Ent's season one and two were dull and uninspired plus the multiple faux pas like when Archer decides for some stupid reason to withhold a cure of a deadly disease from an entire planet. Who could be happy to see that?
Haters of Star Trek: Discovery - wtf?
- Thread starter SpaceLama
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Ent's season one and two were dull and uninspired plus the multiple faux pas like when Archer decides for some stupid reason to withhold a cure of a deadly disease from an entire planet. Who could be happy to see that?
What was that episode where Archer and company stole a warp drive part (or something like that) from a ship, and left the ship stranded in space? I remember the uproar from that episode back in the day. LOL
Yeah, that one was pretty bad indeed.
Really? I think it was one of the best parts of the season and one of the reasons why I think ultimately season 3 is the best season of Enterprise. It brought home the point that desperate circumstances can lead to desperate measures and how easy it is to forgo your ideals and your humanity in the face of a no-win scenario. I think we would be lucky if Discovery incorporates this kind of storytelling.
That episode was called "Damage" and it immediately followed the episode where The Enterprise had been getting shot at by Xindi to the point that just about any other ship we had seen in Trek history would have turned into a fireball.
Enterprise being a prequel was never a problem. It should have been the chance to make something really, incredibly fresh.
Just one example... Don't show any alien species for half of the first season. Do other stuff. Setup humanities little territory in space as it is.(Which was a flaw in the concept of the show from the beginning...Does Earth have an actual fleet, or is the NX-01 the first real ship other than mining and colony ships? Well it does have a defense force of some kind as we see later...But then Archer just comes off as a whiney weirdo at that point because clearly... Nothing was really holding us back if we had a whole flotilla of Delta's and Intrepid/NV's out by season two.)
Berman and Braga pretty much constantly called their audience idiots. That didn't exactly help. Braga basically said at one point said we were a bunch of 12 year olds who didn't care about anything but T'pols boobs. There was some resentment on both sides. In recent years Braga has done a good job of extending an olive branch and admitting they screwed up, and that their was a lot of ego in the way.
Enterprise being a prequel was never a problem. It should have been the chance to make something really, incredibly fresh.
Just one example... Don't show any alien species for half of the first season. Do other stuff. Setup humanities little territory in space as it is.(Which was a flaw in the concept of the show from the beginning...Does Earth have an actual fleet, or is the NX-01 the first real ship other than mining and colony ships? Well it does have a defense force of some kind as we see later...But then Archer just comes off as a whiney weirdo at that point because clearly... Nothing was really holding us back if we had a whole flotilla of Delta's and Intrepid/NV's out by season two.)
Berman and Braga pretty much constantly called their audience idiots. That didn't exactly help. Braga basically said at one point said we were a bunch of 12 year olds who didn't care about anything but T'pols boobs. There was some resentment on both sides. In recent years Braga has done a good job of extending an olive branch and admitting they screwed up, and that their was a lot of ego in the way.
My take on this is as follows:
- The ship's design surely is not great but, if one would continue on designing more streamlined and sleek ships we'll end up with long shapeless unrealistic objects like that awful ent-j. It is an industrial, heavy and bulky design that might work, considering that ships in TOS had simpler designs. To be fair, although ugly, the ship has character.
- I think that the most important thing here is the fact that is set in the prime universe, and that to me is a tremendous relief. Enough with all the preposterous JJ-universe which existed solely on the grounds of making massive use of eye-candy cgi.
- Relax. Give the series a chance. Think about how all the different series started: TNG was poorely made (techinically) for the firt couple of seasons. Ds9 was techinically OK from day 1, but stories didn't start to pick up the right pace until season 3. So what we need here is to give the creators some credit and hope for the best. After all one show is better than now show. (Although I would have felt happier with no Kelvin-universe films)
@OpenMaw - I remember
I also remember them saying that the reason Nemesis failed, was that "Romulans are over-used"
Rather than, ya know, it being directed by someone who ACTIVELY HATED Star Trek.
The reason Nemesis failed was because it was awful through and through. Nothing in that movie makes sense. Like since we know that the bad guy has a world to destroy then what's the point of him waiting around screwing with Deanna's psyche? It's just stupid.
If you are writing a sci-fi TV show from a fictional encyclopedia entry, you've pretty much failed as a creator. Seriously, the creative vision should come first. That first scene from "Broken Bow" is pretty cool. If so much of the show hadn't been so dull and plodding and reliant on what worked before, it might have been a success.
"Minefield" wasn't a bad episode because they forgot about a line from a 35 year old episode, it was a bad episode because it was dull.
Ya know I broadly agree with you BillJ, as I've said in previous threads, but I do think it wouldn't have been too much of a chore for them to have paid some mind to the existing chronology. Even having one person in the writer's room familiar with TOS would have saved an avoidable error, without limiting them in any way. They could have:
And yes, maybe Trekkies would have been more forgiving, if the episode had actually been any good.
If you read my entire post, you would find I pretty much said exactly what you said in your second paragraph, line for line. I also think the episode was shit, because it was shit, and no amount of reverence for canon would have saved it.
Why do people always argue it has to be one or the other? You can do both. You can have an un-impinged creativity, and still pay homage to what has come before. Off the top of my head, I can think of literally millions of plot points that wouldn't contradict anything in TOS. "Writing from an encyclopedia entry" isn't exactly what I said, is it?
- ) - pitched their idea, free as a bird, uninhibited by the chains of continuity
- ) - looked "cloaking device" up in the Encylopedia, taking maybe 35 seconds
- ) - changed it very subtly in a way that wouldn't have broken the script one iota
And yes, maybe Trekkies would have been more forgiving, if the episode had actually been any good.
If you read my entire post, you would find I pretty much said exactly what you said in your second paragraph, line for line. I also think the episode was shit, because it was shit, and no amount of reverence for canon would have saved it.
Why do people always argue it has to be one or the other? You can do both. You can have an un-impinged creativity, and still pay homage to what has come before. Off the top of my head, I can think of literally millions of plot points that wouldn't contradict anything in TOS. "Writing from an encyclopedia entry" isn't exactly what I said, is it?
I would've rather them have people working on making the episode interesting.
Great. They still make mistakes, and those mistakes don't make or break the novel on an entertainment level. Though, the novels are pointed at a distinctly different audience than a TV show.
@GregCox has talked about the size/type of audience for the novels compared to the TV shows.
I don't see why they can't do both.
I really don't want them constrained by throwaway lines from twenty, thirty or forty years ago. That is just a waste of time and resources. Beyond that, the vast majority of your audience just isn't going to care.
An audience is just going to look cross-eyed that something doesn't exist in the far future that we are pondering now. It is the problem with undying loyalty to a fifty year TV show. Society and technology have changed. No one bats an eye at the idea of women leaders now, but if we hold fast and true to the ideas of 60's TV and "Turnabout Intruder", women can't be starship captains, which is plain non-sense.
Does Discovery have to have paper printouts instead of visual displays? Women wearing mini-skirts on dangerous missions? Obvious paper reports in black boxes instead of tablet devices? Heck, as much as I love that black flip open communicator, I would like to see them using wristband or even subcutaneous devices.
The 23rd century is still the future. The future is now being imagined from a 21st century perspective. The broad strokes will remain, the minutiae will likely be shown to the nearest airlock if it conflicts with what they want to do now.
Balance of Terror's cloaking device wasn't a throwaway line.
It was the episode's main plot device - it's Death Star - and a major part of Star Trek the setting.
It was the "Red October" if "Balance of Terror" was "The Hunt for the Red October".
It was the "Guns" if "Balance of Terror" was "The Guns of Navarone".
It is one of the most famous technological devices in all of Star Trek - all other science fiction that uses the term, got it from Star Trek - including The Empire Strikes Back "no ship that small has a cloaking device". It was so fundamentally important to the setting that an entire episode deals with the Federation conducting a mission to steal one from the Romulans, making it the subject of a story arc.
So yes, they shouldn't be constrained by throwaway lines from 50 years ago, but this wasn't one. They also shouldn't ignore things of fundamental importance to the entire nature of the setting - a major part of it's world building - or contradict an entire 50 minute episode (one of the most famous in Trek's history, up there with "Best of Both Worlds"). I think the two things - 1). a throwaway line - 2). a vital part of the setting's world building - are completely different in class/type/scale/scope. I would not care one bit if someone ignored a throwaway line about say "the Federation does not permit cats on board starships", or "you Earth people only achieved spaceflight barely a century ago", or if the crew of the DSC use space suits that look more advanced than TOS ones - but contradicting an hour of your own most famous material is just beyond the pale - completely different to those examples in scope. One is a history-altering technical accomplishment on par with the atom bomb, the others completely irrelevant to the wider context.
And, just to remind you all - it wasn't even needed by the episode. Yes - it served nil purpose - nothing - nada. This wasn't in furtherance of creativity. It didn't remove any shackles. The ships could have warped in. They could have been 'running quiet'. They could have just flown in normally ffs.
Anyway, let's leave it there...
...because it's literally the only time I have ever been that bothered by a continuity error in Trek.
Nothing has ever even approached that for me - Klingons changing appearance in TMP was unimportant.
DSC can do what it likes for all I care - I am ridiculously happy to have any new Star Trek on TV. Have a bridge that looks far more advanced than Kirk's. Have a spacesuit that automatically wraps itself around people. But if it did something that fundamentally altered the setting, for no conceivable reason - like, I dunno, say that the "Klingons are a joined symbiotic species, who are all naturally telepathic, and capable of controlling starships with their minds" - or say that "Vulcans have orange blood, that turns the air around them poisonous" - I think we would all be quite mystified. If you want to write a different science fiction show entirely, by all means do it, but it's just that - another show. A setting will always have some kind of internal consistency. I have no worries in this regard - I'm sure DSC will ignore throwaway lines - I'm sure it will look different to TOS - but I don't have any particular fear that it will do anything as odd as "Minefield" - the JJ Abrams movies are themselves more faithful than that, and they are virtually a reboot. By comparison, Bryan Fuller used to apparently read Romulan history for fun, and was able to quote the reference material.
It was the episode's main plot device - it's Death Star - and a major part of Star Trek the setting.
It was the "Red October" if "Balance of Terror" was "The Hunt for the Red October".
It was the "Guns" if "Balance of Terror" was "The Guns of Navarone".
It is one of the most famous technological devices in all of Star Trek - all other science fiction that uses the term, got it from Star Trek - including The Empire Strikes Back "no ship that small has a cloaking device". It was so fundamentally important to the setting that an entire episode deals with the Federation conducting a mission to steal one from the Romulans, making it the subject of a story arc.
So yes, they shouldn't be constrained by throwaway lines from 50 years ago, but this wasn't one. They also shouldn't ignore things of fundamental importance to the entire nature of the setting - a major part of it's world building - or contradict an entire 50 minute episode (one of the most famous in Trek's history, up there with "Best of Both Worlds"). I think the two things - 1). a throwaway line - 2). a vital part of the setting's world building - are completely different in class/type/scale/scope. I would not care one bit if someone ignored a throwaway line about say "the Federation does not permit cats on board starships", or "you Earth people only achieved spaceflight barely a century ago", or if the crew of the DSC use space suits that look more advanced than TOS ones - but contradicting an hour of your own most famous material is just beyond the pale - completely different to those examples in scope. One is a history-altering technical accomplishment on par with the atom bomb, the others completely irrelevant to the wider context.
And, just to remind you all - it wasn't even needed by the episode. Yes - it served nil purpose - nothing - nada. This wasn't in furtherance of creativity. It didn't remove any shackles. The ships could have warped in. They could have been 'running quiet'. They could have just flown in normally ffs.
Anyway, let's leave it there...
...because it's literally the only time I have ever been that bothered by a continuity error in Trek.
Nothing has ever even approached that for me - Klingons changing appearance in TMP was unimportant.
DSC can do what it likes for all I care - I am ridiculously happy to have any new Star Trek on TV. Have a bridge that looks far more advanced than Kirk's. Have a spacesuit that automatically wraps itself around people. But if it did something that fundamentally altered the setting, for no conceivable reason - like, I dunno, say that the "Klingons are a joined symbiotic species, who are all naturally telepathic, and capable of controlling starships with their minds" - or say that "Vulcans have orange blood, that turns the air around them poisonous" - I think we would all be quite mystified. If you want to write a different science fiction show entirely, by all means do it, but it's just that - another show. A setting will always have some kind of internal consistency. I have no worries in this regard - I'm sure DSC will ignore throwaway lines - I'm sure it will look different to TOS - but I don't have any particular fear that it will do anything as odd as "Minefield" - the JJ Abrams movies are themselves more faithful than that, and they are virtually a reboot. By comparison, Bryan Fuller used to apparently read Romulan history for fun, and was able to quote the reference material.
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I haven't seen enough of DSC to hate it or like it. I'm enthusiastic, although that enthusiasm has lowered somewhat due to when it's set, but that is it.
As for ENT, I think it's biggest mistake was that overall it didn't really take advantage of it's pre-TOS setting like it could have before Season 4. There were a few episodes that did, like the Andorian Incident and the one with the Archer flashbacks to him testing the new ship, but the vast majority of them could have just as easily been done in TNG or Voyager.
As for ENT, I think it's biggest mistake was that overall it didn't really take advantage of it's pre-TOS setting like it could have before Season 4. There were a few episodes that did, like the Andorian Incident and the one with the Archer flashbacks to him testing the new ship, but the vast majority of them could have just as easily been done in TNG or Voyager.
Never saw Space Above and Beyond, so I can't comment on it.
I have seen Firefly, though. While it's not a bad show (heck, I got a copy of it on sale awhile back), that show is honestly one that I'm kind of surprised that others are surprised was canceled. It's a really weird show. While I think the characters can draw people in, the whole "Old West...IN SPACE!" thing kind of got a little old after awhile. Also, the quippy nature of the characters kind of made them seem a little less "real" and more like characters who know they're TV characters. Since I enjoyed it enough, I was able to compensate, but I honestly wonder how much gas was really in the tank. On top of that, I'm not sure if we can judge if Firefly was a good TV show, since we never really got a chance to see how bad it could get (although it did have a couple of really awful ones).
ENT was a new era. Compare it to its predecessors in the franchise. The only one that worked out of the gate was TOS. All the others needed a couple of seasons to click. We saw the same for ENT. It found its legs, only to get canceled when it had clicked. So, in all honestly, I think it was far more of a tragedy that ENT got canceled than Firefly. The latter was an interesting concept, but that's all we got. With ENT, we saw it go through the highs and lows. We know what kind of show it was and where it was going.
Maybe with all this experience, they knew what to do but the network meddled? Braga begged UPN to let them wait to make a new show. But if he and Berman refused, they would have done it without them. Some network heads didn't even know what a hull was. It didn't help that at the time, syndication was in decline but it was still too early for streaming.
OP missed the point, so this whole thread is pointless. So far what has been put out to tease for the new show is underwhelming. It is 100% legitimite to express this opinion. Every opinion based on that is not about the actual show which is going to be produced but about what has been produced to tease for the new show visually and in text.
I wouldnt go so far to say I hate it, I just dont care for it. All information put out about the new show doesnt spark much interest in it for me. The same way it has been for all three JJ-verse movies. It is "Star Trek", but I dont care much for it, because it doesnt click with me.
I wouldnt go so far to say I hate it, I just dont care for it. All information put out about the new show doesnt spark much interest in it for me. The same way it has been for all three JJ-verse movies. It is "Star Trek", but I dont care much for it, because it doesnt click with me.
Not sure that's really an option anymore. Firefly is not a special case: modern TV history is littered with genre shows that got cancelled within a season or two: Terra Nova, Alphas, Fast-Forward, Invasion, Surface, Threshold, Caprica, Limitless, Mercy Point, etc.
TNG was the first new Trek show in ages and had little or no competition, so we cut it some slack while it got its sea legs because it was pretty much the only game in town. But in these days of "peak tv," audiences can't be expected to wait three seasons for a show to "click." You kinda need to hit the ground running . ....
Four seasons is more than most SF shows get, so ENTERPRISE can't really complain.
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That's pretty much what I think as well.
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