I’m always bugged more by individual moments than bigger things. So while T’Pol might be wearing an old fun center carpet as a uniform, and the temporal Cold War is both overly complex and excruciatingly boring neither of those things bothers me more than the following.
In season one, there is an episode titled ‘Unexpected’. In this episode Tripp becomes space pregnant from an alien space mama. During his pregnancy he is framed as becoming irrationally overconcerned about the safety of very minor or unlikely hazards.
At one point, he is in engineering and complains that if you hold onto the handrail of the elevator while it moves, your fingers will be sliced off against the scaffolding since there is no gap.
A crew member brushes him off by just saying, essentially, “Lol skill issue, just don’t hold the handguard.”
Again, Tripp is the one being framed as irrational in this discussion. Because he has a problem with a handguard that slices your fingers off.
Space hormones or not, he’s right that it’s a terrible design.
I’ve seen similar problems on actual escalators. It might not slice your fingers off, but if your arm was stretched out it would snap your arm off at least. But then again I have a phobia of elevators and escalators so it is particularly apparently to me. I blame that Resident Evil movie when the person got their head cut off trying to exit a stalled elevator.
I damn near had my head taken off one time when I was a kid. I was leaned over the side looking down as the escalator went up. My mother grabbed me and yanked me back just moments before my head got stuck in the scissor trap caused by the bottom of the down escalator intersecting with the up escalator.
A couple years later I noticed the started putting plexiglass a foot or two in front of that part. I wonder how many kids didn’t get their head pulled back in time before they started doing that.
That bothered me too. Any rational group of engineers with space laser tools would have fixed that immediately.
I had to reset my expectations after they dropped off that space slug on another planet cause it wasn’t doing well. Like what’s your mission to explore the galaxy and spread invasive species??
Also Archers dog went on away missions.
To be honest, all of this sounds like exactly what humanity would do if we stopped having scientists in charge of implementing space exploration.
Especially after Humanity’s existing exploration at the time amounted to just a few colonies on otherwise uninhabited planets where WE are the primary invasive species, and limited exploration outside our immediate vicinity due to speed constraints.
The Vulcans were right about humanity in many ways, humaity is very reckless, as evidenced by many of the issues we see like these in Enterprise.
ENT gets a ton of flak for this in general, but I’m not quite sure how else might a prequel to TOS look? Kirk and the band were space cowboys without a lot of rules, then a few decades later we have the super-professional Federation…
The trajectory is clear, if you go some decades back, to humanity that is only starting to do space exploration, then it has to be very very rough.
Besides, humans even in the TNG era have the reputation of being reckless, unpredictable and emotional. So I think ENT quite nailed that more often than not.
Yes I know SNW is doing it differently, but it just rehashes stories from other shows, and I do quite question its positions as a prequel. It could be set at any time really.
(And let’s not talk about how DIS works as a prequel…)
I liked the sort of blundering honesty that the ENT crew approached galactic politics with. The Vulcan temple that was being used as a cover for a spy operation being the big incident.
Even seasons later, the Vulcans still complained about the ENT cowboy antics causing the loss of the temple, but quietly didn’t acknowledge the Vulcan spy activities.
The ENT crew’s choice to side with the truth over political allegiance convinced Shran to trust the humans to be honest negotiators and set a path to Andorian-Vulcan peace.
OHNO MY DOG GOT SICK
RUSH THIS CHEESE TO SICKBAY!
Enterprise is watchable and has that classic 90’s trek feel to it. That said, I can barely name or identify a single character on the show or tell you anything about their character, personality, hopes fears dream strengths weaknesses etc.
Captain Archer, has a pet dog, is pretty down to earth and chill I guess…that’s pretty much it…
There’s a guy with a southern accent from I dunno maybe Louisiana? He likes catfish. Those are pretty much his only defining features.
T’pol is a stoic emotionless boring Vulcan. There’s a pretty sexy and out of place scene with her and some other scantily clad attractive characters in a space sauna that didn’t seem appropriate for Star Trek but whatever. She seems annoyed and judgmental about humans. That’s about it for her personality.
The bird like doctor guy is kinda weird. Can’t tell you much about him.
That’s pretty much all I got. There’s really just nothing else to say about any of these characters. I can write books about Captain Picard, Janeway, data, sisko, et all.
Tl;Dr Poor character development bugs me the most about enterprise
Honestly dr phlox is my favorite. He’s that annoyingly cheerful kind of guy and a bit of counterpoint to “normal human things”- he could have been a great character if they just didn’t try to play up the shock value.
Also like he’s low key a sadist. Maybe more a mostly-reformed sadist? There’s definitely moments.
It definitely has its moments and it scratches that itch when you really want classic 90s Trek but you’ve watched TNG/DS9/VOY a zillion times each and want something new.
The comforting ambient hum of the engines really does the trick. That sound is conspicuously missing from New Trek (besides, you know, creative integrity?).
I swear. St:Discotheque makes more sense if you just assume the entire show, they’re all tripping balls off space shrooms.
I can tell you more about them, but obviously you’re correct that they’re nowhere near as developed as the other 90s Trek shows.
-T’Pol might be the best Vulcan character in the franchise next to SNW Spock. She has a tinge of that Enterprise Vulcan arrogance, becomes less emotionally-guarded as she spends more time among humans, has an interesting moderate attitude toward humans, and probably has the best acting on the show.
-Phlox is the best doctor in the franchise, fight me.
-Reed is a British weirdo
-Mayweather is an overly peppy cornily-acted son of a freighter captain raised in space
Captain Archer, tries very hard to be laid back but he’s actually a prep school prick at heart. Smiles like he’s running for congress. Beagle owning water polo enthusiast.
Charles “Trip” Tucker The Third. Chief engineer, catfish lover from Sarasota Florida before it’s trenched by the Xindi. Kinda happy-go-lucky at first then turned real f’n broody because of course. He works out, ends up in his boxer briefs occasionally because “See, we’ve got stuff for the girls to look at too.” Beefcake #1
Malcolm Reed, British tightass who basically has Worf’s job. Spends a lot of an episode inventing the red alert because this series fully intends break into your home at night, hold you down, squat over your face and prequel right in your mouth. Also works out, ends up in his boxer briefs occasionally too, but he’s a bit shorter. Beefcake #2
T’Pol. An attempt by Paramount to make the Seven of Nine lightning strike twice. Same stern humorless member of a conformist society who grows as a person from her outside perspective as a member of the ship’s crew, now with even more blatant thirst bait. To their credit, they almost pulled it off. Cheesecake #1-6.
Hoshi Sato, Uhura but Asian and worse. She’s the same brand of useless that Troi was. Mostly there so they could say “No, see, not all of the female cast was hired for how their nipples look in a grey tank top” but she ended up half naked a few times anyway. Cheesecake #7.
Travis Mayweather, helmsman, raised on a space ship by parents who are upset he took a job working on a space ship. Mostly just happy to be here.
Dr. Phlox, happy go lucky alien doctor, mostly used for comic relief though he delivered one of my favorite lines in all of Star Trek: “It is unethical to harm a patient; however I can inflict as much pain as I like.” Overall deserved a better Trek series.
The Enterprise crew is a bunch or warlike cowboys hopping at random and breaking things everywhere.
The series actually acknowledges that. Several times.
What I really like is the soothing and cheerful opening theme, that tends to play just after some 2% of Earth is destroyed, or somebody decides to kill half of the galaxy.
I mean… he didn’t even get on about the lack of seat belts.
Federation space ships are in fact horribly designed. - thruster placement is off balance with CoG requiring constant control inputs to go in a straight line.
- seatbelts.
- surge protection.
- replicator technology exists, yet they don’t design ships capable of being repaired with self created parts. (Even if they have to build the replicator large enough first….)
- replicators take energy and convert it to matter- or matter into energy. Yet they don’t design ships to use this as fuel.
- they send ships that are expected to go into battle- and carry children and civilians on board-but this ships are also able to go toe to toe with their equivalents from hostile races 1v2-3. But then insist they’re not warships.
- insist on not having a unit of exchange or currency, but then some how having massive amounts of trade and economy.
- their ships waste a shit load of internal volume with the saucer, the neck and the nacelles.
Hello fellow space alien posting on Terran communications boards.
All of your points are correct with the following exception:
• Matter replicators expend energy to convert it into matter, or do the opposite. It is a lossy process, meaning you do not get 100% as a return. The best S+ or A-5 engineered units are 88-98% efficient.
• Theoretically, fuel in space is “infinite” as stars and hydrogen are literally everywhere, so going to planets to gather resources to disassemble in replicators is both a literal waste of time and energy. Dilithium crystals in the show are a hilarious example of contrived scarcity for plot.
- They have carpets on the TV show. Carpets. On a space ship. That is guaranteed not a warship, because carpets.
I’ve taken the mass hit and installed gray carpets in key locations of our own ships and instigated a no shoes policy and I’ll tell you what, it’s never been more comfortable :)
You should definitely try installing carpets
- Naz
Fuel sources in Voyager are very canonically “not common.” But then that probably has more to do with using antimatter as fuel, instead of your nearest asteroid or gas pocket.
While you are correct that it is not perfectly efficient… the ability to stop off at a random star and expect to find some form of matter that can be turned into fuel simply by transporting it aboard and processing it into a singularity or something… would be extremely useful for an “exploration” ship
At least the the ships being warships carrying civilians things has a real life analog. Many (but not all) colony ships sailing Earth oceans were usually heavily armed. This was to deter pirates or privateers from raiding the ships the day after they left port and taking all the supplies they’d need for their colony. And the ships were full of women and children. And more than a few got into battles somewhere along their voyage. Then when the colonists got where they were going, in some instances they’d just pull the guns off the ship and set them up to defend the colony.
It is not canon but one of the novels mention that it was an idea to break species nationalism and encourage a meltingpot. All those kids onboard the starships would identify as Federation not as whatever planet their parents were from.
deleted by creator
their ships waste a shit load of internal volume with the saucer, the neck and the nacelles.
It’s called style.
it’s almost like they got this guy instead of proper engineers:
Explosions
“Haven’t any of you guys invented fuses!” - John Crichton
Farscape is one of those shows I can only tolerate in small doses but still love. Also it’s science is too bad, considering.
I tried watching it through as a background thing while playing podcast games and found it really hard to do more than a couple episodes.
It’s damn near soap level plots for a lot of it, but I really love the characters.
Yup.
A lot of the plot is just straight up bizarre. On the other hand the characters are fairly compelling, and the comedy is classic.
This put me on Reed Alert.
Gentlemen, to your phase pistols.
I’m bugged by decontamination gel.
Why is it so randomly used? Why doesn’t Shran have to use it ever? Did Phlox have to rub it on all of his animals? What’s in it?
To show the audience Jolene Blalock’s oiled up tummy and thighs, it’s that simple
And side boob.
Ah, the side boob hour.
Do I remember them decontaminating the dog at one point? I haven’t seen the show since its original run.
But yeah the decontamination chamber was pretty much someone at Paramount saying “Guys I’ve got this great plot device we can use to peel our cast of pretty people down to their undies sometimes, and even rub lotion on each other!”
I wonder what he got paid for that idea?
What always bugged me in Voyager was that the Doctor didnt get any story lines really exploring what he is. After he got his mobile emitter from the future, he basically was a near immortal AI made of light. He could still be around doing snarky remarks during the heat death of the universe. What a waste of story potential.
There was an episode where a copy of him was brought online in a museum centuries after Voyager had visited the planet featured in the episode
That was a great episode.
he deserved the same respect data got in tng.
Robert Picardo directed a lot of those episodes, so I’m sure he could have written in that recognition…but preferred the tension of having talent and ability mixed with a personality that made him unbearable. His character recognized this at times but never really grew. One of the better jokes was that all the other EMRs of him were so toxic that they were decommissioned as doctors and put to work piloting garbage transports.
He was so bad, Andy Dick was an upgrade.
The one that irrationally bugged me was when Tripp told the captain that he lowered the chair by 1cm, and the chair was still too high for everyone who sat there… I know it’s not supposed to be noticable but I could tell somehow that it wasn’t lowered at all
The gap was pretty big. No way fingers were getting sliced off. Trip was being overly dramatic.
Still not a great design, but Trip being the chief engineer, he could have ordered it changed AT ANY TIME, but never did. He just complained like an annoying pregnant woman, which was the intention of the scene.
Someone probably noticed it after the set was already built, complained, and it was a thing on set.
removed by mod
Ya that was an odd moment, sfdebris called it out too. I think I was just too annoyed by the silliness of the premise to really realize it one way or another.
Either way, I find the meta bigger picture just as interesting. Actors act, directors direct, to indeed portray something as X. In this case Tripp was painted as the weird one, but honestly, we as viewers should be able to make our own judgement on the situation without having to go against the story or against the suspension of disbelief.
I just finished up the show and absolutely hate they decided to just kill off Tripp in the last five minutes because apparently four hostiles of some random species with unknown tech capabilities were able to get onboard the Enterprise in the exact area where the Captain and Ch-Eng were walking and no M.A.C.O.'s happened to be.
He didn’t even need to die for the show’s ending to make sense, cause there’s no further plot to explore anyways. They just did it because fuck it.
Clearly Tripp was recruited by Section 31, who tampered with the official records.
If the finale isn’t going to care about the show and just make it a big holodeck joke, then I’m going to write my own stupid canon.
I always took it as if the last episode is its own thing. A single standalone holodeck program used as a history lesson for the people who would grow up learning about the events leading up to Archer’s no doubt historic speech.
