If you don't like GhoulBen's reviews, then why are you here?
TheGodBen Revisits Enterprise
- Thread starter TheGodBen
- Start date
A better grasp? It's not Finnegans Wake!
Naw, I'll hang out awhile... Thanks.
Feel free. 
And feel free to make specific complaints about what I say if you wish, it normally doesn't bother me unless you make fun of my stature or repeatedly claim that I hate something which I actually like. I used to take more time to respond to people who disagreed with me back in the Voyager thread, but unfortuneately I'm much busier now. 
And feel free to make specific complaints about what I say if you wish, it normally doesn't bother me unless you make fun of my stature or repeatedly claim that I hate something which I actually like. I used to take more time to respond to people who disagreed with me back in the Voyager thread, but unfortuneately I'm much busier now.
Well, Cat in a blender...
I guess in some respect I consider myself philosophically opposed to beating a dead horse, and then coming back 4 years later and picking at it’s bones. The show wasn’t very good, we get it. It failed, it was cancelled, and it may have almost killed a franchise. I don’t respect this thread as a viable exploration of that show after the fact. Especially in a manner that seems pointless, without provoking thought or insight, and just a bit cruel. YES, I WILL be the guy to say: HEY, they tried something. They focused a lot of time and energy, inspiration and creativity, even putting their careers on the line in a industry that rarely forgives failure, to bring us something they thought we’d want to see… and as an interesting avenue to explore as a creative endeavor in a sci-fi concept already 30 something years old at the time. It was a bold choice, but they did it for us. To gave us a Star Trek we’d never seen before, while still being that familiar universe we found comfort in. And, let me acknowledge that I’ll be the first to lambaste it for its shortcomings, redundancies, and occasional sluggishness. Truth is I was pissed more than most when it failed to capture what its concept had so much promise to deliver. My spankings have left marks all thru these forums in my short time here… but you know what? It’s over; the show lives only in reruns now. And to pick it down, episode-by-episode, in such a surface level and insolent manner does no one any favor, other than that of its myopic postmaster, as any less than what I regard to be egocentric masturbation. To a personal degree on the point of Mr. Ghoul, of whom I speak here: what I feel he aims to do is break each episode down to a level that is pure nitpickery. Barely a word, but also a tired practice among this community, and let’s face it, is why Trek was going down hill. It’s our fault; we did this… because Trek’s fan base has been, for a long time, a bitter and sad collection of intellectual bullies and socially inept high-horsers, myself included. And I’m irritated that our poignant legacy is being handed down to the continuing generations of Trekkers. GhoulBen’s utter disregard for Enterprise’s creators, producers, writers and actors sinks to a level of seriously dumb jokes and arrogant commentary, which does NOT serve as a review of a show that does warrant a bit more consideration than what it’s given. And that’s that aspect I find most appalling. I’m all for criticism, constructive or otherwise, a dumb joke at the expense of Treks’ perceived failings is something I’m plenty guilty of, but not in this format. Not as a constant belligerent volley. In his passion to tear apart the trivial aspects of this imperfect show, I feel Mr. Ghoul overlooks many deeper perceptions. Offering, what I believe to be, nothing close to an honest evaluation. Furthermore, in taking on the role of critic, Mr. Ghoul opens himself up to similar analysis (as do I). He is not exempt when it comes to answering for his own critical failings as one may see them, and no one should be denied the opportunity to do so, no matter who originated the thread. If I want to carry on reading Mr. Ghouls musings and continuously offer dispute in comment, it is my right to do so, regardless of others offense.
Ok, was Enterprise high art? No, but none of Trek really was. Was it hokey at times? Yup. Was it unnecessarily and unashamedly titillating? Sure. Was continuity given less than moderate thought on a few occasions? Yes... Did it suck? Kinda… but so what? Because what we loved was the fundamental message that existed beneath the surface of numerous episodes. It attempted to challenge the viewer with highly conceptual story telling. Star Trek, in all it’s forms, but most notably Enterprise, did raise issues about man’s pubescent endeavors to explore space as an even more succinct allegory than other Trek series’ for what it means to be human, including our failings and our strengths in our current struggle to understand our function as a species. And to continually make strides to better ourselves beyond what we are. Trek has always been more about our present than it ever was about our future, and Star Trek: Enterprise made many great efforts to continue that thread. And therefore, I believe it deserves a more thoughtful critique than what its been given in Mr. Ghouls particular revistings.
What the fuck? If you don't like GodBen's reviews, quit bitching and don't click the thread. I can't believe you just suggested that someone else should take over this thread. Honestly, in my two years on this board I have rarely seen anyone making a remark that stupid and rude. Did you actually expect him to say "Well, maybe you're right. I'll stop doing these reviews"? Personally, I think you are way off with your assumption that GodBen doesn't have a good grasp on Enterprise. To me his review threads are easily the funniest, most entertaining, most insightful and, above all else, most original thing on the Trek BBS.
(And no, I'm not one of GodBen's duals ...
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Seriously, I don't think you have any grasp on GodBen's reviews. And I don't say that just to tease you. It's my honest conviction that you are misunderstanding a lot of what he is saying here. He isn't just taking apart the series or nitpicking the episodes. And he is definitely not here just to tell you how much he hates Enterprise. Believe me, I know the guy from his great thread in the Voyager forum and other posts all over the board.
I don't think FlapJoy not only doesn't understand these reviews, but the whole point of a web forum in general.
It is literally a 'forum' for discussion of opinions and beliefs. If we all just sat around saying: "oh man, all Star Trek is pretty great - through the ups and downs, so lets not talk about these ups and downs either", this forum would have closed down years ago.
ghoulBen just a couple of notes..
we see him evolve to a degree through star trek itself.
he actually started out being pretty emotional.
goes into a phase of denying emotions.
then becomes somewhat more relaxed.
then at the start of the movie he tries to rid all emotions only to see it as a mistake for him after the meld with vger.
while yeah tolaris is shown to be a snake (maybe an ancestor of tpring??
) we also see more honorable characters like kov.
spock actually is a little more complex .
we see him evolve to a degree through star trek itself.
he actually started out being pretty emotional.
goes into a phase of denying emotions.
then becomes somewhat more relaxed.
then at the start of the movie he tries to rid all emotions only to see it as a mistake for him after the meld with vger.
while yeah tolaris is shown to be a snake (maybe an ancestor of tpring??
) we also see more honorable characters like kov.
Firstly, let me just thank you for taking the time to explain your position, I'm sure it took much time to write. I don't agree with much of what you say and I think you have the wrong opinion of me and what I'm trying to do, but it is nice to get some feedback.
That's not my intention at all, I quite like Enterprise and think it was a bad decision to cancel it. I try to give the show praise when it is due, but I also criticise it for what I consider to be its mistakes. Maybe I focus more time on the criticisms than on the positive aspects, but that is human nature; when I worked in a call centre we were continuously reminded that a person is 8-12 times more likely to relay a negative customer experience to their friends than a positive one.
I thought it was pretty good, except for season 2. My current rating for the show is 5.5/10, and as I've repeatedly said in the Voyager thread, I don't inflate the numbers to make 6 or 7 be average. 5 is average in my scale, and as such I have given Enterprise an above average score. So far.
I'm doing this partly because I was asked to do it. I started the Voyager thread because I didn't like the show and I felt I should give the show a fair chance by reviewing it and assigning scores for each episode. I was doing it for myself and I started a thread on it in case other people were interested in my project. They were, and it became very popular, it had over 90,000 views the last time I checked. By the time I was finished the first season of that show, way back in March, people were already asking if I could do the same type of thread for Enterprise, and since I was interested in watching Enterprise again I agreed to do so. I assume that those people wanted me to continue with the snarky comments, recurring in-jokes (Dr Kenneth H. Shmully, M.D.) and bizarre characterisation of the writing staff. And even if they don't then I still find it funny.
They only did it for me if the Ben in my name stands for Benjamin Franklins, but my real fake name is The Godfrey Steven Benn.
I'm sure that many people on the writing and production staff loved Star Trek dearly, but it wasn't a volunteer effort, they had jobs and they were being paid for their work. If I'm being paid to do a job and I make mistakes or do some poor quality work then I deserve to be criticised for it, and when my bosses have criticised some aspect of my performance in the past I didn't claim that I deserved special treatment because I bothered to show up.
Okay then, now it is my turn.
Is that when you fantasise about doing it with a female version of yourself?
Because I did that once and it didn't work; I just don't like short women.Am I egocentric? The persona I put on around other people certainly is, but whether that is the real me is up to you to decide.
Nope. As anyone who follows my Voyager reviews knows, I don't pick apart an episode if I find it entertaining enough to distract me from its shortcomings, I only nitpick when I find the episode to be too dull to stop me from thinking.
The West Wing's ratings didn't fall because the fans were too nit-picky, they fell because its creator left the show and the style of the show changed. It may have rediscovered its way again in seasons 6&7, but it was too late to save the show.
Frasier's ratings didn't fall because the fans were too nit-picky, they fell because Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd left the writing staff and the style of the show changed. It may have rediscovered its way again in season 11 when they returned, but it was too late to save the show.
Star Trek's ratings didn't decline because the fans were too nit-picky, they fell because Michael Piller left, Jeri Taylor left, Ira Steven Behr left, Hans Beimler left, Rene Echevarria left, Ron Moore left and Joe Menosky left. The writing staff assembled on TNG, the heyday Trek on television, fragmented between DS9 and Voyager and one by one they all started to leave. By the time of Enterprise the only two to stick around were B&B, so the style of the writing was different from what fans loved on TNG. I'm not saying it was necessarily bad, but it was different from what the audience was used to.
Back in the Voyager thread I did some comical takes on Voyager creative meetings, and I made some very bizarre decisions in terms of characterisation. Joe Menosky was my favourite, I turned him into a pervy freak who wanted to be intimate with Braga, as per this example.
But, in the final writers tally, this is where Menosky ended up:
Second place with a score of 5.529/10, right after Michael Piller whom I admire greatly. Just because I make fun of the writing and production staff doesn't mean that I don't treat them fairly when it comes to scoring their episodes, it is just a little fun I'm having. It is not intended to cause offence, I'm just being playful. If you don't like that then that's fine, we don't all share the same sense of humour, but please accept the fact that my sense of humour is different from yours and you have no right to judge me for it.
It is my opinion, and as Jammer says, "Feel free to agree, disagree or punch your computer screen" but please don't claim that I don't have a right to have and express an opinion.
And I'm not trying to tear the show apart, I've given it a positive rating thus far.
Agreed in principle, you can certainly criticise me for the things that I say or do, but you cannot criticise me for doing things which I do not do, such as your claim that I'm giving a "constant belligerent volley". I've had a major dispute with someone on this board a few months ago for doing exactly that, he made claims that I being critical towards things which I wasn't, and when I pointed out otherwise he accused me of lying. So long as you don't do things like that then you're perfectly welcome here, just keep your criticism aimed towards things that I actually do.
I think Enterprise was a TV show, so I'm going to judge it as I would any other TV show.
There was that time in the Voyager thread where someone criticised my review of Drone and I jokingly left, but people took me seriously and when I came back after the weekend there was a page of people asking me to come back. I was almost going to do it again this time, but I feared a different outcome.
Permission to use as my new sig?
Yup, that's Praetor. It's a pity I concocted that story about him getting a job and not having much time for the board, I could use some extra defence right now.(And no, I'm not one of GodBen's duals ...
Yeah, purge was probably the wrong word, I was just trying to say that Spock and Tuvok really did seem to buy into the notion that they should not express emotion whereas T'Pol seems to be more open to it, which is why she is scared of it. I didn't like it the first time round, but now I think it was an interesting area to explore with a Vulcan.ghoulBen just a couple of notes..
spock actually is a little more complex .
we see him evolve to a degree through star trek itself.
he actually started out being pretty emotional.
goes into a phase of denying emotions.
then becomes somewhat more relaxed.
then at the start of the movie he tries to rid all emotions only to see it as a mistake for him after the meld with vger.
while yeah tolaris is shown to be a snake (maybe an ancestor of tpring??
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Just read the last couple of pages. I was getting all ready to say something but TGB's very eloquent post pretty much says it all.
Your Voyager thread was a riot, and this newer Enterprise thread is just as fascinating. Stop it at your peril.
Which episode are we on then?
When I first watched Fusion it I hurled. I just couldn't take T'Pol's emotional exploits seriously at the time. I agree that over the course of the series, it became more of a recurring theme, so in retrospect the episode is a little more like character building rather than assassination. However, T'Pol's 'love' interest was far too annoying.
Your Voyager thread was a riot, and this newer Enterprise thread is just as fascinating. Stop it at your peril.
Which episode are we on then?
When I first watched Fusion it I hurled. I just couldn't take T'Pol's emotional exploits seriously at the time. I agree that over the course of the series, it became more of a recurring theme, so in retrospect the episode is a little more like character building rather than assassination. However, T'Pol's 'love' interest was far too annoying.
Star Trek XI disagrees
I should point out that Warbird is not a Romulan ship class. More likely, it's used to refer to all Romulan ships, but it's hard to say. In TNG, the Romulans use D'Deridex class warships (or warbirds). The ships in Balance of Terror were never identified. To nitpick about this is to nitpick over nothing.
Oh crap!I would love to know what MikeSussman has to say about this.Why did you have to tell me that he's a member? Now I'm going to feel awkward in case he reads the thread and I'll have to rate all his episodes with 5 stars. And I'll have to drop the series of jokes I had planned about his mother.
Because he's a member, we got this gem of a thread: link
I was going to post it as part of my running commentary of what the board was like back when the episodes originally aired (which, for me, can't start until the second season), but I'll post this early.
EDIT: I shoould add, Sussman can take a joke (if he even still reads these fora) so don't worry too much about offending him.
Dammit, why do people insist on nitpicking my nitpick?!
And, to be fair, if we didn't nitpick over the nothings on Star Trek, there'd probably be far less activity on this board.
Well, FlapJoy, I disagree with the point of your post, and object to the spirit of it.
I'm sure TheGhoulBen will not be intimidated, but I will be sure to actively and vocally support this thread in the future just to do what I can to be sure your mean-spirited and unwarranted jibes have no effect. Carry on
Yes, that's what I get to do too, right? Thanks
Naw, it didn't take that long.
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You mean this thread isn't to discuss my qualities as a person?Which episode are we on then?
Rogue Planet (*)
To be honest, this episode is a little upsetting. It starts out well; there's the interesting concept of a rogue planet, there's some aliens who (at first) are friendly and inviting, and there's even some interesting dialogue that reminded me of DS9, when the characters would talk like people do rather than as a means to move the plot forward.
The problem is that there's a plot to move forward, and it moves forward in the slowest and least interesting way possible. The story about the beautiful woman/giant slug isn't interesting, the fact that it takes on the form of a fictional character Archer doesn't remember isn't interesting, the fact that the Eska refuse to stop hunting it isn't interesting. By the time that it ended it felt like I had been watching it for 70 minutes instead of 45. This is the sort of episode which could easily have been done on any of the other Trek series, and a point has been deducted for that.
And why does a rogue planet seem to have light shining on it from a moon? One of the few interesting things about this episode was the rogue planet itself, and it seems that the production people couldn't even get that right.
Disappearing Aliens: 5
Captain Redshirt: 8
Wow, if I had been a writer I would have been scared to come back to the board after reading some of that. Kudos to him for trying.So I can still post a photo-shopped picture of him in a dress come Bounty?
What about the picture of Braga in a bikini come TATV?I just remembered that I gave him a 5-star review in Author, Author, so that should make us cool, right?
I agree with that - the first time I tried to watch "Broken Bow", I was put off my Archer's gung-ho mentality, among other things; but recently when I gave it another chance, I liked it better, and actually found the flaws of the human crew a refreshing change after the blandness of most of the Voyager (and TNG) crew. It's great to see some conflict between crewmembers.
But the only problem is, the series would be much more engaging if a more charismatic and compelling actor was playing Archer. Archer is a jerk, but things would be so much different if he was a jerk with more charm and presence, you know?
I disagree. I liked the fact that they exposed all the suspicions, paranoia and prejudice among the crew, so early on. If only Voyager did anything like that, instead of making everyone cuddly and BFF after 2 days spent together.As somebody with a mathematically oriented brain who has incredible difficulty in learning new languages, I think it's safe for me to claim that the two are not closely related.
Strange New World (**½)
It's nice to see a crew that is excited about a simple little thing like an Earth-type planet, it's the fun little things like that which make the first half of this episode endearing. I also liked the inclusion of some lower-decks characters, at the time that this episode first aired it made me feel excited that Enterprise might include a large array of secondary characters on the ship, but it didn't seem to go that way in the long run.
Then some weird things start to happen with some rock-men and the episode introduces us to an intriguing mystery. Once we learn the truth of what is going on, that the entire away team is having a bad trip, it's still an interesting story and probably all the better for not putting the crew into a forced suspense scenario. Then begins the forced suspense scenario. If the away-team don't inject themselves with a life-saving medicine then THEY WILL DIE!!!
I suppose crewman Cutler might die, but I think the other three are probably safe due to some SAG rule.
This is an interesting scenario that the crew is in and I can see plenty of potential with this set-up, so it is upsetting that the best the writers could come up with is Trip shouting for fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, when this episode first aired I was so repulsed by the Trip character that I wanted him to be killed off all the way into the second season, which is the point when I started to tolerate him again. At a point when the audience is still unsure of who these characters are, the last thing that should have been done was an episode where their worst vices are magnified.
I disliked both Archer and Trip right after I started watching "Broken Bow" for the first time, but then something happened after I watched the second time - I think it might be the fact that I watched Voyager in the meantime, which 1) might have lowered my standards
and 2) made me sick and tired of the bland characters who get on perfectly together. I figure, it is better to have characters annoy you, than leave you indifferent, you know? Besides, it might be a good idea to make some characters look like jerks early on, and then have them melt and show their more sympathetic side... Lost did that with several of them (Sawyer, Jin...) I wonder if that's where Trip is headed? I have a feeling it is... I was also happy that he survived, not because I cared about him - we didn't even know the guy - but because killing off a redshirt would have been the oldest, most worn out Trek cliche.
There is just one problem with this episode that prevents it from being stronger: it is a weekly TV series, and Trip, T'Pol and Mayweather are regular cast members. Had it been a movie, it could have been a very dark, very suspenseful story of paranoia and misunderstanding, with a Pitch Black-like atmosphere. But, since we knew from the start that T'Pol and Trip would not kill each other, that everything would turn out right in the end, and that they and Mayweather would survive - and therefore there just couldn't be any real suspense. The only thing we did not know is whether the two redshirts would survive.
Y'know this is very interesting and I really like this take on the episode. I just watched it this week and will be posting a review in my thread, but I absolutely hated it.
A lot of the aspects of this episode were poor, but what you talk about brings about a more intriguing thought about it.
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