Ah, don't worry, it's still off-topic enough because I'm not really a Niner. I really do like Deep Space Nine but my favourite Trek series probably is Enterprise, as crazy as that sounds.
The Official: What do Niners Feel About Enterprise
- Thread starter Photon
- Start date
Nah, you're not crazy. I may not agree with you, but you're not crazy for having an opinion.
I watched B5 when it first aired, but that was years ago. I don't think I've even seen all the episodes. It didn't really appeal to me that much, I must admit. A lot of people are praising it highly these days so maybe I'll rewatch it at some point.Well, crazy people have opinions, too.
(And often some worth taking into consideration.) What I meant was that I'm well aware of ENT's shortcomings and weaknesses, that I think that from a more objective point of view, DS9 (from season 3 onward), TNG (from season 2 onward) and TOS (the first two seasons) are better shows than ENT, yet I love ENT the most.
After Voyager ended, I was looking forward to the new Star Trek series. When I started seeing the commercials, I was dissapointed. they kept selling the series as "the first Enterprise". In my mind, the first Enterprise is NCC-1701. I still tried to watch the series. I saw the pilot and wasn't impressed. The characters were more wooden that Voyager. Scott Bakula just didn't pan out as a starship captain. I just didn't enjoy watching the show. When Firefly came, I really liked that show and watched every episode until FOX cancelled it.
After Ent was cancelled, I watched some reruns. The Andorian angle was pretty good along with the Vulcan government collapse. I felt the Xindi thing was too long and contrived. What really burned this series was the Finale. No matter how many issues this show had, it did not deserve to end as a part of Riker's holodeck fantasy. That last episode should have been about the characters of the Ent, not a quasi-TNG episode.
After Ent was cancelled, I watched some reruns. The Andorian angle was pretty good along with the Vulcan government collapse. I felt the Xindi thing was too long and contrived. What really burned this series was the Finale. No matter how many issues this show had, it did not deserve to end as a part of Riker's holodeck fantasy. That last episode should have been about the characters of the Ent, not a quasi-TNG episode.
As a DS9 fan I was vexed when in the initial commercial for ENT, Sisko was not mentioned among the captains. That was the first strike against the show.
I only grew to like ENT in the last two seasons. I thought "Broken Bow" was the best pilot of all the series, but the first season was bland. Wretched character development, thought the production values were great though. I did like a couple episodes from the season season, particularly the Borg episode, the Rura Penthe episode, and the season finale.
Season 3 saved it for me. I liked Dark Archer and I thought the show had more urgency during the Xindi arc. Even though I thought the Space Nazis finale was dumb as hell, I didn't hate the S4 opener, and I really liked S4 a lot, though it sacrificed character development in the quest to put in as many plots with TOS ties as possible.
I guess the Xindi arc had a DS9-type feel to it in some regards, with the willingness to show Archer at dark moments, same with Trip and T'Pol. And the Xindi Council could be something of an anti-Federation like the Dominion was, but I don't see a lot of parallels. I will say that one thing I wish the ENT writers had taken from DS9 was how to write for an ensemble and to create a tapestry of well written characters. The pre-Federation era had a lot of potential for storytelling that was largely wasted.
Also DS9's more arc based storytelling could've helped ENT do a better job with the Temporal Cold War and laying the seeds for the Earth-Romulan War.
One thing I think DS9 did that might have influenced ENT was the snotty Vulcans from that baseball episode. I think their ancestors wound up on ENT. Didn't care for the portrayal of Vulcans on either DS9 or ENT.
I only grew to like ENT in the last two seasons. I thought "Broken Bow" was the best pilot of all the series, but the first season was bland. Wretched character development, thought the production values were great though. I did like a couple episodes from the season season, particularly the Borg episode, the Rura Penthe episode, and the season finale.
Season 3 saved it for me. I liked Dark Archer and I thought the show had more urgency during the Xindi arc. Even though I thought the Space Nazis finale was dumb as hell, I didn't hate the S4 opener, and I really liked S4 a lot, though it sacrificed character development in the quest to put in as many plots with TOS ties as possible.
I guess the Xindi arc had a DS9-type feel to it in some regards, with the willingness to show Archer at dark moments, same with Trip and T'Pol. And the Xindi Council could be something of an anti-Federation like the Dominion was, but I don't see a lot of parallels. I will say that one thing I wish the ENT writers had taken from DS9 was how to write for an ensemble and to create a tapestry of well written characters. The pre-Federation era had a lot of potential for storytelling that was largely wasted.
Also DS9's more arc based storytelling could've helped ENT do a better job with the Temporal Cold War and laying the seeds for the Earth-Romulan War.
One thing I think DS9 did that might have influenced ENT was the snotty Vulcans from that baseball episode. I think their ancestors wound up on ENT. Didn't care for the portrayal of Vulcans on either DS9 or ENT.
In fairness, after fan complains there was a second version of the commerical made, one which name-dropped Sisko.
I heard about that, but Sisko never should've been omitted in the first place. Its not like they have 50 names to remember and they even put Spock in there, even though he never-headlined a show. Of course, Spock is more popular than Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer combined. And Spock was a captain in the movies, but he wasn't a headliner like the other captains mentioned. By that logic, Sulu should've gotten a mention too. To me it felt like a dig against DS9.
*sheepishly re-enters thread to talk about something else.*
We should judge the show by the show not the marketing campaign which was probably handled by a completely different department. Sure, it could have done better in the beginning, but during the early seasons B&B were trying to set the show apart from all the other Treks, and when that didn't work they went the dark, gritty, war/political route of DS9. I think that Enterprise was reasonably fair towards DS9 and even brought back some of the plot elements from the show, such as Section 31.
To be fair, if we were to judge Trek by UPN's promos then I'd have to call almost every episode the most mindless, raunchy piece of rubbish ever put to film. "Come this May! Come what may!"
We should judge the show by the show not the marketing campaign which was probably handled by a completely different department. Sure, it could have done better in the beginning, but during the early seasons B&B were trying to set the show apart from all the other Treks, and when that didn't work they went the dark, gritty, war/political route of DS9. I think that Enterprise was reasonably fair towards DS9 and even brought back some of the plot elements from the show, such as Section 31.To be fair, if we were to judge Trek by UPN's promos then I'd have to call almost every episode the most mindless, raunchy piece of rubbish ever put to film. "Come this May! Come what may!"
Well, I do think there was a period there where the powers that be were convinced that the gradual decline of Trek's popularity was due to its having strayed from the TNG formula, for which DS9 was largely responsable. Whether or not that explains the specific example of this commercial or not, I have no idea, but I do think it explains why DS9 received relatively little support from Trek producers and why so much of Voyager and early ENT feels like TNG-lite.
In reality, DS9 was blazing the path that era of Trek needed to follow in order to stay relevant, though its anyone's guess as to how things would have turned out if the producers had realized this earlier on. Season 3 (and to a lesser extent 4) of ENT certainly suggests they eventually caught onto this, though too little, too late.
But its ratings declined every year. I love DS9, but for whatever reason the show wasn't exactly the big hitter that TOS and TNG had been.
Absolutely. (Though TOS as a tv show was not a heavy-hitter. TNG is really the only heavy-hitter Trek has had on TV.) That is why there is no point in heaping scorn on the Trek producers of this period. It's understandable that they thought what they thought.
Over time, it has become clear that DS9 was heading where sci-fi tv shows needed to go (and eventually would go) to succeed in the increasingly competitive television market. This is one of the reasons why DS9 has aged so well, and why the later seasons of ENT are so much more watchable than the early ones.
One of the things that DS9 and TOS have in common is that they were both a bit ahead of their time. TOS by more than DS9, but they are similar in this respect.
To be fair, Voyager's writers did more to reference DS9 than the other way around; when Voyager made contact with Earth in season 4 they did a story about the events back home (the Maquis being wiped out) while I can't remember Voyager even getting a mention on DS9. And at the end of the day, it wasn't the job of the producers on Voyager to support DS9, just like it wasn't the job of Ira Behr or Ron Moore to support Voyager.
The only producers this really applies to are Berman and Lauritson, and they had to focus more on Voyager because it was a network show. DS9 could keep producing episodes for as long as stations were willing to buy the rights to air them, whereas Voyager was subject to UPN meddling all the time, and some sources suggest the show was considered for the axe as early as season 2 (Susperia being their out if they needed to quickly wrap up the series). They had to work more on Voyager, it was the flagship show for a television network.
Also, Berman and Behr were apparently somewhat confrontational, so why should Berman put as much effort into a show where the head writer doesn't seem to like him? From reading Star Trek Action (which gave behind the scenes details for the production of Hope and Fear) it seems that Braga got along very well with Berman, so Berman probably enjoyed the working environment on Voyager more.
Yes, I do think that DS9 was by far the better show, and it deserved more attention than it got, but Berman had to prioritise Voyager and the movies over DS9.
It only made sense for VOY to acknowledge the huge changes in the political landscape in the Alpha Quadrant, in the episode where Voyager got news from the Federation - especially the destruction of the Maquis. In fact, that had to be acknowledged. DS9 never had a good reason to reference a single Federation ship lost in the Delta Quadrant, which none of the main characters had any particular connection to.
Some aspects of Voyager did make it onto DS9, though. We got Dr Zimmerman and the EMH in Doctor Bashir, I Presume? and Mirror Tuvok in Through the Looking Glass. I don't really think DS9 was hard done by though, certainly not more than most other sci-fi shows.
I havnt seen alot of Enterprise, but what i have seen was rubbish.
With the likes of TNG, DS9, VYG i saw a few eps and it made me want to watch more, those incarnations of star trek grabbed you. Enterprise didnt imo.
With the likes of TNG, DS9, VYG i saw a few eps and it made me want to watch more, those incarnations of star trek grabbed you. Enterprise didnt imo.
I don't have any connection to Tiger Woods, but I still had a conversation about his current predicament this afternoon because it is an interesting story. While I probably wouldn't consider Voyager an "interesting" story as a viewer, in the confines of the Trek universe it was, and according to Voyager it was big news back in the AQ when they learned that Voyager was safe in the DQ. It wouldn't have been too hard for the writers on DS9 to throw Voyager a bone by having Bashir and Garak discuss it over lunch, or something. Refer to it as a good news story which helped lift morale during the war.
They didn't have to do it, but if the producers were interested in helping Voyager (which was struggling even more-so in terms of ratings) it would have been very easy to do so. Who knows, maybe the overture could have led to the end of hostilities in the internet flame wars and we wouldn't have their remnants still burning to this day.
Yeah, I remembered Mirror Tuvok after posting, but I had forgotten about Dr Zimmerman though. But that could have been perceived as DS9 trying to poach Voyager's two best actors for their own show.
I don't know, maybe you just needed to watch the right episodes.
And in case you are wondering, they didn't pull a Voyager and reset the damage, the ship stayed that way until they got back to spacedock 9 episodes later. If you haven't given Enterprise season 3 a shot it might be worth your while.
Sorry, there's something in my eye, I keep winking. I'm going to spend some time in front of a mirror with some tweezers and try to get it out.
Sure, it was understandable, and DS9 probably benefited from the relative neglect as far as its quality is concerned. It fended alright for itself in th ratings department as well, so in the end it was probably better for the show that it was left alone. At least, we probably have a better 7 seasons to watch because of it.
As far as the example of the commercial is concerned, though, I don't think we can rule out that it was a product of a "DS9 isn't really Star Trek" mentality.
I don't think I've ever seen the commercial so I'm probably not in a position to comment... but that's never stopped me before.
Argh! Stop that you stupid eye!
But this thing about ignoring Sisko isn't unusual, people normally name things in threes and Kirk, Picard and Janeway are the three best known captains. It's like that book Steven Colbert read on that famous episode of his Report ("Only god could love Star Trek Voyager"), it only mentioned those three as well.
Argh! Stop that you stupid eye!
But this thing about ignoring Sisko isn't unusual, people normally name things in threes and Kirk, Picard and Janeway are the three best known captains. It's like that book Steven Colbert read on that famous episode of his Report ("Only god could love Star Trek Voyager"), it only mentioned those three as well.
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