Re: ST: Enterprise--What's Wrong With This Series?

On Thu, 8 Nov 2007 22:41:48 -0500, "Phinupi77" <gchavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

a. BRIAN responded: "Scott Bakula was badly miscast."

---> I didn't like him in QL--probably because I didn't like
QL--but explain why you think he was miscast? Who do you think would have
done better?

Bakula did not present a believable authority figure. I never, not
once accepted him as commander of Earth's first deep-space starship.
He's too much "Mr. Nice Guy". I've already mentioned his scenery
chewing whenver he tried to be "Bad Cop". I think Bakula actually
should have been cast as the Dr. McCoy-type role (although not Phlox.)
b. BRIAN responded: "Jolene Blalock has very little acting
talent. She
and Jeri Ryan were brought into Trek for their bodies, but at least Ryan
could act."

---> Eye candy ain't bad, and at least we got Blalock au natural.
While Ryan was definitely a handsome hunk of woman (my "BBBB" - Big Bust
Borg Babe), they had to artificially enhance her. At least we got Blalock
au natural! Ryan could act? Are you kidding me? Of the ST stoics, I
liked T'Pol the best.

Ryan is a considerably better actress than Blalock. There really is no
comparison. See episodes such as "Someone to Watch Over Me" and
"Infinite Regress". See also her work on "Shark" and "Boston Public".
Enterprise never had similar moments from Blalock, who has already
vanished into obscurity.

c. BRIAN responded: "The "Temporal Cold War" storyline was idiotic in
the extreme."

---> I liked that story line the most! The problem, I think, with
scifi--and ST in particular, is it's all been done! Between ST, B5,
StarWars, Battlestar, ST5, X-Files and the many, many other lessers, there's
nothing left to be original with!

I hated the TCW. It made no sense whatsoever. The time-travel
shenanigans in Voyager never made any sense either, but as one-off
episodes they could be overlooked (and Janeway just laughed off the
impossibilities by saying "it all gives me a headache.") Enterprise
tried (unsuccessfully) to build an entire series around this doomed
premise. And it culminated in Enterprise's worst story... the Space
Nazis. Oh my God, they actually used Space Nazis...

e. BRIAN responded: "The NX-01 looked more modern than Kirk's
Enterprise, and considerably uglier."

---> That bugged me, too, but looking at it through today's eyes,
TOS' "technology" is down right campy and corny.

They could have used modern computer visuals and still kept the NX-01
looking like a forebear of Kirk's ship instead of something from the
Dominion War. For starters, how about a grey-white ship instead of
polished metal like the 1701-D? And Spock's hood-gizmo was always a
cop-out to save TOS from having to make expensive visuals the audience
would see. With the hood, Spock merely had to tell the audience what
he was seeing. T'Pol had a hood-gizmo on NX-01, too, in one of the few
nods to continuity the show actually possessed.

I mean, seriously, how many fireball photon torpedoes would you have
tolerated out of NX-01? LOL

We got them anyway, they just called them something else. Same with
"phasers" and "phase cannons". And the transporters that were too
primitive to risk with humans... until, well whenver the story needed
it. Gimme a break.

f. NEBUS responded: "...but the core problem was: it was boring."

---> I admit some episodes were yawners, but the same could have
been said for TOS ("Conscious of the King"), TNG (every episode with Lwaxana
Troi), DS9 (the Bajoran Dukat series), and half of VOY!

All the shows have had yawners. But like "Conscience of the King", the
slow storytelling can be overlooked if the characters are compelling
(Kirk, Riley). None of the characters on Enterprise were.

---> See my response to BRIAN in "c" above. Unless we're prepared
to take it to a "Mars Attacks" extreme, it's all been done and redone!

The "done and redone" is not the problem. The problem is that
Enterprise "redone" them with no flair or style of its own. The
stories of Season 1 and 2 for the most part were indistinguishable
from stories from "Voyager", except that Voyager did them better.

Instead, the show should never have made the Season 1 and 2 we know.
They should have started out immediately with the Xindi storyline, or
something very much like it (use the Romulans instead of the Xindi,
but no cloaks this time). Earth is attacked out of the blue, and
Starfleet has to rush into service its first prototype deep space
starship. The surprise attack forces the Vulcans to reconsider its
lending of technological aid to Earth (this makes them much less the
annoying bad guys "Enterprise" actually gave us) which gets NX-01 off
the ground, so to speak, and we get T'Pol on the NX-01. This story is
much more compelling than the actual pilot, which had Archer simply
ferrying home a wayward Klingon, violating the "decades of war" canon
that supposedly followed first contact with the Klingons. NX-01
returns at season's end, heroic. No Space Nazi sidetracks. Season 2 is
a combination of the actual Season 4, plus the more Early-Federation
type episodes we got in Season 1, such as the P'Jem stories and
"Fallen Hero". More Federation-building as Earth, barely surviving its
brush with the Romulans, seeks to build partnerships with the
Andorians, Tellarites, Deltans, Tholians, Klingons, etc. (not all
successfully.) In later seasons, borrow again. Borrow from Babylon 5
by having Earth/Mars/Alpha Centauri/whatever plotlines where we see
factions on Earth opposed to joining a Federation. If you're gonna
steal stories, steal from a good show like B5 instead of a mediocre
one like Voyager.

Brian
.