Isn't Enterprise supposed to do a re-launch ala DS9? It would be great if they could start the novels with Season 5, and reveal who future guy is. They should get Braga to write it so it coan feel more like an official storyline.
I have a feeling I know who Future Guy was...
- Thread starter Cmndr J Crichton
- Start date
Daniels comment about "None of this is suppose to be happening" in "Carpenter Street was referring to the brutal attack on Earth by the Xindi and the hostility between the two species. And he was right.
If the Sphere Builders hadn't told the Xindi Earth was a threat then Earth wouldn't have been attacked in 2153, 7 million wouldn't have died, Archer's mission wouldn't have taken him to the Expanse this early, the NX wouldn't have been in the Expanse for a year, the Andorians wouldn't have gotten the Xindi prototype etc etc.
Daniels took Archer to the 26th century to show him the Battle at Procyon V in order to let him understand in more detail why someone from the future had pitted Earth and the Xindi against one another in the 22nd century. And as we heard in "Azati Prime", the Sphere Builders lied to the Xindi of humanity being a threat because the Battle at Procyon V failed and the attempted invasion was thwarted.
The Sphere Builders realized that the Federation was too powerful and realized they would need to prevent it from ever existing and by studying the timelines they realized Earth was key in its formation. So they chose a moment where Earth had very little in the way of alliances and picked the Xindi who were the perfect targets to do their bidding.
Because of the time ripple delay Daniels referred to in "Carpenter Street", Daniels was able to take Archer to this unaltered event despite the earlier changes that would erase it. So yes the Battle at Procyon V in the 26th century was part of Daniels past. This battle is what caused the Sphere Builders to contact the Xindi and their interference in the 22nd century created a lot of changes in Daniels' original timeline.
They had no plan. They made it up as they went. They make no apologies. That allows for the most creative justifications on part to string together this hodgepodge of a story. You're quite the deductive thinker startrekwatcher, but do you think Braga could follow that or had anything close to a story model following that when he was handing out writing assignments?
That is true with regards to the Temporal Cold War. They clearly had no overall idea of where it was heading or the motives of the players involved or who FG was. Although with a TCW you could argue that any inconsistencies in actions by FG was the result of his adjusting his original plan in response to efforts by one or more factions to undermine his requiring a continuous modification. So at one point getting the NX mission cancelled served his goal but later on working with Archer was necessary to correct the temporal interference by others.
Afterall it is one thing to have free reign yourself in altering and fine-tuning the timeline to suit your needs but it is another when there are dozens and dozens of other factions each trying to advance their goals. It would be inevitable that whatever changes these factions were trying to facilitate would foul your efforts up in any number of ways.
I think you'll find that while some could definitely argue the TCW was an arbitrary mess, the Xindi arc was a storyline that held together quite well and whether it was all planned out or made up as they went along it created a coherent narrative--the Expanse, it being artificially created, the sphere network generating the anomalies, the trellium mining in "The Xindi", learning trellium could shield ships from anomalies, setting up the deleterious effects trellium had on Vulcan neurology paving the way for T'Pol's addiction and behavior, the writers actually revealing those who manipulated the Xindi unlike FG.
By using the Sphere Builders the writers elegantly tied all the threads of the season together and explained everything and answered questions I had all season.
Why did the faction not destroy Earth themselves? Well they couldn't because they can't survive in our space so they needed proxies in much the same way FG needed the Suliban. Only the Xindi had a more personal stake in the outcome.
Why choose the Xindi out of all the species? 1}The Sphere Builders would be aware of them because the Xindi reside in the region where they established their "terraforming" project. 2)The Sphere Builders could easily take advantage of their worries of losing yet another homeworld in the future.
How could the Xindi be out to destroy Earth if their homeworld was already destroyed? Well it had been destroyed earlier because of the Xindi civil war which makes sense given the contentiousness between the species which itself strikes me as plausible on a world with six different species.
So if they couldn't stand each other and their world was destroyed why come together and form a council and reconciliate? Well they didn't. The Sphere Builders proposed the idea and what better place to hold the meetings than the old Avian stronghold--a reminder of what had been lost and what could never be allowed to happen again.
That also ties back to the question many had as to why a race would commit genocide on the word of some third party. Well once again the writers came up with a believable scenario that didn't make the Xindi look like dupes.
The final episodes of the season provided the last pieces of the puzzle giving the Xindi’s actions of trying to destroy Earth plausibility as we learn that the Sphere Builders didn’t just appear out of the blue one day telling the Xindi to annihilate humanity. The Guardians earned their trust for over a century by guiding them to habitable worlds and helping them locate resources as well as being the ones who brought forth the idea of reconciliation before finally providing visual evidence of humanity destroying their new homeworld. The writers provided a very carefully laid out plan and under those circumstances the Xindi really were doing what they thought was the right thing given what they had to go on.
Actually I really do. I stand by my assertion that the time travel logic held up fairly well to scrutiny in season three. B&B might have been sloppy earlier but they did a decent job with the Xindi arc. I do believe that the trip to the Battle of Procyon V definitely showed thinking on the writers' part.
They remembered that in "The Expanse" the piece of technology the future faction had given the Xindi that Archer found in the probe debris and quantum dated was from 400 years in the future which was the 26th century which was when the Expanse was altered enough to allow for the Sphere Builder invasion.
The scene offered a lot of confirmation of why the Xindi really were attacking Earth. And the reasoning makes sense. It's inevitable that an adversary of the Federation with time travel technology would attempt to prevent it from existing by destroying Earth. In addition, Archer would have to visit the future in order to truly understand why all of this was occurring. It was illuminating for the viewer and Archer.
B&B even set things up decently in "Carpenter Street" by inserting the line about ripple effects taking time to move forward through the timeline. It not only does make sense given all the time shifting going on but it allowed for us to see this Battle.
The scene also had parallels to other major Trek battles which clearly the writers had in mind in crafting it. They remembered to not show the ship design of the Enterprise J from the outside in order to not restrict any future Trek series set in that era to using that design.
The writers even did a good job chronicling the weapon's progress from the plausible delays, the various tests to its launch arming and destruction not to mention how Degra developed into a central figure. The writers even remembered Daniels who as a temporal agent would be responsible for any temporal interference whether involving a TCW faction or interdimensional time travelling interlopers like the Sphere Builders.
The little details such as the idiosyncrasies of the Xindi sprinkled throughout the season.
So based on all of this evidence I think it would be difficult to say that there wasn't some plan outlined because I highly doubt all these various pieces would just so perfectly fall into place.
Here's a very funny reviewer who HATES what became of Star Trek under the guidance of B&B and even Coto. By the end of season 3 he lost the will to write abut Enterprise because he couldn't cope with the dire badness of it all. This will successfully counter all your creative and tenuous praise for seaosn three.
http://www.firsttvdrama.com/enterprise/e74.php3
How do Space Cowboys fit into the overall Xindi Arc? I didn't see even one called Maurice. Now there was a lost opportunity!
http://www.firsttvdrama.com/enterprise/e74.php3
How do Space Cowboys fit into the overall Xindi Arc? I didn't see even one called Maurice. Now there was a lost opportunity!
I read those reviews before and while I don't begrudge anyone being entitled to their opinions, I personally found the reviews nitpicky or downright wrong glossing over a lot of highlights that made the Xindi arc mostly satisfying.
That isn't to say I didn't have problems with season three--the arc had pacing problems, the standalones were mediocre--but overall I thought when it focused on the arc threads it was quite solid.
That isn't to say I didn't have problems with season three--the arc had pacing problems, the standalones were mediocre--but overall I thought when it focused on the arc threads it was quite solid.
Or how about this...
"Daniels," said Captain Kirk with a smirk. "I might have...known. How's the...timeline going, ha-ha."
"You're the Future Guy!" said Archer presciently.
"Yes, I was using temporal technology to...allow my voice...to catch up with itself...and not have so many...pauses," said He Who Must Be Toupeed. "But all I got was a strange...reverse echo. It was because this...politically-correct dweeb...was disfiguring the timeline...with his Temporal Cold Sore."
"DANIELS is the one trying to change history?" exclaimed Trip.
"And it's all ruined! RUINED!" cried Daniels. "Thanks to you, the bastard offspring of randy captains will spread across the galaxy until all aliens look like humans with lots of makeup. Kirk's tribble toupee will lead to decades of war with the Klingon Empire. With the Universal Translator there'll be no need for an alien liaison officer or an exo-linguist. The only purpose T'Pol and Hoshi will serve is as the ship's eye candy. And the female MACHO's will get bumped off because they're wearing red 'shoot-me' shirts."
"That's right," said Kirk, flipping Daniels the Great Bird of the Galaxy. "Things are a lot better...with my timeline. Here when someone tries to...beat up a captain they get their...butt kicked. And why should women become starship captains? How can she...seek out new strife in new civilisations...if she keeps stopping to ask for directions?"
Sorry, couldn't resist quoting from my own fanfic.
"Daniels," said Captain Kirk with a smirk. "I might have...known. How's the...timeline going, ha-ha."
"You're the Future Guy!" said Archer presciently.
"Yes, I was using temporal technology to...allow my voice...to catch up with itself...and not have so many...pauses," said He Who Must Be Toupeed. "But all I got was a strange...reverse echo. It was because this...politically-correct dweeb...was disfiguring the timeline...with his Temporal Cold Sore."
"DANIELS is the one trying to change history?" exclaimed Trip.
"And it's all ruined! RUINED!" cried Daniels. "Thanks to you, the bastard offspring of randy captains will spread across the galaxy until all aliens look like humans with lots of makeup. Kirk's tribble toupee will lead to decades of war with the Klingon Empire. With the Universal Translator there'll be no need for an alien liaison officer or an exo-linguist. The only purpose T'Pol and Hoshi will serve is as the ship's eye candy. And the female MACHO's will get bumped off because they're wearing red 'shoot-me' shirts."
"That's right," said Kirk, flipping Daniels the Great Bird of the Galaxy. "Things are a lot better...with my timeline. Here when someone tries to...beat up a captain they get their...butt kicked. And why should women become starship captains? How can she...seek out new strife in new civilisations...if she keeps stopping to ask for directions?"
Sorry, couldn't resist quoting from my own fanfic.
But in the26th Century Daniels shows Archer a timeline that follows if Archer failed. The Spheres which created the expanse should not be there. The expanse we see in the 26th century is a result of it expanding from the 22nd. So this is not a past of Daniels because without the Spheres tyhere is no expanse.
Dude! Listen to yourself!
You just said that Daniels was lying, yes an omission is a lie, and in this case a smaller appendage probably to a much larger lie... The Prime Directive is about lying too. Lying to the simple innocent cultures that the universe isn't so scary they should piss their pants in terror, and the temporal prime Directive must be an extension of that making sure the younger races remain piss free in their pants.
So really, you just said that we should accept the lie Daniels told Archer, like a parent assuring a child about the existence of the easter Bunny, as an acceptable conclusion to the TCW.
Or did I misunderstand you?
No, no, no. If that were the case and we were being shown a timeline where Archer failed then there would have been no Federation fleet including the Ent-J combatting them since Earth would have been long destroyed by the Xindi 400 years earlier and no Federation. We were being shown the Battle at Procyon V in order to understand why the Sphere Builders were manipulating the Xindi into destroying Earth and all of humanity. We are seeing the original history as it were where there had been no attack on Earth, humanity and the Xindi weren't enemies and Archer hadn't brought down the sphere network.
What ends up occurring because of the Sphere Builders changing history with the Xindi is that they inadvertently triggered a sequence of events whereby Archer ends up in the Expanse much sooner than Earth or the Federation originally did allowing for him to encounter the first sphere and study the network giving him the opportunity to bring down the sphere network in the 22nd century putting an end to the disturbances never allowing them to continue to grow for another 400 years.
Daniels was a lair. He wanted to have Archer make peace with the Xindi and ignore the sphere builders. If the Xindi didn't destroy the earth, the natural expansion of the Expanse was not going effect earth till after the battle of Proycon V. That wasn't the "original" history, that was a history Daniels assured Archer might still be if he just didn't try to end the threat prematurely and just let things progress nu-naturally.
I think the whole future vista was a reverse psychological lie to make him do what he did, but that's just me.
I think the whole future vista was a reverse psychological lie to make him do what he did, but that's just me.
I think FG was Braxton.
Toni Braxton?
That would've been preferable.
Yep.
I could see a bad Toni Braxton song or album rupturing the fabric of space-time and setting off a temporal cold war.
I could see a bad Toni Braxton song or album rupturing the fabric of space-time and setting off a temporal cold war.
So she's the opposite of Bill and Ted?
