Rant: Enterprise: Acquisition

[tuftears]

Since I started playing Star Trek Online the other month, I had a yen to watch the old Star Trek shows. My bro lent me a bunch of DVDs, and Enterprise was the only complete series in there, so... Sure, I'll start there

Comments

[haikujaguar]

The middle-end of Enterprise is some truly awesome writing. Alas, there was enough horrible writing in front of it that people had given up on the show before the new writers turned it around. :/

[tuftears]

By middle-end, you mean seasons 2 and 3? Yeah, I'll continue watching, it hits enough of the right buttons that I'm willing to forgive it one or two clinkers like this one. But yeesh, this one...

[haikujaguar]

Yep, yep. They got some of the Star Trek novel writers to come to the show and start working on backstory for the original aliens, like the Andorians and Vulcans.

[tuftears]

That should be fun, I'll look forward to seeing more Andorian vs Vulcan hijinx. ;)

[okojosan]

Over the past couple of years I've watched all of the Star Trek series (including the animated one!) from start to finish... except Enterprise. A friend of mine tried to watch it and was telling me about blue Nazis and then he couldn't even finish watching it, just gave up because it was so bad. After listening to his complaints I decided I didn't need to see it. :D

Are you arguing that the Ferengi are idiots and could not develop warp technology? Or was that the premise of the show? Because I'd have to disagree with that, the Ferengi are really smart.

(I actually love the Ferengis, the episodes with them were among my favorites on Deep Space 9.)

[tuftears]

I'm arguing that the Ferengi (in this particular episode) behaved like idiots who could not possibly be smart enough to develop warp technology or operate a warp vessel successfully. I picture their ship's computer being a long-suffering soul who has to do its best with their random button-fumbling when all it wants them to do is to give the name of the next destination, and their clan leader having picked that ship to dump the most idiotic Ferengi that would otherwise constantly plague the actually competent ones

[okojosan]

Oh okay! Yes, that is very bad writing. I seem to recall on DS9 there were a few times when Quark seemed to know more about technology than he would really need to, being a bar owner, so I always figured the Ferengi are really quite smart, even if their smarts turn it to "how can I profit off this?"

I most recently watched the original series and found it fascinating to see how it evolved from Kirk trampling all over the utopias he found while claiming "Man is supposed to struggle!" to the ST:NG world where people don't have to work if they don't want to. (I always did wonder how the heck that worked...)

[tuftears]

Post-scarcity civilization! I'm okay with that, they do document that replicators and cheap energy (from anti-matter reactors) provides all their needs.

I don't recall much in the way of original series Trek.

[zorinlynx]

I vaguely remember that episode.

I think the best way to explain the situation is that these PARTICULAR Ferengi were criminals, and not very bright. They were, after all, robbing the ship and behaving like idiots. Just like we have stupid criminals on Earth, I'd kind of expect there to be stupid criminals of each species in a galaxy populated by a number of sentient races.

Of course, being that I saw that episode so long ago, maybe my explanation doesn't work; perhaps these Ferengi are on an official mission or something. But it's a shot, right? :)

[centauress]

An official mission with the side effect of them being banished? ^-^

[caffeinewabbit]

I think there's an unwritten rule somewhere that Ferengi based episodes have to be bad by law or something. Ever see DS9's Profit and Lace? Quark, Rom and Nog are great characters in and of themselves, but holy God was that episode horribly unwatchable. Armin Shimerman officially disowned it.

I watched Enterprise for a little while, but it ultimately felt like a great premise completely squandered. As soon as the words "Temporal Cold War" were spoken, my enthusiasm dimmed, because I've always hated time travel in Trek. It's a beef I have with the reboot too (even though I like it for the most part) - we're already interested in the idea of what came before TOS, you don't need to add all this dumb time travel nonsense to it, just tell us the stories!

[okojosan]

Yeah the time travel in Enterprise was the problem my friend had with it too. :/

[tuftears]

I did not see it! I want to watch the DS9 stuff next, after I get through Enterprise.

Temporal Cold War doesn't bother me too much, I'm waiting to see how it goes. There are definitely a lot of pitfalls that could happen with it. Ultimately the question is going to be whether they can make a good over-arching plotline with it. (or whether they did, since the Enterprise series has finished)

[jordangreywolf]

Glargh. Time travel. Any typical TV story involving time travel makes my brain hurt -- but it especially bugs me when time travel is introduced as an INCIDENTAL technology, brought up every now and then. Like, "Assignment: Earth" (thank you, internet!) -- an episode from the Original Series that I watched in the past few months with Gwendel, and I was boggled about how the episode just starts with Kirk casually mentioning that the Enterprise has gone back in time for research purposes. No great big ordeal, no "we only have 1 in 100 chance of surviving this!" or whatever -- just: Boom. "Here we are in the past, folks! Moving on with our story