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I think I’d also give the Andromeda Ascendant more obvious energy weapons.

Its reliance on Missiles was of course more modern, but in terms of cinematic spectacle doesn’t really compare to blaster bolts, phaser beams, Minbari Beam Weapons or Particle Beams.

Cheaper to animate of course, so entirely fair enough when you’re working to an early 2000’s unproven tv show sci-fi show budget.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Heck, even SG-1, which only really featured space battles late on did that well.

And even literally riffed on the old "beam a nuke to their bridge" Star Trek joke

(well, Atlantis)

Trying to think of another non comedy space show that did stuff like Wormhole Extreme or using the Stargate as a Golf Driving range

Or had someone like Jack O’Neill (two L’s!).

Baal You cannot be serious?

General O’Neill Yes I can. I just choose not to be….some of the time.

The the Golfgate episode is terrific. And I think there are more than a few military personnel that would love to use such an opportunity to muck around and be silly.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did Andromeda have a proper ending or did it just stop?

It had what was quite possibly the worst Final Season in sci-fi history. It really frakked up the lore and was basically a giant stroke off for Sorbo's force lance. Though it did give us another hot android chick that wasn't married to Daniel Jackson.

 Hoitash wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did Andromeda have a proper ending or did it just stop?

It had what was quite possibly the worst Final Season in sci-fi history. It really frakked up the lore and was basically a giant stroke off for Sorbo's force lance. Though it did give us another hot android chick that wasn't married to Daniel Jackson.

Hot android chick? Can't be all bad then.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Hoitash wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did Andromeda have a proper ending or did it just stop?

It had what was quite possibly the worst Final Season in sci-fi history. It really frakked up the lore and was basically a giant stroke off for Sorbo's force lance. Though it did give us another hot android chick that wasn't married to Daniel Jackson.

Hot android chick? Can't be all bad then.

Brandy Ledford, former Penthouse pet. Yeah, her and Lexa Doig together was def the best part of that season.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Hoitash wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did Andromeda have a proper ending or did it just stop?

It had what was quite possibly the worst Final Season in sci-fi history. It really frakked up the lore and was basically a giant stroke off for Sorbo's force lance. Though it did give us another hot android chick that wasn't married to Daniel Jackson.

Hot android chick? Can't be all bad then.

Not as hot as the first one IMO....


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 Hoitash wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Did Andromeda have a proper ending or did it just stop?

It had what was quite possibly the worst Final Season in sci-fi history. It really frakked up the lore and was basically a giant stroke off for Sorbo's force lance. Though it did give us another hot android chick that wasn't married to Daniel Jackson.

I was watching it on Prime then it just disappeared with like 11 episodes to go. What did end up happneing?

Just about finished watching Search for Spock.

Man I love that Klingon Bird of Prey. It’s a pretty timeless design, and looks like a proper predator.

Outside of the designs I’ve seen YouTube video about Star Trek Online ships? Modern Trek is quite disappointing in updated ship designs. Though, to be fair? Perhaps the issue is we never really get a proper look at any - and when we do, there’s little done to properly set their scale.

Well, most of the STO ships they ported to Picard seem kind of... superflous to me. Just like the whole season 3 they're just useless Fan Service that doesn’t get the feeling right. Give me a proper Galaxy and not a strangely distorted Ross-class. Give me a proper federation and not the grimdark crap you made up because some androids went rogue.

OMG the Eureka Maru from Andromdea!

The cool little smuggling ship that they used as their shuttle, rather than, like, the squads and squads of fighters sitting in their hanger bays. OK, whatever. And for short they'd called it "The Maru".

But, (pretentious 'I speak Japanese voice') -Maru is the suffix applied in Japanese for ships, the equal of the SS- prefix.

Combining a Greek word and Japanese suffix is... a choice. But then referring to the ship as "The Maru" is like calling the SS Minnow "The SS".

Star Trek's Kobayashi Maru is the SS Grove, and you can't abbreviate it by calling it SS!

This is why the SS Essess is the only ship worth talking about. Somebody showed foresight in naming that one.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
OMG the Eureka Maru from Andromdea!

The cool little smuggling ship that they used as their shuttle, rather than, like, the squads and squads of fighters sitting in their hanger bays. OK, whatever. And for short they'd called it "The Maru".

Or how they never used the massive ground assault mechs more than once or twice which were also on the ship.

One of my favourite bits of SG-1 (I think it was over the end credits of the second Wormhole Extreme! episode) was having the fake cast of that show complaining about the obvious plot holes caused by various “real” things in the SG universe (Zat guns, etc.)

It was a nice in-joke / mea culpa from the writers of “yeah, what seemed like a good idea in the writing room turns out to be really dumb and/or game breaking if you think about it for more than a minute”.

 Geifer wrote:
This is why the SS Essess is the only ship worth talking about. Somebody showed foresight in naming that one.

SS Essex was my take on that.

Just finished VI, The Undiscovered Country. One of my favourite movies of all time.

And I do like Kirk’s last line to the crew. Second Star To The Right, And Straight On Till Morning.

It is of course a line from Peter Pan, and here it just really works as the sign off for an entire era of Trek.

I always feel VI is underrated, and it's also my favourite of the Kirk movies. The characters are nicely worked out, the story ties well in to Next generation, the action is solid, the real life allegory is great (though Starfleet is a tad too much US in that movie for my taste) and Chang ranks high as one of the best Trek villains, right next to original Khan and Dukat.

I loved the music of The Undiscovered Country...

Also it finally gave each character something to do towards the end of the movie...

 Overread wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
OMG the Eureka Maru from Andromdea!

The cool little smuggling ship that they used as their shuttle, rather than, like, the squads and squads of fighters sitting in their hanger bays. OK, whatever. And for short they'd called it "The Maru".

Or how they never used the massive ground assault mechs more than once or twice which were also on the ship.

Well thre's only a crew of 5 of which only 1 is an engineer for a ship that was designed for like 1,000. So maybe they just all broke down?

Giving Enterprise another whirl.

Will it still annoy me? Or has Section 31 blasted my neurons to a new level of splicing the merely mediocre from abject crap?


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One things for sure. I still can’t stand that dreadful theme song.

Never got the objection to that theme song, I had it played at my wedding
I'd say Enterprise overall is similar to Voyager season 6 and 7, it's all not really bad, but the writers didn't know what to do anymore, so the stories are a little uninspired. Season 3 and 4 are strong, though.
And in the light of Discovery, section 31, Picard and Abramstrek, Enterprise is great. You just need to know what to compare it to.

Hell, after section 31 ST V and even Into Darkness look like masterpieces...

The theme song definitely grows on you.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Never got the objection to that theme song, I had it played at my wedding
I'd say Enterprise overall is similar to Voyager season 6 and 7, it's all not really bad, but the writers didn't know what to do anymore, so the stories are a little uninspired. Season 3 and 4 are strong, though.
And in the light of Discovery, section 31, Picard and Abramstrek, Enterprise is great. You just need to know what to compare it to.

Hell, after section 31 ST V and even Into Darkness look like masterpieces...

With the exception of that crap time travel/Temporal War season, I rather liked Enterprise.

Enterprise had a strong outset - the temporal war was the problem because it was trying to push this massive mega event in and have it mean nothing later cause Enterprise couldn't make massive waves like that.

Meanwhile true fans just wanted to see the Federation forming; diplomacy; negotiations; learning new cultures and honestly fleshing out a lot of the background races that form the Federation, but which honestly don't get much screen time.


They should have looked at DS9 and how the Cardassians and Ferengai were fleshed out. Both were very minor factions in TNG, with the latter being what two or three episodes?

By the end of DS9 not only did we have a lot of understanding of them, how they interact with other races and the Federation but also all the turmoil that interacting with the Federation brought to them. By the end one is ready to start the road toward formally joining whilst the other has crippled itself for generations and is engaging in a rebirth.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The theme song definitely grows on you.

So does herpes.

What makes me sad was the missed opportunities. Reading the Romulan War novels that were written using the unfilmed scripts for the show are something I highly recommend.

It would've been awesome to see Doug Drexler's Enterprise Refit and the Introduction of the Daedalus class ships as the NXs quickly became outdated as the nuclear conflict with the Romulans escalated.

Just moving on to E2.

The show is, admittedly, much better than I remember it. But the themes really stick in my craw.

Anyways. Plot and character wise my main gripe is that the Vulcans seem overly antagonistic. Like they resent humans entirely.

Please don’t spoil a 25ish year old show like, but I’m hoping we get some greater context for that.

I mean, I get not just dumping all the tech we’ll ever need in our lap. Humanity needs help, not a handout. But the attitudes just seem really….racist. Which doesn’t feel especially Vulcan to me.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just moving on to E2.

The show is, admittedly, much better than I remember it. But the themes really stick in my craw.

Anyways. Plot and character wise my main gripe is that the Vulcans seem overly antagonistic. Like they resent humans entirely.

Please don’t spoil a 25ish year old show like, but I’m hoping we get some greater context for that.

I mean, I get not just dumping all the tech we’ll ever need in our lap. Humanity needs help, not a handout. But the attitudes just seem really….racist. Which doesn’t feel especially Vulcan to me.

The Vulcans as a race have a character arc too.

You can look forward to two episodes in season 4 when the theme becomes really frigging awesome.

I liked Enterprise. The first half had a good bit of exploration and earthlings finding their way around, which I should think is an integral part of Star Trek. And the expanse season delivered on a similar promise Voyager never made good on with the isolated ship on a mission from which there is no escape. And if I recall correctly, while the Prime Directive is yet to be invented (and frequently ignored), Archer's character has the integrity to make up for it. I was happy enough with that mix. And yeah, far, far happier than what J.J. Arbrams did, because that was enough to get me to stop following Star Trek.

The temporal war thing was a dud, but I don't like time travel in general, so that's hardly surprising.

I never liked the title song, but in retrospect it doesn't feel as bad as it did at the time. Enterprise was made fairly late, and after DVD sets and streaming became established along with the ability to binge watch, I can't be bothered with intros like all Star Trek shows have anymore. In that regard Enterprise doesn't stand out too much anymore. For me the gold standard has been set by The Bad Batch. Short, to the point, recognizable, and in fact it is so short that it's not even worth the effort to skip. I prefer something like that these days.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anyways. Plot and character wise my main gripe is that the Vulcans seem overly antagonistic. Like they resent humans entirely.

Please don’t spoil a 25ish year old show like, but I’m hoping we get some greater context for that.

I mean, I get not just dumping all the tech we’ll ever need in our lap. Humanity needs help, not a handout. But the attitudes just seem really….racist. Which doesn’t feel especially Vulcan to me.

It's been a good long while, so feel free to correct me, but isn't the Vulcan motivation covered in the pilot episode? Since first contact the Vulcans had a really long, really close look at mankind and got acquainted all too well with the volatile and violent nature of humans, which didn't change enough for their liking in the hundred years or so that have passed.

That's why they wanted to smooth things over with the Klingons themselves. The longer they can prevent mankind from leaving Earth, the longer they prevent adding another, potentially unstable species that might provoke interstellar incidents to a quadrant that already has Klingons and Romulans to worry about.

I think something missing from the Vulcans (which honestly has been missing for a long time) is a sense of magical mystery about them.

You really only get that feeling in a few of the Original series and the films. Hints at it in TNG, but by DS9 and Voyager Vulcans are just "really stern serious people who might share a joke with you after you've beaten them down over several seasons"

I think that's one issue in Enterprise, they aren't "mysterious" they are just really stern and almost selfish. Indeed you do wonder why they are part of the Federation setup when they keep holding back so much.


Also I liked the intro song, I think it fit the idea of Enterprise really well. The issue was Enterprise kinda shifted from exploring the foundation of the Federation to temporal wars and stuff.