a bit to reflect the purported original name to the character: instead of Jackson Archer make it Jackson April. It's a little less mainstream.
That bit about Jonothan April is a cute tip-of-the-hat. I'd perhaps suggest tweaking it a bit to reflect the purported original name to the character: instead of Jackson Archer make it Jackson April. It's a little less mainstream.
I know a lot of you didn't like the time travel in Ent. I always saw it as a bone thrown to people like me who watched the other 'future' series. In fact, I'm not sure how you write a prequel without some kind of reference to the future storyline. I know a couple of people who's first exposure to Trek was Ent and they had very different impressions of Daniels and what he preached than I did, primarily because I knew about the things he was talking about from the future and they didn't. I kinda liked having that inside track. I also liked having the crew stumble over stuff I already knew about, like cloaking devices, subspace corridors, holosuites, etc. I thought the time travel was OK.
I can definitely appreciate the "throwing the bone" intent; I just think that it didn't work and wasn't necessary. Moreover, VGR and the series before really, really, really overdid time travel for my taste. It's not something I wanted to see in the pilot of the show that was supposed to be different...
Still, at least your friends benefited from it.
Cloaking devices were the shark-jump for me. On TOS, Spock was practically agape that they existed, and that was 100 years later. For me, it's these things that made the show even more cosmetically like all the other series than it already was, and it was that aspect that I disliked.
I wanted a bare-bones feel.
It occurs to me that the powers that be missed a trick here. A line from Daniels about his adversaries in the TCW having supplied the Romulans with cloaking technology could have added a new dynamic to the story. Imagine Archer and his crew having to travel, in secrecy, to Romulus to destroy the manufacturing facilities and plans, making it look like an accident, tricking the Romulans into believing the system is too dangerous to use as yet.
And afterwards, Daniels wipes their memory of the event, and destroys any records and evidence.
OK, it's a bit clichéd, but it's better than the 'say nothing and hope no one notices' approach we so often got in the series.
Praetor, thanks for the link to my fanfic. I like your ideas, and may have to steal some of them
.I take it as a major complement when people put my Mary Sue into their own concepts!
Actually, that's exactly how I like to retcon it in my mind.
ENT was just a TNG-era holonovel fictionalizing the events of the 2150s, you know. If the Romulans didn't have a cloak, the audience wouldn't recognize them as being Romulan.
Praetor, thanks for the link to my fanfic. I like your ideas, and may have to steal some of them
I take it as a major complement when people put my Mary Sue into their own concepts!
It was meant in the most sincere form of flattery. You know how fond I am of your efforts. And, by all means steal away. Turnabout is fair play.
Interesting. I have a few unsubstantiated pieces:
* Strange New World was supposed to have a death; Berman granted a last minute stay of execution
* Fusion had a different guy playing Tolaris - I wonder if it would've been as creepy
* Moonves intefered to make season 3 "sexier" so Harbinger may not have happened as it was supposed to
* Twilight was supposed to have Porthos receiving neuropressure from T'Pol because it couldn't sleep
* Twilight wasn't supposed to have T'Pol become silent when Archer asked exactly how far their relationship evolved
* Trip and Mayweather were supposed to be buddies, instead of Trip and Reed
* Trip's name, I believe, was orginally Spike
* Jon Archer's name was originally Jackson
* T'Pol was supposed to be T'Pau, but they couldn't get the license
* Bakula was reportedly suggested by Hart, one of TPTB at the time; I don't think he was Braga's first choice
* Season 3, the crew believed, was the end; it was a miracle season 4 was made
* Sussman suggested that instead of have Trip/T'Pol there should be a triangle with Archer
* Coto wanted season 5 not to have Archer, thinking maybe he'd stay in HQ
* Bakula fought to get the seasons reduced; what if there had been more?
* Coto decided fans loved Kelby (another mistake by Coto); he was originally supposed to be the bad guy in Demons/Terra Prime
* Coto was supposed to pen the end episode, but Braga decided it was his in season 4; I think Coto and Braga had different ideas.
* Season 5 was supposed to feature an episode like the Cloud Miners (visiting that world). Editorial comment: WHAT WAS HE SMOKING?!
* Reeves/Stevens apparently had pretty free reign for The Forge and Observer Effect, but were less encouraged during the other episodes. I wonder what they would've done if they'd more free range
I'm sure there are more.
^I don't understand this, it's a rumor? Bakula ever said that?
are you sure of that? i thought it was the network decision.
Episodes reduced per season. I can see the confusion. (Sorry.) I'm certain; I read it in Star Trek magazine eons ago, but can't find it online. Bakula said he had a family (and so did everyone else) and went to TPTB to make it happen citing that pretty much everyone else had fewer episodes.
Maybe you're referring to season 4? The network did cut off the episodes in order to make ST: Enterprise viable for sale.
Maybe you're referring to season 4? The network did cut off the episodes in order to make ST: Enterprise viable for sale.
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