STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE 09/10/'03: "The Xindi" - Page 4

Then the failure is in their, um, failure to use the sexuality to develop the characters, it's not that Trek fans have some phobia about seeing T'Pol's butt. I get it now. This makes sense. And I agree - to the extent that the sexuality would be so much better if it meant something for the characters. Perhaps they're trying to make it have a purpose, in this latest Trip and T'Pol scene... we'll see if it is used to reintroduce their relationship potential ...or not.

Farscape uses sexuality successsfuly but not as blantant as Enterprise.
Theres nothing wrong with these characters being sexy but why doesnt it have to be So in your face?

Absolutely! Come on, all this T'Pol skin bashing.. Talk about perpetuating a stereotype of Star Trek Fans!

The plot and pace of these shows, to me, is not affected by the occasional good view of T'Pol. If they are this lost for ideas, I guess there are worse things to look at

From the Warren Ellis rant:



That about sums it up for me. The crew is just too whimpy to take on a threat such as this. Sure, Archer is angry, but he just stomps around like an angry kid. It certainly hurts Malcolm's character the worst, since he just ended up looking impotent in this episode. So much for turning these characters into something.

Jason

Ok I watched it. It's not that it was overtly bad just so overtly eh. See DS9 took time to build up it's Dominion StoryLine. It layed the ground work in the first two seasons, having the Mystery About ODO and then to have him become directly involved in the race that threatens the Federation was masterful in giving us the viewer, a reason or a stake in caring about the characters. Enterprise has done none of this. I not invested enough in the main characters to care. Then the producers throw in the marines, more characters that I'm not invested in and don't really care about. The New Villians are interesting and hopefully they can flesh them out, but in the end I'm just not connecting with the situation, Are we supposed to appauled by what has happened to Trip's sister, another character we really have not met and therefore have no vested interest in.

And did any get the creepy Feeling that Phlox was "Pimping" T'Pol out?

OK Archer's Angry but why is he angry, is this just a knee Jerk reaction? And what is there mission? Once they find the Xindi then what? I Understand these characters are not the Utopians of the future Trek's but Have the characters do some soul searching. Let us feel what it's like to just have gone thru 5 Decades getting rid of Povery and Prejudice and then have them face this all again with the Xindi Threat. Have this Lead to something, Alliances that will form the Federation, take the story somewhere beyond the veiled 911 inclinations. Right now its still aimless Treking around the cosmos

It's Star Trek by focus group, for chrissakes. The executive producers are simply pushing buttons at random now. When what the people who liked this thing only wanted stories and dialogue. This is a salad buried in badly made Thousand Island.

Oh yes. No doubt he's blackmailing her. Remember, he's got pictures - probably a few very old copies of Maxim...

True, but beside the point. My point, originally, was that the multi-species nemesis gives the show's creators an "out" if there is a negative reaction to the big bad. It would have been easy, as the DS9 narrative was unfolding, to off one of the species, if the fan reaction was poor.

I just get the feeling that the producers of Enterprise had a brainstorming meeting one day, and included every idea presented at the table. "Yeah, more Vulcan skin... yeah, more sexual tension... yeah, Space Marines is good..., yeah, insect is good... but so is a sea critter... but wait, we need actors working these parts to, so lets have a humanoid..."

They're throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

-Scott

The last 7 minutes was the worst for me. Just stupid pointless titilation. The stuff that came before had some holes you could drive a mack truck through but I've seen worse.

The most worrying thing is that they think they have made "big" changes but they are all cosmetic. They obviously have NFI why ratings are down and are clutching at the guns and nakedness straws.

Oh and the theme went from passable Rod Stewart to Country?! And like everyone has said it now completely doesn't match the visuals or the tone. That and it sucks because it's county.

Maybe T'Pol was covering herself because she knew that Trip would be very uncomfortable if she was swaying free in the breeze.

Overall I thought it was a good episode. As much as the writing may lack my affinity for most of the characters is still growing. This is key to Enterprise's survival. It is also a testimony to the actors and actresses. While some has been made of the multi-specied Xindi being an 'out' for the creators I'm much more bothered by the 'time travel' out which has been way too often abused in Enterprise. Also agree about the pointless titilation scene I mean really as someone mentioned do the producers think these 'baits' will draw hearty fans to a scifi genre show? I think the Xindi and Delphic Expanse could be quite interesting (did anyone think that one reptilian Xindi species looked like the bad guy alien from 'Galaxy Quest?') It would be neat if the five species (reptile, ape primate, human, insect, water mammal) of Xindi represented descendents of life originating in the mysterious Delphic Expanse. Sorta the 'cradle/center' of this universe (with all its anomalties)...maybe 'created' by another alien race or experiment gone awry perhaps? Hey maybe the species of Earth are descendents of these guys and we end up wiping out our ancestors in 400 years!

The worst thing about the cargo bay anamoly is they never had closure, as to what was causing it and has it continued or stopped. Tripp was great, as usual. He continues to remind me so much of McCoy.

Oh, and were I remembered Xindi from was the little speech by the hologram about the Delphic Expanse and the Xindi, from the last episode last season.

At least the pseudo "love scenes" in those episodes had the decency to be an integral part of the storyline and not some cheap add-on thrown in to bait impressionable male virgins into watching the show.

As one person stated, this show appears to have been designed by a committee or at the very least guided by ratings and demographics. That's why premium services like HBO and Showtime are so successful. They rely on a subscriber base to stay alive, not ratings or demographics, giving them the opportunity to experiment a bit and turn out exceptional shows. As long as the Star Trek franchise is not given the opportunity to push aside ratings and demographics and grow on its own merit, the franchise is doomed.

Thought the episode was interesting in a "staring at a car wreck" sort of way.

Was it just me or was MACO's = Star Trek Elite Force PC game tie-in? Chang is the same character name in both the episode and the game, even look similar. Didnt catch other MACO's names to check for a connection.

Also the sniper rifle scene at the end of the escape. Why did the MACO sniper need to be ordered to get out of the shuttle and shoot the bad guy on the tower? Other than allowing the xindi to get shot.

OK, I saw the second half of it. I forgot to set the PVR and realized halfway through so I recorded the second half and watched last night. Now that you're all cought up on my problems...

There were improvements. Production value is much higher, IMO. Sets are more complex. There must have been 5 or 6 set pieces in the 2nd half hour. The new bridge refresh looks more individually "ST:E" instead of ST:VOY. T'Pol's new outfit is gooood. Her new hair is goood. The actor playing the leader of the Marines is good, from his other roles, we'll see how he plays here. (I think he was RFK in the film "Thirteen Days.")

I felt like I missed the setup for the Trip/T'pol shirtless scene in the first half, but reading this thread, guess not. I thought that scene had genuine humor, actually. And I am not a big subscriber to "every gratuitous sexy shot must forward the plot." I guess years of NYPD Blue fandom cured me of that. My wife wanted to see Trip's ass, to be fair.

Lots of action, and not only that the action was choreographed well enough to follow. The suspense of the plasma flowing up the vent (Trip, Archer and Xindi humanoid) was felt by me. I liked that scene.

My wife and I are suckers for Star Trek, so we'll keep watching. Linda Park is a good actress I hope she has something to do this year.

Trek on.

Having finally taken in the opener, after dropping off early in the second season, I got a strong vibe from the first couple of minutes of the show that just got stronger as it went on.

Enterprise: 9/11

The Trek franchises for the most part are interesting windows into the times they were created. The original series is very much a product of the 60's in very many ways. TNG reflects the differences between the 60's and 80's quite well, and I still think DS9 does an excellent job of saying just how much more complex and interwined everything is. I'll even give Voyager a nod for the disassociated feeling people had throughout part of the 90's, especially from "the command level", if you want to tie it to politics.

Enterprise now screams Bush+US foreign policy+9/11 now. The way you had Archer and Tripp just pushing people around, some of the phrases from Tripp about just doing what needs to be done and so forth. The addition of an actual military presence into the daily routine of the crew.

I swung between laughing outright at it and finding it rather creepy to see what it's become. Especially if you place any value in the "reflection of the times" theory.

Really? Because both the new command center and the Xindi round table looked pretty cramped and uninspired to me. I immediately thought of that Klingon courtroom, where the atmosphere should have been epic, but wasn't.

And I still think the picture quality of this show is very poor. Colors are weak and washed out. Everything else I watch on my same TV, (DVD, other channels, tapes, etc.) seems fine, better compared to Enterprise.

Considering how bad I felt Enterprise to be last season, I was just going to tape the episodes and watch them after I finished all the seasons of DS9 since I didn't want to associate DS9's Star Trek world with Enterprise's version of Trek. Well, for some reason I tuned into the season premiere today and association between the two doesn't seem to be a problem because Enterprise has no Star Trek feel to it whatsoever. It just felt like bad Sci-fi and I didn't really like anything about it. The first two seasons created a cast a characters I cared nothing about and the changes this season actually made them worse. Archer is now a just plain Bad Captain. He now approaches every problem pissed off and doesn't even think about the consequences of his actions. Which might explain why Trip is still on active duty. He shouldn't even be on this mission in the first place considering the way he's handling the death of his sister. Didn't Archer even think that he might not be the best guy to bring along when meeting a xindi for the first time? Travis and hoshi are still pretty much nothing and t'pol is acting less and less like a Vulcan. Phlox and Reed are the two best developed characters but I still don't really care about either one.

The entire Xindi mission makes no sense. Once they find their home world, then what? Are they going to say "Excuse me, but why did you attack our planet?" Are they going to take on the entire Xindi race with one starship? Don't they think the Xindi will be waiting for them? As for the Xindi, shouldn't they have waited for their second weapon to be built before attacking Earth?

I can go on and on about all the things I disliked about this episode (I almost turned it off after I saw the insect Xindi in the beginning) but suffice to say I've given up on this show. I'll wipe it from my version of Star Trek canon (not hard considering how un Star Trek the show feels) and just be glad that I didn't waste my time taping this season.

Luckily for me I've still got the rest of DS9 to watch along with the majority of Original Series episodes and a handful of Next Generation episodes which I have never seen. Also, there's a lot of good->great Star Trek novels which I've been meaning to get to. Could any Enterprise episode even come close to "Immortal Coil"?

You mean staight men?
I agree what were they thinking.

Well, you see more on "The O.C." if all you're after is titillation on TV.

I didn't notice too much of a change from previous years' Enterprise. Same suspect writing, same not-quite-Trek feel, and so on and so on. The only real difference is the story, which, as others have mentioned, really doesn't make sense. The Enterprise is the Earth's last hope? In fact, there is an entire alien "council" of Xindi that is bent on the destruction of Earth, all because of the idea that Earth will destroy them in the future? The whole concept is just downright odd.

Enterprise isn't all that good but it's enough to hold my interest and make me keep watching.

And LESS T&A is something I'd like to see. That breast-holding shot of T'Pol was pathetic.

You missed the point.Nobody is "after anything",but I've yet to know any straight man who would have problem to look at Ms. Blalock with or without cloths,in any context. I guess B/B thought the same way.

Let's just say that I would find it really sad that these bare breast holding scenes of T'Pol's were only there to appeal to straight men in a gratuitous fashion, and the scene does seem to be added just for that effect. It's pandering to a very low common denominator, and if that's all B&B have to offer on a weakly(sic) basis, this show really needs to be junked.

I don't get UPN, but this(and Jake 2.0 right after which I DID see tonight) does show on the local Fox station at 9pm. I thought the season premiere was going to be next week so I missed it(was watching the Conan special anyway). I don't suppose anyone happened to record the episode and could send it to me? I'd send it back after watching.

Gee, there is nothing like reading 115 posts to get caught up (as I only saw this Sunday morning_.

Rex, first of all, I almost fell out of my chair when you corrected Enterprise to read Star Trek: Enterprise. Is somebody seeing things that I'm not?

This is not supposed to be a Star Trek show, even with all of the smilarites to previous shows.

Ok, everybody is screaming at me for being such an idiot, but if they wanted it to be called Star Trek: Enterprise, then why didn't they? Did the copyright run out?

Next, with the Lieutenant and the Major. Even without considering which rank is higher, how would one officer address another one? Hey, shithead?

And for those that consider seeing T'Pol like that to be unnecessary, I'd like to know why the card games and the plays were so necessary in TNG. I am of the belief that they were there because they couldn't figure out how to stretch the plot to fill in the extra time.

Logging out
Glenn

Well well well, the truth comes out.I have a the same "opinion" of a certain show on Bravo except I don't bother to tune in!

Those were usually character building scenes, mixed in with a bit of comedy. That sort of thing is essential to a good show.

And, in one instance, the poker game was essential to the plot (when they were living the same day over and over again).

These kinds of scenes are every bit as important as when the trans-warp phase misducer or whatever gets broken.

Saw it again Sunday night when it's repeated.

The issue of the flying cargo in the hold was explained, well, sort of. The dialogue was kind of obscured in Bakula's delivery. He said something to the effect that this was one of many incidents on board the ship. It is not isolated to this area of the ship.

At the risk of eliciting many flaming replies, upon listening to the new theme again, if you don't watch the screen and just listen as I was doing, it sounded pretty good! Nice little upbeat pop tune. The new guitar work keeps it moving along. If it's appropriate for this show is another issue.

Nelson