SPOILERS "The Good That Men Do" How'd you manage that?
- Thread starter Biggshow
- Start date
^^Probably because "TPTB" didn't exist anymore. After Enterprise ended, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga moved on to other projects and weren't responsible for overseeing Star Trek anymore. The only people the authors and editor had to convince were the staff at CBS Consumer Products (formerly Paramount Licensing) headed by Paula Block. And Paula's been great about allowing the novelists creative freedom, so long as they stay true to the letter of the canon.
And really, there's no contradiction at all. We didn't actually see Trip die; we just saw a historical-fiction recreation of the events surrounding his reported death, and even that recreation didn't actually depict his moment of death. TGTMD was hardly the first novel to take something shown onscreen and reinterpret what it meant; see String Theory: Evolution (re: Kes in "Fury") or A Time for War, A Time for Peace (re: Wesley back in uniform).
And really, there's no contradiction at all. We didn't actually see Trip die; we just saw a historical-fiction recreation of the events surrounding his reported death, and even that recreation didn't actually depict his moment of death. TGTMD was hardly the first novel to take something shown onscreen and reinterpret what it meant; see String Theory: Evolution (re: Kes in "Fury") or A Time for War, A Time for Peace (re: Wesley back in uniform).
May I ask what Evolution established regarding Kes' appearance in "Fury"?
Short Answer: It wasn't really her.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Ah ... so I guess she was obsessed by some entity and therefore totally out of character. Looking it at it this way, it makes Jennifer Lien's acting surpreme. She really played out of character very well.
^^More that another being was possessed by her, in a sense.
Just a side note: Not much convincing was needed.
Almost everyone involved with Enterprise HATED the finale. The actors have slagged it. Production personnel have trounced it. And without putting words in anyone's mouth (not Paula's certainly), I will say that I don't recall having spoken with ANYONE in the "professional arena" that liked the series finale.
I'm sure there must be someone who did like it in the professional arena besides Berman and Braga. I just don't recall hearing it from them.
For that matter, I seem to recall Berman and/or Braga admitting that the finale didn't work as well as they'd hoped.
What always struck me about "These Are the Voyages..." was that its heart really is in the right place. Berman and Braga really did love ENT and Trek in general, and really did try to express it adequately in their finale. They really did try to make a valentine for the fans.
The problem was, they were both just burnt out from being on Star Trek for around 15 years. It had just sucked them dry. No matter how much they loved the thing, they'd just been so drained by their years that they weren't able to adequately evaluate their own work's quality as they produced it, or to see where things were and were not working as intended. They had, in short, become such bad writers that even though their hearts were in the right place, they ended up insulting ENT fans by making an episode that focused on a TNG character, and insulting TNG fans by screwing up the characterization of Riker, and insulting franchise fans in general by not having many allusions to any of the other series.
The finale had basically good ideas for a Star Trek ending in general, linking those two generations. Berman and Braga did lots of things to tie ENT into the overall Star Trek-universe. Doing that, they unfortunately didn't write a very good script but the idea was alright. I watched TATV half a year ago and it wasn't that bad.
And I chose to see "Demons" and "Terra Prima" as the finale of ENT. For that matter, since ENT never really finished for me, the fifth season lives on in the written form for me. So hats up for the writers. ;-)
And I chose to see "Demons" and "Terra Prima" as the finale of ENT. For that matter, since ENT never really finished for me, the fifth season lives on in the written form for me. So hats up for the writers. ;-)
That's an intriguing and refreshingly generous analysis. I would add that Berman's strengths were never in writing in the first place. Prior to ENT, he had only written two teleplays for ST (TNG's "Brothers" and "A Matter of Time"); all his other writing credits were for story outlines in collaboration with other writers. It wasn't until ENT that he started collaborating with Braga on actual scripts. And that was a mistake. Berman is a genius when it comes to production and logistics; the modern Trek series wouldn't have looked nearly as good as they did if not for his supervision, and his ability to supervise two simultaneous Trek series and pull off their elaborate, complex production requirements successfully deserves great admiration. But as a writer, he's strictly mediocre. He should've stuck with the production side of things and gotten someone else to be Braga's co-showrunner. (Although to be fair, they did try a couple of times, but the people they hired, such as John Shiban, didn't work out until Manny Coto came along.)
I am so glad TGTMD was around for me to read... I watched all four seasons on DVD and was like "WTF?!?!" after the finale. Someone here rec'd the novel and I ate it up. It pains me to still have to deal with the Trip/T'Pol relationship stuff (mutual affection but prevented by distance argh), but thankfully Trip is still alive and kickin'!
..and a spy, no less
..and a spy, no less
Seriously?
Despite what some people seem to think, Season 4 is not a universally loved bastion of quality television.
Oh, I'm right there with you. Season four wasn't all that great in Trek terms. It certainly can't compare to TOS S1-2, TNG S3-4, or DS9 S3-6 in terms of great Trek. It certainly had a few clunkers. But what it was, was fun. For me, really fun. After too many years of bland been-there-done-that storytelling, I was actually looking forward to the next episode (For that matter ENT S3 kept my attention for the whole year, unlike S 1-2). And the fact that with the fourth season, ENT finally felt like a prequel is another mark in its favor. And I had a lot of fun watching it. What else do I really need from a TV show?
But TATV? A fun premise that I was looking forward to... But the final result? Not so much with the fun, and more with the "WTF?"
