Here's an item to yammer about the new Star Trek TV series, ENTERPRISE.
 
Um, I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

78 responses total.

Ditto.  Hope it doesn't suck.

        I am looking forward to it.
        Amoung other things, no Prime Directive.  Maybe will see the
events that gave need to a Prime Directive.
        However, as to the look of the tech, well, maybe, Gorgie
LaForge did leave something behind when the Enterprise-E helped
with the First Contact.  So the equipment may look more Next Generation
than The Original Series.
        I would like to see stories that show that some of the tech
was plundered or acquired technology instead of all Earth or 
Federation Based.
        Will the Enterprise look like the Enterprise of that supposed
era that we seen in Star Trek, The Motion Picture?

    I overheard someone mention "Star Fleet" in one of the trailers. I thought
this was supposed to be before the feds???  Shouldn't it be NASA, or at most
the UNSN?

From what I understand, "Star Fleet" is an earth thing, and always has been.
The United Federation of Planets is something different than Star Fleet, but
does encumpass it.  It's like we have NASA and the Russians have something
else.  We have Star Fleet, the Vulcans have something else, the Romulins
something else, and the Klingons something else ...etc etc etc.

I gather that the Federation doesn't exist, but Star Fleet does, although
it is brand new.  Since "First Contact", poverty has pretty much been
whipped on earth.  Warp drives work pretty well, phasers, transporters
and universal translators are a bit on the flakey side still.  Shields
and photon torpedos don't exist.  They only know a few alien races and
meeting new ones is not yet routine.

Somebody mentioned to me recently that they're going to push the sleaze factor
a bit.  Apparently it worked pretty well for Voyager, and for the original
series too.

        Why wouldn't tight spandex on a volupuious Vulcan not be
logical?

Hey, I'm not complaining...     ;)

What I'm really curious to see is how they'll handle the "yesterday's 
tomorrow" problem.  How can they make the equipment and so forth look 
less advanced than that on Trek Classic, without also making it look 
absurdly 60s-retro?

  I expect they'll just ignore the issue, though I too am interested
  in how they handle it..  (which is probably the only thing about the
  prospect of a new Star Trek series which interests me..  but then
  who knows?  I thought Deep Space Nine was a really stupid-sounding
  idea for a series, too, and it turned out to be the only one I really
  liked.)

Re 9 - Since we know that Earth just came out of a huge war not too
long before this series (less than fifty years I think) they might
play up the lack of people/resources/factories as a reason why their
tech looks bulkier than our own.  (Or not - it's been a long time
since I was impressed by the speculation in a Trek series, and I'm not
holding my breath now!)

Does anyone know when the first episode will be broadcast?  I don't ordinarily
watch TV, but most of my friends will be talking about this show, and I'd like
to have seen enough of it to have some clue what they are talking about.

September 26

Yep, 9/26, assuming UPN doesn't move its premieres back as some of the
other networks have done.

I've written it on my calendar.  Wednesday, 9/26, Starrrr Trek.

(I often write it that way because that's how the announcers pronounce 
it.  "Next! ... on Starrrr Trek!")

  Presumably they're still using leftover 'r's that they stockpiled
  when making Starrrr Search..

This starts tonight, if anyone needs reminding.  Fire up those VCRs!

        This is not your father's Next Generation!
        They used full power phasers on the first episode.  Remember 
how it took many Next Gen episodes before they even shot at something
full power.

        Much better pace to this premier episode.  They where quickly 
brought together.  The reasons for cross crew conflicts made, and 
a mission as underway.  Best of all, they knew they had to do something,
but did not know all about everything.  They flew by the seat of their
pants.
        Interesting to have a vocal as the theme to Enterprise.
I'll come across the credit when I review the recording.

        All told, I find this to be the best of the follow on 
Trek premiers.

        Did anyone catch what that Klingon was saying?

Um, I caught what the Klingon was saying, because I saved a transcript of the
closed-captioning. I don't know how accurate it might be, and I haven't a clue
what the English translation would be. :)

The pilot didn't really grab me, but it was OK.  Interesting
terminology/technology, like the remarkably crude-sounding version of ship
shields.

Well, OK, the vulcan babe wet T-shirt scene *did* get my attention.  :)

Apparently got the attention of many males (and females...)

The show seems aimed at the young male audience.  Being an older female, 
I didn't find much to relate to.  However, I have been a loyal Star Trek 
fan my whole life and no matter how bad the spin-offs/movies,  I find myself
watching.  I did like the dog.

Apparently the Klingon home world is closer to Earth than Alpha Centauri.

The "sexiness" seemed totally pasted on.  Instead of arising out of some kind
of an emotional relationship between characters, it's completely gratuitous
and meaningless from a plot or character development point of view.  The
dancers with the tongues are one instance, the smearing gell over naked bodies
for no particular reason while discussing something unrelated was another.
Pure titillation for titillations sake.

I liked the conflict between the Vulcans and the humans.  We're used to
thinking of Vulcans as mostly tame aliens, but they really would disapprove
heartily of humans on first contact, and would be remarkably reluctant to help
humans out into space.

So the conflict between Archer and the Vulcan woman started out good.  Except
the writers had to have it all go Archer's way.  Pure animal magnetism and
one rescue is all it takes to cause her to drop out of Vulcan character
repeatedly and submit to the human way.  Mostly this happens off camera - we
see her standing defiantly for her own views, and in the next scene she has
dropped them.  By the end she has lost the dominance game so badly that
Archer is not required to ask her to stay, instead he pressures her into
begging to stay.  If they keep her character development moving along the same
trajectory, she will be Archer's sex slave by the end of the second episode.
It doesn't look like the intercrew conflict is going to last longer than it
did in Voyager.

I suppose we are supposed to be rooting for Archer against the Vulcan because
he represents humanity.  So the series will show humanity gaining respect in
the universe by continuously having people score off the Vulcan lady, who
represents the hostile alien attitudes.  Not much chance for a strong female
role here if that is the pattern they stick to.

The other female character is the whiny female architype instead of the bitch
architype, and also needs to be wheedled into every action by some male
(mostly Archer).  I've haven't been looking at much TV in the last few years,
but I thought that we had moved a bit beyond such puerile sexism.  Heck, TNG
had stonger female roles.

I liked the production design, costumes and sets.  The dog was was a neat
element, until Archer started telling his problems to the dog.  As a light
touch, reminding us that this is not your father's star trek, he was neat.
As an excuse for clumsy exposition, not so neat.

I liked the Doctor.  He's fun, though not very innovative.  Combine the
Voyager Doctor with the lighter side of the DS9 tailor and you've pretty much
got him.

I couldn't keep the white male crew members straight, aside from Archer.
I think there were two, but it may have been three.  Maybe a first mate
and an engineer?  They didn't get much character development in this first
episode.  I guess the writers were too busy defusing their only strong female
to spend much time on them.

Using shuttles instead of transporters introduces a few new plot possibilities:
Where did we park?  Running to the shuttle.  Leaving someone behind.  I guess
we used them all up in this episode.  Transporters were introduced as a story
device, a quick way to move from space ship to planet.  I expect the novelty
of shuttles will wear off real fast.

Lots of loose ends.  This is plainly meant to be a "story arc" kind of series.
The people from the future meddling in current events is bound to eventually
turn into an excuse for cameos for characters from the earlier series.

You'd think that someone in TOS or TNG would have mentioned the fact that
the first human warp-capable star ship was named "Enterprise".

The language thing was nice.  But they are already getting lazy about it.
Why did the chameleon lady happen to speak English?  Or did the translator
just happen to work perfectly on her?

I like the basic idea for the series.  But the writing is weak.  If this is
going to be any better than Voyager, they've got a lot of overhauling to do.

Comparing it to the TNG series opener is interesting.  Both were weak.  The
TNG opener was slow and lacking in drama.  The Enterprise opener was a lot
faster - though I thought the shootout-as-we-run-for-the-shuttle was
excessively drawn out.  Watching people miss each other gets dull after a
while.  But I think TNG tried much harder to be a thoughtful, intelligent
series, probably too hard in the opener.  Enterprise seems to be trying (too
hard) to be a sexy action series.

Actually, that skin-cream scene is so thoroughly gratuitous that I'm deriving
extra entertainment value just by laughing about it.  :)

I've always wondered why the writers of original Trek *needed* any means of
getting people from ship to planet surface instantly. You don't generally
"need" a way to instantly move people back and forth between a sailing ship
and the beach.

Transporters are much cheaper than shuttles both in special effects and in
story time.  Plus there are all sorts of neat plot devices you can derive,
such as splitting Kirk into separate evil and good halves (ok, that one wasn't
so neat, but the parallel universe Spock-with-a-beard more than made up for
it)

As mentioned immediately above, you do for television.

I may well never watch this show again, but it was interesting once.

We clearly are back in the world of original Trek.  Gratuitous fight 
scenes, gratuitous semi-sex scenes, and all the other stuff Kirk used 
to get into.  Only the Klingons are anachronisms.  (I persist in the 
belief that only Original Trek Klingons are real Klingons.  Who these 
guys with the forebrow ridges are, I don't know.)

One real change, though.  At last, at last, humans who find Vulcans as 
irritating as I do!

        I watched it again Sunday night.  Enjoyed it again.

        Does the doctor seem to also contain some qualitites of 
the alien crew member of 'Galaxy Quest'?  I wonder if he will
yeild Thor's hammer when he needs to?

I would agree with most of Jan's analysis. My main objections were: 1) 
both the female characters are singularly un-inspiring, 2)the 
various "flesh scenes" were gratuitous, juvenile, and blatantly sexist -
- almost surely the work of Brannon who-cares-about-character-
development Braga and 3) I can't tell any of the WASPish male 
characters apart and have no reason to care (caveat: I do like the 
British guy -- but then I always like British guys in these types of 
shows).

Obviously Enterprise *wants* to be TOS pretty badly. But it's a lame 
substitute, IMO. TOS had characters, and even the bodacious babes 
tended to have some plot function. The Enterprise pilot just barely had 
a plot.

Of course, there have been iffy ST pilots before. The TNG pilot was 
rather silly and the DS9 one badly convoluted -- but both did a far 
better job of establishing their main characters right out of the gate. 
And DS9 had characters who were not only conflicted and interesting, 
but who had real, believable beefs with Starfleet. The so-called 
dramatic conflict in Enterprise feels wholly manufactured (oh, let's 
make the Vulcans really snobby and ethnocentric and the main Vulcan 
character into a snarky bitch with no particular motive for her 
bitchiness).

And then, of course, we once again have a smart-aleck white guy in 
charge, presumably so all the 18-30-year-old fanboys who think that 
Trek should be about "shooters and hooters" will all get on line and 
talk the show up as the latest "cool" thing.

Guess that sounds pretty cynical. But I have no faith in the writing 
team that's in charge of this thing (the same folks who gave us 
Voyager) -- and writing is the thing that is going to make or break 
this show, as far as I'm concerned.

At this point, I would definitely rather watch my old DS9 tapes.  

        I so much want to see this become something good, as 
TNG and DS9 did, that I am willing to watch and support.  Whether
I watch old Enterprise tapes or old TNG tapes or old DS9 tapes
or B5 DVDs (when they come out) will be for a different mind set.

Well, tonight's episode sure looked like a Voyager episode, and I don't mean
that as a compliment.

Let's see, our character development continues:  T'Pol urges caution and is
consistently wrong, the cheerful doctor is now starting to remind me heavily
of Voyager's cook "Neelix", and the translator chick screamed again.  ;)

And we're already trying to get this series' version of the Borg, I see.

Is is on again this weekend? I managed to miss seeing it in favor of a 
walk in the Arb... I bet I had more fun. ;)

It's on Wednesdays at 8, and are they reshowing on Saturday?  I noticed the
pilot was on again sometime this weekend.

        You can check out upn50.com.  They show Enterprise on this
Sunday at 7pm.

Ah, right, Sunday.  Didn't think I'd been idly watching TV on Saturday.

Not to nitpick about inter-series consistency, but why the heck is T'Pol
telling the captain that Vulcans never bother unknown races (they *might* not
want to be contacted), when the whole reason we have Vulcans in this show is
because some curious Vulcan explorers made first contact with Earth?

And where the heck was the skin scene this episode?  ;)

heh. Right, Sunday at 7... I remember I might watch. <grins> Though 
playing SimPeople will likely be more entertaining.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss