They're not "bad," they're different. Different social mores that seem ridiculous to a Western audience but make sense to them.
Take, say...crossing fingers. As in "I hope this works, fingers crossed." Y'know? Only in Vietnam, the Vietnamese think that crossed fingers look like lady parts. So flashing this at someone is the equivalent of calling them the C-word. Or, consider the thumbs-up.
What you think it means: "It's all good!" What it means in most Arabic countries: A thumbs up in any Middle Eastern country pretty much means, loosely translated, that you hope the person you're gesturing at has a very pleasant trip to the proctologist.
I understand what you are getting at, but remember, Star Trek is all about the 'planet of hats' trope. ALL Vulcans are logical, ALL Klingons are warriors (or at least in the TNG-era), and so on. Each species is defined by only one major thing, and then that thing applies to ALL members of that species. Anyone who doesn't follow it is often times considered an 'outcast' or some such, like Sybok of Final Frontier, or that one Klingon scientist and from the same episode that Ferengi scientist who made metaphasic shielding.
So while I agree that one mere gesture in the real world might mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people, that doesn't apply for Star Trek.
I don't mind that they might've been offended by people eating in front of each other, or that Porthos peed on one of their sacred ferns or whatever which pissed em off. No no, the real gripe I have with that species is that if they are supposed to have any kind of 'galactic presence' you would think that maybe, just MAYBE they would say something to people upon meeting them?
Same thing really applies for the Tak-Tak. If Neelix (being slightly useful) hadn't been there to tell Janeway about them, she would've had zero clue about how to act around them.
In short, I don't really so much mind the species themselves, more just that they are so easily offended and give NO reasons why, and otherwise don't seem to care to tell people when they first meet them things about their culture that might offend them, to prevent such early diplomatic issues.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
They had Linda Park, who looks like she just stepped off of an Athleta catalog cover and is worth a million bucks in any outfit under the sun, and they instead tried to make the sexy character out of a woman who looked like a famine victim with implants the size of grapefruits and an ugly wig.
Plus, Linda Park was a better actress, her character was more competent and intelligent (she caught a bat-thing in MID-AIR with ONE BARE HAND), yet still had believable flaws for her background (it's perfectly understandable for a linguist to be skittish in scary situations, after all). Why the heck didn't they focus on Hoshi more?
Also, nobody on that ship besides Reed (who was omnicompetent) and Hoshi (who was literally better than a computer) could do their actual jobs.
Phlox kept live animals and open containers of biohazardous material in a sterile medical bay. He also clipped his toenails and scraped off his disgusting tongue in said medical bay ("A Night In Sickbay" among others. Oh, and he committed genocide by negligence because he was lazy ("Dear Doctor"). And created a clone for the express purpose of harvesting it for parts.
Archer risked himself and his crew needlessly and stupidly ("Minefield", "Fight or Flight"), displayed jaw-dropping incompetence as a "trained diplomat" ("A Night In Sickbay"), considered a lecture that would normally be given to a poorly-behaved toddler to be difficult to understand ("The Andorian Incident"), displayed blatant hypocrisy and thoughtlessness for others ("Fortunate Son", "Silent Enemy"), and traumatized me for life with the worst sex scene ever ("A Night In Sickbay").
Mayweather...was in space. Possibly. He might have been just repeating a lie to himself in the hopes that it became true.
Tucker repeatedly blew important engine things up and failed to grasp the concept of stopping for repairs ("Unexpected" among others). His sum total of engineering experience was a summer spent repairing airboats in a bayou ("These Are The Voyages").
I could go on, but T'Pol offends my respect for women and there isn't much more I can say about Reed or Hoshi.
They had Linda Park, who looks like she just stepped off of an Athleta catalog cover and is worth a million bucks in any outfit under the sun, and they instead tried to make the sexy character out of a woman who looked like a famine victim with implants the size of grapefruits and an ugly wig.
Plus, Linda Park was a better actress, her character was more competent and intelligent (she caught a bat-thing in MID-AIR with ONE BARE HAND), yet still had believable flaws for her background (it's perfectly understandable for a linguist to be skittish in scary situations, after all). Why the heck didn't they focus on Hoshi more?
Also, nobody on that ship besides Reed (who was omnicompetent) and Hoshi (who was literally better than a computer) could do their actual jobs.
Phlox kept live animals and open containers of biohazardous material in a sterile medical bay. He also clipped his toenails and scraped off his disgusting tongue in said medical bay ("A Night In Sickbay" among others. Oh, and he committed genocide by negligence because he was lazy ("Dear Doctor"). And created a clone for the express purpose of harvesting it for parts.
Archer risked himself and his crew needlessly and stupidly ("Minefield", "Fight or Flight"), displayed jaw-dropping incompetence as a "trained diplomat" ("A Night In Sickbay"), considered a lecture that would normally be given to a poorly-behaved toddler to be difficult to understand ("The Andorian Incident"), displayed blatant hypocrisy and thoughtlessness for others ("Fortunate Son", "Silent Enemy"), and traumatized me for life with the worst sex scene ever ("A Night In Sickbay").
Mayweather...was in space. Possibly. He might have been just repeating a lie to himself in the hopes that it became true.
Tucker repeatedly blew important engine things up and failed to grasp the concept of stopping for repairs ("Unexpected" among others). His sum total of engineering experience was a summer spent repairing airboats in a bayou ("These Are The Voyages").
I could go on, but T'Pol offends my respect for women and there isn't much more I can say about Reed or Hoshi.
Well this is nothing but sensationalism and strawman, no offense. You take certain, singular incidents and overblow them to make the characters look bad or to make a point. Maywweather, while underutilized, had the entire pioneer/"Horizon" Background, Tucker was one of the main engineer's during the testing of the warp 5 engine, and reed most certainly had flaws ashe was essentially the Worf of the crew, he viewed everything and anything through a tactical mindset, which was a good trait for his position.
One thing i also liked about Tucker and Reed is that they both still carried their national identities, showing how the United Earth government was still a (relatively)new thing and the various nations hadn't dissolved at that point.
As for the T'Pol/Hoshi thing, that is purely a subjective thing and to place so much importance on that is..well i won't go there. But we got plenty of hoshi fan service in "In a mirror, Darkly".
Also yes, i get it, you hate "A night in sickbay".
Well this is nothing but sensationalism and strawman, no offense. You take certain, singular incidents and overblow them to make the characters look bad or to make a point. Maywweather, while underutilized, had the entire pioneer/"Horizon" Background, Tucker was one of the main engineer's during the testing of the warp 5 engine, and reed most certainly had flaws ashe was essentially the Worf of the crew, he viewed everything and anything through a tactical mindset, which was a good trait for his position.
One thing i also liked about Tucker and Reed is that they both still carried their national identities, showing how the United Earth government was still a new thing and the various nations hadn't dissolved at that point.
As for the T'Pol/Hoshi thing, that is purely a subjective thing and to place so much importance on that is..well i won't go there. But we got plenty of hoshi fan service in "In a mirror, Darkly".
Also yes, i get it, you hate "A night in sickbay".
Everybody hates that piece of offal. Everybody. It has everything about bad Trek rolled into one offensive ball of reeking stupidity.
Now..."national identity"? You call a ridiculous redneck stereotype "national identity"??? How racist/xenophobic can you get?
I know people who were born and raised in Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida, Florida again, Georgia, whole family from Arkansas of all places...A good two dozen people. Several of them I prefer not to associate with, but I can say this: NONE of them are ridiculous, catfish-eating bayou-surfing stereotypes like Tucker. None of them. Real people have interests and skills outside of their local culture, unlike Tucker who might as well have been Cooter from the Dukes of Hazzard IN SPAAACE.
Reed was the single most competent person on the crew, and it was almost hilarious how whenever he said "sir, we should shoot the thing" Archer refused and it inevitably turned out that shooting the thing would've been the right move from the start.
Mayweather's background doesn't matter, what matters is that it's his only character trait.
Also, the opening theme is a grand celebration of American achievements...not noting that the Soviets got into space first, got a man into space first, got a dog into space first, et cetera, and neglecting Chinese and other non-American leaps as well. This offended me deeply.
Everybody hates that piece of offal. Everybody. It has everything about bad Trek rolled into one offensive ball of reeking stupidity.
Now..."national identity"? You call a ridiculous redneck stereotype "national identity"??? How racist/xenophobic can you get?
I know people who were born and raised in Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida, Florida again, Georgia, whole family from Arkansas of all places...A good two dozen people. Several of them I prefer not to associate with, but I can say this: NONE of them are ridiculous, catfish-eating bayou-surfing stereotypes like Tucker. None of them. Real people have interests and skills outside of their local culture, unlike Tucker who might as well have been Cooter from the Dukes of Hazzard IN SPAAACE.
Reed was the single most competent person on the crew, and it was almost hilarious how whenever he said "sir, we should shoot the thing" Archer refused and it inevitably turned out that shooting the thing would've been the right move from the start.
Mayweather's background doesn't matter, what matters is that it's his only character trait.
Also, the opening theme is a grand celebration of American achievements...not noting that the Soviets got into space first, got a man into space first, got a dog into space first, et cetera, and neglecting Chinese and other non-American leaps as well. This offended me deeply.
What a deep exaggeration of Tuckers portrayal, especially since any "Xenophobia" was no different than the rest of the crew that had to deal with vulcans during the Warp 5 pre-trial period. I also don't see how he's a "redneck stereotype" he's never portrayed as such, but he does have American mannerisms and culture, similar to Reed and his british background. Again sensationalism and blowing things out of proportion.
As for reed, that applies to Worf in TNG as well so i don't see where you're going with that.
As for the intro, i'm not gonna touch that but if that offends you, you are easily offended.
If you don't like the show that's fine, but don't overblow things or pick every tiny detail apart to validate that opinion. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean its horrible.
Oversexualized? Are you kidding? With exception of some of the lame decon scenes(which sexualized the men as much as the women) it was pretty much on par with the rest of trek(minus 2 whole scenes in season 3), minus maybe later-half TNG. You're sensationalizing a bit on this point.
My point about the oversexualization was that it was pointless to the show. Your point about men in the de-con scenes is taken, but... Enterprise is the only Trek series to feature TRIBBLE cleavage and boob jokes. Not really sensationalizing things at all.
As for tech, are you talking the time travel plot or the sets/tech? I can agree on the time travel plot not adding much to the show but i don't think for a moment it killed the show especially since in all it accompanies less than a dozen episodes in the entire series(unless you count the Xindi arc though that is debateable). As for the tech, I think everyone agree'd with the pre-launch comments by B&B that having Enterprise use more primitive tech than what we had in real life just to match the low-budget sets of TOS just wouldn't fly or make much sense, but they did try to line it up somewhat and it certainly had more "Nowdays tech" and no 24th century tech.
My comment about "not letting go of the 24th century" has everything to do with the time travel plot. The Temporal Cold War idea was ill-conceived, and poorly executed. Your point about the time travel episodes only consisting of a small portion of Enterprise's run? THAT'S EXACTLY WHY IT FAILED. One of those episodes was "Broken Bow," the series pilot... in other words, the episode that set up the entire premise of the series. Team Berman had no idea where to go, or what to do with this storyline... and it was summarily done away with once they figured out it wasn't working.
Imagine if, after "Emissary", we spent most of season one of DS9 on a starship? Or, after "Caretaker," we spend most of season one of VOY in the Alpha Quadrant? That's what "Broken Bow" did... introduce something it told the audience was vital to the series, then forgot about it for most of the first season.
I've never had a problem with the design elements of the show, actually... although, the NX-01 bridge kinda looks like the Defiant, IMO. But, I think they got many design elements right.
The plots were also decent and while season 1 is somewhat disjointed (like all trek in its early days), it started finding itself in season 3 and hit the sweet spot in season 4 on all notes. Season 5 was also planned to continue upon the trend of season 4.
Failing ratings is the only reason Enterprise died. While it had a slow shaky start (like every single trek ever), it wasnt able to recover like Treks in the past because of a dying UPN, horrible time-slotting (and a time-slot switch), and unavailability in certain parts of the country. Anti-enterprise sentiment by some butthurt fans, however, did not help motivate Paramount to take the hit and keep the show afloat as the ratings climbed into season 5 and beyond.
Season 4 is when Berman & Braga were removed from the show, for all intents and purposes. Manny Coto is largely responsible for the rebound in season 4 (he, for example, denies "These Are The Voyages..." even happened). Any success in a season five would have been from Coto, not B&B.
I also remember hearing about campaigns to actually keep Enterpriseon the air, so I have no idea what you are talking about with these "anti-Enterprise sentiments." Paramount gave the show two shots to stay alive: season three, and season four. Any rebound in season four was too little, too late in the studio's eyes.
And your comment about other Trek series having struggles early on is true... but, in my book, it's the most damning evidence against Berman & Braga, and Enterprise. This was not their first Trek TV show. This was not their second. This was the THIRD show the two have worked on together, and this was the FOURTH series Berman co-created. At some point, you'd think they'd learn from the mistakes of the past shows, and focus on the strengths... and they didn't. They tried to do the same thing, again, until the show was on life support. The Xindi arc was their last attempt to try something actually new, and then, they were booted in favor of Coto.
The training wheels needed to come off. But they didn't, and we drove right into a wall.
Now..."national identity"? You call a ridiculous redneck stereotype "national identity"??? How racist/xenophobic can you get?
I know people who were born and raised in Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida, Florida again, Georgia, whole family from Arkansas of all places...A good two dozen people. Several of them I prefer not to associate with, but I can say this: NONE of them are ridiculous, catfish-eating bayou-surfing stereotypes like Tucker. None of them. Real people have interests and skills outside of their local culture, unlike Tucker who might as well have been Cooter from the Dukes of Hazzard IN SPAAACE.
Let's not forget about the throw-away line in "These Are The Voyages..." from Hoshi, stating that Tucker didn't even graduate from high school and got his knowledge by working on BOATS. Tucker, a Starfleet officer and chief engineer of humanity's first Warp 5 ship... learned about STARSHIPS by working on BOATS. IN THE OCEAN. AFTER DROPPING OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL.
My point about the oversexualization was that it was pointless to the show. Your point about men in the de-con scenes is taken, but... Enterprise is the only Trek series to feature TRIBBLE cleavage and boob jokes. Not really sensationalizing things at all.
My comment about "not letting go of the 24th century" has everything to do with the time travel plot. The Temporal Cold War idea was ill-conceived, and poorly executed. Your point about the time travel episodes only consisting of a small portion of Enterprise's run? THAT'S EXACTLY WHY IT FAILED. One of those episodes was "Broken Bow," the series pilot... in other words, the episode that set up the entire premise of the series. Team Berman had no idea where to go, or what to do with this storyline... and it was summarily done away with once they figured out it wasn't working.
Imagine if, after "Emissary", we spent most of season one of DS9 on a starship? Or, after "Caretaker," we spend most of season one of VOY in the Alpha Quadrant? That's what "Broken Bow" did... introduce something it told the audience was vital to the series, then forgot about it for most of the first season.
I've never had a problem with the design elements of the show, actually... although, the NX-01 bridge kinda looks like the Defiant, IMO. But, I think they got many design elements right.
Season 4 is when Berman & Braga were removed from the show, for all intents and purposes. Manny Coto is largely responsible for the rebound in season 4 (he, for example, denies "These Are The Voyages..." even happened). Any success in a season five would have been from Coto, not B&B.
I also remember hearing about campaigns to actually keep Enterpriseon the air, so I have no idea what you are talking about with these "anti-Enterprise sentiments." Paramount gave the show two shots to stay alive: season three, and season four. Any rebound in season four was too little, too late in the studio's eyes.
And your comment about other Trek series having struggles early on is true... but, in my book, it's the most damning evidence against Berman & Braga, and Enterprise. This was not their first Trek TV show. This was not their second. This was the THIRD show the two have worked on together, and this was the FOURTH series Berman co-created. At some point, you'd think they'd learn from the mistakes of the past shows, and focus on the strengths... and they didn't. They tried to do the same thing, again, until the show was on life support. The Xindi arc was their last attempt to try something actually new, and then, they were booted in favor of Coto.
The training wheels needed to come off. But they didn't, and we drove right into a wall.
Agree'd somewhat on B&B but i was talking about the show in general, not their specific contribution to it. I also liked the Xindi arc it's problem was taking up a whole season.
Also, the show cancelling after Season 4 despite the ratings rebound was completely asinine on the part of the Studio because they know that the ratings problems had a lot to do with their own issues with slotting the show and getting coverage, and that if they resolved those issues, Coto and crew would keep bringing in the ratings. Which of course, the "Bring back Enterprise" campaigns did try to point out as i recall and yes, you are right to bring them up. You'd be surprised the vitriol faced by those campaigns however.
I find it funny you bring up Emmissary however, as the mystical parts of DS9 are usually the least liked part of DS9, atleast in the circles i run it, it might be a YMMV issue. It may have done well to drop some elements that had been laid down. But you overexaggerate by saying it'd be like "being set on a starship",it'd be more like them dropping the "Emissary of the Prophets" part of the plot. Funny you mention that though since they did end up adding a Starship and starship focused plots. The reason the Defiant was added since people weren't so fond of being stuck with episodic plots only on DS9 and Shuttles.
Sometimes concepts introduced in the pilot/first season don't sell well and get discarded, and coto and the new writers did a good job on settling that plot in the opener of Season 4 too, a great turnaround from the cliffhanger and showed the talent of the writers to take that and do good with it and then roll with it into season 4 and craft great things. Season 4 also added a lot of meaning to elements of the first 2 seasons, adding to the enjoyment of rewatching those, IMO.
Let's not forget about the throw-away line in "These Are The Voyages..." from Hoshi, stating that Tucker didn't even graduate from high school and got his knowledge by working on BOATS. Tucker, a Starfleet officer and chief engineer of humanity's first Warp 5 ship... learned about STARSHIPS by working on BOATS. IN THE OCEAN. AFTER DROPPING OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL.
Why not? After all, they selected their captain by an exhaustive method of deciding which Star Fleet officers were the children of the guy who designed the Warp 5 engine. Their pilot's previous experience was being a crewman (and family member) aboard a freighter. Their weapons officer clearly would have been more comfortable with antique cannon than energy weapons. Choosing the engineer the way they did fits that perfectly.
On the other tentacle, I'd just as soon forget about everything from "These Are the Voyages...", thanks.
What a deep exaggeration of Tuckers portrayal, especially since any "Xenophobia" was no different than the rest of the crew that had to deal with vulcans during the Warp 5 pre-trial period. I also don't see how he's a "redneck stereotype" he's never portrayed as such, but he does have American mannerisms and culture, similar to Reed and his british background. Again sensationalism and blowing things out of proportion.
...
Have you ever met ANYONE from the southern US? What you just said is as offensive as saying that you can't see how Jump Jim Crow was a racist caricature.
If you don't like the show that's fine, but don't overblow things or pick every tiny detail apart to validate that opinion. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean its horrible.
...
Phlox committed genocide by negligence and created a sentient being for the express purpose of harvesting it for organs.
Tucker got impregnated without consent by an alien, it went ectopic to his RIBCAGE, and nobody had one whit of concern for him, oh no, it was all the f*cking embryo.
Tucker never expressed an interest or opinion that wasn't solidly redneck in every possible way. He even got literally all of his experience fixing AIRBOATS!!!!!
Archer BROUGHT HIS DOG TO AN ALIEN PLANET for SENSITIVE DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS with a species that he knew was obsessed with protocol. That's not just stupidity, that's actively sabotaging the mission!
Let me just break down some ENT stories:
Pilot episode: Blatantly violates canon, Archer p*sses off the Klingons by viewing them through his anthropocentric worldview and projecting his culture's expectations onto their culture despite being repeatedly told what an idiot he's being.
Fight or Flight: Archer insists on piddling around to find out why some aliens are hooked up to tubes ad being drained despite knowing that he ran out here without even a tenth of a full weapons complement and no spare parts, resulting in his ship and crew almost getting killed when the bad guys predictably come back.
Unexpected: Tucker is sexually assaulted/r*ped, nobody cares for him even though the nature of the alien pregnancy is almost certain to result in gruesome death, the whole first act is one big joke about Tucker being high as nobody shows any concern for him, everybody treats Tucker being pregnant as a big joke and he acts in a ridiculous sexist stereotype of an overprotective mother. Offensively stupid.
A Night In Sickbay: This one's been done to death, indescribably awful.
Dear Doctor: Phlox commits genocide by negligence because he's lazy and evolution doesn't work the way he thinks it does.
Bounty: T'Pol's horny, ha-hah, funny! Also Archer gets caught by the worst bounty hunter ever. Again sexist and offensive.
Silent Enemy: Despite not wanting to shoot pirates just two weeks ago, Archer brags to the Elachi about how he's going to kill them, then shoots them. Even though by his own logic he just should have sat there and waited to be killed and robbed by them, because you can't use weapons on pirates! That would be self-defense, and that's wrong!
TRIBBLE space lizards episode: Does more really need to be said?
Two Days and Two Nights: God, ANOTHER Risa episode? Ugh. Reed and Tucker get caught in the most obvious honey trap, Archer gets knocked out by an alien whose species he angered and...nothing happens, and Phlox gets woken up from his BS excuse to nap so that he can stumble around like a drunken idiot instead of being a competent CMO.
These Are The Voyages: ...I have nothing to say on this unholy abomination.
Why not? After all, they selected their captain by an exhaustive method of deciding which Star Fleet officers were the children of the guy who designed the Warp 5 engine. Their pilot's previous experience was being a crewman (and family member) aboard a freighter. Their weapons officer clearly would have been more comfortable with antique cannon than energy weapons. Choosing the engineer the way they did fits that perfectly.
On the other tentacle, I'd just as soon forget about everything from "These Are the Voyages...", thanks.
Well that's a serious exaggeration of all of those characters. Reed was descended from Navy men, i highly doubt the modern Royal Navy of the 2100's was using "Antique Cannons", unless you think only 1 division of Earth military keeps up to date. Mayweather was likely selected because of his experience out the outer edges of Earth territory (Which most starfleet pilots would not have), and in "First Flight" it's made clear that at first Archer wasn't even first pick for the Warp 5 program, he had to prove himself.
I know people who were born and raised in Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida, Florida again, Georgia, whole family from Arkansas of all places...A good two dozen people. Several of them I prefer not to associate with, but I can say this: NONE of them are ridiculous, catfish-eating bayou-surfing stereotypes like Tucker.
I know people in Ireland - most of my family lives there - and about half of them fit the Irish stereotype to a T. Particularly my father. So...who's anecdotal evidence trumps who's here? Personally I think my anecdotal evidence is superior, because it comes from me, and ipso facto is better, because secretly I'm an Augment and therefore just better. But I suppose you might have a reason why your anecdotal evidence is superior.
Real people have interests and skills outside of their local culture, unlike Tucker who might as well have been Cooter from the Dukes of Hazzard IN SPAAACE.
I wasn't aware that interest in starship engineering formed a part of the steoreotypical deep south culture.
Reed was the single most competent person on the crew, and it was almost hilarious how whenever he said "sir, we should shoot the thing" Archer refused and it inevitably turned out that shooting the thing would've been the right move from the start.
To be perfectly honest, that is not much different from the situation Worf frequently found himself in aboard D. Worf's entire career with Picard could be summed up as,
Worf: I recommend we raise shields. Picard: No, we don't want to appear hostile.
[6 members of Worf's security staff proceed to die]
Mayweather's background doesn't matter, what matters is that it's his only character trait.
Deanna Troi until Season 5 or so: "I sense great emotion from X, captain." Other than that the only thing she brought to the series was Lwaxana Troi. Which was awesome, but had nothing to do with Deanna.
Also, the opening theme is a grand celebration of American achievements...not noting that the Soviets got into space first, got a man into space first, got a dog into space first, et cetera, and neglecting Chinese and other non-American leaps as well. This offended me deeply.
The Soviets aren't something that Americans typically choose to celebrate, for reasons that should be blindingly obvious. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, the TRIBBLE had the first jet engines, but I doubt you object to the lack of the Luftwaffe in the opening. The Soviets were not nice people, the People's Republic of China is not much nicer, and you may be the first person in the history of criticizing Enterprise to bring up that "fault".
but... Enterprise is the only Trek series to feature TRIBBLE cleavage and boob jokes.
Leaving aside Star Trek: Insurrection since you did specify "series"...unless you specifically mean obvious TRIBBLE/boob jokes, even sqeaky-clean TNG got risque. What do you think Riker was going to Holodeck 4 four? Or referring to when he said "I'm not one to unwrap another man's package?"
Agree'd somewhat on B&B but i was talking about the show in general, not their specific contribution to it. I also liked the Xindi arc it's problem was taking up a whole season.
Also, the show cancelling after Season 4 despite the ratings rebound was completely asinine on the part of the Studio because they know that the ratings problems had a lot to do with their own issues with slotting the show and getting coverage, and that if they resolved those issues, Coto and crew would keep bringing in the ratings. Which of course, the "Bring back Enterprise" campaigns did try to point out as i recall and yes, you are right to bring them up. You'd be surprised the vitriol faced by those campaigns however.
I find it funny you bring up Emmissary however, as the mystical parts of DS9 are usually the least liked part of DS9, atleast in the circles i run it, it might be a YMMV issue. It may have done well to drop some elements that had been laid down. But you overexaggerate by saying it'd be like "being set on a starship",it'd be more like them dropping the "Emissary of the Prophets" part of the plot. Funny you mention that though since they did end up adding a Starship and starship focused plots. The reason the Defiant was added since people weren't so fond of being stuck with episodic plots only on DS9 and Shuttles.
Sometimes concepts introduced in the pilot/first season don't sell well and get discarded, and coto and the new writers did a good job on settling that plot in the opener of Season 4 too, a great turnaround from the cliffhanger and showed the talent of the writers to take that and do good with it and then roll with it into season 4 and craft great things. Season 4 also added a lot of meaning to elements of the first 2 seasons, adding to the enjoyment of rewatching those, IMO.
Look, dude... good for you for liking and defending Enterprise. I mean that sincerely. If you get a lot of enjoyment out of it, more power to you.
For me, though... Enterprise pisses me off. Why? It could have been great. I thought the idea of a prequel show was fantastic. As I said, I thought the design elements of the show were very good. They sold the show (to me, as a viewer, anyway) as the bridge to The Original Series, and a chance to see an era of the Trek universe never seen before. I even liked the fact that they dropped "Star Trek" from the title (I refuse to call it Star Trek: Enterprise).
They didn't go far enough, though, and I feel cheated as a result.
I'm not going to go over all of these points (though we all agree on These Are The voyages), but a lot of this is either nitpicking, insane (Negligent genocide?), or exaggeration to the extreme.
I get it, for whatever reason you hate the show, maybe B&B pee'd in your cereal or something, but you are blowing things way out of proportion. On balance it was a decent show, its early seasons were on par with any other trek, and with Season 4 it was excellent.
Look, dude... good for you for liking and defending Enterprise. I mean that sincerely. If you get a lot of enjoyment out of it, more power to you.
For me, though... Enterprise pisses me off. Why? It could have been great. I thought the idea of a prequel show was fantastic. As I said, I thought the design elements of the show were very good. They sold the show (to me, as a viewer, anyway) as the bridge to The Original Series, and a chance to see an era of the Trek universe never seen before. I even liked the fact that they dropped "Star Trek" from the title (I refuse to call it Star Trek: Enterprise).
They didn't go far enough, though, and I feel cheated as a result.
Then you should be mad at its cancellation as well. Surely even you see that had it made a full 7 season run, it would've gone down as a good, if not great, series. The show doesn't TRIBBLE me off, its cancellation does.
You LIKE watching a grown man act like an entitled, whiny brat for 40 minutes straight, as he abuses his staff, has painfully long and unsexy wet dreams about a famine victim with oversized implants, and generally acts like an overgrown toddler?
I know people in Ireland, and about half of them fit the Irish stereotype to a T. So...who's anecdotal evidence trumps who's here? Personally I think my anecdotal evidence is superior, because it comes from me, and ipso facto is better, because secretly I'm an Augment and therefore just better. But I suppose you might have a reason why your anecdotal evidence is superior.
But what about the half that don't?
We see exactly one southerner on ENT, and he's a racist caricature. Whose sum total of experience came from a semester fixing boats.
To be perfectly honest, that is not much different from the situation Worf frequently found himself in aboard D. Worf's entire career with Picard could be summed up as,
Worf: I recommend we raise shields. Picard: No, we don't want to appear hostile.
[6 members of Worf's security staff proceed to die]
I did say that season 2 of TNG offends me and season 1 had GR's Hollywood Liberal stamp all over it in all the wrong places.
Also, season 1 led to a lot of undeserved hate being flung at a guy I really like. So that, too.
Deanna Troi until Season 5 or so: "I sense great emotion from X, captain." Other than that the only thing she brought to the series was Lwaxana Troi. Which was awesome, but had nothing to do with Deanna.
But she was involved in the development of other characters, a lot, and had other character traits (love of chocolate, exes with Riker, liked helping Data through humanity, etc.).
Token Black flew the ship and...was in space? I think?
The Soviets aren't something that Americans typically choose to celebrate, for reasons that should be blindingly obvious. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, the TRIBBLE had the first jet engines, but I doubt you object to the lack of the Luftwaffe in the opening. The Soviets were not nice people, the People's Republic of China is not much nicer, and you may be the first person in the history of criticizing Enterprise to bring up that "fault".
Fifteenth in my personal experience.
I would, in fact, like to see some Battle of Britain scenes in there. And some Sputnik and Laika and the X-1 and Yuri Gagarin.
Whether you like the Soviets, the PRC, or other such regimes or not, it is an undeniable fact that they have contributed greatly to space exploration, and the height of arrogance to make the intro to a show about a unified, near-utopian future Earth all about how great America is.
My point about the oversexualization was that it was pointless to the show. Your point about men in the de-con scenes is taken, but... Enterprise is the only Trek series to feature TRIBBLE cleavage and boob jokes. Not really sensationalizing things at all.
I have to say, back then Linda Park looked nice in that nice top in the first episode. But TOS already beat ENT to the punch a long time ago with sexualisation of the show.
I seem to remember a young woman in a cloud city above the troglytes wearing a dress showing a lot of skin as an example on TOS, or those close ups of specific women looking sultry or even the first episode with the talosians, about pike and his first officer and the girl with the red hair. also remember Uhuras dance on Nimbus in the dark that had every man running for her.
What about Janeway in the tub and Q kissing her foot, or Janeway taking a massage from the doctor and he told her to get some clothes on before she left her quarters before resuming her duty station.
What about the various dabo girls on DS9, one of them was a green alien, to bottom of her ample chest hanging out in the early seasons or impela in the later seasons?
what about tng with LT Robinson when she was seduced by Captain Okona? a lot of sexualisation in that one as well.
What the point of the arguement its been apart of trek for some time.
My comment about "not letting go of the 24th century" has everything to do with the time travel plot. The Temporal Cold War idea was ill-conceived, and poorly executed. Your point about the time travel episodes only consisting of a small portion of Enterprise's run? THAT'S EXACTLY WHY IT FAILED. One of those episodes was "Broken Bow," the series pilot... in other words, the episode that set up the entire premise of the series. Team Berman had no idea where to go, or what to do with this storyline... and it was summarily done away with once they figured out it wasn't working.
Imagine if, after "Emissary", we spent most of season one of DS9 on a starship? Or, after "Caretaker," we spend most of season one of VOY in the Alpha Quadrant? That's what "Broken Bow" did... introduce something it told the audience was vital to the series, then forgot about it for most of the first season.
I've never had a problem with the design elements of the show, actually... although, the NX-01 bridge kinda looks like the Defiant, IMO. But, I think they got many design elements right.
Enterprise was the attempt of a 5 year journey before Kirk's 5 year journey, but that ship not only sailed, but it made it to port. not only did it make it to port but berman decided to turn it around but send it back, only to find out that is was sinking quickly, because it was a story already told and it was a one way trip.
so to hide what is ultimately water that was being taken onboard at a rapid pace, he decided to change the direction of the ship and attempt emergency repairs and pumping out of water, only to find out that season 3 was the titanic downfall of this ship when it hit an iceberg.. or so it was supposed to be...
Season 4 is when Berman & Braga were removed from the show, for all intents and purposes. Manny Coto is largely responsible for the rebound in season 4 (he, for example, denies "These Are The Voyages..." even happened). Any success in a season five would have been from Coto, not B&B.
Coto was found and then patched up the ship, managed to get it back to dock half sunk but only to find out the makers of the ship were so disappointed with the state of it, they want it decommissioned instead of rebuilding the battered ship.
I also remember hearing about campaigns to actually keep Enterpriseon the air, so I have no idea what you are talking about with these "anti-Enterprise sentiments." Paramount gave the show two shots to stay alive: season three, and season four. Any rebound in season four was too little, too late in the studio's eyes.
yeah, there was a kickstarter project to raise i think it was 5 million dollars for season 5 that received about half that amount but ultimately it never took off as the target was never reached. the sets were then sold off after that. If there had been a season 5, Shran would of joined the crew full time, the earth romulan war storyline would of been been explored as would the borg origins. but none of that got out of the storyline script phase.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I'm not going to go over all of these points (though we all agree on These Are The voyages),
Yeah, that one I'll agree on. But, hey, no series is perfect. "These are the Voyages" gets bad press largely because it's bad and the last episode, but in fairness it's not like it was intended to be the last episode.
but a lot of this is either nitpicking, insane (Negligent genocide?),
A point on "Dear Doctor"...however much we don't like it, it is at least internally consistent with how evolution works in Star Trek. Trek has always gone in for the idea that evolution is more than just survival of the fittest; that evolution is going somewhere, has some kind of goal. And I'm not just talking "Threshold," it's been a part of the franchise since TOS. In that light, the fundamental conflict of "Dear Doctor" - that the Valakians have reached an evolutionary "dead end" and are dying out naturally as a result of it, and so introducing a cure would be meddling in the natural evolution of the Valakians and the Menks - is at least internally, logically sound.
(This comes up in the books as well - the Andorians are a dying people as a result of an error in their genetics, and the only way they have to solve it is genetic manipulation. The Federation forbids genetic manipulation on the scale needed, so the Andorians leave the Federation in order to be able to legally do what needs to be done to save themselves - because otherwise the Federation would have allowed the Andorians to die out due to the Federation stance on genetic manipulation)
Besides which, Phlox isn't human. He doesn't follow the human medical code and does not have human moral values. It could well be, and seems to be the case that, Denobulan medical practice really does view treating the Valakians in this instance as unethical. Really, save for the scale of the episode, this is no different from the episode of TNG wherein Worf lets a Romulan die rather than give blood to save his life. Because Worf isn't human and doesn't have human moral values.
Yeah, that one I'll agree on. But, hey, no series is perfect. "These are the Voyages" gets bad press largely because it's bad and the last episode, but in fairness it's not like it was intended to be the last episode.
Actually, it was. When word of the cancellation came down, Berman/Braga took the show back and wrote that last episode because they wanted the finale to be, in Braga's infamous words, "a love letter to the fans". They missed, obviously.
So what if Phlox and Worf aren't Human? They serve in a military that is run primarily by Humans and runs primarily on Human standards, so they follow those standards.
The difference is that Worf is chewed out and punished when he fails to follow those standards in favor of Klingon standards, and Phlox is praised for letting a species die due to terrible understanding of biology and blatant laziness.
And before you say that biology works differently in Trek...it doesn't. Despite Threshold and Dear Doctor trying to make a mess of things, all of the convergence and unlikely biology can be explained by Preserver d*cking around with DNA. So no. Biology doesn't work the way Phlox wants it to.
Actually, it was. When word of the cancellation came down, Berman/Braga took the show back and wrote that last episode because they wanted the finale to be, in Braga's infamous words, "a love letter to the fans". They missed, obviously.
Missed? hah! They were given a 100% chance to hit a stationary dairy barn 50 meters in front of them with a missile and they missed that by so much they hit the moon instead, no one was happy with the fallout of what Berman and Braga did at that point.
yeah its best not to get into that episode.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
So what if Phlox and Worf aren't Human? They serve in a military that is run primarily by Humans and runs primarily on Human standards, so they follow those standards.
The difference is that Worf is chewed out and punished when he fails to follow those standards in favor of Klingon standards, and Phlox is praised for letting a species die due to terrible understanding of biology and blatant laziness.
And before you say that biology works differently in Trek...it doesn't. Despite Threshold and Dear Doctor trying to make a mess of things, all of the convergence and unlikely biology can be explained by Preserver d*cking around with DNA. So no. Biology doesn't work the way Phlox wants it to.
Phlox is not a member of starfleet and does not serve under their regulations, he is a civilian crewmember "contracted" under Archer and the Enterprise. He is not beholden to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, just as a Mercenary or Civilian Contractor IRL is not. Besides, he still left it up to Archer, he just begged him not to give the order and pretty much made it clear he would leave the crew if forced to do it. Archer wasn't too fond of the decision he made but made it clear he felt it wasn't his place to make that decision. T'pol in a later episode puts it best when she says "Decisions like these should be left for governments, not starship captains."
Of course in TNG we see that the Federation makes Archers stance a government-wide one so its not like Phlox is an outlier. In SEVERAL episodes Picard is willing to let an entire species go extinct, and only by the interference of others are they saved (Worf gets chewed out when his brother saves a species using the holodeck).
But Worffan, biology does clearly work differently in Trek - hence viral infections that can jump species from different evolutionary backgrounds, when it's the rare virus that can infect multiple species on Earth.
Physics work differently, too - I could be here all day lecturing everyone on basic errors in astrophysics (and I mean things more widespread than an event horizon with a "crack" in it, although in my view no less egregious - don't get me started on wormholes, for instance), but in the Trekverse, those things obviously don't work quite the way they do in ours.
Just as genetic strings dropped into a planet's evolutionary heritage two billion years ago will clearly remain uncorrupted into the 24th century so they can be used to reconstruct a recorded message (TNG, "The Chase"), and will in all cases result in any intelligent life forms evolving into bipedal life forms that look roughly similar. I'm sure that your own studies tell you just how amazingly unlikely either of those proposals are - but there we have them.
You LIKE watching a grown man act like an entitled, whiny brat for 40 minutes straight, as he abuses his staff, has painfully long and unsexy wet dreams about a famine victim with oversized implants, and generally acts like an overgrown toddler?
Curiously enough, as an emotionally mature adult I have degrees of emotion between "hate" and "like." I never said I liked the episode, I only said that I don't hate it.
But what about the half that don't?
What about them? Your point is that no one could possibly fit such a stereotype, but I know and have lived with literally dozens of people who precisely conform to a very similar stereotype. Right now you've basically just claimed that no one likes cake, and I've said that half the people I know like cake, and your counter-point is that half the people I know don't like cake, and so therefore your original point stands, when in fact it obviously does not.
We see exactly one southerner on ENT, and he's a racist caricature. Whose sum total of experience came from a semester fixing boats.
As touched upon, Trip does not conform to any actual racist stereotypes anyway. He's not a drunkard, he's not uneducated - you're being very hyperbolic about the airboat thing, we both know that it's not reasonable to think that a person in charge of a Warp-5 starship has no education beyond airboat repairs - he's not racist save for the general distaste of Vulcans that all humans of the era have (that's humanity's hat in the series), and that distaste is both shown to be negative and something that he works on fixing, if his relationship with T'Pol is anything to go by. Trip isn't a war-monger, either, save for when the Xindi attacked Earth and killed his sister, and that is an emotional response that anyone from anywhere could get as a result of such an attack - it's deliberately meant to harken to 9/11, and frankly Trip's response is tame compared to what I recall some people wanted to do to Afghanistan following that attack.
If the worst thing you can say about Trip is that he likes things that Southerners are believed to generally, like...well, so what?
I would, in fact, like to see some Battle of Britain scenes in there. And some Sputnik and Laika and the X-1 and Yuri Gagarin.
I feel that showcasting the Battle of Britain would not quite have fit in with Enterprise's opening theme celebrating of human exploration.
Whether you like the Soviets, the PRC, or other such regimes or not, it is an undeniable fact that they have contributed greatly to space exploration, and the height of arrogance to make the intro to a show about a unified, near-utopian future Earth all about how great America is.
Let's be honest with ourselves here, Future-Earth in Star Trek has always been America In Space with just a touch of other cultures for flavor. Even with Picard, it's incredibly easy to forget that he's French at times, particularly given his accent and his love of Shakespeare. If you make this complaint about Enterprise then you're making it about all of Star Trek.
It's a fine and valid complaint to make, but don't hold it up as a unique fault of Enterprise.
Just as genetic strings dropped into a planet's evolutionary heritage two billion years ago will clearly remain uncorrupted into the 24th century so they can be used to reconstruct a recorded message (TNG, "The Chase"), and will in all cases result in any intelligent life forms evolving into bipedal life forms that look roughly similar. I'm sure that your own studies tell you just how amazingly unlikely either of those proposals are - but there we have them.
Of course in TNG we see that the Federation makes Archers stance a government-wide one so its not like Phlox is an outlier. In SEVERAL episodes Picard is willing to let an entire species go extinct, and only by the interference of others are they saved (Worf gets chewed out when his brother saves a species using the holodeck).
Exactly. The episode might as well have been entitled "Proto Directive." I watched it and instantly realized that what we were watching was an episode about a) the Prime Directive before there's a Prime Directive and b) why the Prime Directive has to be followed even if the results are negative.
Then you should be mad at its cancellation as well. Surely even you see that had it made a full 7 season run, it would've gone down as a good, if not great, series. The show doesn't TRIBBLE me off, its cancellation does.
I'm mad that it had to come to cancelation in the first place, not in the action itself. And that's because of the gross missteps of the show itself, IMO.
But Worffan, biology does clearly work differently in Trek - hence viral infections that can jump species from different evolutionary backgrounds, when it's the rare virus that can infect multiple species on Earth.
Preservers. As I state below, I think that they've been TRIBBLE with DNA for longer and to a greater extent than the hologram admits.
Physics work differently, too - I could be here all day lecturing everyone on basic errors in astrophysics (and I mean things more widespread than an event horizon with a "crack" in it, although in my view no less egregious - don't get me started on wormholes, for instance), but in the Trekverse, those things obviously don't work quite the way they do in ours.
Oh, sure, the stars are all in odd places and I yell at the bad physics onscreen a LOT. But is bad astrophysics ever used to justify letting a species die?
Just as genetic strings dropped into a planet's evolutionary heritage two billion years ago will clearly remain uncorrupted into the 24th century so they can be used to reconstruct a recorded message (TNG, "The Chase"), and will in all cases result in any intelligent life forms evolving into bipedal life forms that look roughly similar. I'm sure that your own studies tell you just how amazingly unlikely either of those proposals are - but there we have them.
I actually put that down to constant tinkering by remaining Preservers.
That was the only way I could justify the brain-hurt. Because you're right, that the sheer weight of statistics is completely against that episode.
I mean, by Green's multiverse hypothesis and the Law of Infinite Possibilities it must've happened by chance SOMEWHERE, but much more likely is constant tampering.
Anyway, I'm sick of this argument and I have to go watch Wrath of Khan with my friends. With everyone wearing Spock ears. Because it's never too late to mourn as a club.
I have to say, back then Linda Park looked nice in that nice top in the first episode. But TOS already beat ENT to the punch a long time ago with sexualisation of the show.
I seem to remember a young woman in a cloud city above the troglytes wearing a dress showing a lot of skin as an example on TOS, or those close ups of specific women looking sultry or even the first episode with the talosians, about pike and his first officer and the girl with the red hair. also remember Uhuras dance on Nimbus in the dark that had every man running for her.
What about Janeway in the tub and Q kissing her foot, or Janeway taking a massage from the doctor and he told her to get some clothes on before she left her quarters before resuming her duty station.
What about the various dabo girls on DS9, one of them was a green alien, to bottom of her ample chest hanging out in the early seasons or impela in the later seasons?
what about tng with LT Robinson when she was seduced by Captain Okona? a lot of sexualisation in that one as well.
What the point of the arguement its been apart of trek for some time.
Oh, I'm not denying that. That is one of the reasons why I don't deify Gene Roddenberry, like other fans. It's a sad, systemic issue in the franchise.
My point, though, is that Enterprise took it to sad and unnecessary levels. Seven of Nine never showed off some "side boob," and Kirk never face-planted into a woman's chest and attempted to talk. Enterprise decided to parade T'Pol's TRIBBLE crack around (literally), and allowing their captain to refer to his first officer's large bust in a lame attempt at a boob joke.
My point, though, is that Enterprise took it to sad and unnecessary levels. Seven of Nine never showed off some "side boob," and Kirk never face-planted into a woman's chest and attempted to talk. Enterprise decided to parade T'Pol's TRIBBLE crack around (literally), and allowing their captain to refer to his first officer's large bust in a lame attempt at a boob joke.
And Star Trek, as we know, is Serious Business, so we can't have that...:rolleyes:
Oh, I'm not denying that. That is one of the reasons why I don't deify Gene Roddenberry, like other fans. It's a sad, systemic issue in the franchise.
My point, though, is that Enterprise took it to sad and unnecessary levels. Seven of Nine never showed off some "side boob," and Kirk never face-planted into a woman's chest and attempted to talk. Enterprise decided to parade T'Pol's TRIBBLE crack around (literally), and allowing their captain to refer to his first officer's large bust in a lame attempt at a boob joke.
so basically the point is made and the bed is sorted, you just dont like the corner folds? an ideal world huh? :P
7of9s catsuit was clearly meant to be a sexualised point as well before it was tuned down a little, and at one point you had 7 naked in the cargo bay when the bored young adolesent Q wanted to have some fun, so that part to an extent about 7of9 is somewhat, cliche like "covered".
kirks eyes and their direction sometimes show more intent then a full on faceplant, frankly that is more sexist then sexualised, the latter being to make something look better then it is with eye candy rather then the former meant to be deliberately insulting.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Comments
I understand what you are getting at, but remember, Star Trek is all about the 'planet of hats' trope. ALL Vulcans are logical, ALL Klingons are warriors (or at least in the TNG-era), and so on. Each species is defined by only one major thing, and then that thing applies to ALL members of that species. Anyone who doesn't follow it is often times considered an 'outcast' or some such, like Sybok of Final Frontier, or that one Klingon scientist and from the same episode that Ferengi scientist who made metaphasic shielding.
So while I agree that one mere gesture in the real world might mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people, that doesn't apply for Star Trek.
I don't mind that they might've been offended by people eating in front of each other, or that Porthos peed on one of their sacred ferns or whatever which pissed em off. No no, the real gripe I have with that species is that if they are supposed to have any kind of 'galactic presence' you would think that maybe, just MAYBE they would say something to people upon meeting them?
Same thing really applies for the Tak-Tak. If Neelix (being slightly useful) hadn't been there to tell Janeway about them, she would've had zero clue about how to act around them.
In short, I don't really so much mind the species themselves, more just that they are so easily offended and give NO reasons why, and otherwise don't seem to care to tell people when they first meet them things about their culture that might offend them, to prevent such early diplomatic issues.
They had Linda Park, who looks like she just stepped off of an Athleta catalog cover and is worth a million bucks in any outfit under the sun, and they instead tried to make the sexy character out of a woman who looked like a famine victim with implants the size of grapefruits and an ugly wig.
Plus, Linda Park was a better actress, her character was more competent and intelligent (she caught a bat-thing in MID-AIR with ONE BARE HAND), yet still had believable flaws for her background (it's perfectly understandable for a linguist to be skittish in scary situations, after all). Why the heck didn't they focus on Hoshi more?
Also, nobody on that ship besides Reed (who was omnicompetent) and Hoshi (who was literally better than a computer) could do their actual jobs.
Phlox kept live animals and open containers of biohazardous material in a sterile medical bay. He also clipped his toenails and scraped off his disgusting tongue in said medical bay ("A Night In Sickbay" among others. Oh, and he committed genocide by negligence because he was lazy ("Dear Doctor"). And created a clone for the express purpose of harvesting it for parts.
Archer risked himself and his crew needlessly and stupidly ("Minefield", "Fight or Flight"), displayed jaw-dropping incompetence as a "trained diplomat" ("A Night In Sickbay"), considered a lecture that would normally be given to a poorly-behaved toddler to be difficult to understand ("The Andorian Incident"), displayed blatant hypocrisy and thoughtlessness for others ("Fortunate Son", "Silent Enemy"), and traumatized me for life with the worst sex scene ever ("A Night In Sickbay").
Mayweather...was in space. Possibly. He might have been just repeating a lie to himself in the hopes that it became true.
Tucker repeatedly blew important engine things up and failed to grasp the concept of stopping for repairs ("Unexpected" among others). His sum total of engineering experience was a summer spent repairing airboats in a bayou ("These Are The Voyages").
I could go on, but T'Pol offends my respect for women and there isn't much more I can say about Reed or Hoshi.
Well this is nothing but sensationalism and strawman, no offense. You take certain, singular incidents and overblow them to make the characters look bad or to make a point. Maywweather, while underutilized, had the entire pioneer/"Horizon" Background, Tucker was one of the main engineer's during the testing of the warp 5 engine, and reed most certainly had flaws ashe was essentially the Worf of the crew, he viewed everything and anything through a tactical mindset, which was a good trait for his position.
One thing i also liked about Tucker and Reed is that they both still carried their national identities, showing how the United Earth government was still a (relatively)new thing and the various nations hadn't dissolved at that point.
As for the T'Pol/Hoshi thing, that is purely a subjective thing and to place so much importance on that is..well i won't go there. But we got plenty of hoshi fan service in "In a mirror, Darkly".
Also yes, i get it, you hate "A night in sickbay".
Everybody hates that piece of offal. Everybody. It has everything about bad Trek rolled into one offensive ball of reeking stupidity.
Now..."national identity"? You call a ridiculous redneck stereotype "national identity"??? How racist/xenophobic can you get?
I know people who were born and raised in Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida, Florida again, Georgia, whole family from Arkansas of all places...A good two dozen people. Several of them I prefer not to associate with, but I can say this: NONE of them are ridiculous, catfish-eating bayou-surfing stereotypes like Tucker. None of them. Real people have interests and skills outside of their local culture, unlike Tucker who might as well have been Cooter from the Dukes of Hazzard IN SPAAACE.
Reed was the single most competent person on the crew, and it was almost hilarious how whenever he said "sir, we should shoot the thing" Archer refused and it inevitably turned out that shooting the thing would've been the right move from the start.
Mayweather's background doesn't matter, what matters is that it's his only character trait.
Also, the opening theme is a grand celebration of American achievements...not noting that the Soviets got into space first, got a man into space first, got a dog into space first, et cetera, and neglecting Chinese and other non-American leaps as well. This offended me deeply.
What a deep exaggeration of Tuckers portrayal, especially since any "Xenophobia" was no different than the rest of the crew that had to deal with vulcans during the Warp 5 pre-trial period. I also don't see how he's a "redneck stereotype" he's never portrayed as such, but he does have American mannerisms and culture, similar to Reed and his british background. Again sensationalism and blowing things out of proportion.
As for reed, that applies to Worf in TNG as well so i don't see where you're going with that.
As for the intro, i'm not gonna touch that but if that offends you, you are easily offended.
If you don't like the show that's fine, but don't overblow things or pick every tiny detail apart to validate that opinion. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean its horrible.
My point about the oversexualization was that it was pointless to the show. Your point about men in the de-con scenes is taken, but... Enterprise is the only Trek series to feature TRIBBLE cleavage and boob jokes. Not really sensationalizing things at all.
My comment about "not letting go of the 24th century" has everything to do with the time travel plot. The Temporal Cold War idea was ill-conceived, and poorly executed. Your point about the time travel episodes only consisting of a small portion of Enterprise's run? THAT'S EXACTLY WHY IT FAILED. One of those episodes was "Broken Bow," the series pilot... in other words, the episode that set up the entire premise of the series. Team Berman had no idea where to go, or what to do with this storyline... and it was summarily done away with once they figured out it wasn't working.
Imagine if, after "Emissary", we spent most of season one of DS9 on a starship? Or, after "Caretaker," we spend most of season one of VOY in the Alpha Quadrant? That's what "Broken Bow" did... introduce something it told the audience was vital to the series, then forgot about it for most of the first season.
I've never had a problem with the design elements of the show, actually... although, the NX-01 bridge kinda looks like the Defiant, IMO. But, I think they got many design elements right.
Season 4 is when Berman & Braga were removed from the show, for all intents and purposes. Manny Coto is largely responsible for the rebound in season 4 (he, for example, denies "These Are The Voyages..." even happened). Any success in a season five would have been from Coto, not B&B.
I also remember hearing about campaigns to actually keep Enterprise on the air, so I have no idea what you are talking about with these "anti-Enterprise sentiments." Paramount gave the show two shots to stay alive: season three, and season four. Any rebound in season four was too little, too late in the studio's eyes.
And your comment about other Trek series having struggles early on is true... but, in my book, it's the most damning evidence against Berman & Braga, and Enterprise. This was not their first Trek TV show. This was not their second. This was the THIRD show the two have worked on together, and this was the FOURTH series Berman co-created. At some point, you'd think they'd learn from the mistakes of the past shows, and focus on the strengths... and they didn't. They tried to do the same thing, again, until the show was on life support. The Xindi arc was their last attempt to try something actually new, and then, they were booted in favor of Coto.
The training wheels needed to come off. But they didn't, and we drove right into a wall.
Let's not forget about the throw-away line in "These Are The Voyages..." from Hoshi, stating that Tucker didn't even graduate from high school and got his knowledge by working on BOATS. Tucker, a Starfleet officer and chief engineer of humanity's first Warp 5 ship... learned about STARSHIPS by working on BOATS. IN THE OCEAN. AFTER DROPPING OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL.
Agree'd somewhat on B&B but i was talking about the show in general, not their specific contribution to it. I also liked the Xindi arc it's problem was taking up a whole season.
Also, the show cancelling after Season 4 despite the ratings rebound was completely asinine on the part of the Studio because they know that the ratings problems had a lot to do with their own issues with slotting the show and getting coverage, and that if they resolved those issues, Coto and crew would keep bringing in the ratings. Which of course, the "Bring back Enterprise" campaigns did try to point out as i recall and yes, you are right to bring them up. You'd be surprised the vitriol faced by those campaigns however.
I find it funny you bring up Emmissary however, as the mystical parts of DS9 are usually the least liked part of DS9, atleast in the circles i run it, it might be a YMMV issue. It may have done well to drop some elements that had been laid down. But you overexaggerate by saying it'd be like "being set on a starship",it'd be more like them dropping the "Emissary of the Prophets" part of the plot. Funny you mention that though since they did end up adding a Starship and starship focused plots. The reason the Defiant was added since people weren't so fond of being stuck with episodic plots only on DS9 and Shuttles.
Sometimes concepts introduced in the pilot/first season don't sell well and get discarded, and coto and the new writers did a good job on settling that plot in the opener of Season 4 too, a great turnaround from the cliffhanger and showed the talent of the writers to take that and do good with it and then roll with it into season 4 and craft great things. Season 4 also added a lot of meaning to elements of the first 2 seasons, adding to the enjoyment of rewatching those, IMO.
On the other tentacle, I'd just as soon forget about everything from "These Are the Voyages...", thanks.
Have you ever met ANYONE from the southern US? What you just said is as offensive as saying that you can't see how Jump Jim Crow was a racist caricature. There's a reason I loathe season 2 of TNG and prefer to ignore season 1. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHHAHAHAHAA
You clearly don't know me at all.
...
Phlox committed genocide by negligence and created a sentient being for the express purpose of harvesting it for organs.
Tucker got impregnated without consent by an alien, it went ectopic to his RIBCAGE, and nobody had one whit of concern for him, oh no, it was all the f*cking embryo.
Tucker never expressed an interest or opinion that wasn't solidly redneck in every possible way. He even got literally all of his experience fixing AIRBOATS!!!!!
Archer BROUGHT HIS DOG TO AN ALIEN PLANET for SENSITIVE DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS with a species that he knew was obsessed with protocol. That's not just stupidity, that's actively sabotaging the mission!
Let me just break down some ENT stories:
Pilot episode: Blatantly violates canon, Archer p*sses off the Klingons by viewing them through his anthropocentric worldview and projecting his culture's expectations onto their culture despite being repeatedly told what an idiot he's being.
Fight or Flight: Archer insists on piddling around to find out why some aliens are hooked up to tubes ad being drained despite knowing that he ran out here without even a tenth of a full weapons complement and no spare parts, resulting in his ship and crew almost getting killed when the bad guys predictably come back.
Unexpected: Tucker is sexually assaulted/r*ped, nobody cares for him even though the nature of the alien pregnancy is almost certain to result in gruesome death, the whole first act is one big joke about Tucker being high as nobody shows any concern for him, everybody treats Tucker being pregnant as a big joke and he acts in a ridiculous sexist stereotype of an overprotective mother. Offensively stupid.
A Night In Sickbay: This one's been done to death, indescribably awful.
Dear Doctor: Phlox commits genocide by negligence because he's lazy and evolution doesn't work the way he thinks it does.
Bounty: T'Pol's horny, ha-hah, funny! Also Archer gets caught by the worst bounty hunter ever. Again sexist and offensive.
Fortunate Son: Archer says "no, you can't shoot pirates, that's bad!"
Silent Enemy: Despite not wanting to shoot pirates just two weeks ago, Archer brags to the Elachi about how he's going to kill them, then shoots them. Even though by his own logic he just should have sat there and waited to be killed and robbed by them, because you can't use weapons on pirates! That would be self-defense, and that's wrong!
TRIBBLE space lizards episode: Does more really need to be said?
Two Days and Two Nights: God, ANOTHER Risa episode? Ugh. Reed and Tucker get caught in the most obvious honey trap, Archer gets knocked out by an alien whose species he angered and...nothing happens, and Phlox gets woken up from his BS excuse to nap so that he can stumble around like a drunken idiot instead of being a competent CMO.
These Are The Voyages: ...I have nothing to say on this unholy abomination.
Need I go on?
Well that's a serious exaggeration of all of those characters. Reed was descended from Navy men, i highly doubt the modern Royal Navy of the 2100's was using "Antique Cannons", unless you think only 1 division of Earth military keeps up to date. Mayweather was likely selected because of his experience out the outer edges of Earth territory (Which most starfleet pilots would not have), and in "First Flight" it's made clear that at first Archer wasn't even first pick for the Warp 5 program, he had to prove himself.
No but let the Enterprise bashing continue...
I do hate TATV though, so i agree on that.
I don't hate it.
I know people in Ireland - most of my family lives there - and about half of them fit the Irish stereotype to a T. Particularly my father. So...who's anecdotal evidence trumps who's here? Personally I think my anecdotal evidence is superior, because it comes from me, and ipso facto is better, because secretly I'm an Augment and therefore just better. But I suppose you might have a reason why your anecdotal evidence is superior.
I wasn't aware that interest in starship engineering formed a part of the steoreotypical deep south culture.
To be perfectly honest, that is not much different from the situation Worf frequently found himself in aboard D. Worf's entire career with Picard could be summed up as,
Worf: I recommend we raise shields.
Picard: No, we don't want to appear hostile.
[6 members of Worf's security staff proceed to die]
Deanna Troi until Season 5 or so: "I sense great emotion from X, captain." Other than that the only thing she brought to the series was Lwaxana Troi. Which was awesome, but had nothing to do with Deanna.
The Soviets aren't something that Americans typically choose to celebrate, for reasons that should be blindingly obvious. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, the TRIBBLE had the first jet engines, but I doubt you object to the lack of the Luftwaffe in the opening. The Soviets were not nice people, the People's Republic of China is not much nicer, and you may be the first person in the history of criticizing Enterprise to bring up that "fault".
Leaving aside Star Trek: Insurrection since you did specify "series"...unless you specifically mean obvious TRIBBLE/boob jokes, even sqeaky-clean TNG got risque. What do you think Riker was going to Holodeck 4 four? Or referring to when he said "I'm not one to unwrap another man's package?"
Look, dude... good for you for liking and defending Enterprise. I mean that sincerely. If you get a lot of enjoyment out of it, more power to you.
For me, though... Enterprise pisses me off. Why? It could have been great. I thought the idea of a prequel show was fantastic. As I said, I thought the design elements of the show were very good. They sold the show (to me, as a viewer, anyway) as the bridge to The Original Series, and a chance to see an era of the Trek universe never seen before. I even liked the fact that they dropped "Star Trek" from the title (I refuse to call it Star Trek: Enterprise).
They didn't go far enough, though, and I feel cheated as a result.
I'm not going to go over all of these points (though we all agree on These Are The voyages), but a lot of this is either nitpicking, insane (Negligent genocide?), or exaggeration to the extreme.
I get it, for whatever reason you hate the show, maybe B&B pee'd in your cereal or something, but you are blowing things way out of proportion. On balance it was a decent show, its early seasons were on par with any other trek, and with Season 4 it was excellent.
Then you should be mad at its cancellation as well. Surely even you see that had it made a full 7 season run, it would've gone down as a good, if not great, series. The show doesn't TRIBBLE me off, its cancellation does.
BS.
You LIKE watching a grown man act like an entitled, whiny brat for 40 minutes straight, as he abuses his staff, has painfully long and unsexy wet dreams about a famine victim with oversized implants, and generally acts like an overgrown toddler?
BS. But what about the half that don't?
We see exactly one southerner on ENT, and he's a racist caricature. Whose sum total of experience came from a semester fixing boats. He never studied starship engineering. He only studied the extremely stereotypical fixing airboats. I did say that season 2 of TNG offends me and season 1 had GR's Hollywood Liberal stamp all over it in all the wrong places.
Also, season 1 led to a lot of undeserved hate being flung at a guy I really like. So that, too. But she was involved in the development of other characters, a lot, and had other character traits (love of chocolate, exes with Riker, liked helping Data through humanity, etc.).
Token Black flew the ship and...was in space? I think? Fifteenth in my personal experience.
I would, in fact, like to see some Battle of Britain scenes in there. And some Sputnik and Laika and the X-1 and Yuri Gagarin.
Whether you like the Soviets, the PRC, or other such regimes or not, it is an undeniable fact that they have contributed greatly to space exploration, and the height of arrogance to make the intro to a show about a unified, near-utopian future Earth all about how great America is.
I have to say, back then Linda Park looked nice in that nice top in the first episode. But TOS already beat ENT to the punch a long time ago with sexualisation of the show.
I seem to remember a young woman in a cloud city above the troglytes wearing a dress showing a lot of skin as an example on TOS, or those close ups of specific women looking sultry or even the first episode with the talosians, about pike and his first officer and the girl with the red hair. also remember Uhuras dance on Nimbus in the dark that had every man running for her.
What about Janeway in the tub and Q kissing her foot, or Janeway taking a massage from the doctor and he told her to get some clothes on before she left her quarters before resuming her duty station.
What about the various dabo girls on DS9, one of them was a green alien, to bottom of her ample chest hanging out in the early seasons or impela in the later seasons?
what about tng with LT Robinson when she was seduced by Captain Okona? a lot of sexualisation in that one as well.
What the point of the arguement its been apart of trek for some time.
Enterprise was the attempt of a 5 year journey before Kirk's 5 year journey, but that ship not only sailed, but it made it to port. not only did it make it to port but berman decided to turn it around but send it back, only to find out that is was sinking quickly, because it was a story already told and it was a one way trip.
so to hide what is ultimately water that was being taken onboard at a rapid pace, he decided to change the direction of the ship and attempt emergency repairs and pumping out of water, only to find out that season 3 was the titanic downfall of this ship when it hit an iceberg.. or so it was supposed to be...
Coto was found and then patched up the ship, managed to get it back to dock half sunk but only to find out the makers of the ship were so disappointed with the state of it, they want it decommissioned instead of rebuilding the battered ship.
yeah, there was a kickstarter project to raise i think it was 5 million dollars for season 5 that received about half that amount but ultimately it never took off as the target was never reached. the sets were then sold off after that. If there had been a season 5, Shran would of joined the crew full time, the earth romulan war storyline would of been been explored as would the borg origins. but none of that got out of the storyline script phase.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Yeah, that one I'll agree on. But, hey, no series is perfect. "These are the Voyages" gets bad press largely because it's bad and the last episode, but in fairness it's not like it was intended to be the last episode.
A point on "Dear Doctor"...however much we don't like it, it is at least internally consistent with how evolution works in Star Trek. Trek has always gone in for the idea that evolution is more than just survival of the fittest; that evolution is going somewhere, has some kind of goal. And I'm not just talking "Threshold," it's been a part of the franchise since TOS. In that light, the fundamental conflict of "Dear Doctor" - that the Valakians have reached an evolutionary "dead end" and are dying out naturally as a result of it, and so introducing a cure would be meddling in the natural evolution of the Valakians and the Menks - is at least internally, logically sound.
(This comes up in the books as well - the Andorians are a dying people as a result of an error in their genetics, and the only way they have to solve it is genetic manipulation. The Federation forbids genetic manipulation on the scale needed, so the Andorians leave the Federation in order to be able to legally do what needs to be done to save themselves - because otherwise the Federation would have allowed the Andorians to die out due to the Federation stance on genetic manipulation)
Besides which, Phlox isn't human. He doesn't follow the human medical code and does not have human moral values. It could well be, and seems to be the case that, Denobulan medical practice really does view treating the Valakians in this instance as unethical. Really, save for the scale of the episode, this is no different from the episode of TNG wherein Worf lets a Romulan die rather than give blood to save his life. Because Worf isn't human and doesn't have human moral values.
The difference is that Worf is chewed out and punished when he fails to follow those standards in favor of Klingon standards, and Phlox is praised for letting a species die due to terrible understanding of biology and blatant laziness.
And before you say that biology works differently in Trek...it doesn't. Despite Threshold and Dear Doctor trying to make a mess of things, all of the convergence and unlikely biology can be explained by Preserver d*cking around with DNA. So no. Biology doesn't work the way Phlox wants it to.
Missed? hah! They were given a 100% chance to hit a stationary dairy barn 50 meters in front of them with a missile and they missed that by so much they hit the moon instead, no one was happy with the fallout of what Berman and Braga did at that point.
yeah its best not to get into that episode.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Phlox is not a member of starfleet and does not serve under their regulations, he is a civilian crewmember "contracted" under Archer and the Enterprise. He is not beholden to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, just as a Mercenary or Civilian Contractor IRL is not. Besides, he still left it up to Archer, he just begged him not to give the order and pretty much made it clear he would leave the crew if forced to do it. Archer wasn't too fond of the decision he made but made it clear he felt it wasn't his place to make that decision. T'pol in a later episode puts it best when she says "Decisions like these should be left for governments, not starship captains."
Of course in TNG we see that the Federation makes Archers stance a government-wide one so its not like Phlox is an outlier. In SEVERAL episodes Picard is willing to let an entire species go extinct, and only by the interference of others are they saved (Worf gets chewed out when his brother saves a species using the holodeck).
Physics work differently, too - I could be here all day lecturing everyone on basic errors in astrophysics (and I mean things more widespread than an event horizon with a "crack" in it, although in my view no less egregious - don't get me started on wormholes, for instance), but in the Trekverse, those things obviously don't work quite the way they do in ours.
Just as genetic strings dropped into a planet's evolutionary heritage two billion years ago will clearly remain uncorrupted into the 24th century so they can be used to reconstruct a recorded message (TNG, "The Chase"), and will in all cases result in any intelligent life forms evolving into bipedal life forms that look roughly similar. I'm sure that your own studies tell you just how amazingly unlikely either of those proposals are - but there we have them.
Curiously enough, as an emotionally mature adult I have degrees of emotion between "hate" and "like." I never said I liked the episode, I only said that I don't hate it.
What about them? Your point is that no one could possibly fit such a stereotype, but I know and have lived with literally dozens of people who precisely conform to a very similar stereotype. Right now you've basically just claimed that no one likes cake, and I've said that half the people I know like cake, and your counter-point is that half the people I know don't like cake, and so therefore your original point stands, when in fact it obviously does not.
As touched upon, Trip does not conform to any actual racist stereotypes anyway. He's not a drunkard, he's not uneducated - you're being very hyperbolic about the airboat thing, we both know that it's not reasonable to think that a person in charge of a Warp-5 starship has no education beyond airboat repairs - he's not racist save for the general distaste of Vulcans that all humans of the era have (that's humanity's hat in the series), and that distaste is both shown to be negative and something that he works on fixing, if his relationship with T'Pol is anything to go by. Trip isn't a war-monger, either, save for when the Xindi attacked Earth and killed his sister, and that is an emotional response that anyone from anywhere could get as a result of such an attack - it's deliberately meant to harken to 9/11, and frankly Trip's response is tame compared to what I recall some people wanted to do to Afghanistan following that attack.
If the worst thing you can say about Trip is that he likes things that Southerners are believed to generally, like...well, so what?
I feel that showcasting the Battle of Britain would not quite have fit in with Enterprise's opening theme celebrating of human exploration.
Let's be honest with ourselves here, Future-Earth in Star Trek has always been America In Space with just a touch of other cultures for flavor. Even with Picard, it's incredibly easy to forget that he's French at times, particularly given his accent and his love of Shakespeare. If you make this complaint about Enterprise then you're making it about all of Star Trek.
It's a fine and valid complaint to make, but don't hold it up as a unique fault of Enterprise.
Having said that, "the Chase" is a great episode.
Exactly. The episode might as well have been entitled "Proto Directive." I watched it and instantly realized that what we were watching was an episode about a) the Prime Directive before there's a Prime Directive and b) why the Prime Directive has to be followed even if the results are negative.
I'm mad that it had to come to cancelation in the first place, not in the action itself. And that's because of the gross missteps of the show itself, IMO.
I actually put that down to constant tinkering by remaining Preservers.
That was the only way I could justify the brain-hurt. Because you're right, that the sheer weight of statistics is completely against that episode.
I mean, by Green's multiverse hypothesis and the Law of Infinite Possibilities it must've happened by chance SOMEWHERE, but much more likely is constant tampering.
Anyway, I'm sick of this argument and I have to go watch Wrath of Khan with my friends. With everyone wearing Spock ears. Because it's never too late to mourn as a club.
Oh, I'm not denying that. That is one of the reasons why I don't deify Gene Roddenberry, like other fans. It's a sad, systemic issue in the franchise.
My point, though, is that Enterprise took it to sad and unnecessary levels. Seven of Nine never showed off some "side boob," and Kirk never face-planted into a woman's chest and attempted to talk. Enterprise decided to parade T'Pol's TRIBBLE crack around (literally), and allowing their captain to refer to his first officer's large bust in a lame attempt at a boob joke.
And Star Trek, as we know, is Serious Business, so we can't have that...:rolleyes:
so basically the point is made and the bed is sorted, you just dont like the corner folds? an ideal world huh? :P
7of9s catsuit was clearly meant to be a sexualised point as well before it was tuned down a little, and at one point you had 7 naked in the cargo bay when the bored young adolesent Q wanted to have some fun, so that part to an extent about 7of9 is somewhat, cliche like "covered".
kirks eyes and their direction sometimes show more intent then a full on faceplant, frankly that is more sexist then sexualised, the latter being to make something look better then it is with eye candy rather then the former meant to be deliberately insulting.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.