Books Television Movies Favourites Rants Contact
Okay, we'll pretend to ignore the stupid soft rock theme song and just concentrate on the images of exploration that they're giving us in the opening. A departure from tradition, but one that works without the music.
As I write this, we're nearing the end of the second season of Enterprise. It's still early yet, if this one runs the seven years everyone is expecting in order to match the last three series, but so far I think that this show is at least the equal of Voyager, if not quite as good as TNG.
I love that they've gone back instead of forward. I love the relative primitiveness. How much more cloying could the happiness and technology get? There's no more of this "Set phasers to level seventeen" crap. It's "There are two settings: stun and kill. Try not to get them confused." They don't have shields, instead they polarize the hull plating. There's no Federation. There's no Prime Directive. They're basically on their own, although they have regular contact with Earth and can yell for help from the Vulcans if they really need to.
I love how it looks like a ship that's actually run by a military of some sort, how the Captain's quarters aren't bigger than my house, how they're hardly bigger than my bathroom. Space is at a premium and most of it serves an important purpose, sometimes two. This makes sense.
I love how the Universal Translator isn't universal and hardly even qualifies as a translator most of the time.
I love how the Vulcans are the ultra-conservative know-it-all parental types who will grudgingly let you do your own thing since you're a stubborn child who doesn't know what's best for you and then, when whatever you're doing nearly, but not quite, blows up in your face, snottily tells you "I told you so" in such a preachy, holier-than-thou manner that you want to knock those slanted eyebrows right off of their faces.
I love how everything is strange and new to the crew, how just seeing another world from orbit makes everyone stop to look, how these people are supposed to be real explorers far from in a not entirely friendly universe trying to learn their way around.
I love the new look for the Andorians, one of the four founding members of the Federation, along with the Vulcans, Humans, and Tellerites. I'm a little eager to see what they've done with the Tellerites. Based on Vulcan-Andorian relations, it's not likely that the formation of the Federation is right around the corner.
I love how not everything we're seeing, particularly in terms of aliens, is stuff we've seen before. It stands to reason that in a Federation "on a thousand planets and spreading out", as Kirk will say a hundred years or so up the timeline and that must be much larger in the TNG era, that a mere 24 seasons of television could possibly have shown us everything there is to see. I'm hoping for some plot originality, but not expecting much for a couple of seasons.
I hate the over-story, the Temporal Cold War. Stupid, meaningless phrase labeling a not very well thought out concept. Trash it and move on. Haven't you guys mucked around with the time stream enough already? You haven't really been creative about it for a long time. Do you need an over-story? Think about that.
I don't think that it was necessary for them to show us just how hot the Vulcan babe is in the very first episode. She's very hot, but did it really add to the story?
I don't think that things should have such instant solutions. "Sure, Captain, we'll install that there phase cannon for you that should have been installed before we left Earth. It's a three week job, but we'll have it done by tomorrow afternoon." Is it reasonable that the Linguistics/Communications Officer can pick up enough of a completely alien language in a couple of days to carry on anything remotely resembling an intelligent conversation (no matter how simple) with a member of that species? She should be able to order a beer, ask where the bathroom is, and say "Please don't kill me, I'm one of the good guys" and not much more. If she's lucky. After all, the tool she's had to help her is the universal translator. And the Doctor appears to be half stone age shaman.
Is the science better? Maybe. It's generally not as out to lunch as some of the things they've made up for convenient plot solutions in the past. But I can't believe that the myth that your hair and fingernails continuing to grow for days after you die is still being perpetuated a century and a half from now.
And, jeez, would someone mind giving Scott Bakula some acting lessons? I think he used to be able to act. What happened?
All in all, the jury is still out.
<end>
Books Television Movies Favourites Rants Contact
Page last updated: 13 Apr 2003.