Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Compel wrote:
Picardo and 7 of 9 were the best parts of Voyager in my opinion. Particularly the interplay between them.

They're pretty much the main reason I watched the show.

I got a little tired of 7's whining about efficiency all the time, but their interplay was indeed good. I only wish they'd done more with her singing abilities as well as his - she's got a pretty darn good voice.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I like that idea a lot, cut the crew to like a dozen, and have a no one is safe rule. Maybe not Game of Thrones level of death, but at least once a season put all the names in a hat and whoever you pull out is gone. Dead, crippled, transferred, resigned whatever.

Enterprise definitely suffered from the plot armor problem.

And a smaller dirtier ship would be nice too.

Maybe in 20 years when Paramont makes the prequel to Enterprise...

A prequel to the prequel?

What do we even call that?

The Se-Prequel

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


A prequel to the prequel?

What do we even call that?

Tedious?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


The 2000s Battlestar Galactica was miles away thematically from the 70s one, but does anyone think it would have succeeded without the brand name and familiar ship designs of the original?!

I'm amazed it succeeded as it is... I hear it got better once it got going, but I barely made it through the pilot episode.

The gritty small ship approach sounds an awful lot like The Expanse. Just to be abundantly clear, I view that as an awesome thing. I'd totally watch a show in that style with early Trek tech.

One where the ship and crew pack low tech backups for their weapons because the high tech really is experimental, and liable to explode or misfire.

Gritty isn't really how Star Trek works though, and lacking basic things we already have like automated loading mechanisms would probably cause even more fan outrage than the "Enterprise looks more advanced than TOS" complaint that often got thrown around. I actually like the design of the NX-1 as a ship. It looked simple and utilitarian, which makes sense for a species that is only just now going into space. The technology was definitely a step back though, with humans only harnessing deflector shields in the final season and phaser beams being mounted on actual turrets rather than charged on arrays. The fear of the transporter I think was a particularly nice touch.

Ultimately I don't think the danger was the issue. There was plenty of danger and unknown in Enterprise, sometimes even playing at things the audience already knew but that the characters obviously did not.

In the end it all came down to writing, which was often mediocre at best.

And I'm finished with Season 4.

Mirror Universe 2 parter, Terrorist Robocop (RoboTerrorist? TerrorCop?), and the St Elsewhere ending.

Mirror Universe was the best the show ever was, I'd have been up for a season 5 of nothing but Mirror Universe.

RoboTerrorist was particularly uninspiring, generic racist @$$ with a death ray aimed at Earth. At the very least I'd have thrown in a Romulan spy manipulating him. Hey there's a traitor on the ship! I wonder if it'll be a main cast member? How about the British guy who you showed was a traitor not 3 episodes ago? No.
OK, how about that supporting cast guy who always looks pissed? How about him? No.
OK, then who? Oh some ensign we never saw before. Well that was... dramatic. Even 24 had more guts than that.

The finale was voted worst episode of Star Trek EVAH and I wouldn't go quite that far. I kind of like the idea that the whole damn show was just Riker's holodeck program. And the bit where he kisses T'Pol during a pause in the program, classy! Killing Trip kind of gratuitious, I mean it's the last episode and a holodeck program to boot! Go big or go home! The corridors should have been running red with the blood of cast members! Of course they did that in the Mirror episode so I can let it go.

Ah well.

In conclusion I think it was all timing. The show came along just as we were entering two new ages - the age of watch anything ever made any time, and the age of prestige TV. Enterprise was acceptably mediocre in a time when I could be watching good/great any time I want. Compare with the the rebooted Battlestar Galactica and Dr Who and there's just no reason to watch it. It was the cap stone of 15 years of new Star Trek (TNG-DS9-V'ger-the other one) and it seems the writers were just out of gas.

I also think the finale of Enterprise gets unwarranted hate. It was bad, bordering on a straight kick to the balls of "hey don't you wish we hadn't killed twenty plus straight years of Star Trek on television with our awful show that was both awful and jerry rigged a lack luster ending and killed one of the less bad characters just because it could" (damn that was a long one...) but it wasn't the worst episode ever.

I'm sorry but no episode of TV I think can ever be worse than the Voyager episode "Threshold." An episode so bad and so hated by pretty much everyone that the writers of the show retconned it out of existence!

Yeah Threshold. The first one I thought of for worst episode EVAH. It takes a lot to make Star Trek fans upset about the bad science.

The one where Kirk switches brains with a woman and we learn wimmins can't be captains because they have soft parts and feelings and wotnot was pretty bad too.

And all of the animated series. All of it.

Y'know more and more I like the idea this was all a holodeck program with some liberties taken.

Kind of like how in historical movies everyone still has perfect teeth, no small pox scars and any racist/sexist rough edges are smoothed over for modern sensibilities.

All of the animated series? Even the one with Kid Spock?


That's pretty harsh.

 LordofHats wrote:
I also think the finale of Enterprise gets unwarranted hate. It was bad, bordering on a straight kick to the balls of "hey don't you wish we hadn't killed twenty plus straight years of Star Trek on television with our awful show that was both awful and jerry rigged a lack luster ending and killed one of the less bad characters just because it could" (damn that was a long one...) but it wasn't the worst episode ever.

I'm sorry but no episode of TV I think can ever be worse than the Voyager episode "Threshold." An episode so bad and so hated by pretty much everyone that the writers of the show retconned it out of existence!

What about that episode that was all about Boxing? That was truely awful

Yeah the animiated show had potential but the cheap (and I say this as child of the 70s who grew up watching Scooby Doo) animation just killed it. Makes GI Joe look like Akira.

And PS thanks to everyone who recommended the Expanse, started it tonight, just want the Holo Doctor ordered.

I had forgotten Threshold existed. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot.

 Crazyterran wrote:
I had forgotten Threshold existed. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot.

Oh... dear god...

ENT is a fine show. Sorry to see it slagged off so badly ITT. It certainly struggled through some of its arcs but I came to really like the crew and the "birth of the Federation" stuff is IMO some of the most interesting Trek ever written.

Also:

I liked elements of most of the series and none in their entirety.

Except for the OT and animated series.

TNG only started getting watchable after S3.
Same with DS9 and Enterprise.

Voyager never really got watchable.

 chromedog wrote:
I liked elements of most of the series and none in their entirety.

Except for the OT and animated series.

TNG only started getting watchable after S3.
Same with DS9 and Enterprise.

Voyager never really got watchable.

Sounds about right. TOS is fine as an artifact of its time and wellspring of what would follow.

Sad to see the animated series get so little love, I've found it quite enjoyable, it's the only one I've bought on DVD as it rarely gets TV repeats.

Because the show was not that great? It was decent enough to kill a hour or two with on a lazy day but noting more I think

After enjoying in TNG and DS9 and tolerating VGR I pretty much stopped watching ENT during the first episode. This past year I decided to go back and give it a shot and I'm SLOWLY.... making my way through it. It's not as terrible as I thought it would be, but it isn't good and the theme is atrocious.

With Discovery coming up I feel like we're on the cusp of more sub-par Trek :(

Hey the animated show won an award for its time....

... also Janeway is a terrorist.

It didnt get the chance it deserved.
People forget, Ds9 had a gakky first season and a half, TNG had bad first couple of seasons.
What I think killed it was Trekkies are continuity nerds, and after being spoiled with it from TNG to VOY having one with none f that made them hate it.

I don't think Star Trek fans are any more obsessed with continuity than most people observing a fictional tale. No one cared that Trills in DS9 looked nothing like a one off character in TNG. Fans didn't care that the depiction of Ferengi in early TNG was completely different from later TNG or DS9. No one ever even bother to care that if you watch "The Jem'Hadar" at the end of DS9 season 2, it actually makes no sense whatsoever for the Founders to be the Changlings because why send a Vorta to spy on anyone when you can send a Changling, and Eris looked at Odo like she had no idea who or what he was.

But of course these are all either minor details or bad ideas/depictions that got turned around into much better ones later down the line. Minor continuity errors fall by the wayside so long as they're minor and the error spawns from things being improved.

The problem with Star Trek, and I think any long running franchise, is that between releases you inevitably come up with the problem of "not my head canon" where the most dedicated of fans get certain ideas stuck in their heads, ideas that realistically have no bearing on the actual product, but that rapidly become as beloved as the product itself. A good example are all the people who became obsessed with the idea "phasers can't be fired at warp," which was a restriction never once uttered on screen of any Star Trek series but became an obsession of long time fans when Into Darkness came out. Ignore that there are several cases in later Star Trek of particle weapons being fired at warp speeds. No. Some fans got it completely independent of any canon product that "phasers can't be fired at warp" and thus Into Darkness ruined the continuity. I doubt any fan actually gave a damn that "phases can now be fired at warp." Fans put a lot of their own creativity into the products they love, to the point that they adopt the creation to themselves. When that creation goes somewhere they don't like it's not enough that they don't like it they want to invalidate it from within the creation itself. It wasn't enough to call Into Darkness a bad film. People wanted to invalidate it from within the creation itself. You see the same behavior in Mass Effect fandom, Avatar fandom, Star Gate fandom. Really anything that runs on long enough that the kids who grew up watching it become adults runs into the problem.

Enterprise got hit hard with this, because almost every other episode when it was first airing there were people screaming over the internet about how "this is a retcon" or "that can't be canon" and "this is ruining the continuity." Never mind that they were all obsessing over tiny details, some so tiny they constituted being made up by fans more than anything. The fan base tore Enterprise apart as much as as well as the inevitable problem of "this takes place before TOS but it looks so much more advanced" problem that comes from a 30 year gap in production and a better budget. Add on top that even accounting for most Star Trek shows having mediocre first seasons Enterprises first season was bad.

I think accrediting Enterprises general failure to internet fan rage, particularly keeping in mind of the time, is giving the fans too much influence. I don't think the economics makes sense. For the show to do so poorly like that, there has to be something bigger, more fundamentally wrong.

I mean, maybe the whole, "this looks more advanced but is supposed to be before Star Trek" may work as an aspect. - A casual, large numbers, viewer would pick up on that. But even so? It'd got to be one of the smaller straws.

Unlikeable or forgettable characters, that'd have an influence.

Overly complicated timey-wimey plots that place too much emphasis on the plot. Doctor Who gets away with it because, ultimately, in Who, the plot is meaningless (often literally), it just drives the character interactions. I think that possibly, this is one of the biggest issues the show had.

The reimagined Battlestar Galactica was a phenomenal success and it ended up having a ridiculously complicated timey wimey plot, much like Enterprise. The difference was, it had compelling, interesting characters that brought people back time and time and time again.

I think that is what will end up being the make-or-break for Discovery (outside of the US and Canada anyway).

Are the characters good?

Fandom is its own worst enemy.

That much OCD isn't good for anything. Especially with trek. You have the old schoolers (who hate anything that wasn't original series), you have the "prime timeline" fans, who hate anything that isn't original "canon" timeline set by the series/movies before JJ got involved. You have the "Kelvin timeline" fans, then you have the fans of the individual shows, who hate the other shows because they "got it wrong".

Then you have people who watch it because of spaceships and pew-pew ...

(Original/TNG had a more utopian future, where humans had moved away from being the petty nationalistic warlike monkeys. DS9 showed that we may have moved away from it, but we are still capable of laying down the smack when required. Voyager showed that ... whatever ... boobs and skintight costumes can hide a multitude of sins - and enterpise picked up on that?)

Do you want star trek wars? Because that's how you get star trek wars. And we all know how that'll end.

As for continuity and timelines ... With the amount of time travel shenanigans going on with the 4 series and movies, the "prime" timeline probably resembles a slice of swiss cheese with the amount of holes left in it.

 Compel wrote:
I think accrediting Enterprises general failure to internet fan rage

I think it was an element. The primary and foremost reason I think is that Enterprise just wasn't very good. Especially on the heels of DS9 and Voyager, it hit all the wrong notes and had a much less engaging cast. The stories were bland most of the time, and by the time they started improving the show had already bleed off so many viewers and that's where fans come into play. Fan love can keep mediocre things alive long enough to find their footing. Just look at Firefly. Horrible show, just horrible, but the fans kept the dream alive long enough for a pretty good movie to come out of it

It was boring and ALL the character s sucked donkey balls. It was just bad.

 LordofHats wrote:

Enterprise got hit hard with this, because almost every other episode when it was first airing there were people screaming over the internet about how "this is a retcon" or "that can't be canon" and "this is ruining the continuity." Never mind that they were all obsessing over tiny details, some so tiny they constituted being made up by fans more than anything. The fan base tore Enterprise apart as much as as well as the inevitable problem of "this takes place before TOS but it looks so much more advanced" problem that comes from a 30 year gap in production and a better budget. Add on top that even accounting for most Star Trek shows having mediocre first seasons Enterprises first season was bad.

Lucky it all turned out to be a holodeck program no?

Now we need the next Abrams-Verse film to end with wtih Obrien and Bashier saying 'Computer end program'.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Now we need the next Abrams-Verse film to end with wtih Obrien and Bashier saying 'Computer end program'.

Would be funnier if it was Reginald Barkley