So, who was Travis Mayweather?

[MrPointy]

Therin of Andor said:
When actor's performances excite the writers, the writers start thinking of new scenes to write for them. So good scripts/scenes lead to good performances and good performances lead to good scripts/scenes.

If Shran and Tholos had been forgettable characters in "The Andorian Incident", the Andorians may have been one-hit wonders for ENT. Ditto Q in "Encounter at Farpoint" (TNG).

David Gerrold wrote "The Trouble With Tribbles" (TOS) assuming he was writing a return episode for Kor. Ditto Jerome Bixby and "Day of the Dove". John Colicos was unavailable both times. But in both cases, the performance of Colicos had inspired them.

True.

Horizon had the potential to be a good episode if Montgomery had the acting chops to do serious scenes. The man is too damn wooden, and not Robert-Beltran-when-he-doesn't-feel -like-doing-a-good-job wooden.

Also, what you said makes me wonder why the writers of ENT didn't do more with Phlox, since he was probably the best of the cast that wasn't the Big 3.

But that's neither here nor there.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

The problem with Phlox is as the quirky alien, so there was always the dividing the character's time between miracle working doctor, observer of human behaviour and actual character development beyond that.

 

[Mirror_Barclay]

I don't know... some characters just aren't as interesting as others.

I think Enterprise did a good job with Archer, T'Pol, Trip and Phlox (I would not have objected to more Phlox episodes).

I would have loved to see more of Hoshi and Reed.

Mayweather? I'm not really distraught at not learning more about him.

 

[cooleddie74]

Aside from the year of his birth(2126, revealed in "Dead Stop"), a few family members from the ECS Horizon and some of his likes and hobbies we learned little or nothing during almost 100 episodes of the series. They waited until the last few episodes of the show to even give him something of a half-assed romantic interest, who turned out to be a Terra Prime operative and spy.

 

[Nebusj]

cooleddie74 said:
Aside from the year of his birth(2126, revealed in "Dead Stop"), a few family members from the ECS Horizon and some of his likes and hobbies we learned little or nothing during almost 100 episodes of the series.

But that's trivia. That doesn't tell you anything about the character. (Example: How would Mayweather's character be strengthened if it turned out he was born in 2127 instead? Or 2125? Would it make the slightest difference?)

Character is defined by what you do. Chuck Jones made an even tougher criteria: it's defined by what you do that's unusual. What did Mayweather do that wasn't nodding and punching in buttons on the helm console?

 

[cooleddie74]

^
True.

But in other TREK shows the trivia and minutae were usually used to flesh out the characters, tell backstory and make them more three-dimensional and interesting. Like all that backstory about B'Elanna on VOYAGER as a little girl. Sure it wasn't much. But it made for some very good personality-builing episodes that made the audience understand her background a lot better.

 

[likestrek]

My friends I all agree that Travis should have been killed off and then just have Porthos fly the ship...

 

[Mott the barber]

Trekwatcher said:

Corran Horn said:
Again, I think people need to re-watch season one and two. Travis didn't really start getting short-changed until season three. In the first two seasons he's featured as often (if not more so) then some of the other regulars.

And I don't just mean an 'aye sir' here and there.

I dunno.I am just about finished rewatching S1 and S2 and it seems like with Travis it is all half measures, even early on. They keep trying to include him in the action, but he never really seems to be a key player or integral to the resolution of the plot. I think that a good example is "The Seventh" which I recently started a thread on. He is part of a 3 man away team, with Archer and T'Pol being the other two, and he really gets to do nothing while the others get all the dialogue and dramatic moments.

If they had kept building him the way they did in "Fotunate Son" he would have been much more interesting. That was a good episode, that put the Boomer thing to good use, but it was an exception and not the rule.

I wonder if Anthony Montgomery was bored/upset/frustrated by his role or if he just shrugged his shoulders, showed up each day, and collected his check.

+1

 

[cooleddie74]

Great. We replace a pilot with no lines and little personality with one who's constantly plugged up with cheese and needs frequent veterinary enemas.

 

[mahler5]

We will never know. The writers ignored his character, and drove this crapfest right into the ground.

 

[Sci]

The problem with Mayweather was that Anthony Montgomery can't act. Seriously. He has two modes: Neutral and Happy. This does not an actor make.

They should have sacked him and found a decent actor to replace him. And preferably not another white guy, either. ENT was already too much of a White Man's Future show for its own good; for a series that supposedly espoused multiculturalism and tolerance, the casting didn't much reflect that.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

For a bit it seems their plan was to do what lazy writers do with "minority" characters, hook them up with the other minority character (Hoshi). But that only happens in the Mirror Universe (and who knows how long mirror Travis will last with that treacherous empress.)

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

MrPointy said:
From what I can gather, the dude piloted the ship, was born on a cargo transport, liked rock climbing, pranked Hoshi on occasion and slept with a very spunky reporter/Starfleet spy who didn't take her bra off during sex.

Yep. Basically, he was the far more interesting and complex version of Lieutenant Sulu.

 

[DumbDumb2007]

No One. the character was a waste.

 

[cooleddie74]

The lamest thing is that he was built up in the first couple of episodes or so as this guy with so much deep space experience from having grown up on a cargo freighter, but then the whole "boomer" thing saw little real development and exploration. Most of the time it was ignored or underplayed, when at the beginning he had more backstory to tell than some of the others. A waste.

 

[MrPointy]

I just watched Deadstop again. I seriously don't believe there was much difference between Travis and his dead replicated clone. The clone smiled less, but that's about it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You have to wonder what sort of wattage that they could have welled out of Mayweather's mind for that Way station to power up maybe a coffee machine?

 

[archeryguy1701]

MrPointy said:
So, who was Travis Mayweather?

Who the hell are you talking about?

Ohh, you're talking about their background crewman who always got to sit close to the screen, right? Eh, I always liked Mayweather and how he was acted. I was really disappointed with how they used him, or more accurately, didn't use him.

 

[cooleddie74]

Maybe if Silik and Future Guy had succeeded in altering history for the worse, Travis might have had more dialogue and been more interesting. Like his Mirror Universe replica.

 

[ALF]

He was the helmsman on the first Starfleet Warp 5 vessel.
He liked the "sweet spot."