Just What Was Up With The Treatment of Travis Mayweather?

[DarKush]

I think the biggest problem for Mayweather is they never pared him up with someone for interaction. His story lines almost always involved someone off of the ship. I also wish they had been more consistant with him. How does a space boomer become the ship's expert rock climber?

^
Good points. I had mentioned that I think the ENT writers dropped the ball at least three times in establishing relationships with Hoshi, Trip, and Archer. Even the Trek Lit. writers did a better job, establishing a relationship with one of the MACOs in the book Last Full Measure. One of the brighter spots of the ENT Trek Lit. is there is a willingness to at least do something with Mayweather. He's by far not the focus of the novels, but his character does get a little needed attention.

 

[SFRabid]

Another missed opportunity for him. ... He was a boomer. Someone experienced with space and interactions with aliens. The show started out making that point, and then T'Pol took over. That should have lead to some conflict between Mayweather and T'Pol. She took an area of expertise that was supposed to be his. She should have been presenting his aloof Vulcan point of view about alien species while he presented his own view as a boomer.

 

[DarKush]

^
I think T'Pol sidelined both Mayweather and Hoshi. T'Pol's knowledge of space and her Vulcan database pretty much made Mayweather's knowledge redundant, and the Vulcan database also took away from showing Hoshi using enough of her language skills. I liked Jolene Blalock, but I've long wondered if ENT might have benefited from having an all human crew.

With the way the Vulcans were portrayed I could see the need to have a Vulcan character, as a counterpoint to Archer and Trip, and the idea of having a sexy but icy female Vulcan character was titillating, and they wanted to recreate the TOS trio vibe, but T'Pol took away from the human adventure aspect of the show. I wish that Blalock had been a human character. She still could've been just as hot. Make her a civilian/government official or something.

 

[sonak]

^
I think T'Pol sidelined both Mayweather and Hoshi. T'Pol's knowledge of space and her Vulcan database pretty much made Mayweather's knowledge redundant, and the Vulcan database also took away from showing Hoshi using enough of her language skills. I liked Jolene Blalock, but I've long wondered if ENT might have benefited from having an all human crew.

With the way the Vulcans were portrayed I could see the need to have a Vulcan character, as a counterpoint to Archer and Trip, and the idea of having a sexy but icy female Vulcan character was titillating, and they wanted to recreate the TOS trio vibe, but T'Pol took away from the human adventure aspect of the show. I wish that Blalock had been a human character. She still could've been just as hot. Make her a civilian/government official or something.

adding Vulcan knowledge to the mission also made it seem like they were basically just doing a trip somebody else had done before instead of being out there exploring.

"look at this cool planet!"


"(yawn) Yeah, that's t'velsrugprm, Vulcans mapped that planet and this system decades ago."

 

[spot_loves_data]

Has anyone called Mayweather the Harry Kim of ENT yet? They're both young, naive, close to their families, and annoyingly squeaky clean.

I liked Mayweather overall, though. Trek really doesn't have enough male eye candy in the tv shows. Not men who are written as chick magnets (Riker, Paris, Dr. Bashir), but men who are genuinely beautiful. As the actor wasn't spectacular, I think he got just enough screen time. But I agree that they wasted an opportunity to add a whole new boomer perspective.

 

[Gotham Central]

I think that the folks that made Enterprise made a very conscious decision to return to the character dynamics that prevailed in TOS over any of the modern shows. Part of that meant that there had to be more of a focus on the white male characters.

DS9 had the distinction of having only one white male human character on the show...O'Brien. He, however, was not the daring swashbuckling hero...he was the hard pressed everyman. He was never underused, and he was distinctive precisely because he was surrounded by all of these other extraordinary men and women.

Voyager, conversely was the first show where the women got most of the focus. The men tended to get short changed on that show (sadly it was the men of color that good the brunt of that...Chakotay, Tuvok, Kim.

As those shows were considered less successful than either TNG or TOS. Thus someone decided that things needed to go back to the way they had been in the past. This is why from the point of characterization, Enterprise felt so retrograde. The number of women were cut back to two and the number of people of color was also cut back to two (with one character being both). Enterprise was the return of the white guy being front and center in Star Trek.

I think that the treatment of Mayweather went beyond simple underuse. His presence had become a farce. Many people pointed out that he made his most important character development while he was dead in "Damaged." I also remember quite a few people pointing out that in "Twilight" Mayweather is killed right at the start with little to no comment. He was the ONLY character that did not get featured in that alternate future.

 

[MacLeod]

^With regards to O'Brien it helps when you have an actor like Colm Meany to throw good scripts at.

 

[T'Girl]

He was a boomer. Someone experienced with space and interactions with aliens. The show started out making that point, and then T'Pol took over.

It would have been interesting to place Travis (in some ways) in the same role as Neelix. Someone who had knowledge of many of the places that Enterprise was going, in some cases possessed personal contacts amongst the Tellars and Andorians. "Alien boomers" too. In the episode where Enterprise needed repairs, it would have been Travis who heard rumors of the automated repair station.

... they wasted an opportunity to add a whole new boomer perspective.

If the boomer family ships existed in the hundreds (or thousands), they could have been a entire interstellar community. perhaps one that was beginning to feel a disconnection with Earth. Travis could have been the link between that community and the Enterprise.

When they started to have trouble with the Romulans, it would have been one of their boomer contacts who said, "The Romulan? Yeah been running into them for years ... sneaky bastards."

 

[Nerys Myk]

Montgomery was miscast as Travis. They should have flipped the casting: Montgomery as Reed and Keating as Travis. With Keating in the role they could have played Travis as a well traveled veteran space boomer. ( as was originally intended) And as "In A Mirror Darkly" showed, playing a security type was in Montgomery's wheel house. Young and eager is also something he could pull off.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If the boomer family ships existed in the hundreds (or thousands), they could have been a entire interstellar community. perhaps one that was beginning to feel a disconnection with Earth. Travis could have been the link between that community and the Enterprise.

When they started to have trouble with the Romulans, it would have been one of their boomer contacts who said, "The Romulan? Yeah been running into them for years ... sneaky bastards."

Yep, the Boomer character should have been the "guide" character - not T'Pol as a Vulcan. Mayweather would have been perfect for that. Maybe recast the role, but I like the idea of having a black actor in a central, scene-grabbing role. It's insulting when nonwhite actors get shunted off to the who-cares roles like Mayweather and Kim. Every so often, okay, but it's happened far too often.

 

[Relayer1]

Mayweather was just a redundant character. Pointless, uninteresting and dull.

Harry Kim was nowhere near as irrelevant...

 

[DarKush]

Montgomery was miscast as Travis. They should have flipped the casting: Montgomery as Reed and Keating as Travis. With Keating in the role they could have played Travis as a well traveled veteran space boomer. ( as was originally intended) And as "In A Mirror Darkly" showed, playing a security type was in Montgomery's wheel house. Young and eager is also something he could pull off.

Interesting idea. Though as it stood Reed didn't get a lot of development either on the show. I wonder if the T'Pol role would've stayed the same, if the switch would've made that much of a difference, since she took the guide status, and also I have to wonder if the ENT would've just not done much with Montgomery in security? Would he have gotten that rivalry and fight with Hayes? Would he have gotten to be in Section 31? Who knows. Conversely would more been done with Keating's on screen family and Gannett Brooks?

 

[Relayer1]

Montgomery was miscast as Travis. They should have flipped the casting: Montgomery as Reed and Keating as Travis. With Keating in the role they could have played Travis as a well traveled veteran space boomer. ( as was originally intended) And as "In A Mirror Darkly" showed, playing a security type was in Montgomery's wheel house. Young and eager is also something he could pull off.

I liked Reed just the way he was thank you...

 

[Nerys Myk]

Montgomery was miscast as Travis. They should have flipped the casting: Montgomery as Reed and Keating as Travis. With Keating in the role they could have played Travis as a well traveled veteran space boomer. ( as was originally intended) And as "In A Mirror Darkly" showed, playing a security type was in Montgomery's wheel house. Young and eager is also something he could pull off.

Interesting idea. Though as it stood Reed didn't get a lot of development either on the show. I wonder if the T'Pol role would've stayed the same, if the switch would've made that much of a difference, since she took the guide status, and also I have to wonder if the ENT would've just not done much with Montgomery in security? Would he have gotten that rivalry and fight with Hayes? Would he have gotten to be in Section 31? Who knows. Conversely would more been done with Keating's on screen family and Gannett Brooks?

Yes, they would haveto stick with the original concept of Travis to make it work and leave the science stuff to T'Pol.

I could see a boomer being an operative of Section 31. Using merchants and traders to gather intel is not unheard of.