TOS Purity and ENT

[number6]

I gotta be honest I don't think Gene would've done a prequel. He didn't think like that. He always thought of going forward, what the future would be like.

If Gene was around and vital when television and Hollywood were starting to really trend toward prequel series (i.e. Young Indiana Jones, Smallville, etc..) you can bet he would have had some kind of younger Kirk/Spock series. Look at how long that SF Academy idea was bouncing around the rumour mill.

A prequel was inevitable. GR was a business man.

And I don't know that he would've done anything beyond TNG. Remember, Roddenberry did TNG because he said it was the "Star Trek he wanted to do".

He was also asked by the studio, but at that time and some years later, it became apparent that Paramount would have done something anyway. Having GR's input guaranteed success and a demand for the show among fans.

Also, when asked to help develop DS9, he said he wished everyone the best of luck but he was done.

if I recall correctly and I believe it was mentioned in the making of DS9 book, GR was already too sick for that conversation to have taken place. Rumour has it that Piller and Berman simply sought his blessing..

I don't know what Gene would've done. But if he had one more series in him I would given anything to see it. The hopeful vision he gave us of the future is something we need right NOW!

You can see glimpses of what he wanted to do in the early episodes of Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict, and even moreso in Genesis II and Planet Earth, certainly in Questor.

GR wanted to get away from Trek and do other things. I believe he would have developed a non-Trek series had he lived longer and wanted to stay at it.

Enterprise is an alternate timeline...

Except Hoshi and Archer's NX-01 service records are on the USS Defiant ("The Tholian Web", "In a Mirror, Darkly") computer, and the finale of Enterprise was a TNG episode.

Which is retconning established in ENT and not TOS.

Well, whatever, though. It was a nice way to tie their presence into the whole Trek universe. It was supposed to be a prequel after all. Why not tie it into the other series??

They certainly earned the right to do it, with the success of the three other series.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

I find it amusing when people state that there should not be any Trek prequel series or movies because (I think George Takei uses this line) that Trek is "about going forward, not back".

This reasoning seems to imply that there will be no "going forward", no places and races to explore, no adventures to be apart of between now and Kirk's era; I guess that there will be a 200 year period of stagnation and then earth cultures and technology will suddenly advance and jump a couple centuries into the future.

There is plenty to explore and plenty of stories to tell in the gap between today and the NCC-1701's mission. Let's see it!

Although I do not necessarily agree with some of their complaints, I can more readily understand the folks who don' t like the prequels over the issue of perceived canon inconsistencies, rather than not wanting to explore the pre-Kirk years.

If TOS says "A" and ENT says "a" (or even "B") maybe we end up with a canon inconsistency, not a canon violation....

 

[Ronald Held]

On reason to go forward, is not to have to explain the overly advanced looking tech on ENT compared to TOS.

 

[number6]

On reason to go forward, is not to have to explain the overly advanced looking tech on ENT compared to TOS.

That is more about the era that we live in more than anything else: no one ever really had to explain the tech in TOS. They used it and it worked and the viewer accepted it. Now everything needs to be explained not only to satisfy the rabid fan who has to have every little detail spoonfed to them but also to the uninitiated who cannot and will not use their imagination to fill in the blanks. Entertainment was much more cerebral back then. We are more cynical and jaded now.

 

[Joker]

I ended up quite liking Enterprise.

Didn't like it initially.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

I loved TOS series as a kid. I had the blue prints and the books. I could draw the location of all the controls on the transporter console. I knew the layout of all the blinking lights and switches on the panels in Engineering (arrangements both before and after they put the impulse synchrotron unit into the deck in front of the screened opening that looks back over the magnatomic flux circulation tubes)..... I loved drawing and memorizing all that minutia!

As much as I loved the careful thought that went into all that, these are simply the sets for a 1960s TV show that allowed our heroes to have their adventures.

I love how the people associated with Trek have been careful -in general- to be mindful of what came before. I am a BIG supporter of that philosophy. But there sometimes are considerations that just must overrule certain options.

TOS was a program made in the 1960s with 1960s sensibilities on what the 2260s would look like. Some might argue that in order to make a 2160s spaceship look more technologically primitive to our Early 21st century eyes, we would best fill our ship with "future technology" as it was presented in the 1950s..... say from the cruiser "Polaris" from "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet". This would certainly look less technologically advanced to our eyes (they'd even be in luck if the studio had not auctioned off the sets for Tom Paris's "Captain Proton" holodeck program.

Just how could you make the technology look LESS advanced compared to TOS, anyway? How do you get more primitive than blinking jelly beans, colored squares and toggle switches? Give their helmsman a furshlugginer shifting lever to control the ship's speed (shudder!) like in TMP and ST09? Woof!

P.S. In general, I really enjoyed ENT! NX-01 looked great, and that's how you want the viewer to perceive the hero ship.

 

[Wingsley]

Now, let's turn this thread on its ear...

If you look at fan films like "New Voyages"/"Phase II", "Starship Farragut", and, my favorite, "Starship Exeter", they are all trying to be TOS Season 4. They all try to pretend, in their own way, that it's still 1969 and they are picking up Roddenberry's baton.

Now, let's superimpose this TOS/ENT discussion over those fan films. If one of these filmmakers came up with a story idea that somehow combined Kirk confronting the TOS-era Romulans with historic flashbacks of Archer's crew confronting the Romulans, would it "fit"? Imagine Kirk or one of the other NCC-1701 crew reading old logs or histories from 100 years before, and the stories "come alive". If "These Are the Voyages..." could play out (awkwardly) as a TNG episode, could ENT resonate, historically, in a TOS episode?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

What is your fascination for all these suppositions? And they're quite flawed. Farragut and Exeter are NOT "trying to be TOS Season 4." They're independent productions, and they're not "trying to pretend" anything. They're the embodiment of GR's concept applied to a new ship, a new crew. And these productions are EXCELLENT to the point that they're more Star Trek than ENT ever pretended to be.

Now let's suppose one of these filmmakers decided to come up with an ENT flashback that had monkeys flying out of Archer's sorry ass... That might resonate historically as a TOS episode in the mind of some, but not for me.

ENT is just an alternate reality, one that didn't even bother to call itself Star Trek at first...

 

[Nightdiamond]

With Enterprise, they ditched the classic opening monologue and soundtrack music, for an adult contemporary song.

The Enterprise was made to look like a sleek 24th century style ship.

The uniforms were also sleek looking and different from the uniforms that came decades later.

I think Enterprise moved too far away from the formula and tried to be too chic.

I think it would have been cool for them to play up to the old style ways, while finding a way to keep the storyline and dialog "modern".

 

[Anwar]

Which really isn't possible.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

The Enterprise was made to look like a sleek 24th century style ship.

Actually, it was the AKIRA class ships that were designed to look like the NX class ships. The 24th century ship designers simply revisited the earlier NX configuration. For all we know, this basic confirmation has been used for various classes (ones not seen on-screen) since the founding of Starfleet.

To me, all that clunky, bulky stuff bulging out from the NX's hull makes it look arguably less sleek than the hulls of all the Enterprises that came later (Same way the details of Galactica's outer hull fits well with the fact that they are still using corded phones and rail guns). Designs got cleaned up by the time the Constitution class ships were launched.

I have no problem with NX class looking as it does. It looks great. While there may be other reasons to complain about canon inconsistencies between TOS and ENT, I think that citing this as such an example is a stretch.

Anyway, that's my story and I am sticking to it.

 

[Wingsley]

Well, for me, if you get past some of the aspects of the NX's exterior design (catamarans, excessively TNGish glowing grilles on the sides of the nacelles) it actually works very well for me. The same for the interior sets. Most of those sets were outstanding and seemed to fall in line with what Spock said in "Balance of Terror".

The warp engines were too TNG-looking, the transporter was too TNG-looking, the weapons didn't match up with Spock's "primitive, atomic" description. Aside from that, though, ENT's biggest problems weren't presentation or style. They were creative. They could've ditched the whole temporal cold war nonsense and started off with "First Flight" and gone from there.

As far as the "suppositions" remark, it is correct to point out that these fan films are independent productions. However, it is also valid to note that these fan films are presented as a kind of virtual TOS revival. James Cawley goes so far as to promote it as "a night in 1969". So yes, they are independent fan films but they are also an obvious attempt to explore what "TOS, Season 4" could have been. You can call it flawed if you like, but the makers of these fan films are the ones who came up with the idea and they seem to be attracting quite a following.

 

[F. King Daniel]

IMO the NX-Akira similarity is no different to the Constitution class resembling the Ambassador class, the Olympic class resembling the old Daedalus, the Sovereign looking like it evolved from Excelsior and so forth. There isn't one design lineage, there are several concurrently evolving.

 

[T'Girl]

Enterprise is an alternate timeline...

Except ... the finale of Enterprise was a TNG episode.

But if you examine the way Riker and Troi look in the Enterprise finale, and the way they look in the episode The Pegasus, the differences argue in favor of two different universes.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Enterprise is an alternate timeline...

Except ... the finale of Enterprise was a TNG episode.

But if you examine the way Riker and Troi look in the Enterprise finale, and the way they look in the episode The Pegasus, the differences argue in favor of two different universes.

If we play that game and vet every episode or movie like that, every single one of them ends up in it's own alternate universe.

For starters, Spock's ears aren't the same in any two of the films . The TOS crew seem to age a decade in the "two and a half" years between TOS and TMP. Saavik, Zephram Cochrane and the entire Klingon Empire suffer total changes in looks and personality, as do the Trill...need I go on?

 

[Nightdiamond]

The TOS Enterprise was made to look stocky and bulky because of the design limitations of the time..

But that fit in the storyline as it being part of the design for that time period.

The TNG Enterprise had a more sleek aerodynamic design, which would had been attributed to advancement in design (on and off camera).

When you look at Enterprise's design, it follows that same curvy stripped down slender design as TNG, but this is when Starfleet was just beginning to produce starships and explore!

So you take a look this first futuristic looking Enterprise, then jump ahead decades later to the TOS series and see this bulkier Enterprise with the big buttons everywhere, and have to believe that the Enterprise was First?

 

[Robert D. Robot]

^ I guess my outlook is different.

I think TOS Enterprise is a model of simplicity and grace. I don't see anything really bulky or stocky about it, although I do understand why some say that the angle between the secondary hull and the nacelle pylons makes the design look a little "stiff" in that area (some say this was improved in the refit).

If anything, I think her successors, the Excelsior and Galaxy classes, went down a path to increasing bulkiness/stockiness with their shorter pylons, the thicker connection between hulls, and more "fully inflated" (for lack of a better term?) primary hull cross-sections. (After seeing TSFS, my friend and I often referred to the Excelsior as the 'DeSoto' because we thought it resembled the "bulgemobiles" of the late 1940s.) The 1701D grew on me over time, but I thought the primary hull was way too large in proportion to the rest of the ship, especially relative to the engines. I like it now, but it still looks a bit "squat" to my eye.

I suspect that perhaps the Trek designers at the studio wanted these successive ships to look increasingly more powerful compared to Kirk's Enterprise, and I feel that bringing the two hulls and nacelles in closer to each other and thickening the connecting structures creates a more massive-looking ship, which may imply a more powerful vessel.

I think 1701B looked bulkier and stockier than TOS 1701. I also think that while 1701D's lines may flow more smoothly than those of TOS 1701 (and definitely better than those of 1701B), it looks bulkier and stockier to me than TOS 1701. I think the trend of increasing bulkiness actually goes in the opposite direction from what you are saying.



Also, even if I did share your opinion that TOS 1701 was bulky relative to her successors, I am not sure that I can agree with the idea that 'design limitations at the time' were likely explanations:

Off-camera, Matt Jeffries designed both the Enterprise and the Klingon Battlecruiser back at the beginning of it all. I think the Klingon design is one of the "sleekest" designs in all of Trek, but 1701 and the D7 have the same Father, and were "born" in the same time, with the same design limitations.

On-screen, I am not sure that increasing sleekness is necessarily the result of increases in design capabilities at Starfleet. "In space, no one can hear you scream 'aerodynamics'". Sleekness may give a vessel a higher 'coolness factor' for some viewers, but I am not that sleekness will get you across the Alpha Quadrant any faster.



For me, the 'tons' of greebles on the NX-01's hull, her relatively slender pylons and relatively small, cylindrical nacelles make her look like a less technologically advanced vessel than anything that came after her. As was mentioned in some other thread months ago, the Starfleet designers eventually got all the external 'stuff' tucked inside under a smooth hull surface by the time we got to TOS, and I think that the trend never really was reversed in the decades that followed.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think it's also a stretch to describe the multipocketed ENT jumpsuits as "sleek".

 

[number6]

What did you expect? This is becoming another one of those "Dump on ENT" threads.

Didn't see that one coming.

 

[TIN_MAN]

I actually liked ST:E, after TOS, it's my second favorite -oddly enough.

Anyway, I agree with number6 look to Planet Earth and Genesis II for a feel for Roddenberry's take on a prequal. As for the ship, throw in the ring ship from his unsold Starship concept and you're practically there!

As for fan productions, I think most would try to re-interpret "the past" along the lines I just mentioned?