ENTERPRISE 04/09/'03: "Judgement" (1 Viewer)

[Will_B]

But, can someone explain why a show that comes before the 60s show can't look like it comes before it? This show looks like it is made up of sets and costumes and ship designs that could have been used on TNG, DS9, Voyager...

The interior of the Klingon ship had some nods to the Old Series, in the new use of different colored lights. Instead of just red, the Klingon ship interior had blues, violets, other red hues - it looked great.

Too bad the writers aren't coming up with any original ideas for the show. There's talent on the show, but it is not on the part of the writers.

Remember on Next Gen in season one Picard and Data and Worf found a world where there were "portals" to other places - but the species that had built the portals had vanished? Enterprise should take that story and write the prequel to it.

 

[Randy Tennison]

The interior of the Klingon ship had some nods to the Old Series, in the new use of different colored lights. Instead of just red, the Klingon ship interior had blues, violets, other red hues - it looked great.

I just watched it tonight on TIVO, and this is exactly what I thought. Nice job by the DP to get the Klingon ship looking so good.

Overall, alot of buildup to nothing. Nothing happened. The lawyer went to jail, and that is the extent of what happened.

Come on, guys, you can do much better than this!

 

[Qui-Gon John]

I too was really bothered by how did they get Archer. They got away from the Battle Cruiser. And it seems were able to drop off the refugees somewhere. What, did Archer then say, "jeez, you know the Klingons were pretty mad at me. I better go back there and surrender myself to them and try and patch things up".

 

[Will_B]

This sort of "distancing" of the audience away from what is going on in the lives of the characters happened on Voyager too, when the show would start with them midway into some sort of story, without any regard for how it leaves the audience out of the journey.

They need some writers who understand how to have characters relate to one another - the suggestion was made earlier that the writers of Buffy should be hired once Buffy wraps. Or maybe some people who worked on Cheers, or other programs where personalities were built up steadily, and the audience felt they were coming to know the characters.

 

[Tony Whalen]

I saw a klingon ship (I assume a Bird of Prey) and I thought to myself "why is it that ship looks more advanced than the Bird of Prey that appeared on ST III?

I disagree. I thought the ship looked bulkier and less-streamlined.

Also, when Enterprise scanned the Klingon ship, it was mentioned (forget by who...) that it was a "D5-class cruiser", which would make it a predecessor to the D7-class we always saw in TOS.

...*NOW* I feel like a geek.

 

[PhilipG]

They need some writers who understand how to have characters relate to one another - the suggestion was made earlier that the writers of Buffy should be hired once Buffy wraps

Are you serious? The Buffy writers need to go back to school themselves w.r.t plot and pacing, and I'm not sure that their hip "Buffy-speak" dialogue talents are quite what Enterprise needs.

I suggest they hire the Farscape writers. Then, slowly (so that B&B don't notice), kill off the main cast and replace them with Ben Browder, Claudia Black etc. Eventually have an episode where the previous Enterprise episodes were all a nightmare in John Chricton's mind (during reconstruction from being shattered into little bits). Then continue with the *real* plot.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Jason Seaver wrote (post #18):

Uh, it's a little before my consciousness would have noticed for sure, but I think RCA was still the sole owner of NBC in the '60s. Yep!

Plaints about the look of the ship, the Klingons, other high-tech gadgets, such as the tricorders, et al. have been aired before. As I've said over and over, that was one of the things that I thought made this show a bad idea from the get-go: getting believability out of pre-TOS technology and making it acceptable to today's young tech-exposed audiences---which is who the networks and studios want to be viewing their programming---while seeming to stay "true" to the original show. (Why do you think they have to push buttons to open the doors on that ship, even though we have infrared sensors to automatically open our doors for us already today?)

It's a hard balance to strike and everyone won't be pleased or convinced.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

But they could have come up with a look and feel that would have fit in better. For example, the aforementioned DS9 Ep. Trial and Tribbleations, the scenes with the DS9 crew in TOS uniforms, etc., looked like that time period, as best as I recall.

 

[Jason Seaver]

"Trials And Tribble-ations" was fine for one week where the point was nostalgia, but I'm not sure that sort of look would fly for a show that was supposed to last five years plus.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Why not, it was good enough for The Original Series.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Different audiences. While TOS looked neat and futuristic in 1966, it looks quaint now. Come out with new Star Trek that's supposed to be set in the future today, with big knobs, manual dials, and garish color schemes, and it will look campy. The 15-30 year old audience UPN is trying to attract(*) would not take it seriously. They accept it when seeing TOS for the first time because they can put in context of when the series was produced.

When coming up with the design for Enterprise, the people at Paramount had the choice of doing something that looked like our future or TOS's past. They eventually chose "our future", because they're trying to market it to an early-21st Century audience, but still put in a few things that refer to TOS - the little blip-viewing-thing at T'Pol's station, for instance.

The way I like to think of it is, TOS isn't the way things "really" looked in the 23rd century; it's the best that a television production in the 1960s under the same pressure to make it look good for its audience could do.

(*) Insert bitching about UPN (and network TV in general) marketing to specific demographics here. Getting that audience is a necessity for a network with UPN's reach, though, and it's not as if folks above 30 wouldn't be likely to dismiss a retro-styled Trek as a curiosity, as opposed to a serious program, either.

 

[Jeremy Illingworth]

Why do you think they have to push buttons to open the doors on that ship, even though we have infrared sensors to automatically open our doors for us already today?

But with the narrow corridors on the ship, they would all be opening as everybody walk past, with todays technology. By the Next Generation era, the door sensors know when you want to go through. And just because something is available doesn't mean that its used. We have intrared door openers at the mall but they aren't used on spacecraft today.

And there are some little trowbacks to TOS, like the viewing scope at the science station, but I would have liked it if there were more 'campy TOS' elements. The uniforms wouldn't have to be as bright but I could stand a mroe retro look. The Enterprise uniforms have even less colour than the Next Generation.

jeremy

 

[DeathStar1]

Heh, I still think it would be great if they would re-releas TOS in Boxed Season sets with re-done Special Effects leaving only the actors and dialoug alone.

Change the planets, the ship, the sets, the alien actors, leaving only their bodies and performances to match the look and feel of the TOS movies.

Then no one will complain about the show looking out of place or outdated . And purists will already have the orginals on DVD preserved .