ST: Enterprise Discussion and Appreciation Thread

[P-90_177]

I'm currently doing a rewatch on this, 10 eps into S3 atm, and it seems better to me than it did first time around.
I recall getting so sick of the Xindi storyline that I turned it off as soon as that was mentioned in an episode. I think I may have overlooked a few good episodes doing that.

It does drag quite a bit. I think it's as a result of it being the same formula throughout. Just the one ship against the odds saving Earth etc. Fortunately it gets shaken up a lot in the final quarter and that's when it really picks up.

[Annoyed]

It does drag quite a bit. I think it's as a result of it being the same formula throughout. Just the one ship against the odds saving Earth etc. Fortunately it gets shaken up a lot in the final quarter and that's when it really picks up.

Oh, I clearly remember S4 being the best season by far.

[aretood2]

Oh, I clearly remember S4 being the best season by far.

And it was sadly caught off. I think it was four years ago that I watched Enterprise. Since Last year I have been rewatching Star Trek (minus TOS, I am part of the PETER organization "People for the Ethical Treatment of Every Redshirt"). I got to Star Trek First Contact and decided that the next logical thing to do would be to continue with Enterprise. Second Season is where I am at.

Here are my thoughts:

1. I think that it should have taken half a season to get Klaang back to Klingon space, they could have easily done that without changing much, aside from stupid continuity errors like going to Kronos and back within a week under warp drive, the episodes pretty good and made sense to me.
2. They should be showing us first contact with people like the Betazoids, Bolians, Deltans, et al. instead of brand new never before seen aliens all the time so close to Earth (By TNG standards). I don't mind new aliens, just...all the time? Some of these guys could have been very helpful in the 24th century. This is a prequel after all.
3. Ferengi? really? I like this show but...seriously? Couldn't they get the Elachi to show up again instead? (For those that don't know, they are named in Star Trek Online videogame).
4. Make more of these aliens as advanced as Earth, not as advanced as 25th Century federation.
5. The Second season was better, as it is exploring Vulcan stuff. When I first saw this show, I was a bit confused as to how the Vulcans were behaving but then I saw the Pon Farr episode from TOS (Okay, so I have seen some random episodes, PETER is a very hypocritical organization) and noticed how....interesting they were behaving.
6. It's always fun when Shran shows up, and I have always wanted him to call Mayweather a pink skin. I mean...come on.
7. I know a lot of trekkie hardliners hated the ship's design...I for one love it.
8. Am I the only one who has the urge to wrap T'Pol in bubble wrap to protect her from the cold cruel world? I get that she is supposed to be the "hot one", but I have always seen her as this cute puppy that you find and nurse to good health...odd for a character that "has no feelings".
9. What would McCoy think of Phlox?
10. Romulans!!! I love those devious overly secretive duplicitous tricksters!!! This show should have been about the War! Though they really need to retcon those atrocious uniforms of theirs. Their fashion sense has to be against the Khitomer accords or something.
11. Stigma against mind melders is such an obvious Romulan ploy, in hindsight I wished that I would have realized this when I first watched it.
12. You know what's Ironic? That the Vulcans are all like "Humans, let us take care of things for you, stick around on your Earth." but then during Kirk's time they are like "Spock, space travel is such a human thing, why don't you stick around in the Science Academy Vulcan". And Spock is like "No, I'm a rebel." And then you get Tuvok who basically disobeyed Janeway and tried to sell Starfleet tech to get Voyager home. Funny how times change things.
13. You know what Vulcans need? They need some more Jesus Surak in their lives. And yes, Archer does make side comment that made me think of that joke in season 4.

?
That's all I can think of so far.

[P-90_177]

Your second point has always been the biggest sticking point for me. The series ended up being another alien of the week show when what it needed to be was explore more of the races that we know and are familiar with. That's the whole point of a prequel. I did get some great insight into the Vulcans and Andorians and later the Tellerites and Orions but we needed more. Meet a ship of Bajorans pre-occupation on a pilgrimage to find their Celestial Temple on their first warp ship. Xenophobic Bolians, Betazoids that creeped out Trip and the others for getting in their heads. Hell show us some Caitians like in TAS. That'd be awesome. I really enjoy season three but I think it could have been achieved just as easily with a race that we had seen before.

[Annoyed]

I think the distances/time required to travel can't be a good guide.. Remember, Warp 2 is not twice as fast as Warp 1, or Warp 4 is not 4 Warp 1. It's more like Warp 1 is twice C, Warp 2 is 2x2, or 4C and such.
NX-01 could do Warp 5 on a good day, which is far slower than TOS era or TNG & later eras. There was also a redefinition of the warp speed scale along the way, too.

But there were a few places where "Enterprise" played fast and loose with their established facts when it comes to travel times. It took 7 weeks to reach the Expanse after the Xindi attack on Earth @ Warp 5, but later on, even with damaged warp drive and a lower speed, it didn't take that long to get back to their home stomping grounds for one episode.

As far as T'Pol goes, it seems to me that Jolene Blalock just never got comfortable in the role. Wrong actress for the job, as far as I can tell. There were many scenes where she appeared quite uncomfortable, despite there being no plausible reason for her to be so in the storyline at the time.

As far as the technical level of the various societies, I'm amazed that they are that close to each other.
Not only would intelligent races be separated by distance, they would be divided by time, too.

For example, if an intelligent race had developed in Alpha Centauri 10 million years ago, they could have rose to be the strongest power in the galaxy and then fallen and become extinct before we climbed out of the seas. We would have never known about them, and they would have never known about us.

[aretood2]

Your second point has always been the biggest sticking point for me. The series ended up being another alien of the week show when what it needed to be was explore more of the races that we know and are familiar with. That's the whole point of a prequel. I did get some great insight into the Vulcans and Andorians and later the Tellerites and Orions but we needed more. Meet a ship of Bajorans pre-occupation on a pilgrimage to find their Celestial Temple on their first warp ship. Xenophobic Bolians, Betazoids that creeped out Trip and the others for getting in their heads. Hell show us some Caitians like in TAS. That'd be awesome. I really enjoy season three but I think it could have been achieved just as easily with a race that we had seen before.

I would have loved seeing the Bajorans as those religious pilgrims in season one that observed a nebula on the Enterprise, they were transported by an alien ship which would have made sense for Bajorans at that time, no different than a Vulcan ship ferrying some humans around out of the goodness of their pointy ears.

And the infamous episode with Trip getting stuck with that kidnapped princess could have easily been a member of some royal Betazed house, if they did that I would have gladly overlooked if they went as far as making her a Troi (She could have made a comment about never wanting to wear a starfleet uniform). I mean...it was a silly episode to begin with might as well make it worthwhile. And her telepathy could have helped us learn something about Trip in the process too...and those aliens who impregnated Trip could have been Deltans and avoid that...Seahorse silliness and have no need for holodecks. The Axanar aliens could have been have been a Benzite, and then use some of those random rubber faced aliens from TNG and DS9 for groups like the Tandarans. Maybe even through a familiar face from TNG/DS9 as a prewarp alien race who 200 years later joins the interstellar community in order to then show up as that random extra that Picard passed in the hallway or that Nog pranked on the promenade or a random patron that Paris included in his Parisian bar Holoprogram.

I think the distances/time required to travel can't be a good guide.. Remember, Warp 2 is not twice as fast as Warp 1, or Warp 4 is not 4 Warp 1. It's more like Warp 1 is twice C, Warp 2 is 2x2, or 4C and such.
NX-01 could do Warp 5 on a good day, which is far slower than TOS era or TNG & later eras. There was also a redefinition of the warp speed scale along the way, too.

But there were a few places where "Enterprise" played fast and loose with their established facts when it comes to travel times. It took 7 weeks to reach the Expanse after the Xindi attack on Earth @ Warp 5, but later on, even with damaged warp drive and a lower speed, it didn't take that long to get back to their home stomping grounds for one episode.

As far as T'Pol goes, it seems to me that Jolene Blalock just never got comfortable in the role. Wrong actress for the job, as far as I can tell. There were many scenes where she appeared quite uncomfortable, despite there being no plausible reason for her to be so in the storyline at the time.

As far as the technical level of the various societies, I'm amazed that they are that close to each other.
Not only would intelligent races be separated by distance, they would be divided by time, too.

For example, if an intelligent race had developed in Alpha Centauri 10 million years ago, they could have rose to be the strongest power in the galaxy and then fallen and become extinct before we climbed out of the seas. We would have never known about them, and they would have never known about us.

I always interpreted that to be on purpose actually, part of the weirdness of the Vulcans. I do remember reading that they were planing on revealing that she was part Romulan before the show was cancelled. That would have been interesting, and putting Trip in a "sleeping with the enemy" kinda role...not that she would have been a Romulan spy. But would people have rioted if she turned out to have been a spy that later decided that the Romulan Star Empire wasn't such a big deal? Maybe a sleeper agent? There are so many ways that they could have done that. I don't know how advanced their plans for Romulans were, if they even thought about it back in seasons 1-2, but that episode where she had to hunt down a Vulcan criminal could have been written differently to make T'Pol seem more..........culpable for that one guy's death and part of the reason that she went through that memory wipe which had an unintended consequence as a result of her Romulan heritage, a fact revealed years later once Trip realizes her true past as a kid of a Romulan deep cover agent a la "The Americans". The show had so much potential.

[Annoyed]

I would have loved seeing the Bajorans as those religious pilgrims in season one that observed a nebula on the Enterprise, they were transported by an alien ship which would have made sense for Bajorans at that time, no different than a Vulcan ship ferrying some humans around out of the goodness of their pointy ears.

And the infamous episode with Trip getting stuck with that kidnapped princess could have easily been a member of some royal Betazed house, if they did that I would have gladly overlooked if they went as far as making her a Troi (She could have made a comment about never wanting to wear a starfleet uniform). I mean...it was a silly episode to begin with might as well make it worthwhile. And her telepathy could have helped us learn something about Trip in the process too...and those aliens who impregnated Trip could have been Deltans and avoid that...Seahorse silliness and have no need for holodecks. The Axanar aliens could have been have been a Benzite, and then use some of those random rubber faced aliens from TNG and DS9 for groups like the Tandarans. Maybe even through a familiar face from TNG/DS9 as a prewarp alien race who 200 years later joins the interstellar community in order to then show up as that random extra that Picard passed in the hallway or that Nog pranked on the promenade or a random patron that Paris included in his Parisian bar Holoprogram.



I always interpreted that to be on purpose actually, part of the weirdness of the Vulcans. I do remember reading that they were planing on revealing that she was part Romulan before the show was cancelled. That would have been interesting, and putting Trip in a "sleeping with the enemy" kinda role...not that she would have been a Romulan spy. But would people have rioted if she turned out to have been a spy that later decided that the Romulan Star Empire wasn't such a big deal? Maybe a sleeper agent? There are so many ways that they could have done that. I don't know how advanced their plans for Romulans were, if they even thought about it back in seasons 1-2, but that episode where she had to hunt down a Vulcan criminal could have been written differently to make T'Pol seem more..........culpable for that one guy's death and part of the reason that she went through that memory wipe which had an unintended consequence as a result of her Romulan heritage, a fact revealed years later once Trip realizes her true past as a kid of a Romulan deep cover agent a la "The Americans". The show had so much potential.

That theory doesn't make a lot of sense. The Vulcans, as portrayed in Enterprise were about as open minded as your stereotypical Georgia redneck. No way is she going to turn up to be of mixed parentage.

[Annoyed]

One other point... they lifted some scenes frame by frame from other ST properties.
There's an S3 ep. where Enterprise runs into an even more badly damaged version of itself from a different timeline, and the extra ship was disposed of exactly as in TNG "Yesterday's Enterprise".

[P-90_177]

I think the distances/time required to travel can't be a good guide.. Remember, Warp 2 is not twice as fast as Warp 1, or Warp 4 is not 4 Warp 1. It's more like Warp 1 is twice C, Warp 2 is 2x2, or 4C and such.
NX-01 could do Warp 5 on a good day, which is far slower than TOS era or TNG & later eras. There was also a redefinition of the warp speed scale along the way, too.

But there were a few places where "Enterprise" played fast and loose with their established facts when it comes to travel times. It took 7 weeks to reach the Expanse after the Xindi attack on Earth @ Warp 5, but later on, even with damaged warp drive and a lower speed, it didn't take that long to get back to their home stomping grounds for one episode.

As far as T'Pol goes, it seems to me that Jolene Blalock just never got comfortable in the role. Wrong actress for the job, as far as I can tell. There were many scenes where she appeared quite uncomfortable, despite there being no plausible reason for her to be so in the storyline at the time.

As far as the technical level of the various societies, I'm amazed that they are that close to each other.
Not only would intelligent races be separated by distance, they would be divided by time, too.

For example, if an intelligent race had developed in Alpha Centauri 10 million years ago, they could have rose to be the strongest power in the galaxy and then fallen and become extinct before we climbed out of the seas. We would have never known about them, and they would have never known about us.

I think Trek in general has kinda dealt with that sufficiently to be honest. For the first part there have been numerous highly technologically advanced species around the galaxy but they have all been either destroyed or moved on in some way, either out of the galaxy or evolved to some kind of higher consciousness. Space is vast and it's more by luck and happenstance that the are that the Federation inhabits is more in the region in which there are a number of dead ancient civilisations that have since left a power vacuum. Then there were the Vulcans and Romulans who did have a significant lead over other cultures, but once the Federation was formed Earth and all the other Federation races all shared technology so everyone was quickly brought up to everyone else's level. Go outside of the Federation's region of the galaxy and you start to encounter races like the Borg, Dominion, Tholians etc. who are all much more advanced than the Feds, Romulans and Klingons.

I grant that they never have done a great job of presenting other neighbouring friendly powers that are more advanced than the Federation like say the Minbari or even Vorlons from Babylon 5, but I think it's fair to say that any none federation major powers which are more advanced probably still find the Federation useful as a trading block to deal with. Even if they're more powerful the Federation has a notable size and numbers advantage.

[P-90_177]

One other point... they lifted some scenes frame by frame from other ST properties.
There's an S3 ep. where Enterprise runs into an even more badly damaged version of itself from a different timeline, and the extra ship was disposed of exactly as in TNG "Yesterday's Enterprise".

I think you're misremembering it slightly.

I THINK you're thinking of E2 (or E Squared as it should be) where they come across a version of Enterprise that had been sent back in time a hundred years and then turns up still trying to stop the Xindi while being manned by the children and grand children of the crew. In the end of that ep the crews work together (after some drama between them) to take on some hostile aliens and reach a spatial conduit which originally sent Enterprise back in time but in this case took them to where they needed to go while the Past / Future Enterprise (Depending on your point of view) stayed behind to take on the aliens and it's left to our imagination whether they were destroyed of ceased to exist because our Enterprise never went back in time.

I mean I sort of see some parallels to Yesterday's Enterprise there but the episodes themselves go about things in really rather different ways.

[Annoyed]

I think you're misremembering it slightly.

I THINK you're thinking of E2 (or E Squared as it should be) where they come across a version of Enterprise that had been sent back in time a hundred years and then turns up still trying to stop the Xindi while being manned by the children and grand children of the crew. In the end of that ep the crews work together (after some drama between them) to take on some hostile aliens and reach a spatial conduit which originally sent Enterprise back in time but in this case took them to where they needed to go while the Past / Future Enterprise (Depending on your point of view) stayed behind to take on the aliens and it's left to our imagination whether they were destroyed of ceased to exist because our Enterprise never went back in time.

I mean I sort of see some parallels to Yesterday's Enterprise there but the episodes themselves go about things in really rather different ways.

I was just referring to the actual scene where the "extra" Enterprise goes into the spatial phenomenon. Damn near copied from YE. frame by frame.

[P-90_177]

I was just referring to the actual scene where the "extra" Enterprise goes into the spatial phenomenon. Damn near copied from YE. frame by frame.

I mean having watched the scene I can't say I see much similarity but if it's more just the general look of the thing I'd say if anything it's more an homage than anything. To me the scenes look very different from each other though.

[Annoyed]

I mean having watched the scene I can't say I see much similarity but if it's more just the general look of the thing I'd say if anything it's more an homage than anything. To me the scenes look very different from each other though.

Yeah, I'll buy the homage angle.

[aretood2]

That theory doesn't make a lot of sense. The Vulcans, as portrayed in Enterprise were about as open minded as your stereotypical Georgia redneck. No way is she going to turn up to be of mixed parentage.

Romulans are super secretive duplicitous tricksters, I'm sure T'Pol's Vulcan parent would be left in the dark as to the true nature of their mating. In any event, not all Vulcans were like that, you still have T'Pau et al (Grant it, T'Pau refused to take a seat in the Federation Council because....logic?). And that Ambassador that T'Pol admired too.

[Annoyed]

Romulans are super secretive duplicitous tricksters, I'm sure T'Pol's Vulcan parent would be left in the dark as to the true nature of their mating. In any event, not all Vulcans were like that, you still have T'Pau et al (Grant it, T'Pau refused to take a seat in the Federation Council because....logic?). And that Ambassador that T'Pol admired too.

They do have forensic genetics...

And until the events in S4, T'Pau was an outcast from "polite" Vulcan society; a member of the rebellious group who were looking for the Vulcan version of their bible, which Archer found in The Forge. Looks to me that sparked a revolution on Vulcan, morphing them into the Vulcans we see in TOS or later.