Fans, what don't you like about ENT?

[JiNX-01]

Add "sexploitation" to my list. Standard decon procedures consist of oily semi-naked rubdowns? Go figure.

I'm OK with the concept of slathering neo-sporin on your skin to kill the germs. It's the idea that physically fit people need to have someone else smear it on the back of their legs, their necks, their ears...

And then of course there's the (apparent) rule that both sexes must be represented in any decon scene ...

 

[Praetor]

Exactly JiNX-01, exactly. The "mood lighting" didn't help either

I mean, it would have been one thing if they just had to strip down and sit in there and be bathed in radiation for, oh, a half-hour or so after coming back on the ship. That might have actually been awkward yet somewhat plausible and maybe interesting.

I can't believe T'Pol and Hoshi never had a fight in a Jell-O pit...

 

[Mach5]

Two hours of MU, yet no lesbians...

 

[xman]

I don't like that they got rid of the ball caps. It gave the crew a handyman kind of look, like they were ready to get their hands dirty. I didn't really like the overalls though.

I also don't like how the show got less sexy as it went along.

And the final episode blew dogs! I guess we can argue that the Enterprise isn't canon and it never happened that way.

X

 

[commodore64]

• Trip and T'Pol's "relationship"
• That seasons 1 - 3 didn't have enough cool Trek references that fit into the story
• That season 4 had random Trek references that bordered on fanwank
• That we never got to find out what the TCW was or that it had importance
• No Romulan War started, Romulans were TNG Roms not TOS
• Some of the writing seemed to take short cuts
• T'Pol turned into a drug addict without a resolution to her character and redemption
• That Trip died in a rather silly manner, even if his death was important
• Lack of development for all characters other than Archer and T'Pol

 

[DarKush]

1. Poorly written characters. I don't think TPTB had a good idea of what to do with the mostly talented cast. Others have pointed out some of the poor characterization so I'm not going to repeat that. Perhaps the two worst were Mayweather, who was reduced to a cipher, and Archer, who came across as a constipated daddy's boy far too often, who didn't deserve all of the accolades everyone was giving him.

2. Wrong nods to TOS. Resurrecting the Big Three with three actors that obviously didn't have as appealing a dynamic as Kirk-Spock-McCoy was a mistake. Every fumbled attempt reminded me of the TOS magic and how ENT was so lacking in that regard. I think they should've stuck with an ensemble cast and utilized all of the main cast. On TOS, Kirk was the guy in the middle but Archer and Trip seemed to gang up on T'Pol. And T'Pol always seemed to be wrong, as did the Vulcans, which was another problem I had with ENT.

3. Didn't like their portrayal of Vulcans. I felt the exchanges between the Vulcans and humans always made the Vulcans out to be wrong or underhanded until the reformation arc. I would've liked a more balanced portrayal.

4. Klingons. If they had to have them, at least make them different than what we've seen before. Berman promised they would be more savage but never delivered. "Marauders" definitely wasn't it.

5. Temporal Cold War. The potential for something interesting was there, but it was never well thought out and it didn't lead anywhere. I suspect it was thrown in there to add an elment of unpredictability to the show but that never really paid off. ENT had a lot of potential stuff that could've dealt with without even bringing the Xindi, Suliban, or Future Guy into it. There's the first contacts or early contacts with the Federation worlds, the sheningans of the Orions and the Romulans, the Earth-Romulan War, etc. To me, the historical limitations of doing a prequel didn't matter if I cared about the characters. I knew that Earth wasn't going to be conquered or destroyed in the Earth-Romulan war for example, but I didn't know about the fate of the NX-01 or the crew. If they had spent more time on characters I think it could've been more engaging. But the writers seemed limited by the prequel concept and threw in the TWC to give them something new to play with without fully appreciating that for most fans Orions, Tellarites, Andorians, etc. were still relatively new because they hadn't received a lot of focus. Not to mention the Deltans, Caitians, Rigellians/Rigellians, etc.

6. T'Pol's catsuit. Just one example of the awkward and almost juvenile attempt to inject sex in the show. T'Pol's not the first Trek female in a catsuit but with the exception of Seven of Nine it never felt more obvious, or at times desperate, to trade in on Ms. Blalock's looks.

 

[Noname Given]

Two hours of MU, yet no lesbians...

Well, to be fair - there WAS one 'catfight' between HO-shi and T'Pol near a turbolift; and the MU uniforms are about as 'scantily clad' as ENT female characters got.

 

[Praetor]

"HO-shi."

 

[Flibble]

What I didn't like about the show was:

The Trip/T'Pol romance
The way that the story line with Future Guy was not resolved
Trip dying in such a throwaway manner
Denobulan culture was not explored further

I could go on.....

 

[Warped9]

Okay, I'm not a fan, but take this in the spirit of observation.

I was more disappointed with ENT than any other series because they missed their opportinity so spectacularly. They needed a fresh creative team to really break away from their usual approach and practices.

The show not only should have looked fresh and different it should have felt likewise. It should have been set up like they were really just stepping out into the galaxy rather than having it populated with so much that was already familiar. Part of the problem is that they were taking their cue from First Contact which was flawed in its own way particularly in terms of historical timeline.

I'm grasping to express my thinking, here. But it should have felt more raw and should have distanced itself more from so much that was already familiar.

And while the NX-01 has its fans it just looked too much like we'd already had before. They should have been more daring in doing something different.

 

[ImperialWolf]

Didn't like the dependence on time travel as being the main plot driver, its such a sci-fi cliche. But hey-ho other people must like it or else iit wouldn't permeate through every piece pf star trek ever done.

 

[Broccoli]

Part of the problem is that they were taking their cue from First Contact which was flawed in its own way particularly in terms of historical timeline.

How so? We knew nothing of that time other than vague and often contradicting throwaway lines.

 

[Peter the Younger]

Well, others have mentioned a lot of this, but here's my two cents anyway:

1) The Temporal Cold War. Not so much the concept itself, but the fact that it was so badly executed. It would have worked so much better, I think, if it had been a war between two possible alternate realities.

2) When it came to showing the rough and tumble early days of space travel, they lacked the courage of their convictions. For the first two seasons, especially, it felt way too familiar, and waay too safe. Season 3 and 4 corrected this, but many people had already given up.

3) #2, but times a factor of three when we're talking about the technology used in the show:

- "We have a transporter, but it's in the early stage" (effect of being in the early stage? One guy gets some leaves stuck in his skin in one episode.)
- "We don't have phasers, we have an early version called "phase" pistols. (Ah, you left off an "r." Wow. Balsy. Yet somehow, they work exactly like phasers.)
- "We don't have photonic torpedoes yet, they have photonic torpedoes. We get to see the early version." (An extra "ic." Again, stunning difference there. And how is it dramatically interesting to see "the early version" of something, when it works exactly the same way?)
- "They don't have shields, they have hull plating." (Which goes to 60% when hit, then 30%, then 10%... need I say it again?)

4) Resistance to expanding on what was already established in Trek's background. Why create the Xindi the Delphic Expanse, when you already have the Zenkethi and the Typhon Expanse sitting there waiting to be expounded upon? In order to do a prequel justice, you have to be the sort of person who loves to fill in the blanks with interesting stories, who goes to the encyclopedia and asks, "Is there anything already established that I could use here?" Again, Coto got it right, but sadly he was given control only after the show's fate was already sealed.

 

[startrekwatcher]

4) Resistance to expanding on what was already established in Trek's background. Why create the Xindi the Delphic Expanse, when you already have the Zenkethi and the Typhon Expanse sitting there waiting to be expounded upon? In order to do a prequel justice, you have to be the sort of person who loves to fill in the blanks with interesting stories, who goes to the encyclopedia and asks, "Is there anything already established that I could use here?" Again, Coto got it right, but sadly he was given control only after the show's fate was already sealed.

What I find interesting is fans of XI mention that ENT producers felt constrained by all the backstory of Trek and didn't understand why they introduced new elements yet that is exactly what Abrams has done.

And who cares if we never heard of the Expanse or the Xindi? As long as the story centering on them is interesting I don't see the issue.

 

[Praetor]

Okay, I'm not a fan, but take this in the spirit of observation.

I was more disappointed with ENT than any other series because they missed their opportinity so spectacularly. They needed a fresh creative team to really break away from their usual approach and practices.

The show not only should have looked fresh and different it should have felt likewise. It should have been set up like they were really just stepping out into the galaxy rather than having it populated with so much that was already familiar. Part of the problem is that they were taking their cue from First Contact which was flawed in its own way particularly in terms of historical timeline.

I'm grasping to express my thinking, here. But it should have felt more raw and should have distanced itself more from so much that was already familiar.

And while the NX-01 has its fans it just looked too much like we'd already had before. They should have been more daring in doing something different.

Yes, I definitely get what you're saying here. I have to echo that this is most of the reason I was so annoyed with ENT, and to a lesser extent to VGR before it, because I felt they had bungled the opportunities of their premise to do something different than what came before, ultimately giving us something that was more or less the same, yet suffering all the more from "franchise fatigue." The stuff they did give us that was good was largely overshadowed by this, in my perception anyway.

I assume with regard to FC you are referencing certain dramatic conceits that were made for that film to play out the way it did, i.e., Cochrane building the first warp ship in a missile and so on?

 

[Warped9]

^^ TNG didn't start contradicting TOS, the '80s films did, but TNG had two things that really bugged me. The rest could be mostly shrugged off. I disliked having the first Kilngons encountered set so far back and I really disagree with the reasoning behind elements of First Contact.

Firstly the show should have looked in a way that could make one wonder whether they were actually watching a Trek series. By that I mean make it look different in overall style from anything that came before. I'd have ditched the NX-01 design and gone with Matt Jefferies ringship idea: jazz it up some and perfect since the design was initially intended as an early exploratory ship anyway for a series that never materialized. Ditch tech references that sounded too TNG/DS9/VOY like. It could have been almost as low tech as Stargate but with early warp capability.

The cast of characters was basically fine although I didn't care for the Doctor. But I'd have avoided Klingons, Romulans and anyone else familiar. I'd keep Vulcans, Andorians and Xindi (because they were new and unfamiliar). But I wouldn't have had Earth under the Vulcans' umbrella. A big problem is they were putting in too much that was already familiar as if they were trying to connect the dots with every little reference in previous series. It took away a lot of the potential mystery because not everything has to be explained.

For the show as a whole I'd have gone for something of an X-Files feel. We're opening up the galaxy so lets kinda freak folks out periodically and encounter and explore some weird shit. Ditch the stupid temporal cold war.

Take the real lesson from TOS and break from convention. In this case break from the conventions of how Trek (and sf in general) had generally been done since the '80s.

ENT as an idea had some real meat to it if they had been visionary and daring enough to pull it off. But they didn't. I think it would have needed a fresh creative team with fresh perspective. On the business side Paramount messed up trying to peddle this gamble through the UPN network--fucking dumb thinking. They should have stuck with what worked for TNG.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well the producers of a prequel are alway between a rock and a hard place. they can't make it too different becuse it wouldn't really be "Star Trek" , especially to the casual viewer. On the other hand if its too similar to past versions the jaded, more "sophisicated" fans get turned off.

 

[Reanok]

A problem I had with the Vulcan arc it was supposed to be about T'Pol's story ark and they instead they have her captured arrested and ignored for the last 2parts.I found that really disappointing. I would have like to have seen more about T'Pol dealing with the aftermath at what happened after the attack on te Takeraeth sacnctuary and what happened to her mother and how it affected her and all the changes occuring on Vulcan.

 

[Warped9]

Well the producers of a prequel are alway between a rock and a hard place. they can't make it too different becuse it wouldn't really be "Star Trek" , especially to the casual viewer. On the other hand if its too similar to past versions the jaded, more "sophisicated" fans get turned off.

The casual viewer wasn't tuning in. They were thinking, "Oh, it's just more of that Trek stuff." They had to try something that could make the casual viewer think, "Hey, what the hell is this? Looks kinda cool."

The fact that viewership and particularly the mainstream was slipping away and tuning out shows they were doing something wrong. "Same old, same old" wasn't cutting it anymore.

 

[Praetor]

^^ TNG didn't start contradicting TOS, the '80s films did, but TNG had two things that really bugged me. The rest could be mostly shrugged off. I disliked having the first Kilngons encountered set so far back and I really disagree with the reasoning behind elements of First Contact.

Firstly the show should have looked in a way that could make one wonder whether they were actually watching a Trek series. By that I mean make it look different in overall style from anything that came before. I'd have ditched the NX-01 design and gone with Matt Jefferies ringship idea: jazz it up some and perfect since the design was initially intended as an early exploratory ship anyway for a series that never materialized. Ditch tech references that sounded too TNG/DS9/VOY like. It could have been almost as low tech as Stargate but with early warp capability.

The cast of characters was basically fine although I didn't care for the Doctor. But I'd have avoided Klingons, Romulans and anyone else familiar. I'd keep Vulcans, Andorians and Xindi (because they were new and unfamiliar). But I wouldn't have had Earth under the Vulcans' umbrella. A big problem is they were putting in too much that was already familiar as if they were trying to connect the dots with every little reference in previous series. It took away a lot of the potential mystery because not everything has to be explained.

For the show as a whole I'd have gone for something of an X-Files feel. We're opening up the galaxy so lets kinda freak folks out periodically and encounter and explore some weird shit. Ditch the stupid temporal cold war.

Take the real lesson from TOS and break from convention. In this case break from the conventions of how Trek (and sf in general) had generally been done since the '80s.

ENT as an idea had some real meat to it if they had been visionary and daring enough to pull it off. But they didn't. I think it would have needed a fresh creative team with fresh perspective. On the business side Paramount messed up trying to peddle this gamble through the UPN network--fucking dumb thinking. They should have stuck with what worked for TNG.

I respect that vision, a lot. It's a lot like what I wished the show would have been, although I wouldn't have totally avoided the Klingons and Romulans (especially the Romulans) but used them sparingly. Obviously, our heroes wouldn't ever actually see the Romulans. But yes, the cosmetic feel needed to be as different as possible from everything that had come before, yet by that perhaps capture more of the Trek spirit, and that's really what I had been hoping for.

But Nerys Myk is probably right; the network clearly put the production in a place where they wanted something cosmetically recognizable as Trek, even though I'm reasonably convinced that Braga knew they needed to do something different. I think Berman had lost touch though. I mean, he wanted to use the Akira design, with no changes, and thought that was appropriate? Thank goodness Doug Drexler and the other art department folks were able to change it to be a better fit.