Why such poor continuity?
- Thread starter commodore64
- Start date
I ain't feeling it. The Trellium and Pa'naars were just too similar. Both destroyed the neural pathways and could have eventually been fatal. I mean, I think they knew they wanted T'Pol to be an emotional Vulcan from the start, obvious from the first episode, but how to explore the emotions is what wasn't pre-planned.
Frankly, I thought the Trellium was a much more interesting vehicle for exploring T'Pol's emotional side. I think the Beebs thought the same and pretty much dumped the Pa'naars storyline as a result.
Ironically, Manny decided the Trellium story could die peacefully and resurrected the Pa'naars, albeit only to give it a proper burial, but resurrected it nonetheless.
It's relationship to the Vulcan counterculture was certainly an aspect of the Pa'maars storyline. I also think it was meant to be a part of T'Pol's character storyline. But it was left open at the end of season 2 and wasn't mentioned at all in season 3. It could have been left for dead or picked up again. Manny decided to pick it up again.
THe Trellium story was left open too. Though T'Pol stopped taking the stuff while still in the Expanse, we were told that it's affect would stay with her for the rest of her life. It could easily have been used in season 4, but was dropped.
I'm not dissatisfied with the way things turned out for the most part, but I think its clear that the Beebs didn't have a real vision for the show until season 3.
I mostly agree with this. I don't think all the different illnesses (drug addiction, fallara, Pa'naar, forced meld) T'Pol had were planned though. I also wish the writers had written down the details about the characters some place so that they could be referred to later.
I think season 4 had absolutely no direction, and think - as far as continuity within the show - seasons 1 - 3 did a better job. Most of Enterprise's own continuity errors are within the last season.
The continuity within the show was about as good as any of the modern Trek shows, and quite a bit better than TOS.
No, continuity glitches don't bother me much at all unless they're within an episode - don't show me that something is so at the beginning of a story and then accidentally contradict it later.
No, continuity glitches don't bother me much at all unless they're within an episode - don't show me that something is so at the beginning of a story and then accidentally contradict it later.
The point's the same, though. They had very little time to tell original stories, and they had interesting themes and storylines -- both for the characters and in the backstory of the show -- which they could have advanced, and they could certainly have added new things that would pay off in a good episode now and then set a foundation for interesting episodes to follow, and ... given all the potential laying about and that they weren't going to have forever to explore it in, the show spun its wheels for a Blazing Saddles riff that would come and go without mattering.
So it's remarkable that with as much potential and as much pressure to show results as the show was under that there should have been any episodes that were droning background noise, like, well, ``Marauders''.
Which is the problem. Most likely, they thought they had time to float and tinker about the way TNG and DS9 and VOY did before breaking out the good stuff.
Whatever the reason, I agree that TIIC should have picked one emotional plot device and stuck with it. I realize that the Pa'naars thing was mandated by the network, but still.
Very strong possibility. After all, the three previous shows all lasted between 172 and 178 episodes and seven years apiece. And when ENT started UPN and Paramount seemed pretty adamant that the new show was going to be sticking around for quite some time. I guess laziness set in until the network began threatening early cancellation and then there was a mad and inept rush to fill in a lot of blanks and it didn't all work out.
From The Seventh:
T'POL: I had forgotten all of it, until today.
ARCHER: How?
T'POL: Have you heard of the Fullara?
ARCHER: No.
T'POL: It's an obsolete Vulcan ritual where the memory of an event is repressed along with the emotions associated with it.
ARCHER: And you had this...
T'POL: Fullara.
ARCHER: ...this Fullara ritual performed?
T'POL: When I returned to Vulcan, I was unsettled. I resigned my position with the Ministry and sought guidance at the Sanctuary of P'Jem. For months, one of the Elders worked with me to control the guilt, to restrain the despair of having taken a life, but the feelings remained.
And at the close of the episode:
ARCHER: Dealing with these memories...it's not going to be easy for you, is it?
T'POL: No, it's not.
ARCHER: If you feel you need a leave of absence...
T'POL: That won't be necessary. I was much younger then.
ARCHER: You've also spent a lot of time around humans lately.
T'POL: You do have a way of putting questionable actions behind you.
ARCHER: When you don't have the ability to repress emotions, you learn to deal with them and move on.
Those last few lines seem to have been TPTB's way of putting enough closure on the incident that they wouldn't have to keep bringing it up again, thereby making The Seventh a standalone episode.
I, for one, have always been fascinated by how Vulcans deal with their emotions (beyond the simplistic "suppression"), ever since I first saw Spock constantly in conflict with his emotional, human side. The Enterprise-era Vulcans, some of them at any rate, displayed emotions at times. The idea of exploring the ways in which their non-emotional natures could and might be tested was clearly wicked cool to the writers. I could see why T'Pol was conceived as a Vulcan whose emotions were closer to the surface, so they could put her in crisis, more than once, and see how she handled it, see how the people around her handled it.
I never thought, "Well, that's the end of that one. I'll never see that again." I always think there's a red circle that means, "Oh no - this will pop up again." For example, when Trip tells Archer he did the right thing by stealing the warp coil, I never assumed Archer had really settled with it. When Archer and Soval reached a tentative "friendship" in Cease Fire, I never assumed that meant that he and Soval were best buds. I kinda took what the characters said, and the way they said it more importantly, to determine what would happen next.
When Archer delivers the information about moving on to T'Pol, she sure doesn't look convinced in the same way she doesn't seem convinced or settled when Archer tells T'Pol that dreams can be pleasant. That's why I assumed here she wasn't finished with emotions or this issue.
Thanks. There's a blurb in T'Pol's entry at Memory Alpha that says that Mike Sussman wanted an episode in season to reveal that T'pol's father faked his death and he would be a Romulan agent.
That would make T'pol half-Romulan and it would shed light on her emotions more the blurb says.
There's no source quoted at article, but what are everyone's thoughts on that?
That would make T'pol half-Romulan and it would shed light on her emotions more the blurb says.
There's no source quoted at article, but what are everyone's thoughts on that?
That's what makes it Star Trek. If it would've had spot-on continuity, I would've been thinking, "Wait. I thought this was supposed to be Star Trek. What's with the spot-on continuity?"
But seriously, the usual culprit is the use of multiple writers who sometimes miscue what other writers have done. For instance, when Borg are first introduced they don't assimilate people, only technology. Somewhere along the line that got miscued into Borg assimilating people (probably from the Picard-Borg episodes). The Ferengi were introduced as militants, but the fact that they were interested in a salvage operation was miscued by other writers into the Ferngi we now know as unscrupulous profiteers.
It's something that will inevitably occur even when a single writer has full control of the story, let alone when multiple writers are involved.
But seriously, the usual culprit is the use of multiple writers who sometimes miscue what other writers have done. For instance, when Borg are first introduced they don't assimilate people, only technology. Somewhere along the line that got miscued into Borg assimilating people (probably from the Picard-Borg episodes). The Ferengi were introduced as militants, but the fact that they were interested in a salvage operation was miscued by other writers into the Ferngi we now know as unscrupulous profiteers.
It's something that will inevitably occur even when a single writer has full control of the story, let alone when multiple writers are involved.
In a potential season five episode, writer/producer Mike Sussman hoped to have T'Pol finally meet her father, and reveal to the audience that he was in fact a Romulan agent who had posed as a Vulcan officer prior to faking his own death. The suggestion that T'Pol was half-Romulan would have shed light on her affinity for humans as well as her interest in experimenting with emotions.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/T%27Pol#Background_Information
There's the exact quote. I'm not very good at explaining things.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/T%27Pol#Background_Information
There's the exact quote. I'm not very good at explaining things.
I seem to recall that Vulcans actually do have some sort of biological component (has to be in the brain-area) that helps them control their emotions. I'm not sure when this was first revealed, but I do recall that it was mentioned in a Voyager episode. I'm pretty sure the one where Tuvok melded with Lon Suder and went psycho.
Aw MAN this is cool! I wonder if the Relaunch folks are gonna run with this. Somebody call Mike S. and get cracking, already! MIIIIIKE!
And yes, yet another sign that the show shoulda had 7 years, and TPTB shouldn'ta been assuming they'd have 7 years to play, and... *sigh*
According to at least a couple of books, Saavik is half Vulcan, half Romulan. She struggled with her volatile Romulan half, at least at first, as she strove to live as a Vulcan.
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