Registered: Mar 2000
Location: NJ
Posts: 517

Enterprise

I'm surprised nobody else has posted anything yet... Enterprise (the new StarTrek series) premiered last night. What did everyone think? I thought it was really good, can't wait to see next weeks! I must admit I was very skeptical going in, and after seeing the rather lame intro (for the credits) I was about to give up hope, but man the show turned out to be really good. Hope the following episodes follow suit. My enthusiasm for Star Trek has been renewed, Voyager's last season wasn't very good IMO. Now between Enterprise and Farscape I've got a reason to watch TV, not sure if that is a good thing or not, hehe.

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Registered: Feb 2001
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I was also surprised that no one had brought this subject up and had planned to do so myself. I also enjoyed the episode and have high hopes for the series. I too found the opening credits to be a little lame and was concerned as well.

The effects and visual impact of the early star ship were great. Also the interactions with new species was good.

I must admit that I have never been a big fan of the temporal paradox episodes in either STNG or STV. I guess that I find them a little illogical.(eg They don't want to get the Humans and Vulcans involved but if they are from the "distant future" don't they already know that the Humans and Vulcans were involved?) I hope that the "Temporal Cold War" doesn't become too much of a recurring theme in the series though I expect that it will.

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Ditto. Overall assessment - pretty darn good. I always liked Scott Bakula, and it's nice to see a kick-ass type in the big chair again. Credits - sucked. I'd prefer to see the temporal aspect toned down.

Great minds think alike.

Registered: Oct 2000
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I liked the Vulcan rub-down (although I doubt the necessity with the technology available). Was Spock full Vulcan? IOW, could we be seeing the get together of his parents already (I'm not a fan of the original series - just TNG)?

It's about time they brought a dog on board. Data's cat should've had to ride outside.

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Registered: Feb 2001
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I thought the porn was gratuitous, especially given that they didn't rub their entire bodies (shouldn't they have), and the amount of time they had to spend under the lights was determined by their temper, not whether the spores were killed.

But whatever. I hated DS9 and Voyager, for the most part. This one looks pretty good.

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Spock was half-Vulcan, half-human, but he had a human mother, and vulcan father (Ambassador Sarek).

I thought Enterprise was great -- good chemistry for a pilot, realistic characterizations (everyone has their own limitations/flaws they need to overcome), some internal conflicts to resolve. I also like some of the little touches, like having to actually puzzle out the alien ship's controls as opposed to other Star Trek shows like Voyager, where the crew just automatically know how to use alien technology.

Registered: Sep 2000
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Yeah, but just wait till T'Pol undergoes the Pon-Farr ...

I'd willingly pay $100 for the NC-17 version of that episode.

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Personally I enjoyed the transition from the Next Generation's portrayal of well-adjusted perfect people in their flying motel to Enterprise's non-politically correct, nity-gritty real people in a believable submarine-esque interior.

I watched the original Kirk and Spock Trek in the late 1960's (when I was about 7 years old) and was a devoted fan up to about Deep Space 9. Then I defected to Babylon 5 in disgust.

While I still think B5 is the best SF on TV to date, bar none, Enterprise has brought back the magic. I will be watching it.

They did have some challenges.

For instance, Captain Kirk's original communicator was supposted to be the latest thing in the year 2300, but it looks pretty crude compared to one of our folding cell phones. Enterprise's updated communicators strike a good balance.

How many of you were ticked by the "phase pistol" reference?

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Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:

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Originally posted by Winchell
How many of you were ticked by the "phase pistol" reference?

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???

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quote:

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Originally posted by dietrichbohn
???

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Registered: Nov 1999
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A bunch of people got together in front of a big screen TV to mock it, and I'm happy to say we pretty much failed.

I didn't like the opening credits, and the rubdown scene was way too obvious. On the other hand, the characters look like they're going to be interesting, and I hope they're able to maintain a certain edginess between them without ruining the fact they're supposed to be working together.

Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:

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Originally posted by John Nowak
I didn't like the opening credits

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Registered: Apr 2001
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Did no one notice the wacked out math they are using in "Enterprise?"

They traveled all the way to the Klingon homeworld from Earth in about 4 days traveling at Warp 4.4.

Keep in mind that they are using the old warp scale (Speed of light = Warp Factor^3) Thus Warp 4.4 is ~85x light speed. Thus they were traveling at (299,792.458 km/s * 85 = ~26,000km/s) Scott Bakula's character said something like "wow we're going 30,000 km/s" which is rounded up I guess.

I know this sounds nitpicky (trust me I've seen some REAL nitpickers having at this show) but seriously it is kind of wacked out.

At Enterprise NX-01's TOP speed of Warp 4.5 (about 91x the speed of light) it would take about 16 days to get to Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighboring star. And yet they made it to the Klingon home world in under a week? Huh?

I usually let little dumb stuff slide, but THAT made do a double take. "The Klingon's are RIGHT next to Sol?!" I was always under the impression that the Klingon homeworld was some distance away. What about the "neutral zone" which existed between the Federations zone of influence and the Klingons' zone? Didn't it have multiple planets and systems in it?

-Trotsky

Registered: Nov 2000
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Hmmmm...overall I guess I liked it. (I'm reserving judgment.)

But these things bothered me:

1) Opening music by Dianne Warren totally sucks. I can't believe that I have to listen to this Bryan-Adams-in-space crap for the forseeable future.
2) Doesn't this show look more high-tech than Kirk's era? This makes no sense at all.
3) The Klingon's blood appeared red; in "The Undiscovered Country", Klingon blood was purple.
4) Dr. Phlox character was WAY too much like Neelix. But he looked like a caucasian cardassian.
5) The comm officer is scared of her own shadow. Ridiculous for any space explorer.
6) Insufficient explanation of Dr. Phlox's species & home planet.
7) Though these Vulcan's were obviously "post-Surak", they revealed way to much emotion for my liking.
8) Extremely unlikely that humans would allow any species to talk them out of space exploration for 100 years.
9) Unbelievable chain-of-command-problems. Can you image any military operation where the first officer and the exec officer argue over whose commanding the ship while the captain's away?
10) Near the end the captain asks the comm officer what the Klingon Chancellor said while brandishing a dagger, and she responds, "You DONT want to know." Can you imagine any other Starfleet captain accepting that as an answer? Unacceptable. To the best of our knowledge, Klingons have never seen a human before. This is a first-contact-situation. If I'm the captain, I want to know everything the Chancellor has to say. Totally unrealistic, given the situation.

But I'll keep an open mind.

-cnegrad

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Last edited by cnegrad on 09-29-2001 at 01:13 PM

Registered: Sep 1999
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I finally got around to watching it last night (love that ReplayTV) and really enjoyed it. The opening music was ok but the lyrics have to go. Guess I'll be skipping over that in the future.

I really liked Bakula's performance, and the other characters were also good. That Doctor does remind me of Neelix too; when he made that big smile it soo reminded me of that guy from Galaxy Quest.

I also liked the widescreen presentation. I'm a big DVD fan and this really added something to the show for me. The preview for next week was full frame though . I hope this wasn't a one-off thing.
Do Vulcan women go through Pon Far? I happened to like the shower scene.


cnegrad, as for your points:

2) It looks high tech because it's a prequel. How advanced was EP:1 (yeah yeah, wars took stuff away, but you get the idea)
3) The blood was made purple to keep ST6 from being rated R in that movie. TV violence is ok. Notice that the corpuscles were still purple. I'm surprised no one mentioned that Klingons in TOS looked like people, but here they are STNG like. There were monetary problems during TOS that prevented them from using fancy makeup, but when Worf talked in the DS9 ep about the tribbles it made it seem like Klingons were supposed to look like humans back then.
4) Agreed
5) She seemed more like a civilian to me. I think the shadow jumpiness is due to her keen hearing. She is the empath of this series.
8) I don't think the Vulcans made humans not leave; they didn't give them any help. I don't like Vulcans now though
9) I think that was to show how the trip was thrown together. TNG was like butter, but here the captain is feeling his way through it all still.

Anyone notice that those Sarilians (sic) were from the Kabal system? Interesting in today's context.

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The ship wasn't "thrown together." They've been itching and preparing for interstellar space travel for the last 100 years. You'd think they'd train their crew a little better than that. Also notice that Starfleet is a totally MILITARY organization (an offshoot of the Navy?) at this point. Where was the discipline? It is so relaxed, it's ridiculous. I totally agree with the "You *don't* want to know" statement. Can you imagine any Naval captain of a battleship of today accepting that kind of answer from a reserve officer? Also what kind of military doesn't have a a clearcut chain of command?

Think of how long it took to build the NX-01 Enterprise. If our government spent X number of years and possibly trillions of dollars building an interstellar ship would they really just "throw" a crew to together? Wouldn't they have had a crew planned for years and years - possibly wwwaaaaayyy over-training them out of paranoia?

These are just stylistic issues. There are some major problems with the show that no one has addressed.

Picard said "A disastrous First Contact with the Klingons caused decades of war, leading to the creation of the Prime Directive." He used this in context of "First Contact" as in the first time the Federation would contact a non-space faring race. Also the Prime Directive is only aimed at non-space faring races.

How the heck would what we saw on "Enterprise" lead to a Prime Directive? The Klingons apparently have "hundreds of Birds of Prey" (implying warp tech) and already know about and have diplomatic relations with the Vulcans. They are waaay more advanced than us apparently.

The thing is that this show is supposed to be all about how the original series universe (and eventually the Next Gen universe) came into being. You'd think they'd be a little more careful with the continuity and timeline. As much as I hated Star Wars: Ep1, (die jar jar!) at least they researched the continuity somewhat.

If all these other species are more advanced than us, have explored a lot of the galaxy already and know about each other.... what's the point of the Federation? It wasn't just a galactic UN. The whole point of the original show as that space was unexplored. Not just by humans but by space faring races in general. Spock, the vulcan was surprised all the time by various planets, as were the Klingons who contested them on sometimes. It wasn't just like "Captain's Log: Well we encountered a strange new world, but Spock had been there already and he read us the description from the Vulcan Encyclopedia of Crap We Don't Have to Explore"

-Trotsky

Registered: Nov 2000
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"Captain's Log: Well we encountered a strange new world, but Spock had been there already and he read us the description from the Vulcan Encyclopedia of Crap We Don't Have to Explore"

ROTFL!! Well said!

-cnegrad

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Full Screen Ahead

Hi All,
The first one were "great". They didn't sport any handheld device(s) on the open show thought? Hope their future shows will make use of such devices.
Also whatever they call it, when the screen is cut-off from the top and bottom by dark space (about 20% viewing from full screen). I hope they are not planning on doing this for the rest of the shows?

Byron

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quote:

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Originally posted by Trotsky
Picard said "A disastrous First Contact with the Klingons caused decades of war, leading to the creation of the Prime Directive." He used this in context of "First Contact" as in the first time the Federation would contact a non-space faring race. Also the Prime Directive is only aimed at non-space faring races.

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With so many things said during the course of the other four series, I think it is pretty hard to create an episode where nothing contradicts anything else and still have it be entertaining. I care more about getting into the current show then worrying about why such and such isn't possible. This isn't to say that those details aren't nice, but I was overly impressed with all the details that were correct (stars moving slower during warp, having to press a button to open the door, rather crude medical tech, no translation devices etc.).

It would be fun to see everything fit, but I don't think it would be possible without sacrificing some. One of the reasons SW Episode1 wasn't great was (IMO) because Lucas followed the history that had already been set up. How exciting can something be when we already know what happens to the characters? Just a thought.

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