Romulan War

[Opus]

I was just watching a Biography documentary on the captains of Trek, and Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens said had 'Enterprise' kept going, the Romulan War was going to be featured.

I am one who thinks the show violated continuity too much. But the 4th Season had many promising episodes. Perhaps they might have been able to turn it around and do a pretty good job with this, given the chance.

It's too bad they just didn't try to hit the ground running, or even perhaps get into the Romulan War in the 3rd Season instead of following the Xindi arc.

 

[F. King Daniel]

IMO the Xindi are a million times more interesting than the bland Romulans.

I've read the synopsis for the season five episodes (they're on Memory Alpha), and the only Romulan story was gonna be T'Pol finding out that her father was a Romulan spy who faked his own death.

Then there's the aborted Romulan war movie, Star Trek: The Beginning. It was cancelled in favour of JJ's reboot and reduced the Romulan war to a week-long battle in Earth orbit between the UESN fighter pilots and hundreds of Romulan drone ships equipped with cloaking devices, and involved Kirk's great-grandfather, Spock's grandfather, a Daedalus-class warp 8 ship, a band of Terra Prime-style loonies in an arctic Nazi bunker and a nuclear bomb. The Enterprise is at Risa and misses the whole thing.

I think if/however the Romulan War played out in Enterprise, it would have borne no resemblence to Spock's description in "Balance of Terror", and would have had canonistas furious. As usual.

 

[TV-Tastic]

I was just watching a Biography documentary on the captains of Trek, and Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens said had 'Enterprise' kept going, the Romulan War was going to be featured.

I am one who thinks the show violated continuity too much. But the 4th Season had many promising episodes. Perhaps they might have been able to turn it around and do a pretty good job with this, given the chance.

It's too bad they just didn't try to hit the ground running, or even perhaps get into the Romulan War in the 3rd Season instead of following the Xindi arc.

Although I appreciate the sentiment and as a Trek Fan I would have loved to have seen the Romulan War theme from the beginning, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference whether or not the series lasted beyond the four seasons it had.

ENT wasn't a particularly bad show, it's just that its style and format were dated. Aside from all of its tangible flaws that are regualrly brought up by fans (recycled plots, continuity problems, etc.) its biggest problem is that it was following the exact same format of TNG which worked for Trek until about 1995 but as the viewing audiences and tastes changed, Trek stood still. That combined with the fact that it was on UPN spelled doom for the series regardless of the writing and regardless of whether or not they had jumped in immediately with the Romulan War theme.

-The 'Tastic

 

[JiNX-01]

I was just watching a Biography documentary on the captains of Trek, and Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens said had 'Enterprise' kept going, the Romulan War was going to be featured.

I am one who thinks the show violated continuity too much. But the 4th Season had many promising episodes. Perhaps they might have been able to turn it around and do a pretty good job with this, given the chance.

It's too bad they just didn't try to hit the ground running, or even perhaps get into the Romulan War in the 3rd Season instead of following the Xindi arc.

As I recall, there has been some discussion that suggests the suits at Paramount didn't want the Romulan war to be a factor in case they decided to do a RW movie.

 

[TV-Tastic]

I was just watching a Biography documentary on the captains of Trek, and Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens said had 'Enterprise' kept going, the Romulan War was going to be featured.

I am one who thinks the show violated continuity too much. But the 4th Season had many promising episodes. Perhaps they might have been able to turn it around and do a pretty good job with this, given the chance.

It's too bad they just didn't try to hit the ground running, or even perhaps get into the Romulan War in the 3rd Season instead of following the Xindi arc.

As I recall, there has been some discussion that suggests the suits at Paramount didn't want the Romulan war to be a factor in case they decided to do a RW movie.

That's the first time I've heaed that but it wouldn't shock me at all. Great sig, BTW!

-The 'Tastic

 

[JiNX-01]

I was just watching a Biography documentary on the captains of Trek, and Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens said had 'Enterprise' kept going, the Romulan War was going to be featured.

I am one who thinks the show violated continuity too much. But the 4th Season had many promising episodes. Perhaps they might have been able to turn it around and do a pretty good job with this, given the chance.

It's too bad they just didn't try to hit the ground running, or even perhaps get into the Romulan War in the 3rd Season instead of following the Xindi arc.

As I recall, there has been some discussion that suggests the suits at Paramount didn't want the Romulan war to be a factor in case they decided to do a RW movie.

That's the first time I've heaed that but it wouldn't shock me at all. Great sig, BTW!

-The 'Tastic

Re: Sig: Thank you. It was in a post in the TATV thread.

 

[Saquist]

IMO the Xindi are a million times more interesting than the bland Romulans.

I've read the synopsis for the season five episodes (they're on Memory Alpha), and the only Romulan story was gonna be T'Pol finding out that her father was a Romulan spy who faked his own death.

Then there's the aborted Romulan war movie, Star Trek: The Beginning. It was cancelled in favour of JJ's reboot and reduced the Romulan war to a week-long battle in Earth orbit between the UESN fighter pilots and hundreds of Romulan drone ships equipped with cloaking devices, and involved Kirk's great-grandfather, Spock's grandfather, a Daedalus-class warp 8 ship, a band of Terra Prime-style loonies in an arctic Nazi bunker and a nuclear bomb. The Enterprise is at Risa and misses the whole thing.

I think if/however the Romulan War played out in Enterprise, it would have borne no resemblence to Spock's description in "Balance of Terror", and would have had canonistas furious. As usual.

They were too afraid to stick to canon.
They weren't up for the challenge....much like the last movie.
But even worse they were afraid to do anything really interesting once they decided to leave canon behind. They were stuck in a TNG version of Ground Hog's day.

It may have been stupid as stories go...
But at least Abrams broke canon with style.

 

[Timo]

The thing is, the backstory of the Romulan War was written so without thought in "Balance of Terror" that any description of the mindbogging events would have to be high-concept science fiction. And Trek has never been comfortable with doing science fiction.

OTOH, we have already seen conventional war stories in the Trek context, in the latter half of DS9. That's all "been there, got the t-shirt" stuff now. Changing the enemies from Cardassians or Jem'Hadar to Romulans wouldn't be enough to make another war story dramatically interesting. Perhaps it would indeed be time for a bit of highbrow fantasy where a "corpseless war" would suddenly make perfect sense?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mach5]

They weren't up for the challenge....much like the last movie.

Uhm... Que?

 

[Satyrquaze]

IMO the Xindi are a million times more interesting than the bland Romulans.

I am forced to disagree. I think the ratings show that the average fan wasn't terribly interested in the Xindi either.

 

[F. King Daniel]

They were too afraid to stick to canon

Fear had nothing to do with it. Fact is, a TV series based on Spock's offhand comments in "Ballance of Terror" would have been dull as ditchwater.
TOS and the old movies were never afraid to ignore their own canon when the need arose. Why on earth do TOS fans keep bitching when a later Treks dare change anything, even when it's with good reason?

IMO the Xindi are a million times more interesting than the bland Romulans.

I am forced to disagree. I think the ratings show that the average fan wasn't terribly interested in the Xindi either.

I really don't think having Romulans in place of Xindi would have reversed Enterprise's downward ratings trend. Less terrible episodes in seasons one and two would have.

 

[BillJ]

IMO the Xindi are a million times more interesting than the bland Romulans.

I am forced to disagree. I think the ratings show that the average fan wasn't terribly interested in the Xindi either.

I think the ratings show that the average fan wasn't terribly interested in Star Trek in general (at that point).

We'll never know how the average fan would've reacted to Enterprise, on its' own. Enterprise was at the tail end of one gigantic twenty-five season run as far as the average fan was concerned... and they were completely burned out by this point.

 

[Mach5]

I think the ratings show that the average fan wasn't terribly interested in Star Trek in general (at that point).

Bingo! That's also the reason Nemesis made like 15 bucks total at the box office.

 

[Satyrquaze]

Just my opinion, but the Xindi storyline bored the crap out of me.

 

[Saquist]

Fear had nothing to do with it. Fact is, a TV series based on Spock's offhand comments in "Ballance of Terror" would have been dull as ditchwater.

That's a matter of vision.
For those with the right vision can achieve great things. They can "McGuyer" a great story out of the most seemingly lacking description. The only true limits to a story is the story teller.


Two shows come to mind that equal TOS's description in Tech. Battlestar Galactica which didn't have energy shields transporters cloaks and holograms and Babylon 5.

IMO the Xindi are a million times more interesting than the bland Romulans.

I am forced to disagree. I think the ratings show that the average fan wasn't terribly interested in the Xindi either.

Infact the average user wasn't interested, let alone the fans.

I really don't think having Romulans in place of Xindi would have reversed Enterprise's downward ratings trend. Less terrible episodes in seasons one and two would have.

It was the bad writing, the bad actors, particularly Bakula's major hammy acting and the Wooden acting of Jolene, the Mayweather guy.

 

[Shatnertage]

I think it would be pretty hard for Trek to do justice to a war in a way that would make sense. Even on earth, wars are massive, often-multi-front conflicts. It would be really hard to tell the complete story of a war in the made-up Trek universe without doing massive info dumps. By having the Enterprise be the only Warp 5 ship, the Xindi Arc avoided that problem. Even then, they had to pull some major gymnastics with plot logic, like having the Xindi test their super-weapon on earth.

BTW, the synopsis that KingDaniel provided in post 2 is pretty awful. Well, not his summarizing (I don't think), but the story line itself. Yikes!

If they ever do another series, they could do a great comedy episode along those lines: there's a major galactic crisis unfolding somewhere, and the Enterprise is stuck at a starbase for repairs. They follow the action via subspace radio while the A-story, which will probably be about the non-human's quest to understand humanity, gets played out.

 

[Saquist]

I think it would be pretty hard for Trek to do justice to a war in a way that would make sense. Even on earth, wars are massive, often-multi-front conflicts. It would be really hard to tell the complete story of a war in the made-up Trek universe without doing massive info dumps. By having the Enterprise be the only Warp 5 ship, the Xindi Arc avoided that problem. Even then, they had to pull some major gymnastics with plot logic, like having the Xindi test their super-weapon on earth.

Deep Space Nine did it.
I get the impression that you're unwilling to accept an alternative to ENT's story line.

If they ever do another series, they could do a great comedy episode along those lines: there's a major galactic crisis unfolding somewhere, and the Enterprise is stuck at a starbase for repairs. They follow the action via subspace radio while the A-story, which will probably be about the non-human's quest to understand humanity, gets played out.

Yeah that was undoubtedly bad but is was made possible by the horrible decisions that created the series in the first place.

 

[F. King Daniel]

BTW, the synopsis that KingDaniel provided in post 2 is pretty awful. Well, not his summerizing (I don't think) but the story line itself. Yikes!

Here's a review of the script. There's another one somewhere (where cloaking devices and drone ships are mentioned), but I can't find it again.

 

[Shatnertage]

^ Thanks for the link. That was pretty bad. Lots of cliches--I would link to them in TV Tropes, but I don't want to be responsible for everyone else wasting as much wonderful time there as I do.

 

[Capt_Pickirk]

Here's a review of the script. There's another one somewhere (where cloaking devices and drone ships are mentioned), but I can't find it again.

I like the boarding through the breach approach, although that is something I would imagine a klingon would be doing. It's a pity that most of the space 'battles' we see involve them sitting on their ass on their ship, rather than engaging in the hand to hand combat that they love so much.

Anyways... back to the romulan war. I would've liked the whole series to have been centred around the war, somewhat like submarine warfare in space kinda thing. And giving limits to warp capability, say warp 2 or 3 as a maximum.

(And add some colour to those bland sets!! Whenever I saw Enterprise, I thought the whole ship looked dull as hell)