Archer and TOS

[payndz201]

In fact Archer will also become President of the Federation.

What a horribly, horribly depressing thought. From what we saw of Archer in ENT, I wouldn't put the man in charge of a whelk stall, never mind a political body that affects the lives of millions, even billions.

Though it has to be said that in (petulant) attitude, (sulky) facial expression and (in)competence, he does rather resemble a certain president of the present day. And I'm not talking about Ahmadinejad.

 

[Kryton]

Porthos for Vice President!

Cheese for everyone! Yay!

 

[3D Master]

Well, one has to interpret the TOS "atomic weapons" line about the Earth-Romulan War in some logical fashion. Now that ENT has fleshed out what Earth vessel weapons were like at the time of the war or at least just before, the only rational explanation that comes to many minds is that---for some reasons unrevealed in canon---Starfleet and allied weapons weren't particuarly effective against Romulan fleets and ships at some stage in the conflict and nuclear devices had to be resurrected and used.

Which doesn't make any sense, as about everything of Enterprise. One of the many, many, many reasons why I've said we should just toss it out the window.

 

[SFRabid]

That's ridiculous. A nuclear explosion and a matter/anti-matter explosion produce the same energies; the m/a-m just far, far, far more of it, for far, far, far less material. ...

Wow. That shows how far behind I am. We never covered anti-matter explosions in physics. I didn't not know we could even test anti-matter explosions to see what type of output they have. By the way, where did our present day scientists come up with anti-matter?

We've encountered anti-matter and their annihilation decades ago. We can create it in particle accelerators, and there are also natural positron radiators around.

And though we have reached a point where we can create anti-protons, optimal conversion to anti-hidrogon would allow us to create a gram of anti-hydrogen in about 2 billion years. Since current science can only keep anti-hidrogen about 10 seconds before it annihilates we are still a long long way from being able to study an anti-matter bomb and how exploding anti-matter affects matter as opposed to a regular neuclear explosion.

 

[SFRabid]

Which doesn't make any sense, as about everything of Enterprise. One of the many, many, many reasons why I've said we should just toss it out the window.

Half of TOS does not make sense and canon violations started around episode 3 of TOS. Are you willing to toss it out?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

In fact Archer will also become President of the Federation.

What a horribly, horribly depressing thought.

I'm quite cheered by it. I like Archer.

One of the many, many, many reasons why I've said we should just toss it out the window.

Say what you like - the answer is still "No."

I had to pretend Enterprise took place in an alternate universe to enjoy it at all.

I did something similar.

I pretended "Enterprise" and TOS and all of the rest of "Star Trek" was just a bunch of TV shows and movies and not real at all.

Not only could I enjoy "Enterprise" more that way, but the rest of Trek as well.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I pretended "Enterprise" and TOS and all of the rest of "Star Trek" was just a bunch of TV shows and movies and not real at all.

Not only could I enjoy "Enterprise" more that way, but the rest of Trek as well.

A TV show???? That's just crazy talk!

 

[Tyson]

A big part of what made Star Trek cool is the continuity between shows and movies. Sure, it wasn't always perfect, but it made the various things that happened (Klingons blasting the fuck out of DS9, etc) more interesting. Nobody should expect continuity to be absolutely perfect in TOS because it was still very formative, and there's not much there that can't be easily explained or ignored.

Enterprise was a poorly written, poorly acted show with weak characters and equally lame stories most of the time. As a prequel to TOS, it doesn't work visually or audibly. The last season was a good try at trying to fix the lame storytelling, but by that point the damage had been done; who cares about fighting the Romulans when they have Voyager's technology and the characters are all morons? I'm saying this as someone who tried desperately to get into it, and I still like Scott Bakula since I've actually seen him act well in other things. This show was made very recently, there is no excuse for that level of inconsistency in this day and age- especially when the only people left watching are far more likely to notice that kind of thing.

Yes, you can sit around and explain away all the discrepancies between ENT and what we know of that era from the other shows/movies, but there's a point where you just stop and go "You know what? This is silly and unconvincing." Artistic license is one thing, but it's clear right from the start that they weren't even going to try and make it work as a prequel on anything more than a very superficial "look, the fans will appreciate that one panel in the back that sort of looks TOSish." level.

Of course, we can be snarky assholes to the folks that appreciate the connections between the various Star Trek productions, going "it's just a TV show!" when we all know damn well that's the case. That doesn't change the fact that continuity is a vital part of Star Trek's identity and we would do well to remember that it's not the only show that's true of.

All that said, I tend to pretend that ENT never happened too; it was just a piss-weak program on the same level of stupidity as the latter seasons of Stargate, only without the inappropriate self-depreciating humor to keep me moderately interested.

 

[cooleddie74]

Well, one has to interpret the TOS "atomic weapons" line about the Earth-Romulan War in some logical fashion. Now that ENT has fleshed out what Earth vessel weapons were like at the time of the war or at least just before, the only rational explanation that comes to many minds is that---for some reasons unrevealed in canon---Starfleet and allied weapons weren't particuarly effective against Romulan fleets and ships at some stage in the conflict and nuclear devices had to be resurrected and used.

Which doesn't make any sense, as about everything of Enterprise. One of the many, many, many reasons why I've said we should just toss it out the window.

Problem is, you'd have to do the same with a LOT of contradictory stuff in the entire franchise and be left with a very hollowed-out series of shows and films.

 

[Ronald Held]

Archer Might have changed for the better by the time he became President of the Federation.

 

[3D Master]

Wow. That shows how far behind I am. We never covered anti-matter explosions in physics. I didn't not know we could even test anti-matter explosions to see what type of output they have. By the way, where did our present day scientists come up with anti-matter?

We've encountered anti-matter and their annihilation decades ago. We can create it in particle accelerators, and there are also natural positron radiators around.

And though we have reached a point where we can create anti-protons, optimal conversion to anti-hidrogon would allow us to create a gram of anti-hydrogen in about 2 billion years. Since current science can only keep anti-hidrogen about 10 seconds before it annihilates we are still a long long way from being able to study an anti-matter bomb and how exploding anti-matter affects matter as opposed to a regular neuclear explosion.

Of course not. An anti-matter bomb is simply a trillions and more times the annihilation of 1 particle. The moment you know what happens with one particle you know what happens to all of them when put a lot of them together to form a bomb.

A big part of what made Star Trek cool is the continuity between shows and movies. Sure, it wasn't always perfect, but it made the various things that happened (Klingons blasting the fuck out of DS9, etc) more interesting. Nobody should expect continuity to be absolutely perfect in TOS because it was still very formative, and there's not much there that can't be easily explained or ignored.

Enterprise was a poorly written, poorly acted show with weak characters and equally lame stories most of the time. As a prequel to TOS, it doesn't work visually or audibly. The last season was a good try at trying to fix the lame storytelling, but by that point the damage had been done; who cares about fighting the Romulans when they have Voyager's technology and the characters are all morons? I'm saying this as someone who tried desperately to get into it, and I still like Scott Bakula since I've actually seen him act well in other things. This show was made very recently, there is no excuse for that level of inconsistency in this day and age- especially when the only people left watching are far more likely to notice that kind of thing.

Yes, you can sit around and explain away all the discrepancies between ENT and what we know of that era from the other shows/movies, but there's a point where you just stop and go "You know what? This is silly and unconvincing." Artistic license is one thing, but it's clear right from the start that they weren't even going to try and make it work as a prequel on anything more than a very superficial "look, the fans will appreciate that one panel in the back that sort of looks TOSish." level.

Of course, we can be snarky assholes to the folks that appreciate the connections between the various Star Trek productions, going "it's just a TV show!" when we all know damn well that's the case. That doesn't change the fact that continuity is a vital part of Star Trek's identity and we would do well to remember that it's not the only show that's true of.

All that said, I tend to pretend that ENT never happened too; it was just a piss-weak program on the same level of stupidity as the latter seasons of Stargate, only without the inappropriate self-depreciating humor to keep me moderately interested.

QFT.

 

[Gepard]

Enterprise was a poorly written, poorly acted show with weak characters and equally lame stories most of the time.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. It's not the continuity-it's that the show was bad.

 

[3D Master]

Enterprise broke every semblance of continuity. Even the ship itself was continuity flaw, making every single episode from beginning to end one big continuity flaw.

And thing is, the above, is exactly the reason WHY it was so bad. The above demanded the show become Voyager 2.0, and to top it off the episodes weren't half as good as Voyager. But even then, it COULD NOT HAVE BEEN Voyager 2.0. This is a prequel, this is before all the exotic things come upon Trek's radar.

The result is flaw compounding flaw compounding flaw. And it would have been avoided if they had observed continuity - meaning a truly primitive ship that's barely holding together, and this point, Voyager 2.0 stories are automatically precluded.

The thing is, that even if it was good, you still can't accept it as part of the Star Trek universe, a reboot in a different reality sure, but not the universe we've been playing in for the 35 years before that.

 

[Timo]

Blah blah. What's the point of treating any piece of Trek as part of a self-consistent fictional universe if one then makes exceptions? None of Trek has ever been written with enough consistency to be a self-sustaining whole by itself: it has merely achieved coherence by the sheer weight of material, the sheer age of it, the sheer number of reruns, so that we can now pretend that such wildly contradictory episodes as "Balance of Terror", "City on the Edge" and "Space Seed" are considered classic chapters of one and the same story.

It's all in the rationalization, in the turning of a blind eye. ENT is no worse in that department than any other incarnation of Trek, and certainly far better than TOS at its best. It just happens that ENT is a crappy show with crappy stories, most of them badly acted, while TOS does significantly better in most of those departments.

Well, one has to interpret the TOS "atomic weapons" line about the Earth-Romulan War in some logical fashion. Now that ENT has fleshed out what Earth vessel weapons were like at the time of the war or at least just before, the only rational explanation that comes to many minds is that---for some reasons unrevealed in canon---Starfleet and allied weapons weren't particuarly effective against Romulan fleets and ships at some stage in the conflict and nuclear devices had to be resurrected and used.

Or then the weapons seen in ENT were atomic. As, apparently, were the weapons seen in TOS, because Spock speaks of "primitive atomic weapons" as if he were comparing them to the advanced atomic weapons currently in human possession. Certainly the other half of his sentence must be interpreted in that manner, as Spock says the old war involved "primitive space vessels" while the adventure itself obviously involves non-primitive ones.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A big part of what made Star Trek cool is the continuity between shows and movies.

Not really. The only thing that made "Star Trek" cool was when the stories were good. Continuity is trivia, and it's a great part of why so few new viewers bother with the Franchise at all.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

A big part of what made Star Trek cool is the continuity between shows and movies.

Not really. The only thing that made "Star Trek" cool was when the stories were good. Continuity is trivia, and it's a great part of why so few new viewers bother with the Franchise at all.

I had come to the point when ENT aired that I would view each series separately and on its own terms rather than get bogged down in the "canon." I began to look at TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT as their own separate beings that would occasionally mention one another, but in the end could stand apart from one another. This made them, with the exception of VOY which I could never really get into, more enjoyable to watch.

All I want is a good story that's entertaining and has the right mix of character and action. Is that so hard to ask?

 

[cooleddie74]

Archer Might have changed for the better by the time he became President of the Federation.

Well, by the time anyone gets elected president of the UFP I imagine they've made some very lasting and positive contributions and impressions.

 

[3D Master]

Blah blah. What's the point of treating any piece of Trek as part of a self-consistent fictional universe if one then makes exceptions? None of Trek has ever been written with enough consistency to be a self-sustaining whole by itself: it has merely achieved coherence by the sheer weight of material, the sheer age of it, the sheer number of reruns, so that we can now pretend that such wildly contradictory episodes as "Balance of Terror", "City on the Edge" and "Space Seed" are considered classic chapters of one and the same story.

Uh, would you please explain how those three episodes contradict each other? Because I'm trying and trying, and for the life of me, I can't remember a damn thing in there that contradicts the others.

Especially considering you could name actual contradicting episodes.

It's all in the rationalization, in the turning of a blind eye. ENT is no worse in that department than any other incarnation of Trek, and certainly far better than TOS at its best. It just happens that ENT is a crappy show with crappy stories, most of them badly acted, while TOS does significantly better in most of those departments.

Enterprise is INFINITELY worse than TOS and the rest. Every single last second of screen time is a continuity breaking second. It's because Enterprise was set up flawed from the very start; the ship itself is too advanced for the time for one thing. Everything in that ship is too advanced for its time. It's too spacious, it's transporters are too advanced, the food synthesizers are far too advanced, it maneuvers and accelerates faster than a 24th century Runabout, goes to warp as fast as Voyager and faster than the Defiant, and that's all just the beginning.

Well, one has to interpret the TOS "atomic weapons" line about the Earth-Romulan War in some logical fashion. Now that ENT has fleshed out what Earth vessel weapons were like at the time of the war or at least just before, the only rational explanation that comes to many minds is that---for some reasons unrevealed in canon---Starfleet and allied weapons weren't particuarly effective against Romulan fleets and ships at some stage in the conflict and nuclear devices had to be resurrected and used.

Or then the weapons seen in ENT were atomic. As, apparently, were the weapons seen in TOS, because Spock speaks of "primitive atomic weapons" as if he were comparing them to the advanced atomic weapons currently in human possession. Certainly the other half of his sentence must be interpreted in that manner, as Spock says the old war involved "primitive space vessels" while the adventure itself obviously involves non-primitive ones.

Bullshit. "Primitive atomic weapons" are simply primitive weapons that happen to be atomic. There's no comparing going on with present day atomic weapons, because there are not present day atomic weapons, and everyone knows it. The NCC-1701's weapons, phasers and photon torpedoes, neither are atomic and everyone knows it.

 

[Timo]

Isn't that "I'm everyone" routine growing old already?

Everything you posted above was just a personal, subjective opinion, from the generalizations down to the technological minutiae (and everybody knows it). Every single bit of material you quoted could be interpreted the exact opposite way (and that's a fact because it is). So why on Earth do you strive to interpret it in the way that makes the least possible sense in the wider context, causing undue anguish instead of happy harmony (are you having problems)? You could easily pour your considerable creative powers into making it all jibe perfectly (and if you don't see that, you are an idiot ).

Some examples: "She's too spacious" vs. "She's built for a bigger crew but is too primitive to support it on the deep space missions she suddenly finds herself in" or "There are no present day atomic weapons" vs. "Since 'atomic' is a long-retired term in scientific-military parlance and thus free for scifi use, let's apply it on weapons that interact on the atomic level as opposed to nuclear or molecular - say, phasers or antimatter annihilation devices".

Uh, would you please explain how those three episodes contradict each other? Because I'm trying and trying, and for the life of me, I can't remember a damn thing in there that contradicts the others. Especially considering you could name actual contradicting episodes.

But the latter would defeat the spirit of the argument. What I'm referring to is not "gross" contradictions like different maximum speeds for the ship in different eps, or different names for Kirk's employer, or timepoints for Kirk's adventures that vary by several centuries between episodes. What I mean is that the episodes were written to depict conceptually different fictional realms. In one, we meet a Starfleet worried about an interstellar war with a rather petty old enemy, with everybody amazed by standard scifi cliches and alien ways of life as if they met those for the first time. In another, a cosmopolitan Starfleet bears the responsibility for the past and future of the entire universe, as it apparently hinges on what happens on Earth. In yet another, humans concentrate on battling themselves, as if the galaxy were just their own personal sandbox and the villains and technologies of the 1990s would present a worthy challenge to our heroes of the what-was-about-2190s-back-then.

The three episodes aren't supposed to exemplify the farthest outliers in this respect, either. Going through TOS episode by episode, one can find a different conceptual milieu behind basically each one.

The "gross minutiae" can be explained away as long as there is a general feel of connectivity between the stories. The different scifi realms only merge into a whole thanks to the weight of material - the airhours, the repetition, the times the actors try to convince us that their appearances in different dramatic frameworks on different weeks are part of the same story, and the times we strive to accept this.

TNG basically took place in an almost completely different scifi universe from TOS, with only gratutious name-dropping ("warp drive", "Starfleet") to keep the two elements connected. It didn't take us long to accept it as part of the "Star Trek universe". DS9 presented another challenge which we took on, perhaps milder than the TOS->TNG one, but perhaps in some ways more severe. ENT is just another such challenge, and we enjoy all the same advantages and privileges as with TNG: a century of in-universe temporal separation, a different zeitgeist driving the writers in the real world, a different cast of actors, a deliberately different visual feel.

It just puts a damper on things when the writing is so poor and the acting doesn't improve the experience any.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[3D Master]

Isn't that "I'm everyone" routine growing old already?

Everything you posted above was just a personal, subjective opinion, from the generalizations down to the technological minutiae (and everybody knows it).

No, it isn't, and everyone knows it.

Every single bit of material you quoted could be interpreted the exact opposite way (and that's a fact because it is).

No, it can't. Willfully fantasizing things completely different from what's on screen, does not interpretation make.

So why on Earth do you strive to interpret it in the way that makes the least possible sense in the wider context, causing undue anguish instead of happy harmony (are you having problems)?

I'm hardly interpreting anything at all, that's the point, and I'm certainly not fantasizing things to be contrary to what's on screen. Also, anything that brings that pile of junk that is Enterprise into continuity is the opposite of happy harmony. Happy harmony would be everyone finally disavowing the pile of junk.

You could easily pour your considerable creative powers into making it all jibe perfectly (and if you don't see that, you are an idiot ).

Oh, I can see that, I just don't do fantasy, I do science fiction.

Some examples: "She's too spacious" vs. "She's built for a bigger crew but is too primitive to support it on the deep space missions she suddenly finds herself in"

:bwahahaha: You have got to be kidding me. You call that harmony? The whole point of what Spock is saying is that the ships of the 22nd century are primitive, barely functional ships, but really they build magnificent fully functional vessels that worked better than the ship Spock is flying in and future vessels, but they couldn't staff them!?!?!? That makes no bloody sense.

or "There are no present day atomic weapons" vs. "Since 'atomic' is a long-retired term in scientific-military parlance and thus free for scifi use, let's apply it on weapons that interact on the atomic level as opposed to nuclear or molecular - say, phasers or antimatter annihilation devices".

Which do NOT work on the atomic level, they work on the SUB-atomic level. Therefor photon(ic) torpedoes would be SUB-atomic weapons, and the weapons used by Enterprise would be SUB-atomic weapons and NOT atomic weapons. They are thus too advanced.

Like I said, I'm not not into fantasy.

Uh, would you please explain how those three episodes contradict each other? Because I'm trying and trying, and for the life of me, I can't remember a damn thing in there that contradicts the others. Especially considering you could name actual contradicting episodes.

But the latter would defeat the spirit of the argument. What I'm referring to is not "gross" contradictions like different maximum speeds for the ship in different eps, or different names for Kirk's employer, or timepoints for Kirk's adventures that vary by several centuries between episodes. What I mean is that the episodes were written to depict conceptually different fictional realms. In one, we meet a Starfleet worried about an interstellar war with a rather petty old enemy, with everybody amazed by standard scifi cliches and alien ways of life as if they met those for the first time. In another, a cosmopolitan Starfleet bears the responsibility for the past and future of the entire universe, as it apparently hinges on what happens on Earth. In yet another, humans concentrate on battling themselves, as if the galaxy were just their own personal sandbox and the villains and technologies of the 1990s would present a worthy challenge to our heroes of the what-was-about-2190s-back-then.

The three episodes aren't supposed to exemplify the farthest outliers in this respect, either. Going through TOS episode by episode, one can find a different conceptual milieu behind basically each one.

No such things happen.

The "gross minutiae" can be explained away as long as there is a general feel of connectivity between the stories. The different scifi realms only merge into a whole thanks to the weight of material - the airhours, the repetition, the times the actors try to convince us that their appearances in different dramatic frameworks on different weeks are part of the same story, and the times we strive to accept this.

The ARE part of the same story, and there's no different dramatic frameworks; it's a ship flying about.

TNG basically took place in an almost completely different scifi universe from TOS, with only gratutious name-dropping ("warp drive", "Starfleet") to keep the two elements connected. It didn't take us long to accept it as part of the "Star Trek universe". DS9 presented another challenge which we took on, perhaps milder than the TOS->TNG one, but perhaps in some ways more severe.

Nope, there's nothing different about it. It's the same universe, just a century later, and through the eyes and coloration of the Enterprise crew. DS9 is no different either; in fact, the tone is much closer to TOS than TNG.

ENT is just another such challenge, and we enjoy all the same advantages and privileges as with TNG: a century of in-universe temporal separation, a different zeitgeist driving the writers in the real world, a different cast of actors, a deliberately different visual feel.

Nope, not at all. Enterprise is a pile of junk, heavy handedly mucked with by the Paramount suits, so instead of new stuff the creators said they were going to do, we got a carbon copy of Voyager, right down to the same battle scenes, only a few terms were slightly changed here and there. They're even still in Starfleet with the same icongraphy for gods' sakes! The creators didn't give a damn enough to stand up to the suits, they cared even less when what they wanted to do was no longer being done, and the result is the apathic pile of junk we got.

And as long as we're trying to marry it to the good Star Trek that came before, as long as we're happy campers about it, the Paramount suits will go: "See, we got it rightl! The idiots will lap up everything." And they'll happily keep on going the way they were going, meaning that we'll only get more of the same junk we got with Nemesis and Enterprise. They're all "very pleased" indeed.

You want that to change, the only chance you got, is if all the Star Trek fans, or at least 90% of them, all go; this is an inconsisten, continuity breaking pile of junk. Toss it out the window, and forget it ever happened.

It just puts a damper on things when the writing is so poor and the acting doesn't improve the experience any.

The acting is so poor, because the writing was so poor. The writing was so poor, because they didn't give a damn. They didn't give a damn because they'd be doing the same thing 15 years straight, and the suits changed what they wanted to do to more of the same, so they did something they didn't really wanted to do, making their apathy greater. And why, because they didn't care enough to stand up to the suits, unlike Ira Steven Behr and Ronald Moore with Dragonriders.

And as long as we keep lapping this stuff up, and going as if it was a-ok and it really did fit, the suits will think they were right, and keep doing what they've been doing.

It needs to end, the only chance to end it, is to start tossing the discontinuous junk we got with Enterprise out the window across the Star Trek fandom board.