Trouble near for Enterprise format? (1 Viewer)

[Rex Bachmann]

As a continuation of comments made in the latest Enterprise weekly discussion thread I'd like to know:
Is it just me, or does anyone else see trouble here?
:

would be tricky, as current continuity holds that Romulans didn't make first contact with humans until the time period of the original Star Trek series.

Now, is my memory failing me, or was it not established in the original introduction of the Romulans in TOS episode "The Balance of Terror" that the (pre-Federation?) Earth space force had fought a war with them
a) never seeing Romulans themselves
and
b) in pre-warp-capable spacecraft????
This was supposed to have taken place about 100 years before Kirk's time, no? If so, that would mean that Berman and company can't pull off such an adventure without gross violatoin of the established canon ("history") of the franchise, since Enterprise is already premised on technical progress beyond b)?
Am I misremembering?

 

[Jeff Kleist]

I've been theorizing that Gary Graham's character and possibly some of those emotional Vulcans may be the ones that found the Romulans. It has been established that the Romulans are basically emotional Vulcans before

 

[John Berggren]

It's also been established that Rick Berman cares f@#%-all for continuity. He's said as much in print - that he's sick of "continuity nazis" and doesn't want to hear it anymore... that they created Enterprise so they wouldn't have to worry about continuity.

Mmm-hmm. Good choice. The past never has bearing on the future.

 

[Will_B]

Romulans have been seriously under utilized, and if Logan makes Nemesis a winner, then bringing them in to Enterprise for an episode or two could be a very interesting move. Imagine TPol having to go undercover as a Romulan - requiring her to act emotionally (and, in Romulan fashion, brutally). Could be a good character development for her, especially if it was a 3-part episode or something ... like a deep cover agent who gets too far undercover and might not be able to be brought back!

 

[Jack Briggs]

Rex: "Balance of Terror" is the first time humans laid eyes on a Romulan.

Everybody: We've all focused on the problem here and hit it on the nail. Berman thinks the hardcore faithful are "continuity Nazis," and he doesn't give a rip. His own words betray how little he truly cares about the franchise and its legacy. And to think: Berman was once just what the "doctor ordered" when it came to re-energizing Trek during the TNG era. It's just cash cow to him now. He is ruining this franchise. Ruining it.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Jeff, it was my understanding that Romulans "split" from Vulcans a long, long time before humans got involved- so long ago, that most Vulcans didn't even know about it.

In the first of two episodes of the original series involving Romulans, they already had a neutral zone which was established in a treaty at the end of war between the Federation and/or Starfleet and the Romulans.

a) never seeing Romulans themselves

and

b) in pre-warp-capable spacecraft????

I highly doubt that they battled Romulans in pre-warp spaceships. Can you imagine the Discovery vs a Romulan Warbird? (I know, exaggerating, but you get my drift)

As for not seeing them, I don't remember exactly what that was about. I remember they were surprised when they saw their first one at how closely he resembles Vulcans, but there can be many explanations for that. Maybe they just never kept a visual record, or didn't have the visual ship-to-ship technology during the first encounter with Romulans- seen with human eyes but not recorded. It was left pretty vague.

Either way, having Archer & Co face up against some Romulans actually would make sense according to the very vague outline of Star Trek cannon given in the series. It would also serve as a nifty cross-promotional tool with the new movie.

 

[Jeffrey_Scotts]

Jack Briggs:

I agree with your post about your feelings. In fact, I even feel that TNG and the other Treks went downhill after Gene Rodenberry passed. To me, Star Trek was always Gene and his vision and no one else gives a rip anymore. Yes, there have been some good shows and a couple of movies. But, it's been a feeling of hit and miss even for them.

Enterprise I'm giving up on if things don't change. Just too much trash and bad script writing for me. Also, like you said, continuity is gone. A perfect example is the episode where the Doctor made the guy look just like the alien species in captivity. This couldn't be done until later and was even something VERY new and complex on TNG.

Jeffrey

 

[Michael St. Clair]

After 'Voyager' why didn't they sack his sorry ass? If Berman & Braga were baseball managers, they would have been fired many seasons ago.

 

[Jason Seaver]

the first time humans laid eyes on a Romulan.

(And now, for the controversial part of the post...)

But let's ask ourselves - is this bit of continuity worth keeping? Think about it - does it make logical sense? DS9 quietly ignored that "The Last Outpost" was the first face-to-face meeting between humans and Ferengi(*), because it didn't make sense.

Does it make sense that Earth and Romulans would have fought a war and negotiated a treaty without meeting each other face-to-face? Well, maybe in 1966, when the big concern was long-distance nuclear MAD and the superpowers had their borders sealed tight against each other. And it was a useful plot twist for a non-serialized 1960s show which was completely unconcerned with how what happened in one episode might have ramifications one year (let alone 5 or 35) down the road.

But does it work for an early-aughts show which has to maintain a strict continuity? Not really. Real-time videoconferencing is too commonplace in the present, and a modern audience might not be easily sold on an entire war fought without any ground combat, or even without corpses being recovered and examined from destroyed ships.

Sometimes, the question shouldn't necessarily be "how do I fit this story into continuity?", but "which parts of continuity no longer make sense?".

(*) Of course, in some sort of sick law of conservation of plot contrivance, they dropped a "nobody's ever seen the Breen" on us, even though Kira had apparently taken the uniform off a corpse just a year earlier.

 

[Jack Briggs]

...early-aughts...

The second time I recall Jason correctly referring to this decade's moniker.

Those were some good and interesting points. But some continuity needs to be maintained. For me, First Contact went way too far with its revisionist take on Cochrane. If a certain "position" is taken and then canonized as "Official Trek Lore," the franchise loses some credibility when it's mucked around with for the sake of a cheap and easy plot. And that's been going on too much under the present regime. Again, B&B are way too eager to relegate Enterprise to the Star Trek status quo and give us those same tired, cookie-cutter stories that could work just as easily in any of the three other spinoff series.

It's almost as if everybody at Paramount involved with this series is punching the time clock, putting in his or her eight hours, and then punching out and heading for home, never to give Star Trek further thought until the next work day.

This yeomanly, production-line sameness is choking the life out of the franchise.

 

[Blu]

Regardless of wether it should be revised or not this is something that should be left alone. Why even have the Romulans in this series? Sheesh even though they have a brand new series here they need to respect the series that have come before it. If they can't come up with a original race to be a antagonist then perhaps they should resign and let some fresh blood take over. There is a Klingon war to fight yet remember?

They have a whole galaxy of adventures to have but they want to reintroduce a race that clearly can be a slippery slope in terms of continuity?

If they would put some thought into it they can come up with this crew's Borg.

 

[Jason Seaver]

It's almost as if everybody at Paramount involved with this series is punching the time clock, putting in his or her eight hours, and then punching out and heading for home, never to give Star Trek further thought until the next work day.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I loved Ira, Ron, Rene, Robert, and Hans as much as anybody, but they may have overdid the Trek Universe stuff on DS9.

 

[Blu]

I agree that there are some aspects that wouldn't make sense due to the technology, BUT that is the way it is. The way it was originally told. Revising that would start upon a very slippery slope where nearly anything would or could be open for revision, any possible interpertation would be open and fair game. Any point of history could be revised then providing someone would write it. Therefore exactly when would it stop?

My Borg comment was made to show that THAT is what they want to do with the Romulans. Once they are introduced AGAIN where do they go from there? There is a limited time span where the Romulans can be effective. It is a bad decision all the way around should they pursue it.

 

[Mark Lee]

A big part of the problem, from a continuity standpoint, is the "pre-quel" nature of the show. As far as new alien races go, OK, if the show were in fact to stay faithful to its predecessors, we wouldn't have Romulans, the Klingons would look just like humans in "brownface," and who knows what else! But if the writers were to concoct entirely new and novel alien races to play major roles in the show, one has to wonder, where the hell do they go in the ensuing 100 years (i.e. all the other ST series)? Did they just move and not leave a forwarding address or something?
To maintain continuity with the other series is certainly preferable from a plot logic standpoint, but from a day-to-day writing standpoint, I can see why trying to navigate thru all the potential plot-line continuity obstacles is something that they would just rather not have to slavishly adhere to. It's a problem, and I dunno how they'll sustain this show for a prolonged period given its built-in difficulties (unless they just plan to contrive as many excuses as possible for Jolene Blalock to wear as little clothing as possible -- bring back TOS's miniskirts! ).

 

[Win Joy Jr]

I can overlook the Klingons because someone stated that Gene wanted them to look like the TMP ones from day one, bud did not have the budget or the technology to do it. Same for the glowing nacells...

I can even accept the Ferengie episode...

But the Trek history has been compromised by the passage of real-time.

I would not put it past TPTB to try to erase vast portions of TOS via the temporal cold war story line. But there are threads into TNG, DS(, and V'Ger. The Trek timeline is becoming a mess...

Either the temporal cold war changes history, or at the end of season 7, Archer and the NX-01 sacrifice themselves to restore the timeline, hence, no mention of NX-01 in history.

Can someone answer me this? In every series, it has been "The Enterprise", "The Defiant", until V'Ger. Then it was just "Voyager". Now, just "Enterprise". It just sounds strange...

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Basically I'm not a die hard continuity freak. It's hard to maintain total continuity given what has changed from the 60's to today, 40 years is a long time. Balance of Terror while being a great ep was basically a retelling of "Run Silent Run Deep". the Submarine ideology is all over that ep, right down to the sonar beeps and Kirk telling Spock to "Work Quietly" this is Outer Space not Under water, it made no real sense, but was dramatically very familiar to TV viewers wened on War Films of the Day.

I cut current Trek some slack it tries to maintain, where it can , continuity. But the Powers that Be, don't want to forsake the characters that this current generations, that grew up on TNG not TOS, remembers.

I honestly would just like better and sharper stories on Enterprise and I would be happy.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Win Joy, Jr. wrote:

Quote:

I asked this same question in an earlier post. So far dead silence. D'yah think it's because "B&B" want to "distinguish" their "new" show vis-a-vis all Treks that preceded it (just by dropping the "the")? If so, it ain't workin', guys. Try good writing, instead!

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Mike Broadman wrote:

Due to "technical difficulties", as they say, I can't watch my DVD of "Balance of Terror" at this time, but the latest version of Michael Okuda's The Star Trek Encyclopedia seems to aver at least part of my original query:
Under Romulan Neutral Zone:
__________________________________________________ __________
". . . The Neutral Zone was established in 2160 after a conflict between Earth [emphasis mine, natch] and the Romulans. That conflict had been fought with early space vessels using primitive atomic weapons. The peace treaty establishing the neutral Zone had been negotiated by subspace radio . . ."
__________________________________________________ __________
Under Romulan bird-of-prey:
__________________________________________________ __________
"Spacecraft of the Romulan Star Empire in the late 23rd century . . . . Propulsion was simple impulse. . . . ."
__________________________________________________ __________
As I remember it, in that first encounter episode the Federationists were surprised to learn that they had a speed advantage over the Romulans, which is what led me to surmise that, when the original "conflict" (war?) had been fought, neither power had had warp-capability.
So where does that leave us? I don't consider the shucking of this portion of the Trek canon "minor", at all. It's a major event in the background universe of the characters we all love (or love to hate) to watch, week after week. This is an event that would probably have gone a long way to shape the universe that we get to see every week (or every few years on the big screen). "Petty consistency" and all that is one thing, but this is not only bad in and of itself, it is the gateway to ever more inconsistency and chaos. Mr. Joy's comments above apply.
One has to ask oneself whether he (or she) wants that in a "science fiction" show. I, for one, do not. And, for those who are clearly indifferent, keep in mind: today it's something I dislike. Tomorrow, it may be something you will dislike, something glibly shoved aside without the least bit care for consistency or "artistic integrity" or any respect for the audience that's invested so much into this "franchise" over the decades (going on three generations now).

 

[Mike Broadman]

But if neither Earth nor the Romulans had warp capability, how could they find each other? Space is too big. And if one of them had it, then it wouldn't be much of a fight (assuming the race with the huge speed advantage also had an equally large weapons advantage). The first war between the Romulans and Earth was basically a draw, but this would not happen if one had such a large technilogical advantage.

The only reasonable way for them to meet and fight without one side winning a decisive victory is for both to have warp tech and comparable weaponry.

I personally never put any stock in books about shows, no matter who writes them.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Mike Broadman:

Well, that's your personal thing. The fact is: Okuda is one of the production staff of the various ST series and has unparallelled access to production materials. His entries for the Encyclopedia tend to be paraphrases from the tv episode scripts themselves, and, so, are quite accurate to the show.
How the two races are supposed to have encountered one another is never explained in that episode, but the story emphasizes that the Romulans even of Kirk's time did not have warp-capabilities in their warship. The Federationists have the speed, the Romulans the power.