Like Sulu before him (or after him, depending on how you look at it), SOMEBODY had to fly the ship.
Travis Mayweather, what was the point of that character
- Thread starter The Overlord
- Start date
Like Sulu before him (or after him, depending on how you look at it), SOMEBODY had to fly the ship.
Travis at least had a family and did have an episode or 2 that was all about him. I personally liked his character. It was just a shame that they never did get to develop the rest like they did with the other series. That is partially due to the fact their run was shortened by 3 years. But I think they had a plan for him as with Hoshi but they never got to fully realize it.
Malcolm was another character that they threw things out but never truly developed him. And the same could be said about Phlox. We knew more about them than with Travis and Hoshi.
Malcolm was another character that they threw things out but never truly developed him. And the same could be said about Phlox. We knew more about them than with Travis and Hoshi.
No, that assumes they had a consistent plan throughout, which they didn't. The show was retooled from season to season as its ratings fell. I don't think there's ever been a Trek series that felt so different in every single one of its seasons. In the first season, they tried for a smaller, more character-driven ensemble drama with an emphasis on exploration and discovery, and that's where we got a lot of the best character-building for the supporting cast. In the second season, probably under network pressure, they began playing up the action quotient more and the show became more unfocused in its attempts at character exploration (when they did try to do more character-driven pieces, we got misfires like "A Night in Sickbay," "Singularity," and "Vanishing Point," although there were some decent ones like "Stigma" and "First Flight"). Then in season 3 they threw all their original plans out the window and replaced them with the Xindi arc in a grab for ratings, and development of the supporting cast took a back seat to action and serial plotting. And in season 4, with ratings so low that renewal was unlikely, they just went all-out with the continuity porn to satisfy the hardcore fans who were the only ones still watching. Although the season 4 producers actually made a good effort to reverse Travis's decline into obscurity by giving him more to do, particularly in "Demons"/"Terra Prime."
Travis might have been better off if ENT had gone the TOS route and had a separate helmsman and navigator. The navigator wouldn't have to be on the bridge at every moment while the ship's in orbit like the helmsman would, so maybe if Travis had been merely the navigator (appropriate for someone who knows space better than any other human on the ship), he would have been freer to go on away missions and such.
But like Christopher said, Montgomery kind of blew his big chance, and that's when Travis' role started getting downsized. Maybe if the writing on ENT had been less stiff and formal and more contemporary, Montgomery might have done better with the material like others here have suggested.
^I'm not one for shoulda-woulda-coulda usually, but I think the Horizon scene would have played much differently and better if Montgomery had adlibbed it. I don't think it was a matter of bad acting as much as a generation gap between writer and actor. From what I've read, this was not a set where actors felt free to tweak the scripts.
And btw, by "slang" I didn't mean jargon or regional language, but rather a more relaxed way of speaking as opposed to stage language. Normal conversation doesn't get dated that quickly.
And btw, by "slang" I didn't mean jargon or regional language, but rather a more relaxed way of speaking as opposed to stage language. Normal conversation doesn't get dated that quickly.
But Travis often did go on away missions, at least early on. He's on the away mission to Rigel X in "Broken Bow," he's telling ghost stories as part of the landing party in "Strange New World," he's down on the planet in "Terra Nova," he's on the comet in "Breaking the Ice," etc. From the start, he was meant to be the go-to guy for piloting a shuttle wherever the characters needed to go, and that made him a fixture on away missions, at least in the early episodes. So his bridge responsibilities had nothing to do with it. (After all, they had relief personnel who could take over a main character's station.)
And Travis's familiarity with space wasn't supposed to be as big an asset as you suggest, since the whole idea was that NX-01 was travelling farther than humanity had ever travelled before.
But the dialogue style was significantly more contemporary on ENT than on the other shows. For instance, it's the only place outside of The Search for Spock where you'll hear anyone in Starfleet use the phrase "son of a bitch." (The phrase is also used by David Marcus in TWOK, Gillian in TVH, and Lily Sloane in FC.) They used plenty of slang and vernacular in the show, as part of the intention of portraying a more "modern" crew, one closer to the people of our own time.
Here's Travis's dialogue from the aforementioned scene in "Fortunate Son":
That sounds pretty informal and contemporary to me.
Manny Coto, who wrote Similitude, talks about the formality of Trek writing in the commentary to that episode on DVD. He mentions that it was difficult to pick up the cadence of the dialogue because it was very strict. So while the dialogue quoted above seems informal in writing, it sounded formal when spoken. So the "going to"s didn't slide into "gonna"s for example. I wish I could link to the comments. He was pretty clear that it was a Trek specific thing and it came from on high.
"Singularity" is one of my favorite ENT episodes and I really enjoyed "A Night in Sickbay" as well.
I enjoyed the Xindi arc but I could have lived without it just as easily. But I did enjoy Season 4 a lot. I liked the 2 to 3 episodic story arcs.
Season 4 was good, but my point is that it represented a completely different plan than the ones followed by the previous seasons. They didn't have a single 7-year strategy that got cut short after season 4; whatever initial strategy they had was thrown out the window at the end of season 2.
I would agree to that. Season 3 was in doubt in season 2 and season 4 was a bonus.
I definitely disagee with that, because there's a difference between slang terms and how a person might slang their speech.
I don't hate "A Night in Sickbay" -- it's actually a pretty good Phlox-focus episode. But it does have its awkward elements and misfires. "Singularity" doesn't work for me, because it's just "everyone's out of character because of a space whoozits" and we're not learning anything about the characters as they really are. It would be one thing if the things they were fixated on actually revealed something about their personalities, but they're just obsessed with complete trivialities and so the whole thing feels equally trivial. And "Vanishing Point" is, well, pointless because it quickly becomes obvious that it's all just a hallucination. And because it's just an extended riff on the "Hoshi is neurotic and afraid of stuff" thread that the character had already outgrown by the end of season 1, so it feels like a regression.
Travis needed to be something other than the Green Young Guy character. His Boomer identity could have been used to much better effect.
The Boomers (presumably) were humans who were the first from Earth to colonize space. They weren't beholden to any government. They were out there on their own. They felt superior to the "landlubbers" of Earth who weren't as bold and daring as they were.
They had made alliances (and enemies) out there, and knew more than Starfleet about the lay of the land. Starfleet could trust them more than, say, a random Klingon or Andorian. But simply because they were human didn't guarantee their loyalty to Earth. They had their own agenda.
In short, Travis, not T'Pol should have been their guide through the wilds of space. Travis could have been in Starfleet, but a more roguish type than everyone else. He could get away with more shit because Starfleet needed him, and he knew it. He should have been cocky and a bit tough to control, but very useful in a pinch. He should have been the scene-stealing character of the series instead of a wallflower.
The Boomers (presumably) were humans who were the first from Earth to colonize space. They weren't beholden to any government. They were out there on their own. They felt superior to the "landlubbers" of Earth who weren't as bold and daring as they were.
They had made alliances (and enemies) out there, and knew more than Starfleet about the lay of the land. Starfleet could trust them more than, say, a random Klingon or Andorian. But simply because they were human didn't guarantee their loyalty to Earth. They had their own agenda.
In short, Travis, not T'Pol should have been their guide through the wilds of space. Travis could have been in Starfleet, but a more roguish type than everyone else. He could get away with more shit because Starfleet needed him, and he knew it. He should have been cocky and a bit tough to control, but very useful in a pinch. He should have been the scene-stealing character of the series instead of a wallflower.
Did Travis have a non-professional relationship with any of the other main characters once the writers decided to pair Trip with Reed? They set up a Travis/Trip friendship in "Broken Bow," but didn't go much further in that direction as far as I can recall. That seemed to eliminate a lot of potential for scenes with the character -- the writers couldn't pair him up with anyone off-duty.
It's been a few years since I've seen the series, though, so my memory could be failing me here.
It's been a few years since I've seen the series, though, so my memory could be failing me here.
Similar threads
