I'm a Firefly fan also and couldn't agree more. I also totally agree with the assessment to kill or destroy the lame Enterprise theme song.
How could they have made this a better show?
- Thread starter ReadyAndWilling
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I'm a Firefly fan also and couldn't agree more. I also totally agree with the assessment to kill or destroy the lame Enterprise theme song.
Well, I wouldn't have the entire first season set entirely in spacedock, more like the opening story arc, like the first four episodes or so. And it wouldn't all be set in the Sol System. There would be some exposition on Vulcan, setting up the Orion Syndicate, more of a focus on Klaang and why he was even anywhere near Earth, etc. Maybe have Malcolm offworld finishing up some assignment, but without revealing his connection to Section 31 until later in the season. Stuff like that.
Oh, and I'd also let Mayweather wear an NX-01 ballcap like Joker in Mass Effect.
I figure as a Boomer he's used to being a little more lax.
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Yes, 'twas me, at Terraformers convention 2 years ago. The next one is in Greece in April!
I loved Enterprise first because of the retro look - it was the main reason for me to watch. Even more 50's would have been great. And the computers should have had paper readouts!
I've said this in other threads but it is relevant to this one so I'll repeat it here. For me, the main stumbling block with ENT was that it was far too familiar.
An organisation called Star Fleet. A lead trio consisting of a dedicated captain, an old friend from the deep south, and a stoic Vulcan scientist. Weapons that can stun or kill. Klingons. Time travel. The last minute use of the transporter to save someone's life.
All Star Trek staples. And all present in the very first episode.
Pre-publicity suggested that things would be very different to other Treks. In practice all that changed were the names. Phase pistols instead of phasers. Hull plating at 30% instead of shields at 30%.
An organisation called Star Fleet. A lead trio consisting of a dedicated captain, an old friend from the deep south, and a stoic Vulcan scientist. Weapons that can stun or kill. Klingons. Time travel. The last minute use of the transporter to save someone's life.
All Star Trek staples. And all present in the very first episode.
Pre-publicity suggested that things would be very different to other Treks. In practice all that changed were the names. Phase pistols instead of phasers. Hull plating at 30% instead of shields at 30%.
I loved the show. It had some fantastic characters, and had potential to be phenomenal. But, sloppy writing really cut down on its quality which was a crying shame.
*I gotta agree with many other posters: Cut the Xindi arc in half if you have to have it at all.
*Let us get to know Elizabeth (The Elder) Tucker before you kill her off. Even if it's just glimpses of letters between her and Trip, it would make her death seem even more devastating and less random if the audience got to know her, as well.
*Make T'Pol less of a sex-object. And for the love of all things holy, get that girl some decent Vulcan robes! Her character was great, but they really didn't elaborate on it until the fourth season. Drug addiction does not character development make, TPTB! I love the thought of her being an unusual Vulcan who never really knew her place in the universe, and joined these strange Humans to figure it out. But they shoved that off to the side for commentary on her posterior!
*The TripxT'Pol relationship needed to be kept, but with some re-vamping. It had the potential to be an absolutely beautiful romance, and then they had to botch it. It seemed like they were developing a solid friendship through Season 1, and had great chemistry. Then, the writers realized the relationship had gotten away from them and shoved Trip out of the picture for Season 2. Then, upon seeing that Archer and T'Pol had the chemistry of a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal, pushed the engineer back in. Not content to let it develop on its own, the poor kids were promptly dragged through every soap opera cliche possible.
To sum up: They should have let this develop naturally, and then left it to evolve on its own. Being one of the first Vulcan/Human couples would've created drama on its own, without any help.
*More Archer/Tucker/T'Pol friendship. With more screentime, it could have been a wonderful trinity, with a feel of "Us against the Universe."
*Chuck the Temporal Cold War. Lame concept and poorly executed.
*MORE FIRST CONTACT! This is Earth's first deep space exploration mission. We should have seen new worlds, new places, been introduced to well known species for the first time. (E.g. Betazoids)
* I have to agree with The Badger. Everything was far too formalized for such an early mission. Make it new, exciting, a touch bizarre for everyone involved and just a tad chaotic. The universe is re-organizing itself with the appearance of Humans on the scene in a big way, let that be felt in the storytelling. And Anwar, they could have started out very different, followed by a slow progression towards what is known and loved in the Trek-verse.
*I'm torn whether or not they should've included the Romulan War. It probably been a little out of the budget range, though.
*I gotta agree with many other posters: Cut the Xindi arc in half if you have to have it at all.
*Let us get to know Elizabeth (The Elder) Tucker before you kill her off. Even if it's just glimpses of letters between her and Trip, it would make her death seem even more devastating and less random if the audience got to know her, as well.
*Make T'Pol less of a sex-object. And for the love of all things holy, get that girl some decent Vulcan robes! Her character was great, but they really didn't elaborate on it until the fourth season. Drug addiction does not character development make, TPTB! I love the thought of her being an unusual Vulcan who never really knew her place in the universe, and joined these strange Humans to figure it out. But they shoved that off to the side for commentary on her posterior!
*The TripxT'Pol relationship needed to be kept, but with some re-vamping. It had the potential to be an absolutely beautiful romance, and then they had to botch it. It seemed like they were developing a solid friendship through Season 1, and had great chemistry. Then, the writers realized the relationship had gotten away from them and shoved Trip out of the picture for Season 2. Then, upon seeing that Archer and T'Pol had the chemistry of a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal, pushed the engineer back in. Not content to let it develop on its own, the poor kids were promptly dragged through every soap opera cliche possible.
To sum up: They should have let this develop naturally, and then left it to evolve on its own. Being one of the first Vulcan/Human couples would've created drama on its own, without any help.
*More Archer/Tucker/T'Pol friendship. With more screentime, it could have been a wonderful trinity, with a feel of "Us against the Universe."
*Chuck the Temporal Cold War. Lame concept and poorly executed.
*MORE FIRST CONTACT! This is Earth's first deep space exploration mission. We should have seen new worlds, new places, been introduced to well known species for the first time. (E.g. Betazoids)
* I have to agree with The Badger. Everything was far too formalized for such an early mission. Make it new, exciting, a touch bizarre for everyone involved and just a tad chaotic. The universe is re-organizing itself with the appearance of Humans on the scene in a big way, let that be felt in the storytelling. And Anwar, they could have started out very different, followed by a slow progression towards what is known and loved in the Trek-verse.
*I'm torn whether or not they should've included the Romulan War. It probably been a little out of the budget range, though.
Except for the (poorly executed) concept of being a prequel, Enterprise was just a mediocre show (well, definitely less) that relied on the same-old, same-old tired, formulaic paint-by-numbers approach as the other modern ST shows, but with a different cast and sets. Berman and Braga could have capitalized on the whole retro 60s and 70s thing that got big, but instead they stuck to what they know, which is essentially an early 90s sensibility about how to make a series. Good thing audiences saw right through it and stopped watching. Scott Bakula was horribly wooden and so obviously out of his element, and while the rest of the cast showed some promise too often they were given almost nothing fun or interesting to do except occasionally show their butt cracks or hint at the possibility they would get to act like they were alive. It was an expensive but unimpressive, unimaginative television program conceived badly from the start.
Oh, yeah.
I liked the concept, tho' I don't know if it had to be about Xindi. Could have been Orions or Rigellians or another hostile species we'd actually heard of.
Yes, this was a huge failing in story development. Her death had no emotional impact on the viewers. Another flaw, IMO, was that Trip never goes home to see his parents when Enterprise gets back to Earth following the attack or even after the Xindi mission.
I agree about the sexification of T'Pol. Seriously, the costume department couldn't find a pair of pajamas in all of Los Angeles that would fit Jolene?
I agree. We never got a chance to really see how Spock's parents made their union work. I always hoped the writers/producers of Enterprise would have the guts to try to show us how it could have been done.
I'm not sure I really wanted another Kirk/Spock/McCoy triumverate. I think I would have preferred to see wider development of friendships rather than the same old cliques.
I'd like to execute the person who came up with it.
I'd prefer not to go with species introduced in TNG or later.
Actually, when I first heard there was going to be a prequel series, I thought it was going to be more a "Star Trek: The Right Stuff" kind of show. Really small ship, 30-40 crew members; they're cocky, brash, over-confident until they get out there and get their noses bloodied; their weapons and medical care are maybe 75 years ahead of where we are. They find themselves outclassed about 50 percent of the time; almost half of their first contacts are disasters. People are maimed and die and there's no super alien doctors to save them. And the ship goes home once in a while so we can see what Earth is like in the future.
Nah, we didn't need the war. But I would like to have seen some early warning signs.
Avoid the war entirely.
And if you really want to go for the "Earth's first contacts with aliens", set the show before the 2150s (when the Romulan Wars and Federation happened). As it, a LOT before; 2110s preferably.
Earth didn't even have a Mars colony until 2103, so the problems can be more around Earth and the Sol system for the first season (and if you HAVE to get them further out, the fist EPISODES can be in the Sol System).
Hell, aside from a few Vulcans don't have any aliens appear in Season One at all and then introduce T'Pol halfway into the first season. Season Two is when they can meet up with the Andorians and stuff.
And if you really want to go for the "Earth's first contacts with aliens", set the show before the 2150s (when the Romulan Wars and Federation happened). As it, a LOT before; 2110s preferably.
Earth didn't even have a Mars colony until 2103, so the problems can be more around Earth and the Sol system for the first season (and if you HAVE to get them further out, the fist EPISODES can be in the Sol System).
Hell, aside from a few Vulcans don't have any aliens appear in Season One at all and then introduce T'Pol halfway into the first season. Season Two is when they can meet up with the Andorians and stuff.
Yes, it is that bad. The singer is awful, and it sounds like something by Michael Bolton or a very bad 80s sweet metal band. The idea to replace the classic, anthem-like Trek themes to something different and use a contemporary pop song was a good one, but if that song was their idea of contemporary pop music, oh well... I applaud them from trying to do something different, but I have to give them thumbs down when they do it so badly.
Less T'Pol and Tucker. They basically took over the show after a while. I am not interested in the weekly going on's of the ENterprise couple. I wanted actually plot and character development. More Hoshi and Mayweather would have been good. Hoshi was a great character but during the first she did very little, and the captain assigning her to track down Reed's favorite food, seriously? Why couldn't Archer get a crewman to do that and let Hoshi actually do her job. Mayweather was okay but really treated like Harry Kim #2 in that his character never developed.
This is an easy one, forget that seasons 1-3 ever existed and that the season premier was just a by product of eating bad shell fish. I've always thought that if ENT began with the quality level of season 4 the show would have been great but instead we got the stupid TCW and massive filler.
Season 4 wasn't even that much better than S3, it was just the publicity effect of having a new showrunner that mainly got people back in.
Then again, Coto finally gave them the continuity porno they always wanted so I guess there is something to spinelessly pandering to the audience.
Then again, Coto finally gave them the continuity porno they always wanted so I guess there is something to spinelessly pandering to the audience.
Personally, I feel that season one of Enterprise is better than season one of TNG. Once more, I am completely perplexed by the lack of respect Enterprise gets. It was way better than Voyager. I haven't seen enough of DS9 to make a comparison, but we're still talking about a show that had the Trek spirit, and went about its business in a quiet, almost understated way. I found that to be one of the show's many charms. And people, can we please stop the bitching and moaning about the theme song? Not that I'm a fan or anything, but I truly believe Trek fans can bolster their arguments with stonger facts then, "the theme song sucks, I'm not watching the show" Aren't we better than that?
I noticed that several folks mentioned the Kzinti as a possible antagonist species...
Are these references to the Kzin from Larry Niven's Known Space/Ring World universe? Or was the name appropriated by the Trek creators and assigned to an entirely different species?
If it's the same felinoid race I know from Niven's work, I would be thrilled to see them on screen -- so long as they weren't heavily altered from the original concept.
Are these references to the Kzin from Larry Niven's Known Space/Ring World universe? Or was the name appropriated by the Trek creators and assigned to an entirely different species?
If it's the same felinoid race I know from Niven's work, I would be thrilled to see them on screen -- so long as they weren't heavily altered from the original concept.
They are, and it's because the animated version of TOS had one episode that featured the Kzinti and the 5 or so wars they had with humanity. The whole thing was a barely rewritten existing Niven story in his "Known Space" Universe.
Besides, we're supposed to believe that a humanity only a few decades after First Contact could rebuild itself to the point that it could defeat an interstellar war machine that decisively in a series of wars? We're supposed to believe that the Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons or Romulans never dealt with them long before they got to Earth?
Drop the Kzinti entirely, or rewrite the Kzin thing so it's not the Man-Kzin wars Niven wrote about.
Besides, we're supposed to believe that a humanity only a few decades after First Contact could rebuild itself to the point that it could defeat an interstellar war machine that decisively in a series of wars? We're supposed to believe that the Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons or Romulans never dealt with them long before they got to Earth?
Drop the Kzinti entirely, or rewrite the Kzin thing so it's not the Man-Kzin wars Niven wrote about.
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