Root of all the ENT bashing/hating?
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I wonder if any Captain could have satisfied every viewer?
I thought Archer a great first Captain. I think Ent was fine though maybe more research and planning by the producers to counter the critics before it came to that. I also find alot of haters I have met at cons etc have only seen an ep or two.
I thought Archer a great first Captain. I think Ent was fine though maybe more research and planning by the producers to counter the critics before it came to that. I also find alot of haters I have met at cons etc have only seen an ep or two.
Picard...?
Captain X said:
Still better than what T'Pol had to begin with, or the double brows that kept showing up in S3. At least here you can see there was some effort put into it by how her eyeliner is, which follows the regular contour of her brow (for whatever reason). She was also a minor character compared to T'Pol, who was very front and center.
T'Pol had the Moe cut and the ears, so I think she looks more Vulcan than Dar. Though I could livedwith out the Moe cut. That bugged me more than the eyebrows.
The melding stigma was very much unthought of. No one saw that coming. Though it almost makes sense. Vulcan psi powers are almost unknown of by the humans on the 1701, until Spock mentions them. Spock also has a rather negative reaction when Mitchell ger his Psi powers
There're a few visual aids here.
Been there manys time over the last several years. There is no doubt that the NX-01 is based on the Akira, but as I've said I can't get worked up over it. Small potatoes
MUst have missed that. I can't recall them ever calling it a fan fave.
They did call them cannons amd torpedoes: phase cannons and spatial torpedos.
No matter what they called it its still going to wind up fuctioning like a phaser. So why be coy about it.
Most things fail by percentages. It's a good way to track the level of failure.
With Trek the differences are mostly window dressing. Or deliberate choices bast on consumer expectation.
Thats one possible interpretation. Heck even the writer (and Trek BBS poster) Dennis Baiiley admits he didn't but all that much thought into the speech. He tossed in the Klingon reference because it sounded cool.
My prequel idea used the Orions as the main villains.
By listening to those annoying Vulcans!!!!!
Fiction. Fluid. Prequel.
Huh? Why is that. The Klingons are out there with spacefaring tech, how could they not run across them?
Not really understanding your point. The characterization is consistant with established Ferengi behaviors. You cant bitch about continuity on the one hand and then dismisses it when they get it right on the other
They are Borg if they act with in established Borg behavior what does it matter which film or episode they're from.? Though weren't these Borg mosty assimilated humans from the research team?
Sure they could have. And TNG could have done more the Ferengi. There's probably a species on DS9 that could have been played up more than the Klingons.
I'll have to take your word for it. I bailed on VOY after season 2. I like Season 1 on ENT because it was more like TOS. Season 2 was ok. Season 3 they got all arcy and ruined the TOS feel. Season 4 was fan wank but fun.
Its my third fave after TOS and DS9.
Captain X
Rear Admiral
I suppose they could have went with the mullet cut.
But at least other Vulcans, starting with Spock, have been shown to wear that style pretty consistently. Must be a very popular hair style on Vulcan… Personally I could've even lived with the mullet if they got the eyebrows right.spatial torpedoes were ok, phase cannons weren't. But what I was actually after was something without adjectives. I mean, they had grapplers; it might've even been cool to do something different with the weapons.
An arrow and a bullet are both projectiles and function more or less alike, but they're still different. My argument is that if you’re going to make a prequel and claim to be different that you should go ahead and do so.
Not in my experience. An energy field might fail in easily determinable percentages, but materials don't. Hull plating would deform and/or fracture, and only the hull plating directly effected by the weapons' fire, not every hull plate on the ship the way a shield bubble might.
I'm more demanding, which is why I point out areas that could be improved.
But that's still what was on screen, so it's established.
Wow, something we agree on.My prequel idea used the Orions as the main villains.
Except that what happened wasn't a disastrous first contact leading to decades of war to begin with, and listening to the Vulcans wouldn't have had anything to do with observing a culture before making contact.
Space is big.
I'm saying that since ENT was a prequel, if they were going to have the Ferengi, then they should've played them as the sinister, mysterious, cannibalistic gerbils that we first saw in early TNG instead of the lovably misogynist comedians of DS9, or better yet, they should've left well enough alone and just not had them.
Yes. They were from First Contact, so that's how they should've acted, and more importantly, that's the level of technology they had.
Yes, but they still shared the collective consciousness of the original surviving drones.
But arrows and bullets are used in very different types of projectile weapons. Beam weapons are all very similar no matter if you call them a phase pistol, a laser or a phaser. They all shoot energy beams. The are more akin to flintlocks, six shooters and automatics. All versions of the same basic tech.
But this is polarized plating. As the polarization failes their effectiveness decreases until all you have it the metal plate. So it is an energy field.
But open to interpretation as more "facts" come to light.
Looking back from the vanatage point of 200 years it can be though. The lense of History can refocus simingly small events into large ones.
Not that big. Local space in ENT/TOS is pretty small.
Why cant both types of Ferengi exist? Are all humans alike? The sinister, mysterious, cannibalistic gerbils might just be the "military" faction while independent operators like Quark and the "Mauraders" are the misogynist comedians
Arent they all the same Borg?
Captain X
Rear Admiral
A flintlock is vastly inferior to a modern firearm, but the phase cannons on ENT could do everything that the phasers on TNG could do, at least when the plot called for them to. Initially they weren't very effective, but that was forgotten pretty quickly. The plasma weapons they had initially would've been better for the era as a less advanced precursor to what would eventually become a phaser.
The way they described it on the show, all it did was help to harden the hull. The hull would still be damaged, and not by overall percentages that effect the whole ship.
Unless they don't fit.
Not so much as to be completely different from what actually happened.
Big enough to avoid the Klingons, especially at the slower speeds of the era.
The problem is that the DS9 type would have no qualms about identifying themselves as Ferengi, and thus you wouldn't have the great mystery about them in early TNG, because everyone would already know about them.
Not really. The First Contact Borg differ from the Q Who Borg or the BoBW Borg, from their look to their priorities, how they move, and how they assimilate their hapless victims.
And eventually they would be doing everything TNG Phaser could do.
What exactly did those phasers do that were so special and different than phasers in TOS? They just shoot stuff and people. In TOS they could knockout a city block from orbit. Did they ever do that in TNG?
And as that hardening decreased by increments....
They fit well enough. Who you gonna trust the guy who learned it in the history books or the guy who was there?
All we really know is that is was a distater. No other details are provided by Picard. Again Archer was there.
Yet small enough to encounter The Orions, Andorians and Tellerites and any other TOS aliens that strike your fancy?
Maybe. Its a different era. Vulcans are Snobbier. Humans are xenophobes. Though the Romulans are still sneaky and the Klingons are still dumb. Ferengi are well established in the Alpha Quad (more so in the Cardassian sectors) in the 24th Century. In the 22nd they yet to gain a foothold in the proto UFP regions and are operating under a different set of rules.
And Spock was once a smiling fool who shouted alot. Or was that a different Spock?
Captain X
Rear Admiral
They already pretty much were, that was the problem.
They could be fired at warp for the ship-mounted ones, and the hand-held ones had different beam adjustments on them so they could be used as a cutting tool.
So what would the harm have been in keeping the plasma weapons they started out with?
Yeah, they did better actually, because they drilled into a planets crust down to the mantle in order to relieve tectonic pressure on a planetary scale. Insanway also threatened to vaporize the building they were in Starling wouldn't give back that timeship.
It's a shield under another name.
They don't fit. They just aren't anywhere nearly close enough to account for any kind of factual drift that one might see in recorded history, unless Georbles wrote it.They fit well enough. Who you gonna trust the guy who learned it in the history books or the guy who was there?
No, we also know that it led to decades of war, and later it led to a controversial policy of spying on aliens to make sure they won't freak if you decide to make first contact with them.All we really know is that is was a distater. No other details are provided by Picard. Again Archer was there.
Yes, because since they were a part of the Federation in TOS, even if they were in the same direction from Earth, then that suggests that they are closer to Earth than Quo'Nos.
Not really. They were reclusive and the object of rumor and mystery when they were first introduced in TNG, which means the Ferengi Alliance couldn't have been very large then, and even in DS9 they're basically referred to as a third-rate power.
The Ferengi we saw didn't look like they were operating under any kind of rules other than the famed rules of acquisition.
Which has nothing to do with the Borg in Regeneration supposing to be from the destroyed sphere in First Contact.
Temis the Vorta said:
The root of the bashing is that for the first two seasons, ENT was truly awful in the same way (and for the same reasons) VOY was awful. And like VOY, this meant that a very promising premise, and some decent actors, were being utterly wasted, which was a frakking crime.
S3 was an improvement simply because they were trying something new, tho not doing it very well. S4 was what ENT should have been from the start.
Sometimes the bashers are right, yknow.
I was thinking of this recently, that if Enterprise didn't give into the pressure to evolve from the TOS bible which kept Voyager running full steam through steaming turd stories, then maybe if Ent hadn't rocked the boat and kept it's head down, it would have survived for another 5 years producing episodic reset button no consequence stories from season 3 through to the contracts end of the actor in season seven?
A couple good episodes out of 26 a year is all I needed, and if Enterprise hand't whacked itself from a fit of failed selfimprovement then they would have been allowed to make a series 6 afterwards which would be just exactly the same as Voyager and TOS and Enterprise, god help us all.
This vacuum of nothingness is intollerable.
I was refering to the plasma cannons not the phase cannons. No matter what they called them, they would funtion as phasers in every way except for the name.
In TOS phasers were fired at Warp since day one. TNG changed that to sound more "scientific". Phasers were also used as cutting tools. See "The Naked Time." Heck in TOS a starship had enough fire power to sterilize an entire planet.
None at all, but the producers or studio wanted some familiarity in the tech and names as touchstones for viewers with a passing knowledge of Star Trek. Though it sound like you like change for the sake of change.
Then the TNG phasers have improved on the TOS ones. Technology marches forward. Now did the ENT phasers equal or go one better than TOS or TNG/DS9/VOY?
Any protective device be in energy, metal or magic is a "sheild". I think your objection is the percentages which you associate with TNG. So by your way of thinking it can't appear on ENT. Which to me a tortured logic.
I think I've shown how they fit. YMMV.
Did it really? Or was Picard engaging in hyperbole? There was a long protracted Cold War, but other than "Errand of Mercy" did the UFP and the Empire ever engage in all out war? The thing about Picard's statement is it just doesn't fit with what we know about Federation-Klingon history. That history has usually been an analog to US-USSR relations. Small skirmishes, often using proxies, with the occasional saber rattling.
Thats a bit of tortured logic. So if Qo'NoS was closer the Klingons would join the Federation? Did we even know how long the Andorians and the Tellerites had been UFP members in TOS? They could have joined a year or two before "Journey To Babel"? for all we knew. The Romulans must be closer still since Earth fought them before the UFP was formed.
According to STVI the Klingons and Federation have been on hostile terms since the early 23rd Century. I doubt this hostilty appeared over night in 2223.
They werent all that reclusive or mysterious. Picard knew what their ships looked like. And they knew enough abut them to draw a parallel to "Yankee Traders" and for Picard to threaten Groppler Zorn with Ferengi horror stories. Zorn even mention he's in negotiations with the Ferengi. The biggest mystery was what they looked like. Which nicely parallels the Ferengi not giveing their name in ENT.
They seemed to be operation under the keep things on the downlow rule. (Might even be a Rule of Aquisition) Just like the Ferengi in "The Last Outpost" and "The Battle" did. Seems to be SOP for Ferengi when entering a "new market".
I don't compartmentalize species and individuals in Star Trek by episode, series or film. To me they become more interesting, complex and real if you factor in everything. So the Spock is both the smiling guy from "The Cage" and Mister cool logic from TOS and The Borg from "First Contact", "Q Who" and "Regeneration" are the same only operating under different circumstances and parameters.
I'm a big DS9 fan, and I couldn't tell you which ship design is the Akira, and I never thought that the NX-01 was a ripoff of anything beyond the typical Federation saucer and two nacelle design.
I like ENT, but it is my least favorite ST series because it had too much blandness and mediocrity in its first three seasons. For every standout like "Dead Stop," there were four forgettable episodes like "Canamar."
I like ENT, but it is my least favorite ST series because it had too much blandness and mediocrity in its first three seasons. For every standout like "Dead Stop," there were four forgettable episodes like "Canamar."
Captain X
Rear Admiral
Not if they'd treated them the way they should've. Hell, I wouldn't have even had a stun setting on the small arms.
I seem to remember something about only being able to use photon torpedoes at warp from some technobabble reason, then later they presumably found a way to make using phasers possible because the writers forgot about that restriction.
Was there anything to suggest that ENT's "phase cannons" couldn't do the same?
If the idea was to make the show different from the previous four, you change things, not just rename them.
I'd say they equaled those of TNG/DS9/VOY
Unless they use armor.
No, I just think that if you’re going to claim to be different that you should live up to that.
No, you stretched it and tried to make it fit, but it still doesn't.
Yes.
No. Picard was preachy, but he always had a point that actually had something to do wit hthe matter at hand.
There is nothing that came before that which suggests otherwise. The Federation and Klingons were already hostile toward each other in TOS. Wouldn't it stand to reason that the Federation and Klingons might have engaged in open war and simply arrived at a stalemate? It doesn't parallel US/Soviet relations exactly unless you think they fought as allies against a common enemy before-hand. So what Picard said, fits, and it came first.
Uh, what? No, I'm saying that the other worlds are part of the Federation and the Klingon empire is along the outside of that, therefore those other planets are closer. Unless you think they had to cross the Klingon Empire every time they wanted to go visit their member worlds.
Except that they were founding members along with Alpha Centauri, Vulcan, and Earth.
No, they were just closer than the Klingon Empire, or at least the Romulans had spheres of influence that were closer.
The hundred years between ENT and TOS is plenty of time for what Picard described to happen in.
Exactly, so since they didn't know what they looked like, they were reclusive and mysterious. Knowing what their ships looked like meant that they'd encountered their ships before. Knowing that they were traders and did business could come from any source, including the Orion Syndicate.
No it doesn't. Not only did members of the crew see them very up close and personally, but they also knew what their ship looked like, and undoubtedly there'd also be sensor records, security footage, etc. Simply failing to mention their name wouldn't keep later crews from putting 2 and 2 together well before the 2360s.
They were simple pirates, and they got caught red-handed. There was no excuse beyond the real-life cop-out of not mentioning their name in a pathetic attempt to maintain canon for people like me while still needlessly including a 24th century alien into a 22nd century show.
I do. I factor in when things are supposed to take place, because time is linear. The Borg were supposed to be from First Contact, so the 2370s. They introduced themselves to their victims and let them know exactly what they were going to do to them. The Borg in Regeneration did the second part, but conveniently forgot that first part for the same reason as the Ferengi not mentioning their name and supposedly being too scared to have anything to do with Earth, Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, or any other future UFP member planet ships because Archer threatened a few pirates.
You really should by now if you're so sure it isn't a rip-off even though Berman and the guy who actually designed the NX-01 admitted as much. But here's a couple pictures just for your information then if you really don't know what it looks like.
No offense, but have you tried looking at them?
They set the rules so there is no "should've"
Not in TOS They fire phasers and photons at warp, from orbit and at impulse.
You tell me. You're the one claiming they can do everything a TOS or TNG phaser could do. You must have an example of them doing so. As far as I recall all the did was shoot other ships.
But if they follow the same function is there really a change. You can call it a "plasma cannon" but its really just another energy weapon. Laser, phaser, plasma,\ it really all the same. The alternative would have been a non energy weapon. But thats not Star Trek.
But not TOS??? Again example of tne phase weapons doing something that a TOS phaser cant do but a TNG/DS9/VOY phaser can.
Armor is sheilding. And in ENT they used a combination of metal armor (sheilding) enhanced by polarization.
Hype. Don't believe it. There was no way the studio or the network was going to allow a Trek that was nothing like Star Trek to be made.
As I said. YMMV. I'm from the generation of fans that takes making it fit as a challenge.
Seems like he made the basic look before you leap allegory. Fits what he said and what happened on ENT.
You really need to watch TOS and understand the time period in which it was made. Having lived through the 1960s I can assure you that the Klingons were Soviet stand ins during TOS. Sonmething that was carried through to STVI. (Gorkon. Gorbachev.) No it doesn't parallel exactly nor dies it have to, but its pretty obvious what the writes of TOS intended. Though the idea of the Klingons being one of the Earth's allies in the Romulan war is interesting.
Sure its possible that the Klingons and the UFP fought a decades long war, but there nothing to support it out side of Picards statement.
Thats two dimensional thinking. Space is not only big but three dimensional and expands in all directions. Terrestrial ideas of borders and boundries don't always apply. The idea that every planet close to Earth joined the UFP so the Klingon has to futher away because it not part of the UFP makes little sense. Klingon and UFP areas of infuence can be all over the Galaxy. Some "side by side". Others "above and below." There can be a big chunk of Klingon space bisecting parts of the UFP.
Wasnt that just fan conjecture until ENT? Though Alpha Centauri was given the boot IIRC.
Accorrding to the map in "Balance of Terror" Romulus and Remus (Rom II) are pretty darn close to the Neutral Zone. They're the only planets given names. That the Romulans are closer than the Klingons is pure conjecture.
No mention of it though.
So it would be possible for a group of Ferengi to met humans in the 22nd Century.
Your looking at from the perspective a Star Trek viewer who knows what a Ferengi looks like and knows what they are called. To the UFP and Starfleet they are two seperate unknown aliens. One are called Ferengi and the others looked like hairless, snaggle toothed rats. The snaggle tooth rats were last heard of 200 years ago. The Ferengi seem to have appear within the 24th Century. So until the Fenengi appeared on the 1707D's view screen no one knew the snaggled toothed rats were the Ferengi.
There you go compartmentalizing again: "24th Century alien" and "22nd Century show".
Crooks give out false information to the authhorities all the time. Sometime they even use false names.
The Borg are the Borg. Sometimes they give the we are the Borg speech and sometimes they dont. In "Regenration" and "Q Who" they chose not to.
These are Ferengi. The probably lied and exaggerated what happened to them. So the Nagus of that time decide that sector of space wasn't worth the hassle. Or they just contiuned operating on the downlow and avoided Humans and Vulcans.
It may have been mentioned somewhere in between the TL;DR posts, but I'll repeat it: Les Moonves wanted this show gone. Period. (I think I remember him going on the record publically to say in season three that he would have cancelled Enterprise at the end of season three, if he'd been in charge of UPN at the time.) No amount of good writing or ratings other than complete domination of that timeslot could have saved ENT.
And even aside from that--a few good episodes out of 26?
I'm hoping there's some sarcasm in there that went over my head, because that whole mentality of Trek skating by on a few good episodes is exactly why no one's put any effort into this franchise since mid-Voyager.
Captain X
Rear Admiral
The entire point of this thread is to discuss the roots of why some people don't like ENT. In other words, what they should've done but didn't.
The only real example is the devastation done to the moon or asteroid in Fight or Flight that I can think of off hand. Otherwise they had no reason to ever fire on a planet.
Why not? By your argument, muzzle loading cannons would somehow equate to phasers because they have the same function.
Presumably 24th century phasers are more powerful than 23rd century versions, so by saying ENT's were as powerful as that makes comparing them to TOS phasers irrelevant.
Armor is physical, the shields (or polarization in this case) are energy.
That is why they failed.
So am I, but you can't make a square peg fit into a round hole.
Picard used a specific example of what could go wrong if he did what that alien he was talking to wanted. It does not fit with what happened in ENT because what happened in ENT was neither disastrous, nor was it decades of war.
I know that, and I never said they weren't. What I said was that they weren't exact allegories.
Except for that alliance they have with the Rommies in TOS.
Which is enough until someone comes along and actually shows it.
Except that every map we've ever seen on screen presents things in a 2D manner.
It was behind the scenes conjecture by the people who made it. I consider it canon because it was in Picard's book in Generations.
Which just happens to fit the established facts.
Not in person.
I'm looking at it from the perspective of everything the Ferengi said being a matter of record and being able to compare it to what's been said about them from other sources, including power signatures, hull compositions, and ship configuration.
Exactly the same way I'd compartmentalize the 19th century American from the 21st century American, or anyone else for that matter.
They didn't even do that.
In First Contact and in every encounter in VOY, they did. That was the 2370s, and that was when these Borg were supposed to have been from.
They were pirates, why would the Nagus even care? And even if he did, why would anything about these few pirates being outwitted due to their own stupidity keep him from sending warships if he thought there was profit in it?
Did for me. I could tell you pretty much every class of ship in a given shot for the show. As soon as I saw the patch in TV Guide, I instantly thought of the Akira class.
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