Rick Berman: Enterprise May Not Suck Next Year 592
Steve Krutzler writes "Star Trek producer Rick Berman has made his latest comments in a new interview with a British magazine and he says the season finale of Enterprise ("The Expanse") will begin to change the ultimate mission of the show for the better: 'I think our final episode of the season is going to be quite startling because we're going to do a cliffhanger that will put a new twist on the series as it enters its third year.'"
On a related note (Score:5, Funny)
KNW
Bring Back MS:TOW (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bring Back MS:TOW (Score:4, Funny)
He's dead, Jim. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's dead, Jim. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't even watch Enterprise. Why do all the screens have to be flat(?) screen monitors? Looks pretty non-futuristic (ie we have it today)
Re:He's dead, Jim. (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, unless you're displaying something where 3D would be useful there's no reason for a holographic screen.
Re:He's dead, Jim. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because LCDs don't scan like CRTs, thus you don't have the same problems filming them. LCDs are more cost effective in TV or film due to reduced post-production work. They've really revolutionized sci-fi consoles and displays since you don't have to matte them in post. Woo-hah.
Re:He's dead, Jim. (Score:4, Funny)
In all, I'd say about a quarter of the current episodes really made me sit and go "Hey, this is really, really good!" At least half of them I would rate as "very good" Only about two or three would I say that I wasn't a big fan of. To anyone who thinks this is the "Worst. Show. Ever.", Just try suspending the "But this isn't like B5/Farscape/SG1/Buffy" factor for a change. This isn't the same show. It's Star Trek. You aren't supposed to take it this seriously. Yes, Farscape is fantastic. When I get a spare week I'll pick it up again and keep watching. That's when I get a spare week. Enterprise is good as a one-off show and still a hell of a lot better than most shows on TV. I'd much rather watch it than any of this so-called "Reality" TV. If it were that real, all those people would be dead from some mosquito-borne virus. Give me a bit of semi-believable Star Trek over that any day.
It's the lack of show! (Reruns during season!) (Score:5, Interesting)
They play rerun after rerun during the season. I can understand one or two, for a holiday or something.. I've gotten to the point where I assume it's going to be another rerun.
How do they think this is good for the show? Especially considering the show is 2 seasons old, there's not a lot of old episodes to show.
I think the fourth episode of Enterprise was a rerun of the second.
Re:It's the lack of show! (Reruns during season!) (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the fourth episode of Enterprise was a rerun of the second.
But the good thing is that with no real plots or character changes, you can run practically anything at any time.
Genius! YOU CAN RUN SHOWS AT ANY TIME AS LONG AS NOTHING CHANGES.
Yet the fans still watch. WHY? (Pounding chest like Heston) WHY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO YOU STILL WATCH?
Honestly, I stopped watching Star Trek when the characters could not grow, for the exact same reason that you mentioned.
Re:He's dead, Jim. (Score:5, Funny)
Yada yada yada, the enterprise blows up.
Re:He's dead, Jim. (Score:3, Funny)
How to save the show (Score:5, Interesting)
Make it a drama with contiguous episodes. We need mutli-season plot arcs, and an over-arching theme.
How many star trek episodes have you watched where they discover some AMAZING new technology (new weapons, new technology, new energy source etc.), possibly even something that alters the reality of the show (afterlife, alternate realities, etc) and then that development is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN ?
Think about the big shows right now -- Sopranos, The Shield, West Wing, Buffy, Farscape etc... All dramas, no episdoes where everything is resolved in 44 minutes.
One of the worst abuses EVER was in Enterprise, when they found out one of the crewman was FROM THE FUTURE and that there was a time "cold war". They didnt mention it again for like 6 episodes ... they just kept flying to different planets to talk to aliens ...
Why don't they wanna have a Drama? The show is much more difficult to repeat, much more difficult to write for, and much more difficult to produce. However, in exchange for this they get -- loyal fans --.
Re:How to save the show (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How to save the show (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How to save the show (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's not really what Star Trek needs to become relevant. Remember that the original Star Trek did just fine with almost nothing but individual episodes that didn't really connect to each other. But that series had writers willing to write intelligently and take chances. None of the new series have really had that. They have to be sanitized, inoffensive, familiar. When is the last time an episode of Star Trek really took a chance, made a bold stand on something? That's just not what Star Trek is about anymore.
Babylon 5 was the show that sacrificed its episode-by-episode pleasure in favor of a lengthy story arc, and it got away with it because its creator really knew what he was doing. The long story arcs in Deep Space Nine and, to a lesser extent, Voyager were embarrassing because they lacked continuity, forethought, and dramatic integrity, exactly what J. Michael Straczynski brought to Babylon 5. Note I'm not saying Babylon 5 was perfect--it wasn't. But it did this better than Star Trek ever has because it was its entire purpose for being. The Star Trek writers don't know how to do this.
And they shouldn't need to. They need to be true to the precepts that Roddenberry built the show on. But they don't want to do that, because he's dead and Berman is in charge. And with every new "innovation," he buries Star Trek further and further. It's sad, but it's the way it is.
It might be time to put Star Trek to bed. Babylon 5 was the first revolution. What's the next one? I think we're ready.
Re:How to save the show (Score:4, Insightful)
That could have been Firefly, but FOX killed it.
Re:How to save the show (Score:5, Insightful)
No it didn't. It was cancelled just a couple of seasons in. It didn't suit the audience of that time and didn't truly enjoy success until it was syndicated and gained a cult following.
The new trek series have tried to meet the wants of the trekkies while being completely formulaic in order to meet the wants of the average spoon-fed network/viewer.
If HBO picked up a Star Trek option, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up with tight writing, good continuity, and a strong following. Sadly, fat chance of that happening
Re:How to save the show (Score:4, Interesting)
The next one? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The next one? (Score:4, Interesting)
StarGate has all but dropped the mythology and the integration of sci fi and ancient civilization stuff... In past years, they were able to weave an incredible tale based on facts of Egyptian Mythology. Recently, they have pretty much forgotten this stuff. The cliffhanger this year has the opportunity to bring that back though.
Re:How to save the show (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe. I dunno. I don't think I've seen three minutes of a Trek since about season 3 of TNG. This franchise jumped the shark when Data got laid.
Re:How to save the show (Score:5, Interesting)
No wait, hear me out please. I think that Trek has become a bit too goddy-goody. Too polished. The Federation is too nice with their clean carpeted ships and humanitarian attitude.
I imagine a bunch of special operations guys flying around in a souped up Defiant type ship.
Their missions sould be covert ops, taking care of all the dirty work that the Federation needed taking care of. Assasinations(klingons, romulans, the occasional starfleet captain that gets too big for his red suit), scouting, hostage rescue, etc. All the things that Green Berets, Seals and Rangers do. Except in space.
The show would have a (Strazinsky style)story arc, lots and lots of subplots, and would also be told partially in flashback mode.
The sho would focus on the dark side of the Federation's operations. There'd be gratuitous violence. Interrogation, some torture, nuking of entire cities, that kind of thing. Definitely pushing for an R rating.
Ever wonder what really happened to Sisco? Ask the captain of this ship. Who planted the swamp thing that killed Tasha Yar? Yup, it was my guys. Except that they f*ked up. The grease slick should have killed Riker. Oops.
Turns out that the Federation isn't really so perfect after all. That's the point. And these commandos have to fly around and clean up the mess and try not to make too much of a mess themselves.
Think NYPD Blue meets Babylon 5 meets Rambo meets DS9. Gritty. Profane. Huge stories. Mega violence. Poltical intrigue. Powerful storytelling. Believable characters with growth potential. Plot continuity. They could even pull stories out of the headlines(or war reports).
I really think a show like this would appeal to a whole new audience. Maybe with the commando slant they could get a portion of the crowd that likes war movies. Maybe with the NYPD Blue plot elements they could pick up some of that crowd. And maybe they'd bring back some of the older Trek crowd because the flashback storytelling and obligatory time travel episodes would show that there were some otherthings going on behind the scenes in TNG, DS9, TOS and Enterprise.
Oh yeah, about the ship. It's an advanced Defiant class. A bit smaller than the type we saw on DS9. It's painted black, and can drop undetected into a planet's atmosphere to put troops on the surface. It's armed with the standard trek weapons, as well as nuclear warheads.
It has a cloaking device. This was secretly developed by the Federation after they reverse engineered the one that Kirk stole from the Romulans. Here's the killer. The ship can fire and use the transporter while cloaked. It can also be cloaked and shielded at the same time, and can still shoot and transport. It has a kind of replicator/transporter hybrid. To a small extent it can pull blueprints of something out of the computer and beam it somewhere.
The ship is a freakin killer. And it's the biggest secret the Federation has.
The guys themselves run around with phasers, M-16 type rifles, knives, and Klingon Bat-Lets. They have stolen(reverse engineered) Jem-Hadar personal cloaks, and personal short range transport devices. And the command crew thinks nothing about using their shield penetrating transporters to beam a nuke into a Romulan engine room.
Yeah, I've thought about this quite a bit.
Re:How to save the show (Score:5, Interesting)
The closest thing I can think of for them to do with Enterprise is to have them screw up. I can't remember seeing even one morally ambiguous situation from this series, and it's boring me to death. That episode where the Enterprise crew helped some fuel farmers or something run off Klingon bullies, with absolutely no one getting hurt despite booby traps and phaser/disruptor fire? It was so limp. It was essentially 'bullies are bad'. Well, no shit.
The Enterprise crew needs to screw up terribly. Someone should die because of them. They should go somewhere with all their self-righteous crap and totally screw up another civilization because they don't understand, and they can't learn to understand in 44 minutes.
The Next Generation wasn't controversial, but it had some morally ambiguous moments, like when Picard left a planet to suffer from withdrawal symptoms because the Prime Directive said not to and he figured they would be better off in the end. Enterprise needs something like this, because I never get the sense that the crew is getting the shocks that would challenge them to really think and mature as characters. And frankly, if there are characters that are going nowhere (like Harry Kim from Voyager, I haven't been able to sit through enough episodes of Enterprise for an example from that) kill them off and try bringing in something new. Is there anyone that doesn't think killing off Tasha Yar and increasing the profile of Worf was good?
***MEGA SPOILERS*** (Score:5, Funny)
Re:***MEGA SPOILERS*** (Score:3, Informative)
Re:***MEGA SPOILERS*** (Score:5, Funny)
Re:***MEGA SPOILERS*** (Score:5, Funny)
Same old stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Same old stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
The show doesn't need any kind of hiatus at all as long as what they do come up with doesn't suck donkey ass. I think it's time for some new blood. Preferably some writers who aren't content just to live off past glories.
The only way they can go is up.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, it's not a representative sample but from what I see Enterprise just doesn't appeal to its expected audience.
Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:5, Insightful)
I DO like Enterprise but after reading the article to find out that the Borg are going to be in an upcoming episode. I feel sick.
Paramont please fire Berman and replace him with someone who does not rehash old ideas and thinks they are exiting story lines. It took are huge letter campaign to get ST from Paramount/Gulf-Western/Desi-Lu's closet to the Big Screen. Anyone want to write to "Impeach Berman" ?
What's next have a new young helm officer named James T. Kirk?
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:5, Interesting)
This post made me read the article. This post also made me want there to be a "deeply frightening/disturbing" moderation. I won't comment on the line about how they have been discussing other cross-overs...
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:5, Interesting)
The episode you're referring to is Trials and Tribbulations. Although they pretty much skipped over the time traveling part of it, the episode as a whole was one of the best imho. It has a lot of good humour (Worf's "We don't talk about it!", referring to the ridgeless Klingons of Kirk's era), and the effects were just superb. The scene where O'Brien and Bashir were in the lineup, with Kirk having a go at them all was just fantastic. The blending of old and new footage was the best I've ever seen. I'm a big fan of DS9, and this is a prime exmaple of why.
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:3, Interesting)
The temperal cold war will probably involve several interactions with the events from other series.
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:4, Interesting)
Your kidding right?
The borg is virtually unknown in the alpha quadrant for at least 2 more centuries until Picard is introduced to them by Q.
They are by leaps and bounds alot smaller and have barely a few dozen worlds conquered in the delta quadrant where they are more known during this time.
If the borg wanted crappy 22nd federation technology that barely works( 22nd is leaps behind the 24th of picards day and many more advanced civilizations have much advanced technology)then they could of easily been assimilated. The borg would of done so long before even Kirck or Spock are born.
I do not watch enterprise due to work and school demands. I did watch one eposide where John Archer talks with Vulcan medical experts on a controversial mind meld from a certain group of vulcans. The vulcans were highly illogical and prejudice against certain vulcans who have the gift. They acted very emotionally towards any hint or rational thought and believed in stereo types about these kinds of people.
Then I watch tos and spock mentions how he thinks humans are highly illogical because of their prejudices???
Gimme the Borg! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:4, Interesting)
Ie. Not the Borg we're utterly sick of but a kind of proto-borg that we know the future of but the Enterprise crew don't so they can remain unknown until TNG time.
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:3, Funny)
I hate to quibble over Trek, of all things, but I think you'll find that the Borg did just that in [amazon.com]
Star Trek - First Contact.
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually my two greatest problem with the series are, Time Travel episodes and that it misses totally the idea of story/world development. Or the script-writers total disrespect for a consistent world, and its evolvement, should it be inconvinient for new story spins.
Why should it play in the past, when everything which exists in the future already occurs. Great deal, they don't have it, but everyone else has stuff they don'
Re:Rick Berman Needs to GO (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all old ideas, tho'. Example: they don't have shields, but the writers are too lazy and stupid to do away with the shields-are-failing plot device, so they substitute the words "hull polarization" and carry on as before. Everyone loved it when Scotty said "the engines will nae take it, cap'n!", so the engines are underpowered in almost every episode. Kirk explored the galaxy, kicking ass in a battlecruiser full of a well trained crew and backed up by a powerful space navy, but the writers have Archer doing the same thing in Star Fleet's only ship, which is not only technologically inferior to every other spacefaring race, but his crew are also range from inexperienced to clueless. There was a crawling-though-the-jeffries-tubes episode the other night, but they called it "the catwalk". The captain's sidekick is a drawling good ol' boy from the South, except now he's the engineer instead of the doctor. And the doctor is the chef from Voyager, and the Vulcan is a poor man's 7 of 9.
The one thing that's good about Enterprise is the cute translator. The camera should just follow her around.
Poor Man's 7of9 (Score:5, Funny)
If Jolene Blalock [maximonline.com] is a poor man's Jeri Ryan [wearetheborg.com], I want to be the most penniless pauper in the world.:)
Big change... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Archer will change into a woman, he's touchy feely enough already.
There's no justice in this world. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There's no justice in this world. (Score:3, Insightful)
- Conceive show
- make pilot
- promote promote promote
- show pilot
- run series
- Make money!!
Some how- conceive show
- make pilot - but don't show anyone
- run series - but don't tell anyone
- don't make money
- cancel series
- run pilot
That just isn't as impressive.Geez.. I kinda like it... (Score:5, Insightful)
ST Sidenote (Score:5, Informative)
I really wanna hear a comment from Wil. (Score:5, Interesting)
I really wanna hear from CleverNickName [slashdot.org]
And screw the political sidestepping of the issue. Wil, how would _YOU_ fix it? WWWWD? Inquiring minds want to know!
Don't make me get my dueling glove.
Re:I really wanna hear a comment from Wil. (Score:5, Funny)
Wil can't really comment about stuff like this otherwise bad things will happen, like having all his scenes mysteriously cut from future movies.
Oh, wait...
It worked on Voyager, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
...And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon guys... It won't stop sucking until Berman is out of the driver's seat. He doesn't know how to do anything truly creative. He was Roddenberry's financials guy, for crissake, not the creative pillar behind the series.
Spoiler Alert (Score:5, Funny)
And the new plot will be... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And the new plot will be... (Score:5, Funny)
In an ironic twist, Archer will actually have to let Rick Berman die in a freak truck accident after having fallen in love with him.
Cliffhanger (Score:5, Funny)
Enterprise Bridge. Archer occupies the captain's chair, his crew working busily around him. Archer suddenly sits bolt upright, and then sags as if exhausted.
Archer: I feel a great disturbance in the force.
Crew: The whaa?
Change in mission (Score:5, Funny)
What about Q ? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Q"? That'd be a stretch. (Score:4, Interesting)
WTF? (Score:3, Funny)
Then again, the plots are SOOO crappy that I never actually get to enjoy the benifit as my TV won't actually let me tune into the channel playing it...
I mean, there was an entire episode that I dragged myself through, where two people were on a shuttle running out of air, thinking that enterprise was destroyed, going back and forth about how they don't wanna die. That's not entertaining, that's like pulling teeth... Hell, Enterprise is like watching paint dry... except it never seems to dry... it's painful... make it stop!!!
Bullshit. Just more hype (Score:3, Interesting)
My take on this: of course he is going to say it won't suck! His job is to make a good show, and get people to watch it so the station can make money. If his show sucks, no one will watch it, and he won't get another paying job.
We have seen a TON of hype about TV lately (always?) and more than 95% of the time it is bullshit. Marketting hype.
Recent example: Fox TV: Joe Millionaire will make his decision next week! reality: No, just a filler episode, people boycotting Fox for lying.
Too many commercials anyway.
Cliffhanger elements considered by Paramount (Score:5, Insightful)
Actual cliffhangers considered by Paramount:
Sorry, that was one was added by me.
The best TV-watching decision I've made all year was deleting Enterprise from my list of TiVo Season Passes. I'm a huge DS9 fan (still rewatching episodes as they air), I watched every episode of the other series (well, I missed a few Voyagers, I think you understand), but I can't believe people are still watching Enterprise.
The Slashdot story I'm waiting to hear is that Terry Nation's Survivors is coming out on DVD. Terry Nation was a science fiction script writer who could actually write.
Three Words (Score:5, Funny)
I just hope they change the theme music (Score:4, Insightful)
The Gee Whiz Factor. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many nasty things you can say about Rick Berman: lousy writer, assumes audience consists of morons, rips off actors and writers, etc. But even if he had none of these issues, he'd have no hope of producing a watchable SF series. 'Cause he has no idea what SF is.
He thinks SF is all about the Gee Whiz Factor. Fancy effects, pretentious pseudo-science, lots of gadgets. That's why he abandoned the Picard/Sisko/Janeway thread: it was getting to hard to top himself with fancier and sillier gadgets and effects. So he goes back a couple centuries, where he can derive GWF from the "this is where it came from" element.
Real SF has nothing to do with the GWF. It's about playing with ideas, fiddling with them, seeing where they will go. That's why Star Trek developed a serious following in the first place.
Enterprise has pro forma "ideas" of course. But they're lame, silly, invented by retarded people who don't even know Junior High science.
Ironically, absence of the GWF is also why Stargate SG1 is doing so well. Which is really weird, because the premise of SG1 has got to be the silliest ever. (The USAF is secretly involved in intergalactic exploration and warfare? Yeah, right.) But the better SG1 episodes do what Star Trek used to do -- find interesting ideas and use them to tell simple interesting stories.
Re:The Gee Whiz Factor. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't even bother watching Enterprise. It has none of the campy 60s feel of TOS, none of the fine acting or writing of TNG, and none of the interesting characters of DS9.
They need to stop poorly imitating Voyager (why would you imitate crap?) and start coming up with NEW ideas
What's wrong with it now? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason I like Enterprise is because it's more "humble". There really isn't a prerequisite to the show, so I was able to be introduced to "Star Trek" just as the crew (staff) of the show is. It's less technical and deals more with the human experience. (Like Voyager) I heard that people dislike the intro, but I think it works very well. It keeps up the "human"/"humble" theme. Even though the orchestra openings are good, I don't think there's a problem with the opening song (Faith of the Heart). (BTW, if you want to see what the Orchestra version would of been like, a "leaked" recording is here [magnet]*.)
Now that I got into Enterprise, I've also started watching Voyager nightly, and now TNG on the "New TNN" and I'm having a new appreciation for Star Trek as a really good collection of shows, instead of the stereotype "geek" show that I used to make fun of.
Anyways, I hope they don't mess up the series. The last few episodes ("Stigma" & "Canamar") have been pretty good, "Stigma" went on about the politics of an AIDS-like disease among the Vulkcans (via Mind Meld). Though, they should of done something like that years ago.
I'll keep watching.
The only hope... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn you Berman! Damn you to hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Enterprise has already broken the star trek timeline so many times that it's just not funny anymore. The plot lines are cheesy rip-offs and hold no future for the show.
I bet his idea of "quite startling" is "implied nudity" and "cliffhanger" is "predictable ending" and "new twist" is "old and abused nonsense."
Sorry,I screwed up when I submitted this.. (Score:5, Funny)
"Rick Berman: Enterprise may not suck next year, but it probably still will."
Sorry for the mixup.
The only truely consistant are the dead (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm talking about mixing in some suspense and drama with the sci-fi/speculative fiction.
Kill some characters off. Make the ones that don't change. Have a plot that lasts. The soft-porn sections are (let's be honest) nice, but I'd trade them for a plot.
Why Enterprise will continue to suck (Score:4, Insightful)
When asked about the backlash brought on by the atrocious theme, Rick Berman's response was "I like it". That there, to me, is the whole problem. Berman doesn't give a shit about what anyone else thinks. If he likes it, good to go. And, since Berman has shitty taste and doesn't know the first thing about Trek, we're stuck with substandard crap.
Crossover - Bring on 7 of 9! (Score:4, Funny)
She, with her big boobs and tight jumpsuit, managed to improve the ratings of Voyager so much (and disgusted me enough to stop watching it) that it kept going for years.
So, bring in a crossover with her and the show will do fine. Of course, it will stop being believable, but who cares if you can see a nice chick with big booms in a jumpsuit?
Re:Crossover - Bring on 7 of 9! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crossover - Bring on 7 of 9! (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeri Ryan played a woman in a tight jumpsuit that played a character that didn't quite catch on to humanities finer points like emotions and social interaction.
Jolene Blalock is a woman in a tight jumpsuit that plays a character that doesn't quite catch on to humanities finer points like emotions and social interaction.
no time travel, defective ship (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with Enterprise is that the basis is time travel and crummy technology. It was doomed from the start. Both of these plot devices force the writers to cheat, back peddle, and generally create unbelievable plots. The best thing the writers can do is to assume a good enough ship, ditch the time travel arch, and concentrate on character development and other basics of good story telling.
I'm glad I don't watch Enterprise regularly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nevermind that they had never been heard of prior to the last season of The Next Generation, and nevermind that Voyager already tried to ret-con it so that Seven of Nine's parents actually knew about them prior to the events of "The Best of Both Worlds," and nevermind that each successive appearance of the Borg in TV and film has made them less interesting, but can the writers come up with no better ideas? Even after the Borg were introduced in The Next Generation, the writers kept trying new things and didn't rely on them. Deep Space Nine's Dominion plotline was dramatically insulting, but they found a way to deal with non-Borg life. Voyager I can understand, since that show took place a long way away from the Federation, but... but... Enterprise?!?
Mr. Berman, hear this: If you have to rely on the Borg to make your show interesting, you need new writers! And quick!
....I must be missing something. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just deliver on the promises! (Score:5, Insightful)
That recent "Stigma" episode (T'Pol has mind-meld disease) was as far from "Star Trek with phasers" as you can get. On the other hand, that recent "Canamar" epsiode (Con Air, in space) was pretty cool.
Here is the best hope for the series: Berman and Pillar have stopped writing all the episodes. Every time I watch Enterprise, I make careful note of who wrote the episode. The whole first season was purely written by Berman and Pillar. Recently, we have had a string of episodes written by other writers.
If they want to make us happy, they ought to get some scripts from actual SF authors. How about John E. Stith [neverend.com], David Weber [baen.com], or Catherine Asaro [physicscentral.com]? (I draw the line at Piers Anthony [rinkworks.com], though...)
steveha
I have inside information... (Score:5, Interesting)
Young James Tiberius Kirk is rescued from a giant space rat or something. They let him drive the ship for a little bit, but Wesley Crusher visits from the future, and convinces Kirk that it's a really really bad idea, so Kirk leaves the ship to train as an Iron Chef (Iron Klingon). The entire timeline is changed, except for Wesley, who now travels in a battered blue police box, and is thus immune from the changes he has wrought.
In the meantime, when the Klingons attack Earth after trying Kirk's attempt to cook gagh, and a Vulcan shuttle transporting young Sarek crashlands onto the Picard vineyards, killing the entire family. Just to play it safe. The bistro in New Orleans where Sisko came from can stay. Good restaurants in New Orleans are surprisingly hard to find.
Finally, young Checkov discovers that he has psychic powers, and the rest of Starfleet travels off to meet the Minbari.
OK, we could only wish. But the ultimate problem with what Star Trek has evolved (devolved?) into is that the producers don't actually have a story to tell. They have episodes, and a made-by-committee chronowar goulash to hold it all together. They just don't get it. They need a continuing story, where you can't get everything if you miss a couple of episodes.
They also need to start killing off redshirts. No one on the crew has died so far (at least on the episodes I've watched). I want to see Crewman Jones choke to death on space pollen. I want to see a crew member shipped home because of genetic damage caused by routine exposure to the Warp V engine. I want to see some sacrifice here, space people.
I wanna see them complete f*ck up an undeveloped world trying to do good, resulting in the creation of the Prime Directive. It's got to be bloody, and horrible. I want to see them drop off on an unsuspecting planet that really nice scientist who thinks that the Nazis could have been a good idea - but he's really just an evil Nazi bastard like all of them are and secretly went there to create the Fourth Reich in all its glory. [want an alternate universe story? Starfleet vs. Nazis armed by the Klingons].
AND, they need to drop all of their useful crutches, that means:
1. No holo-anything. Not even holo-trinkets from Vulcan.
2. No transporter malfunctions that result in anything other than painful and irreversable death.
3. No mirror-universe
4. No mirrors - let's play it safe here.
5. No Borg
6. No Q. OK, maybe Q, but they can't remember ANY of it at the end of the episode.
7. No time travel chrono war. Have it all resolved in a very special episode with special guest stars Wil Wheaton and John DeLancie.
8. No decon gel. Let's get real, folks. Just let them have space-sex, and we'll get all the fan service we want. Just give us an honest space-erotic massage, and I'll be happy.
Need a plot? War with the Klingons. War with the Romulans. Peace protestors at home. Vulcan and French disapproval of Starfleet military intervention.
Here's a New Direction (Score:3, Interesting)
For the intellectual part of the show, they could concentrate on inter-clan wars, the empire itself, and its culture-rich religion.
Sex appeal is the only problem. Sure they have their tits hanging out of their uniforms all the time, but those nasty-ass ridges don't do it for me.
Oh yeah, and there wouldn't be any time-travel, whiney women/geekey men, or techology based episodes, because the klingons wouldn't give a damn, and if they did, they'd just kill the offenders.
DS9 , so good it should not be classed a Trek show (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to take several of the points against DS9 on right here and now.
# The hero or heroic group does not have to make a physical journey so much as a spiritual or experience based one. Go back and reread Jospeh Campell's Hero With A Thousand Faces or The Power of Myth. Time and time again little minds always equate the heroic call to journey as a travel based journey. Space is only one dimension of experience. Go read Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) for more on experience and expansion thereof.
# DS9 the station may have "sat" there but the characters in it moved across time, space and experience.While other Trek show characters simply mouthed the required catch phrases ("make it so" "blah blah blah logical" "I cana change the laws of phsyics") DS9 characters had to grow, had to expand, had to come into conflict not just with the swirling universe around them but the swirling turmoil in their own selves.
Once again we are hitting on the narrow minded ideas of what makes a Star Trek Production good.
# Besides the many great topics hit on by WolfDaddy take a look at how they dealt with the issue of Race. Many times the plot of a show or arc of shows had to do about a characters race and the conflicts they have in being that race.
The Captian himself has to come to grips with this in the alternate flash back universe of Benny, the black science fiction writer living in the middle of the 20th century.
# DS9 also looked under other unseemly issues that most of the other Trek shows glossed over. In the other Trek shows the Federation were a group of happy content citizens whose every basic need is catered to. In DS9 we finally see the cracks in the Federations shiny armor. People are still fsked up, people are still people rather than holier than thou walking talking good will ambassadors.
I can see where many die hard Trek fans would find this a bad thing. They were happy knowing they were part of a just and right thinking future and here DS9 comes along to tell them all is not as it seems.
Have you ever been to a movie house full of die hard Trek fans? Watch and listen to them. They will cheer as certain catch phrases are used, start citing chapter and verse detailed factoids as to way such and such cant be happening
"well in the third season shows 23 it was clearly shown that Sub Commander Thalls second half sister was on that planet when it was destroyed by speices 776523 and so that character can not be in this movie because that would cause a rip in the space time continuity"
and will have this warm happy glow on their faces no matter how bad the movie or show was. Why? Compare and contrast the audience in a Jimmy Swagart revival or in the audience of any evangelical church gathering. See something interesting? I knew you would.
haiku (Score:5, Funny)
tall man with glass jaw
why do you talk so strangely?
your father watches
Hoshi:
sad little Hoshi
Universal Translator
her only lover
Mayweather:
silent, empty chair
what is my function, captain?
the captain hears not
Tucker:
banjo pickin' boy
leave space before she bites you
on your redneck ass
Reed:
they are all your foes
you're only course, sacrifice
serve the greater good
Enterprise sucks because it's a propaganda tool. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.trektoday.com/news/010203_03.shtml
I don't know about you, but I've been aware of AIDS for almost 20 years now and I don't need Rick Berman and company to tell me about it.
It would be so nice if the producers understood that stories that are little more than contrivances and vehicles for political and social propaganda aren't something that people are going to relate to. The sad thing is, the people behind this program probably don't even realize what they're doing. Hollywood is so intellectually inbred that they probably believe the programs they're creating will actually resonate with audiences. While these shows might resonate with the people behind the camera, out here in the real world they come accross as a steaming pile of PC.
The job of television programming is to entertain. It is NOT the job of television programming to propagandize. Whenever the people behind a program become deluded into believing that they can use the show to push whatever social or political ideology they subscribe to, the quality invariably suffers.
Part of what makes Farscape so great is that the show doesn't have an agenda beyond entertaining its audience. It makes me wonder if the fact that it is an US/Australian production has anything to do with that. Did the producers have to leave the country before they could make a decent show? What role did its lack of preachiness play in USA network's decision to cancel it? If you ask me, they cancelled it because it makes the rest of their lineup look like a bad joke. I'm almost afraid to see what its replacement, Tremors, is going to be like. How can one create a sustained story line from such a simplistic plot as people running away from underground monsters? Its good enough for an action movie, but hardly something that makes for a weekly TV show.
I can't really complain though since I almost never watch TV. Farscape and Stargate are about the only things I make an effort to watch on a regular basis, and now that Farscape has been killed off I suspect I won't even bother to tune in for Stargate.
Lee
I believe I've heard this before (Score:3, Insightful)
- Tossing in the Defiant will fix Deep Space Nine because now they can get off the station (well, they could with the runabouts too, but those weren't cool enough)
- Tossing in Worf will fix Deep Space Nine because now we'll have Klingons, and Klingons R Kool
- Tossing in a big multi-year bunch of B5-envy will fix Deep Space Nine because we didn't know what this show was supposed to be about in the first place, and the Bajoran/Cardassian thing is getting boring.
- Tossing in Seven of Nine and killing off Kes will fix Voyager because Borg R Bitchin' and you can never have too much of them
- Jumping 10 years closer to home will fix Voyager because everything we've set up with the Kayzon and the plague and stuff just isn't working
Sigh. I believe anime term for this kind of viewer abuse by a long-running series is "Tenchi Restart Money-Grab". It's obnoxious, and nobody should be falling for it anymore.The root problem: Archer's an idiot. (Score:5, Insightful)
- "The Andorian Incident": The transporter is new and not guaranteed to work. By taking hostages, the Andorians have already forfeited their lives, but rather than beaming them out, an away party is beamed in.
- "Cold Front": Near the end, Archer has a phaser on Silik, yet does not kill him.
- "Fortunate Son": The Enterprise away team is under fire from the freighter crew. They could have had their opponents beamed out or heavy weapons beamed in--on the gripping hand, neither option would be necessary if Starfleet Academy could find non-Stormtrooper marksmanship instructors.
Conclusion: The protagonists' survival is attributable solely to their being characters in the Star Trek universe. Were they nonfictional, they wouldn't last five minutes in a firefight.What? (Score:4, Funny)
It could be true! (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's how to make Enterprise thoroughly kick ass! (Score:5, Funny)
A coalition of governments, led by the humans, have constructed a space station, let's call it Beladon 6. It is located in nuetral territory orbiting a planet called Eksilop 2.
The purpose of this station is to provide a place for humans and aliens to work out their differences in peace. It's a home away from home for diplomats, officers, wanderers, business people and others.
Jonathan Archer is put in charge of the station, at the request of the Klingons, which is kinda strange.
By the end of 2258, nothing is the same any more. The Klingon ambassador names Volann, has put herself into some sort of cacoon, and a mysterious alien presence has made an appearance. These aliens appear to be immensely more powerful than any other race around.
We then jump ahead to 2259, where captain Archer has, mercifully, been reassigned to duty on the Klingon homeworld. Strangely, the series seems to improve considerably after that. To replace him is captain Sherinnian, a war hero of the Earth-Klingon war.
About this time, Volann comes out of her cocoon and is a human-Klingon hybrid named Torres (no relation). We also meet a species called the Suliban who use technological means to simulate the effects of magic. We learn in a spin-off series of books that they were created by the mystery race to be weapons.
Sherinnian and Volann fall in love, get married and have a child, but who really cares about that crap anyway.
The mysterious alien race send an agent to speak to all the ambassadors on the station. Along with him are invisible members of the alien race, who we later find out has a name so long we could never pronounce it, so we just call them species 8472 (again, no relation).
Aaaanyway...
Sherinnian leads a coalition of the will... no, an army of light... no, a FEDERATION!, in a war against species 8472. We finally beat them by not fighting at all (don't ask), but we later find out that they had dark allies serving them that are just as dangerous, called the Borg. We'll be dealing with them for a LONG time.
There's also some crap a few seasons down the road about people with telepathic abilities, and Berman and Braga expertly set up a war between them and mundanes for the NEXT Star Trek series, which should start some time around Enterprise' fifth season.
Hmmmm... this all sounds kinda familiar actually...
Don't worry... at the end, Q shows up, resets the timeline and Enterprise goes back to sucking hairy moose cock again.
All I keep watching for is the slim hope that one of Hoshi's tits will pop out during a gel scene and the editors and censors will miss it.
God this show sucks!
Woohoo - goodbye karma ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Until Enterprise came along, I hated Star Trek. I didn't find ANY of it entertaining, from TOS, DS9, and whatever else was out there. I gave every new series a shot because it was considered the 'geek-correct' thing to do. For years I hid my shame, and hid my disdain for ST.... No longer!
Yes, you read that right - I'm a geek, I hate Star Trek, and love enterprise... Mod away!
The Crappola just gets Deeper and Deeper (Score:5, Funny)
"I think our final episode of the season is going to be quite startling because we're going to do a cliffhanger"
Mullet:
"Um, Rick, what series season finale doesn't end with a cliffhanger?"
Rick:
"We're talking about a change that is going to, to some degree, alter our mission and, to some degree, change the tone of the series"
Mullet:
Oh, I see. So we're moving away from seeking out new life and exploring new civilizations now? Gotcha. Good call. That was overrated anyway."
Rick:
"The Expanse" will continue a Klingon story arc beginning in "Judgment" and also introduce an attack on planet Earth
Mullet:
"Ah yes... I heard about that VERY SIGNIFIGANT EVENT from the other Trek series... Yes, so memorable it wasn't mentioned by anybody before this series... Very sneaky. You should get a +1 Insightful."
Rick:
"One of [the last four episodes] is going to be a fascinating Borg encounter," he told the mag. "Which is interesting in that Starfleet had never heard of the Borg before Picard. So we have managed to deal with that in what I feel is a very interesting fashion."
Mullet:
"The Borg! Wow! Wait, let me guess-- The crew will A) Forget of their existance by the end of the ep or B) Not recognize them as Borg and feel their presence so insignificant as not to report it in the chain of command thereby filling Picard with COMPLETE surprise three centuries later when he encounters them. Like the Ferrengi. I'm sensing a trend here, Rick."
Rick:
"We've discussed everything from a young 'Sarek' to 'Q' [John de Lancie] to 'Kirk' [William Shatner]."
Mullet:
"I understand, Rick. That's kinda what happens when you have the creative genious of a rock. Gotta fall back on something, and far be it from me to suggest that something be original..."
You know, I can already see it... By the time Rick is done with this series, it's going to look like it's been through a blender on frappe'. It will be like the Star Trek V or Highlander 2 of the trek series-- Universally maligned and disowned. Many will pretend such a mistake simply never existed. The Borg? Serek? Q?! As if the time travel crutch weren't enough, you have to rape all of the other series for their creativity as well? Somebody picked AT RANDOM with absolutely no directing experience from the Slashdot crowd could do a better job than this spider monkey... I move we file Intent of Assination. All in favor?
Re:hope its true (Score:5, Funny)
They're getting older though... It'd be "Star Trek: Seniors in Space". Although ST has been shit since DS9, I mean... Come on, It's ben way too much ficussed on "character building", I want some action too. I'm sure that even in the future normal human arrogance, greed and innate hostility still remain. Coupled with big-ass spaceships, this SHOULD make an excellent combo. Instead, we're getting to see how Sisco governs a space station with mentally incapable crew, a less annoying incarnation of Wesley Crusher and Silly Putty as a security officer, with the supporting cast of the one and only non-hostile Cardassian and a derelict Ferengi whose brother has the Ferengi equivalent of Down syndrom. Yay.
I'm not even going to mention Voyager. Come on, dealing with the Borg to attack another, even more powerful species and STILL win, with a ship that's build for long range exploration/scouting. I mean, Picard had his ass kicked by the Borg and that was the fcking FLAGSHIP. Also, Janeway is an idiot. "Oh no, we're 75 years away from home! Instead of the quickest route home, we'll visit every little cloud of dust we see and seriously ruin any culture we come across! Tally-ho!"
No more Star Trek for me, I'll miss Shatner and his magically ripped shirts, along with Patrick Stewart and his shiny dome...
Re:Save us from Berman (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Save us from Berman (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't seen the episode "Dear Doctor" but I just read the text about it on startrek.com wondering what was awful and amoral and found out that what was awful and amoral is the genesis of the oft talked about prime directive. Now you can think what you want of the prime diretive (that it is awful and amoral to you apparently) but I am surprised that you seem to have developed these feelings watching that episode and not by watching one of the countless episodes where they have dealt with the prime directi
DS9 did not suck! (Score:5, Interesting)
The tradeoff is you pretty much had to watch it every week for it to make sense and play well, but that's not exactly unique to that show (West Wing comes to mind.)
As for Enterprise, I would probably watch it if it wasn't in the same timeslot as West Wing.
As for Berman, he's an idiot. The studio stuck a studio guy in what is a creative man's job. He's trying to make Trek work by doing what worked for Trek before, not realizing that worked for Trek before was doing something that Trek had never done.
The Borg wern't cool because they're the Borg. The Borg were cool because they were something Trek had never seen. Like Tribbles and evil copies of main characters from a parallel dimension, they're only good for so many episodes.
Re:So that means the first season sucks? (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. It doesn't suck but it's not Earth-shatteringly great either. But then again, first season of TNG sucked, and I think that first season of Enterprise was better than first season of TNG.
Re:So that means the first season sucks? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.firsttvdrama.com/enterprise/index.php3 [firsttvdrama.com]
Re:Borg (Score:5, Interesting)
Then came First Contact. What a travesty. Oh look, the Borg aren't really communists, they're actually a capitalist society taken to it's illogical conclusion (from 'the individual matters' to 'only one individual matters'). They became yet another comic book villain. Wonderful. Like we need more of them . Oh, and the fact that torpedoes fired from a high technology ship at a ground emplacement seemed to have about as much explosive force as hand grenades was just ludicrous. I'd go on, but if I stopped to pick holes in First Contact I'd be here all week. Q was a competent villain, omnipotent but not particularly evil. The Borg were original before First Contact. The Dominion? Oh look, another empire, how exciting. Species 8472? Another empire, vaguely interesting since they could defeat the Borg, and it took the doctor almost a whole week to design a super weapon to destroy them. The Cabal? Oh look, another empire...
Enterprise fails for a number of reasons.
- They have to pitch technology above what we have now by about 50-100 years (I assume a World War III would reduce the tech level of a civilisation), below TOS. Since a number of things in TOS are feasible now, this is quite difficult.
- They lack continuity with the other series'. If first contact with the Ferengi was Picard on the Stargazer, then we should not be seeing them 200 years earlier. There are a large number of races which appear peripherally in the other series' and don't have their history mentioned at all. Why not use some of them? Why invent new species' like the Suliban who are either going to all die during the series, or leave a glaring continuity hole at the end?
- A prequel really wasn't the correct thing to do. When the Time Ship Aeon appeared in Voyager I thought that this would be a great setting for a new spin-off. After a few more episodes in the same line I felt convinced. Then Enterprise came out, with the 'Temporal Cold War' which seems to be trying to do this, but as a back story, not as a series premiss. And failing, I might add.
- Their story lines are cliche. A few episodes (Ceasefire springs to mind) are so obvious you can work out what's going to happen before the opening credits.
I'm going to continue watching Enterprise for the same reason I watched Andromeda up to Season 3. I honestly can't believe that something with so much potential can be as bad as the evidence suggests.Re:So Berman gonna quit then? (Score:4, Interesting)
If they bring the Borg into it, that'll be the final straw - we're talking about a parallel timeline... maybe one spawned after the crew of the Enterprise E (and their Borg hitchikers) interfere with Cochrane and first contact. Remember, the Queen was trying to contact the Borg of that era - who's to say she didn't succeed?
Anyways, that's how I treat Enterprise - as a non-canonical spinoff. Makes it much easier to accept all these anachronisms they keep introducing.
Re:So Berman gonna quit then? (Score:4, Interesting)
This sounds like a good way to buy into the series. Unfortunately, deciding it's a parallel universe doesn't help me to ignore the hackneyed writing. Considering the number of Trek fans out there, and assuming there are some in the movie/television industry, why can't they bring in some GOOD writers?
Whatever bad things might be said about Voyager, and to a slightly lesser extent DS9, at least they tried to take things into different directions at times. For all its faults, Voyager was a starfleet vessel with no contact with starfleet (until near the end) and a non-starfleet crew - at least an interesting concept that was only ruined by the apparent insistence on letting that ship get by too easily, IMO. DS9 showed that the Federation isn't pure goodness and light (for example, by showing starfleeters at their worst while in a "real" war as opposed to capital ships throwing broadsides at each other) and brought religion into the mix.
What fresh ideas has Enterprise given us? I haven't noticed any myself (a temporal "cold war" just seems dumb, especially the way they've handled it). Good Lord, they even made the first officer VULCAN - the antithesis of originality. Enterprise, to me, is Rick Berman trying to do ST:TNG again - and not the good episodes...more like the first season of TNG which was filled with rip-offs from the original series.
Ah well, I shouldnt be saying anything at all since I'm not watching it anymore (the last three episodes before they started reruns again finally convinced me they had nothing original). I'll take a look at Enterprise again in two years or so, assuming it's still on, and see if it's managed to become interesting. That method worked for me on DS9.
Re:Enterprise sucks? (Score:3, Interesting)