• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Captain Archer - lame

Volkanismo

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Red Shirt
What's wrong with this guy? He always puts his unadulterated trust in total strangers, letting them on his ship or jumping at the first sign of hospitality like an overexcited puppy just to be betrayed and get his arse kicked the very next moment. I love the series, but this naivity is just nonsense in deep space, especially from a captain of a Starfleet vessel. He should never have made it to captain with this kind of lame attitude.
 
Um, NX-01 crew's mission -- and that includes the captain -- was to make first contact with other species.

Firing a warning shot across the aliens' bow would not have been helpful.
 
There's a plethora of tone variants to be chosen between firing a warning shot and letting total strangers on a ship, thus eventually compromising the mission.
 
There's a plethora of tone variants to be chosen between firing a warning shot and letting total strangers on a ship, thus eventually compromising the mission.
Well, if the humans had gone to the aliens' ship, would you be griping about how stupid the aliens were?
 
Well lets face it, Archer was kind of a dumbass before season three... :alienblush:
He was definitely no genius.

I just think making first contact is going to be pretty hard to achieve if you insist on taking your cues from The Three Little Pigs.
 
I think Archer set the record for number of times a Starfleet captain was captured. He was an awful fighter too. Jeez, Chekov coulda kicked his butt!!
 
What I didn't care about with Archer was he was a daddy's boy. I never bought that he was the best of the best, worthy of captaining the NX-01. He lacked gravitas.

For some of that I chalk up to Bakula's stiff, uncomfortable performance. But also I think the writer's never had enough of an idea of who or what Archer should be as a character. One of the few interesting or at least different things about him was his bias against the Vulcans. I wish they had actually let him be more biased and then have the Vulcan Reformation arc show how he changed.

But the writers didn't even give Archer that edge, because they made the Vulcans real pricks for the most part, justifying Archer's dislike/discomfort, or suspicions.

I liked the darker take on the character in Season 3, his best season. In Season 4, the stories were better but I think character development for most of the characters in the final season was sacrificed for the plots.
 
:guffaw: to all of above. As a latecomer to ENT, didn't warm to Archer initially and abandoned series. Have since rewatched from season1-4, and yeah, he does make dumb/lame decisions. But I've grown to love him for it. Seeing him in trek universe context now, think of him as the proto-Kirk. He learned the hard lessons Kirk (to an extent), Picard and Sisko knew to avoid.
 
There's a plethora of tone variants to be chosen between firing a warning shot and letting total strangers on a ship, thus eventually compromising the mission.
Well, if the humans had gone to the aliens' ship, would you be griping about how stupid the aliens were?

If I saw that those aliens were taken advantage of several times before, without introducing some kind of safe first contact procedure, yes. Allegedly, T'Pol is on that ship to bring reason and logic to a human expedition. Why hasn't she proposed such procedure? It simply doesn't make sense.
 
Why hasn't she proposed such procedure? It simply doesn't make sense.
Humans should have followed Vulcan first contact protocols, at least roughly, until they developed their own.

You cannot just knock on every door you run into. That's ludicrous.
 
Archer is a terrible Captain and my least favourite character on Enterprise. He just seemed like a bumbling fool to begin with, stumbling into things and somehow outwitting alien species that have far more experience and knowledge of life in space. He was an awful fighter, even though he seemed to pick a fight at the drop of a hat.

He only started to get semi-interesting in S4, when he had gone through hell, but even then Scott Bakula's performance never seemed all that great IMO.

Enterprise Cast Preference:
1. Tucker - A very human character, with intelligence, wit and charm
2. T'Pol - A bit pouty, but a good foil for Tucker
3. Sato - The inexperienced rookie, often overwhelmed, but always trying
4. Phlox - Should have made him more eccentric and wierd though
5. Mayweather - He didn't do a damn thing, but he was good to look at
6. Porthos - Awww puppy!
7. Reed - A bit too stiff and stereotypical "British" for me
8. Archer - See above
 
HAHAHAHAHAHA! This thread just made my day, the whole discussion about how many times Archer was captured is fantastic!

By the way, once we've exercised our wit and stated that Archer is very simply an idiot, let's say anyway that this was the first Starfleet mission in deep space. It can be compared to Columbus' voyage to the Indies, Marco Polo's one to China and so forth, only x10000 as to the importance of the whole thing. It can be easily understood thus that Archer was pretty much excited at the thought of leading that historic mission, and was also naive and inexperienced.

Of course, the whole thing simply proved to be too much for him and he ended up being taken prisoner and hostage a ton of times while becoming the laughing stock of the whole quadrant. I particularly love how he meets new, uninteresting cargo ships, he puts on a silly smile, narrows his eyes and says "We're on a mission of exploration, we come from Earth, we'd be interested in getting to know you" and the other is like "Man I'm in the middle of something just bugger off will you?"
 
I think Archer set the record for number of times a Starfleet captain was captured. He was an awful fighter too. Jeez, Chekov coulda kicked his butt!!
28 times, that's probably a record.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ent.htm

picard_facepalm.jpg


Humans should have followed Vulcan first contact protocols, at least roughly, until they developed their own.

You cannot just knock on every door you run into. That's ludicrous.

Agreed.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! This thread just made my day, the whole discussion about how many times Archer was captured is fantastic!

By the way, once we've exercised our wit and stated that Archer is very simply an idiot, let's say anyway that this was the first Starfleet mission in deep space. It can be compared to Columbus' voyage to the Indies, Marco Polo's one to China and so forth, only x10000 as to the importance of the whole thing. It can be easily understood thus that Archer was pretty much excited at the thought of leading that historic mission, and was also naive and inexperienced.

Of course, the whole thing simply proved to be too much for him and he ended up being taken prisoner and hostage a ton of times while becoming the laughing stock of the whole quadrant. I particularly love how he meets new, uninteresting cargo ships, he puts on a silly smile, narrows his eyes and says "We're on a mission of exploration, we come from Earth, we'd be interested in getting to know you" and the other is like "Man I'm in the middle of something just bugger off will you?"

I understand why the writers wanted to depict him as a naive, enthusiastic character for the first few times, but after a while, he should have grown into a more mature, serious character, something which he went through far too late, around the end of Season 3. But even after his "dark" period, he insisted on leading the missions or going alone to personally kick some alien butt, which makes him sort of an Indiana Jones in space.
 
I always felt that Archer was on the dense side. Never listened to any advice, considered every alien (with the exception of Vulcans) a friend and thinks that the mention of being from earth meant something special. Besides, how can you take a man seriously who feeds his dog cheese:wtf:.
 
He is much better if you ignore a few early episodes, such as ANIS. But, when I watch ANIS I'm not thinking "How stupid is Archer?" I'm thinking "How stupid are these writers?" I think that by the third episodes the Klingons should have eaten Porthos. It would have been a good way to build animosity between Archer and Klingons, and it would have prevented ANIS.
 
I think Archer set the record for number of times a Starfleet captain was captured. He was an awful fighter too. Jeez, Chekov coulda kicked his butt!!
28 times, that's probably a record.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ent.htm


That is amazing that Archer was captured 28 times, Kirk was maybe 10 times and he was on a 5 year mission:lol:

One thing that is interesting is the ratings chart in your link. It's amazing that the ratings in the middle of season four were higher than at any time in the shows history and they cancelled the show anyway.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top