The Borg, a defence

[Anwar]

DS9 started getting more love in in S4, when the Dominion arc started to pick up more. It was around the time VOY started getting blasted for everything and people began to think Berman was the Spawn of Satan (because no one knew what was really going on behind-the-scenes with VOY and all the UPN interference).

 

[Sci]

TOS has several races that were never seen again post-TOS (even in the movies), so what's wrong with ENT doing the same?

In theory, ENT should always be much closer to Earth, since TOS will have had an extra century to continue expanding before the Federation butts up against Klingon and Romulan space, thus inhibiting its continued expansion and creative relatively static borders in the area of space buttressing the Klingons and Romulans until well into the 24th Century.

As such, if the NX-01 runs into a species that seems really important and then never runs into them again, it sticks out more, because it should be much closer to Earth and therefore have exerted more of an effect on Earth and Federation history than, say, some random planet Kirk meets out by the Klingon border.

 

[Praetor]

^What Sci said. Would it have really killed anyone to make the Suliban the Orions?

 

[Sci]

^What Sci said. Would it have really killed anyone to make the Suliban the Orions?

To be fair, they gave themselves an out with the Suliban because they lack a homeworld. Indeed, the Suliban Cabal seems to have been little more than a highly-advanced terrorist organization that was able to exert influence primarily due to the advanced technology granted to them by Future Guy.

They had an out with the Xindi as well because of the great distance between Earth and New Xindus. (I subscribe to the theory that most of the Delphic Expanse was located spinward of Earth and above -- thus explaining why most of the Federation's growth seems to have been in the opposite direction, antispinward, towards the Klingons and Romulans, and why the UFP didn't encounter Cardassia and Ferenginar much earlier in their history -- they were staying away from the spinward direction of the Alpha Quadrant because the Delphic Expanse had freaked them out!)

I'm thinking more along the lines of the Tandarans, who seemed like they'd be really important and then disappeared forever. And, really, there was no reason to bother creating the Xindi -- it would have been much more effective if it had been the Suliban who attacked Earth in 2153 and if it had turned out that the Cabal had been amassing its weapons in the Delphic Expanse. But I digress.

 

[hyzmarca]

Species 8472 was originally presented as something half way between eldritch abominations from beyond space and cardboard genocidal maniacs. Mixing Lovecraft with Trek rarely works well, certainly not for a one-shot villain race. The fact that they were defeated by technowank didn't help the cause. The number of problems that were solved miraculously by nanoprobes afterward is a testament to that.

In their next appearance, they were more affable, though unfortunately played by human actors due to budget constraints and issues of practicality. And they never appeared again.

 

[Praetor]

^What Sci said. Would it have really killed anyone to make the Suliban the Orions?

To be fair, they gave themselves an out with the Suliban because they lack a homeworld. Indeed, the Suliban Cabal seems to have been little more than a highly-advanced terrorist organization that was able to exert influence primarily due to the advanced technology granted to them by Future Guy.

They had an out with the Xindi as well because of the great distance between Earth and New Xindus. (I subscribe to the theory that most of the Delphic Expanse was located spinward of Earth and above -- thus explaining why most of the Federation's growth seems to have been in the opposite direction, antispinward, towards the Klingons and Romulans, and why the UFP didn't encounter Cardassia and Ferenginar much earlier in their history -- they were staying away from the spinward direction of the Alpha Quadrant because the Delphic Expanse had freaked them out!)

I'm thinking more along the lines of the Tandarans, who seemed like they'd be really important and then disappeared forever. And, really, there was no reason to bother creating the Xindi -- it would have been much more effective if it had been the Suliban who attacked Earth in 2153 and if it had turned out that the Cabal had been amassing its weapons in the Delphic Expanse. But I digress.

Yeah, you definitely have some good ideas there, and that all seems to work pretty well.

In my happy place, though, the Orions would have been the Suliban, and would have also fit in place of the Xindi, working for the Romulans...

 

[Anwar]

The fans didn't like the Suliban, which is why they decided to create the Xindi to serve as new antagonists. Also, being a brand new race meant that the writers wouldn't have to worry about being constrained by prior writers when it came to using them like if they had used the Romulans. Same reason they made the Suliban in the first place, they didn't have to worry about any silly complaints of how they were misusing the Orions if they didn't use the Orions at all.

And guess what, when they DID use the Orions they got complaints they were misusing them. That reaction in itself justified the creations of new races.

And hzymarca has also just demonstrated why fans hated the 8472 aliens as well and why the VOY writers had to get rid of them.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

And why fans hate fans.

Fan-hater.

Why do you hate fans so much?

 

[RoJoHen]

And why fans hate fans.

Fan-hater.

Why do you hate fans so much?

I'm starting to wonder the same thing.

 

[Anwar]

They're acceptable targets.

 

[Praetor]

The fans didn't like the Suliban, which is why they decided to create the Xindi to serve as new antagonists. Also, being a brand new race meant that the writers wouldn't have to worry about being constrained by prior writers when it came to using them like if they had used the Romulans. Same reason they made the Suliban in the first place, they didn't have to worry about any silly complaints of how they were misusing the Orions if they didn't use the Orions at all.

And guess what, when they DID use the Orions they got complaints they were misusing them. That reaction in itself justified the creations of new races.

Fans didn't like the Suliban (or at least this fan didn't) because we'd never heard of them before and because they were a part of that horrible Temporal Cold War. If the Suliban had been Orions in the first place and they'd dropped the time travel bit, I doubt they'd have gotten the negative backlash, at least from me, even if they'd still been able to climb walls and slink under doors.

Also, from what I've seen most of the issue with the Orions when they finally did appear on ENT had to do with the "revelation" that the girls were masters and the men the slaves. I didn't mind this, personally.

 

[hyzmarca]

The cloaking devices didn't help the Suliban much, either.

Adhering to established canon puts hard limits on storytelling, but that isn't always a bad thing. Working within those limits can sometimes produce much more interesting and compelling narratives than would be possible with total creative freedom.

 

[Anwar]

The cloaking devices didn't help the Suliban much, either.

Adhering to established canon puts hard limits on storytelling, but that isn't always a bad thing. Working within those limits can sometimes produce much more interesting and compelling narratives than would be possible with total creative freedom.

Not with how utterly constrained ENT would've been if they slavishly obeyed every last thing TOS said about the pre-TOS era.

The main problem is that TOS wasn't made with a prequel in mind, too much stuff was explicitly stated to be brand new in TOS for there to be anything leftover for a prequel. And plus, if anyone heroic had been around pre-TOS they'd have been mentioned but no one ever was. Wars worked (to an extent) in that it was still the same guy in charge, featured a lot of the same characters from the other movies, and they never told us anything about the past aside from one mention of the "Clone Wars" leaving them free to do whatever they wanted.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

They're acceptable targets.

I bet they wouldn't be if they loved ENT and VOY more than any other trek series.

Wait a sec... the point I'm making here seems familiar.

Can't quite put my finger on it.

 

[Anwar]

If you're implying I like those two more than any other series you're wrong. I like TOS, TNG and DS9 probably more than I like those, I just don't despise UPN Trek and I don't worship DS9 as the end-all of TV.

 

[Sci]

Personally, I don't despise VOY or ENT; I'm just terribly disappointed in them. In my view, neither one lived up to their true dramatic potential (though ENT began to in its final year). VOY started off promisingly, but the first major dramatic flaw hits at the end of "Caretaker" -- even though the Maquis make up a third of Voyager's crew, and even though the Starfleet crew needs the Maquis, and even though the Maquis had demonstrated bravery and selflessness by sacrificing their ship to save Voyager, Janeway still forces the Maquis to join Starfleet and demands that Voyager be run as a Starfleet ship, instead of creating a more democratic command structure that acknowledges the reality of Voyager's situation (cut off from Command) and treats the Maquis as equal partners instead of subordinates.

The basic problem with both VOY and ENT, so aptly demonstrated with the finale of "Caretaker," is that each one set itself up to be very different from TNG... and then fell into the pattern of trying to be TNG again. Neither one lived up to their differences, to the things that made them unique; both spent most of their lifespans trying to be TNG again, and both failed dramatically. TNG succeeded by not trying to be TOS. DS9 succeeded by not trying to be TNG. VOY and ENT failed by trying to be TNG -- and ENT only began to succeed when it stopped trying to be any series but itself.

 

[Anwar]

Like I mentioned in other threads, that's because they were UPN Trek. UPN wanted TNG clones, the writers didn't. The writers lost.

 

[Sci]

Like I mentioned in other threads, that's because they were UPN Trek. UPN wanted TNG clones, the writers didn't. The writers lost.

Then they really should have left, because it should have become clear to them that they were not turning out a good product.

 

[Anwar]

They were contracted beforehand. Quitting would have been a violation of said contract and led to lawsuits/blacklisted from the industry.

 

[Sci]

They were contracted beforehand. Quitting would have been a violation of said contract and led to lawsuits/blacklisted from the industry.

Tell that to Ronald D. Moore, who did quit when he realized he wasn't going to be able to turn out good work under those conditions.

And I'm skeptical of the idea that it's all UPN's fault, frankly. Numerous statements from Moore, Ira Steven Behr, Garret Wang, and others, have strongly implied over the years that Trek was being run according to the arbitrary, risk-adverse whims of Rick Berman. (In particular, Wang's claim that actors playing Humans were instructed by Berman to tone down their performances to create emotionally flat Humans because Berman felt that was the only way to make alien characters believable sticks with me.)

I'm not saying Berman and Braga are bad guys. And both of them did turn out good scripts at times, too. But it's my strong opinion that by the time of mid-VOY, both were suffering from creative burnout and weren't producing good stories anymore -- and that their aversion to creative risk stifled other writers.