4.24.02 Enterprise (1 Viewer)

[Jason Seaver]

Wolfe was the man - not only did he do a lot of good DS9 (mostly co-writing with Ira Stephen Behr), but he also recognized when he was burned out and left the show before he could do it any harm. The world he built for "Andrommeda" was also pretty interesting, and I'm hoping that the show doesn't go too far downhill since his ouster.

And he read and responded to his email, as well as mixing it up in Star Trek and SFTV newsgroups, going so far as to name a character in the "Andrommeda" pilot after a guy who was always on his back. Somehow, I can't see Berman or Braga having that kind of relationship with the fans.

There hasn't been a Star Trek series since the original that didn't have at least one season of growing pains.

I'd argue that DS9 was pretty good right off the bat - it wasn't the same show it became in later years, but it was a good show. There were a few clunkers (any time someone would call something Wolfe wrote terrible, he'd respond with "well, maybe. But was it as bad as 'The Passenger'?"), but I think DS9's first season holds up very well.

Still, I've made this point before, but do people make the "growing pains" excuse for other shows? Do we say, well, maybe "Wolf Lake" just needs a year or so to find its feet? No, we expect it to be good right away, otherwise we'll turn the channel.

And the really funny thing is, "Enterprise" has less claim to this excuse than most. It's part of an enormously successful franchise, and the people in charge have been doing "Star Trek" for ten years. One would think that by this point, they would know what they were doing and wouldn't need a year to get the bugs out.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Any show, especially one that enters a very differently structured area, even of the same franchise, needs a year to get the bugs out

Agreed that DS9 had a much better first season than most. Certainly MUCH better than the stinkers that were TNG and Voyager's first seasons

 

[Mike Broadman]

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Do the "off" button on your remotes not work? I really don't understand why people watch shows they don't like.

I used to like X-Files, but IMO, it got weak, so I stopped. Same will probably happen with Boston Public after this season, and maybe Enterprise down the line. We do not owe any loyalty to any TV shows just because of the name.

A lot of the criticisms I read are contradictory:

"It's too much like the older series."

"It's not like the older series."

"The social and morality issues are too much and annoying."

"There's not enough social commentary in the episodes."

Etc, and so forth.

Yeah, I have my little gripes with the show, but I'm convinced that it is impossible to make a new Star Trek show that would be accepted by fans, because, quite frankly, we don't even know what we want.

Maybe this is a good reason to just stop making anymore Star Trek.

 

[Chris]

And he read and responded to his email, as well as mixing it up in Star Trek and SFTV newsgroups, going so far as to name a character in the "Andrommeda" pilot after a guy who was always on his back. Somehow, I can't see Berman or Braga having that kind of relationship with the fans.

Yep, Wolfe used to participate in the USENet groups and he was very good about answering his email, I still have a few stacked away that were responses to questions.

One thing he said really hit me once: it's too easy to write a script and say "it's good enough for star trek" where it's difficult to say "this is a good enough script that if noone knew anything about these characters, it'd be a good show"

Too bad a lot of episodes fall into the latter.

 

[PhilipG]

Just to defend Berman and Braga for a microsecond: they wrote "Shuttlepod One", my favourite episode of the season so far... Freaky.

 

[Todd_Brown]

"Story by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.

It isn't an "I hate Enterprise" thread until someone makes it known how much they dislike Berman and Braga. My wife and I enjoy this series, but maybe we're just not as discerning as the rest of you.
Todd

 

[Jack Briggs]

Mike:

It's not a simple matter of resorting to the "off" button. We care about Star Trek and want the franchise to be the best it can be. That's why there has been so much hope for Enterprise.

Until this most recent block of new episodes, I was yammering almost daily about how Enterprise was off to the best start since TOS--ask Jeff Kleist, Jason Seaver. Now, it is off to a less even start than DS9's first season. If the final block of new episodes continues the present trend, I fear we are looking at Voyager Redux.

At first, Enterprise rekindled my enthusiasm and love for [Star Trek. The only thing that's keeping that love flame burning at the moment is Paramount's Season One boxset of TNG.

Berman and Braga do not love the franchise. It is stricty business to them. Ronald D. Moore, on the other hand, exuded his affection for Star Trek, along with constantly demonstrating his extensive knowledge of it. As a result of B&B, we'll never see again anything on the order of "Relics."

 

[Jason Seaver]

It isn't an "I hate Enterprise" thread until someone makes it known how much they dislike Berman and Braga.

At this point, you can't discuss the quality of Trek without bringing those two into it. They've been doing Trek for about ten years apiece, and it hasn't escaped notice that the most consistently good Trek made during that time - DS9 - is where they were least hands-on.

The sad thing is, it wasn't always that way. Berman was exactly what the franchise needed when Paramount hired him and Michael Piller to rein Gene Roddenberry in on TNG, and Braga did some good work on TNG as well (note that he and Ron Moore collaborated quite a bit there). But after TNG ended, somehow the distribution of TNG staffers between DS9 and "Voyager" wound up with Ira Behr having a bunch of people who loved sf in general and Trek specifically on DS9 and Rick Berman having a bunch of decent television writers without a really good feel for the genre on "Voyager".

By the time DS9 ended, it got much worse - the "Voyager" folks seemed to see "Trek" as nothing more than a meal ticket, and Ron Moore has told horror stories of his two months there - tons of office politics, nobody talked to anybody else, the cast HATED what they were given to read... Moore basically got forced out, which appeared to really hurt him, since he'd considered B&B friends and Braga had been a longtime collaborator, and they'd gotten their start together.

The way they treated Ronald D. Moore is the principal reason I despise the two of them - before, I figured they were just burned out on Trek, and should be given a gold watch and sent off to find jobs writing for a cop show. But then they mistreated a guy who could have made them look good. Moore loved "Star Trek", and unlike many of his colleagues at DS9, he felt he still had some good Trek left in him. Part of the reason he'd gone to "Voyager", despite Behr & co.'s warnings, was that Berman had told him that he'd be able to develop and show-run Series #5, but they wound up reneging on that when they realized it might mean an end to their time on the gravy train. Ah well; their loss was "Roswell"'s gain, and for Ron's sake I hope his "Battlestar Galactica" kicks "Enterprise"'s ass.

Still, I was hopeful for "Enterprise". Despite feeling that the people in charge were substandard human-beings, Paramount had spent the cash to get Scott Bakula, along with a couple of new writers he'd worked with on "Quantum Leap". The setup seemed designed to prevent B&B from falling back into bad habits; maybe they'd learned from their mistakes on "Voyager". But it's starting to look like that's not the case, and that saddens me. It's still a decent show, but "Voyager" started out decent, too.

 

[Chris]

Moore was not the only writer who was left to go.. look at it this way; almost all of the outside writers (Moore, Wolfe, etc.) all of them got the hook.. pretty much a "that's it" after DS9 closed.

One thing that hurts trek right now is that there isn't a truly varying viewpoint of the universe; part of what made DS9 great was the wide diversity of guiding writers that managed to craft a well-focused SciFi show. I know a lot of trekkies who didn't always care for DS9, but the SciFi factor to it was much more inventive and interesting then Voyager ever was, and in it's best it represented what trek -could- be.

Enterprise got off to a running start with some solid episodes, but has really hit a lull. The way to get it back is to find a way to get new viewpoints in writing back on staff.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Exactly, Chris. The Factory might even want to consider--*gasps*--hiring bona fide science fiction writers who have a soft spot for Star Trek.

It really seems like science fiction--pun intended--to ponder the fact that the likes of Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison have their own byline credits gracing the Trek pantheon of Great Episodes.

 

[Doug R]

I'm willing to bet that "Story by Rick Berman/Braga" simply means that they just come up with a bunch of rehashed storylines and more "professional" writers complete the actual teleplay/script (which is why you see another credit for that).

So it's even sadder. They have some big writers meeting and Berman and Braga list all of these cliche/rehashed stories for these guys to flesh out:

Rick Berman: Okay, we need a prison story. Where Archer and some underused character up till now gets unjustly detained (oo good title for the episode) and learn that other captives aren't being treated well either.. then they break out with weapons and stuff. Go with it.

Braga: We also need a simple scary alien on the ship story.

Rick Berman: Oh yea and how about a scary alien on ANOTHER ship story.

Braga: Good stuff man.. good stuff.

"Story by Rick Berman"

sigh

 

[ikiru]

This episode, to me, was ok. I have been watching TOS re-runs on Sci-Fi and I have noticed one thing that would make Enterprise better. In TOS, all of the episodes ended with some sort of closing comments made by the Big Three. Archer has been known to do a post episode monologue (i.e. the dreaded "prime directive" thought), but I think it needs to be more interactive with his crew. This past episode could have used some sort of moral discussion by the crew at the end to tie things up. They kind of did it while they were in the escape shuttle, but it would have been nice to see it on the bridge. Kinda like...

-BEGIN IKIRU EPISODE ENDER-

Mayweather (watching the escape pods on the viewscreen): "Do you think they will make it?"

T'Pol: "The odds are not in their favor."

Archer (who obviously has been thinking about his recent experience): "Do you suppose Colonel Grat is any different than any one of us?"

Mayweather: "Captain?"

T'pol (raises an eyebrow)

Archer: "Our history is full of injustice because of our fear of different races and cultures. We have discriminated and continue to discriminate simply based how someone looks. We can touch the stars, but have we really come so far? (looking over at T'pol)."

T'pol (looking back at Archer): "Perhaps not Captain"

(pause for drama/deep thought)

Archer (turning to Mayweather): "Ensign, I believe its time to get going ourselves"

Mayweather: "Eye Captain"

Enterprise pulls away.

-END IKIRU EPISODE ENDER-

I know its a bit cheesey, but there can be a lot of insight into each character during these brief 2 min dialogues. These little bits can show how each character is adapting to each other without having to devote a whole episode to do so. In the IKIRU EPISODE ENDER we get to see that Archer is thinking about his own racist feelings about Vulcans (they might not be as bad as he pegged them to be, at least not all of them). Now we dont need episodes where T'pol gets re-assigned and Archer spews out "but I need you"...or something vomit-inducing like that. Or if we do have episodes like that, at least we will know why Archer "needs" T'pol other than just being a good science officer (perhaps he is starting to develop some sort of friendship).

-ikiru

*enjoy the sauce*

read on for a HOT STAR TREK OPINION (HSTO)

-BEGIN IKIRU HSTO-

Roddenbury was right, the human condition is the root of all of our political problems. The one thing where Enterprise has suffered is with our modern day culture. Kirk and crew were playing to an audience who had some sense of what right and wrong is. Today, Enterprise watchers are relativists (see also Prime Directive) where even murder might be acceptable depending on the the race's culture. Enterprise writers try to go back to the right/wrong feel of TOS, but today's audience is no longer willing to embrace it as much. Ratings force Enterprise writers to write more politically correct episodes, which to me leave me feeling cheated somehow. *shrug*

-END IKIRU HSTO-

 

[Jeff Kleist]

I admit, by love of BSG is greater than my love of Trek. I'll watch BOTH

 

[Patrick Sun]

Was it me, or was T'Pol randier than usual in her conversations with the Stockwell character? There was this lilt in her voice that was most non-Vulcan (not that I'm complaining, I sort of enjoyed it).

I finally got around to watching this episode (you can see how far it's fallen on my priorities) and it was recycled stuff all over again. Grrr...