Check out the opening of "Babel One." There's a scene with Hoshi and Archer that is adorable. I wish we'd had more scenes like that one.
Enterprise or Voyager
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LOL, that's exactly how I always felt about Neelix. When I saw the "Caretaker" for the first time, I remember thinking: "Wait, are they taking this annoying THING with them? Seriously? For real? WTF is wrong with this Janeway person?
Furry f#cker stayed on board til the 23rd episode of the final season...
With that last comment you are totally forgiven.yeh i realised after i posted it i put the thread in the wrong place sorry about that.interesting views. Iwould put trip amongst the best actors and charachters he was always watchable even with some truly awful stuff.
Phlox was great. 
I prefer ENT. I really liked season 3 and 4, but even in the first 2 seasons, I liked ENT characters better. Mostly because they had development, something that VOY characters were very rarely allowed. And because they always seemed more like real people. Maybe it was because of the more low-key and natural acting, compared to the theatrical feel of some other Trek shows. I first watched ENT while I was halfway through VOY, and ENT felt very refreshing for that reason. In seasons 5 and 6, when VOY started to look like a sitcom at times, I realized that the characters felt very much like larger-than-life sitcom characters.
Montgomery was very bland, but it's hard to judge his acting skills since he had nothing to work with - and it was no different with Wang or Beltran.
As for Seven, she was great in her first couple of seasons, she added a lot to the dynamics of the show, and she is certainly one of the strongest characters on the show. But in the last couple of seasons, she was overused, together with the Doctor, and her stories and lines started to feel repetitive. At first, when she first came to the show, she maintained that Borg were superior, but then she started to change and tried to learn to be human... which could be really fun or really moving, and it was at first. But, apart from the fact that the whole learning to be human thing was hardly something new to Trek, the problem was that Seven was learning to be human, but the show couldn't allow her to become too human, because she needed to still seem Borg enough, to act stiff and confused in social situation, and use the words "efficient" and "irrelevant" in every second sentence. She was always learning the same lessons over and over. It was Data all over again. And to make it worse, with time her lessons got more and more boring to watch. It's ironic that Seven's attempts at regaining her individuality included the dullest, most generic scenarios possible. That particularly struck me in "Unimatrix Zero". How ironic that the rebel Borg were regaining their individuality by creating the same virtual environment for all of them, and, to make it worse, it was a generic 'dreamlike' natural environment. It would have been much better if all of the rebel Borg had created different 'dream places', each according to their personality (as in BSG, where Cylons had different projections - one chose to see their basestar as a cathedral, while the other saw it as a forest near her ex-lover's lake house). Wasn't it possible for Seven's attempts to be human to culminate in something less dull than in stereotypical romantic dinners and painfully unconvincing romance with holographic Chakotay/real Chakotay, filled with the most trite 'romantic' dialogue possible?
I prefer ENT. I really liked season 3 and 4, but even in the first 2 seasons, I liked ENT characters better. Mostly because they had development, something that VOY characters were very rarely allowed. And because they always seemed more like real people. Maybe it was because of the more low-key and natural acting, compared to the theatrical feel of some other Trek shows. I first watched ENT while I was halfway through VOY, and ENT felt very refreshing for that reason. In seasons 5 and 6, when VOY started to look like a sitcom at times, I realized that the characters felt very much like larger-than-life sitcom characters.
I disagree. People go on about Blalock being an awful actress, and for all I know (have barely seen her in anything else), but she was perfect as T'Pol. Bakula was miscast, and he bad in the beginning but got much better later on (maybe better writing helped, too), although he was always more comfortable with playing gentler aspects of Archer than the hard or threatening moments. It's just isn't for him - In A Mirror, Darkly proved that he couldn't be a convincing bad guy to save his life. He was not as good as Mulgrew, but I wouldn't call him bad - I'd say his acting was sometimes not very convincing, other times it was good.
Montgomery was very bland, but it's hard to judge his acting skills since he had nothing to work with - and it was no different with Wang or Beltran.
I'm not sure how she turned into a human by getting addicted to Trellium? Why would Humans be the only race who can get addictions? Trellium-D was a "Vulcan drug", just like mind-melds are Vulcan, and Pon Farr is Vulcan, so how does that make her a human (any more than she and every other humanoid alien can be seen as a stand-in for humans)? And what do you mean by "been Vulcan throughout the show"? What does it mean to be Vulcan? Vulcans don't have to fit into a stereotype to be "true" Vulcans, any more than Humans do. If anything, Trek alien races can always do with more diversity. You may as well say that Picard would have been more interesting if he was a real Human (like Bones or Trip), instead of a Vulcan without the pointy ears. Frankly, Vulcans, as we saw them in Trek, never were "truly alien", they just acted as humans with pointy ears who are very stoical, rational and emotionally suppressed, but, ironically, still cling to violent and barbaric old customs out of tradition.
As for Seven, she was great in her first couple of seasons, she added a lot to the dynamics of the show, and she is certainly one of the strongest characters on the show. But in the last couple of seasons, she was overused, together with the Doctor, and her stories and lines started to feel repetitive. At first, when she first came to the show, she maintained that Borg were superior, but then she started to change and tried to learn to be human... which could be really fun or really moving, and it was at first. But, apart from the fact that the whole learning to be human thing was hardly something new to Trek, the problem was that Seven was learning to be human, but the show couldn't allow her to become too human, because she needed to still seem Borg enough, to act stiff and confused in social situation, and use the words "efficient" and "irrelevant" in every second sentence. She was always learning the same lessons over and over. It was Data all over again. And to make it worse, with time her lessons got more and more boring to watch. It's ironic that Seven's attempts at regaining her individuality included the dullest, most generic scenarios possible. That particularly struck me in "Unimatrix Zero". How ironic that the rebel Borg were regaining their individuality by creating the same virtual environment for all of them, and, to make it worse, it was a generic 'dreamlike' natural environment. It would have been much better if all of the rebel Borg had created different 'dream places', each according to their personality (as in BSG, where Cylons had different projections - one chose to see their basestar as a cathedral, while the other saw it as a forest near her ex-lover's lake house). Wasn't it possible for Seven's attempts to be human to culminate in something less dull than in stereotypical romantic dinners and painfully unconvincing romance with holographic Chakotay/real Chakotay, filled with the most trite 'romantic' dialogue possible?
She exposed herself to the trellium because she wanted to experience emotions. When Phlox suggests she was also interested in getting closer to Trip, she doesn't dispute it. She wanted to be more like the humans around her despite the risk of further brain damage from her panaar syndrome.
She was trying to turn herself into something she wasn't.
Allow me to rephrase: She would have been more interesting if she had embraced her Vulcan training. Fusion made it pretty clear that Vulcans take a great risk when they try to add emotions to the mix. Apparently she learned nothing from any of the bad experiences she had.
Clearly, we're never going to agree on these issues, but when T'Pol is repeatedly going to pieces -- yes, the fault of the writers -- it's hard for me to take her seriously as a Vulcan.
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Enterprise, because I assumed that the first one to captain such a mission as this would be expected to be almost that incompetent from a lack of any real off-world experience. Even Archers stiff, ineffectualness seemed, somehow, appropriate to the setting. And the series took a lot of interesting chances... portly Vulcans!? That took guts. (sorry
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The Voyager command's failure to find some way to maroon an annoying alien, or two, seemed more odd. ("Sorry Neelix. We didn't realize that you and your obnoxious girlfriend had beamed down. We can't spare the dilithium to go back. Good luck, you two!") For reasons, well stated by previous posters, most of the aliens in Voyager seemed more irksome than scary, or even mildly interesting, And the Boredg got noticeably worse, at each appearance. And I think Captain Janeway really would have considered Q's offer a little more realistically. Get her ship to safety first, acquire some Q-powers ("We have so little in common, Dear. *Katherine, cooing into Q's ear* How do you expect me to sympathize with how heroically difficult it must be, to be - You?"), then blip up your own bogus demise, and transform into someone he could never recognize. Just a thought.
)The Voyager command's failure to find some way to maroon an annoying alien, or two, seemed more odd. ("Sorry Neelix. We didn't realize that you and your obnoxious girlfriend had beamed down. We can't spare the dilithium to go back. Good luck, you two!") For reasons, well stated by previous posters, most of the aliens in Voyager seemed more irksome than scary, or even mildly interesting, And the Boredg got noticeably worse, at each appearance. And I think Captain Janeway really would have considered Q's offer a little more realistically. Get her ship to safety first, acquire some Q-powers ("We have so little in common, Dear. *Katherine, cooing into Q's ear* How do you expect me to sympathize with how heroically difficult it must be, to be - You?"), then blip up your own bogus demise, and transform into someone he could never recognize. Just a thought.
Same here, but, if you took, like, the last season of Voyager VS. the last season of Enterprise, my vote would have been different.
The last two seasons of ENT put it over VOY for me. I liked the Xindi arc, for the most part, and a lot of the miniarcs from Season 4 more than many VOY episodes, which I primarily watched to get a Trek fix. With the final two seasons of ENT I watched because I was more engaged and actually wanted to see what would happen. That occurred very rarely with VOY.
That being said, after reading Admiral Shran's comments, it got me thinking more about it, and there are some things that VOY did have over ENT. I think they had better characterization for most of the main characters and they had better villains. The Kazon were jokes, but the Vidiians were downright creepy. Plus there was the Hirogen, Malon, Krenim, Species 8472, the Borg of course, and others. Perhaps there were too many villains and it became a situation where the VOY writers were just throwing crap at a wall to see if it stuck and not focusing enough on most villains except for the Borg, which they overdone. But most of the VOY villains were better than the Suliban, Future Guy, Na'kuhl, or the ENT Romulans (who admittedly didn't get much development). I can't believe that I'm defending VOY, but there you go.
I do think that ENT eventually began to live up to its premise-way too late-and that VOY abandoned theirs way too quickly. Point to ENT for that. VOY's characters could be a little vanilla, but at least it seemed like the writers had actually put a little thought into them, and I don't recall getting stuff like Hoshi just remembering that she is a martial arts badass in the final season. That just felt so random and plot-driven, which was a big problem with ENT. Point to VOY.
The plots were more important than the characters, especially in Season 4. It's just that those plots were pretty interesting to me, and I felt that a good deal of VOY was bland in comparison. Another point to ENT.
I think I've created a tie, well, as I said, the final two seasons put ENT over the top. That's my tie breaker.
That being said, after reading Admiral Shran's comments, it got me thinking more about it, and there are some things that VOY did have over ENT. I think they had better characterization for most of the main characters and they had better villains. The Kazon were jokes, but the Vidiians were downright creepy. Plus there was the Hirogen, Malon, Krenim, Species 8472, the Borg of course, and others. Perhaps there were too many villains and it became a situation where the VOY writers were just throwing crap at a wall to see if it stuck and not focusing enough on most villains except for the Borg, which they overdone. But most of the VOY villains were better than the Suliban, Future Guy, Na'kuhl, or the ENT Romulans (who admittedly didn't get much development). I can't believe that I'm defending VOY, but there you go.
I do think that ENT eventually began to live up to its premise-way too late-and that VOY abandoned theirs way too quickly. Point to ENT for that. VOY's characters could be a little vanilla, but at least it seemed like the writers had actually put a little thought into them, and I don't recall getting stuff like Hoshi just remembering that she is a martial arts badass in the final season. That just felt so random and plot-driven, which was a big problem with ENT. Point to VOY.
The plots were more important than the characters, especially in Season 4. It's just that those plots were pretty interesting to me, and I felt that a good deal of VOY was bland in comparison. Another point to ENT.
I think I've created a tie, well, as I said, the final two seasons put ENT over the top. That's my tie breaker.
I completely agree. Bakula isn't a bad actor, he just doesn't have the commanding presence a good captain needs.
A desire to experience emotions may not be the same thing as "wanting to be more like humans." T'Pol and Vulcans had encountered plenty of other highly emotional species (Andorians come immediately to mind). The way I saw it was that T'Pol wanted to taste more of the forbidden fruit...to experience what Vulcans were trained from childhood to repress. Her affinity for emotions ("Fusion," "Home"), her longtime posting on a human vessel, and yes, her logical goal of interacting more effectively with the crew and understanding them better, all might have made her curiosity about emotions even stronger. The meld with Tolaris was terrible, but clearly, it didn't purge her interest in emotions.
Kov appeared to be doing all right. Captain Tavin, as well. They demonstrated to T'Pol that it was possible to balance logic and emotion.
I agree that T'Pol's arc in Season 4 would have been more effective if the writers had the time to explore the aftermath of the damage the trellium did to her emotional control-- which would have made the need to balance logic and emotion even more of a struggle, a la Spock.
I think TPTB were messed up by the coming cancellation, and as a result, T'Pol's post-trellium journey was mostly cast aside as a plotline. She was a mess in "Home," closed off in "Borderland," pining for Trip in "The Augments," emotional in "Awakenings," stoic in "Daedalus," ice queen in "The Aenar"...but the why wasn't explored. It would have made much more sense if the episodes had made clear that her emotional rockiness was a result of her post-trellium struggle with her lack of control. If we knew that she was trying to figure out how to be Vulcan despite being stuck with emotions (maybe using the Kir'Shara as a way to do it, as T'Les had hoped), it would probably have made more sense for the character to be running hot and cold as she did.
I would like to see which show people prefer.
a lot of the time Enterprise was awful but at least it took some risks with Star Trek. The third season was flawed as the story telling was all over the place untill the end but it had someinteresting characher moments and dilemas. Season 4 had its flaws but on the whole was a good season which felt like Star Trek. Another reason I prefer Enterprise is its technological limitations (although this was often ignored) they were less likely than Voyager to turn to techno nonsense for an answer.
Voyager on the other hand started badly, became almost tolerable then became really really bad.I don't think it added anything to star trek at all and is best ignored.
Didn`t add to star trek?! Holographic rights, ending the borg threat, traveling across the delta quadrant, the first female Captain, omg I think not.
I understand that a lot of fans think T'Pol's "journey" was an interesting one.
I'm just not one of them. Watching The Expanse right now and she once again tossed off the line, "It's logical." And yet, she isn't.
I also think it's ridiculous that only Phlox and the viewers ever learned what the heck was wrong with her when she was having emotional meltdowns and running hot and cold.
I think the potential was there for it to be compelling. There was a lot of setup work done in Season 3 that could have given rise to some fascinating developments and conflicts for T'Pol. But Season 4...for me, that potential was given short shrift, or tossed altogether. Probably because of the looming cancellation, too many storylines and not enough episodes, someone's need for More Space Battles! or Cool Guest Stars! or whatever. There wasn't a whole lot of character development for anyone in Season 4, other than Shran and Soval (which I welcomed).
I can't see her not telling Archer. He knew something was wrong as early as "Damage," and I don't think he would have let it go. If she had told him, if he knew Phlox was treating her, he might have kept it on the q.t. in order to keep her from being hauled back to Vulcan for reassignment. We'd already seen Archer move heaven and earth to keep T'Pol on Enterprise, on more than one occasion.I also think it's ridiculous that only Phlox and the viewers ever learned what the heck was wrong with her when she was having emotional meltdowns and running hot and cold.
T'Pol and Trip were getting on well enough in "Countdown"/"Zero Hour"/"Home" (before Koss, of course) that she could have told him. I mean, old T'Pol waved a big ol' "confide in Trip" flag in "E2."
But the writers didn't listen to old T'Pol, LOL. They seemed more interested in more mundane "trouble in paradise" story devices: the Other Guy, the Keeping Of Secrets, the Deus Ex Pa'nar Cure By Mind-Meld, the Unrequited Lover Who Leaves His Job In A Huff. None of which were emotionally satisfying for me to watch.
I agree, what we were shown onscreen was frustrating as all get out-- the waste of potential most of all, for me. But I like to speculate about what went on in between those scenes, to try and make sense of the senseless. The "augmented" Season 4, with all those missing scenes spliced in, plays much better in my head.
That's what the Vulcans always say, whether it actually makes sense or not in the context. It's their catchphrase, like "It's glorious" or "You have no honor" with Klingons, the way humans say it's the right thing to do or it's for the common good or whatever, even when it's not. The Vulcan serial killer in DS9 "Field of Fire", when asked why he killed those people, said "Because it was logical", when it so obviously wasn't logical at all.
I'm glad that didn't happen. It doesn't make sense - why would Romulan DNA have made any difference? Aren't Romulans the same species as Vulcans? And it's not like all Vulcans are the same, or no Vulcans ever showed an interest in exploring emotions. What about those Vulcans from "Fusion" or Sybok - and we also know that Vulcans were very emotional and violent just a few millennia ago. That's too short time for any sort of important biological evolution of the species.
