ooh:
a chance to post this!
…To boldly go. “Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!” This movie utterly destroys the characters of Kirk and Spock for plot expediency, and while it’s the most revolting crime committed by this misbegotten disaster of a movie, it’s far from the only one…
Read it. It will make you think. It will even make you think “No! I don’t want to think this. You can’t make me!”
I shall read. Didn’t dig this one. Also, really wish the Star Trek writers would make a slight effort to understand Shakespeare before they start quoting him:
It’s not about that. It’s about giving a giant wink to all the nerds who know Shaz used to play at the Stratford Festival before he got established in TV.
He was also in The Brothers Karamazov, so can we get some Dostoyevsky quotes as well?
No, because that’s historical, not fantasy.
Star Trek is basically being in a really loopy production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Stream of Consciousness: (my process below, though that does sound like an episode!)
Best captain: Picard
Best book: Spock Must Die! by James Blish (caveat: I’ve not read many)
Best amusing villain: Harvey Mudd. I also liked Berlinghoff Rasmussen, played by Matt Frewer.
Best episode: ST:TNG “Yesterday’s Enterprise”
Worst villain: Q (he can do ANYTHING. Where’s the drama in that?)
Best character, ST:TOS: Dr. McCoy
Best character, ST:TNG: Lt. Broccoli
Best movie: Wrath of Khan (though the wormy ear thing grossed me out)
Worst movie: Star Trek 5, Final Frontier, though I’m quite proud of my Official Kraft Star Trek 5 Marshmallow Dispenser, hidden in a box somewhere:
Worst series: Enterprise, though I only saw a few episodes before going “ecch.” A “temporal cold war?” What?
And of course, I did object to a lot of the balonium used as plot devices, especially post Original Series. But then I like hard sf!
what episode do you get up to? I recently saw the entire run, and I was mildy curious about (the unmade) Season 5. In truth I wanted to see Larry Niven mess with star trek…
Similarly, I find Doctor Who a lot more interesting when the sonic devices are left out of it.
The temporal cold war concept sucked, and thankfully went away. I have a soft spot for Enterprise, because I think it’s the Star Trek we deserve, not the Star Trek we want. These characters know people who are old enough to remember the last, devastating world war (ie: the one that’s already started in Syria, for the exact reasons Rodenberry said it would in the 60s). And when the Vulcans say, “you aren’t ready for interstellar relations and are lucky you met us first”, they’re not wrong.
Which makes for some interesting points that unfortunately get buried under a bunch of other things, like that temporal cold war (that isn’t even so cold). Also there are a number of episodes where an interestingly flawed character is thrown into some hero/saviour/Chosen One plot, and it just doesn’t work. Uncritical Chosen One plots can get discontinued any time now.
I don’t recall, but it was indeed first season. But I didn’t know Niven was going to be involved! On the other hand, I think Niven’s best work was fairly early; I’ve read some of his later work, and haven’t enjoyed it as much. Not to be a critic or anything . . . 
Well, that’s good. There were other things that didn’t resonate with me – like the shower scene between the female Vulcan and the male human, where they were mopping each other with some sort of cleanser. I mean, really. Hints of porn and Star Trek really don’t go together. And I really disliked her character, so I guess that, and what I read about it over the months and years, turned me off.
But I see what you mean about getting more details about the early history.
Supposedly there was a lot of network interference with Enterprise, and judging from what stuff is ascribed to them, whoever was giving feedback had never seen Star Trek before. The gel thing died off eventually too (IIRC last seen with a funny scene where Dr. Phlox explains he has a strong aversion to casual touching). Those scenes were generally just icky to watch, not least because they didn’t have a helluva lot to do with plot or characters – except to maybe remind us this is before Starfleet has holodecks, so everyone’s dealing with being stuck on a spaceship the old-fashioned way.
What? Network suits interfering with the creative types? Never!
The theme song was pretty clearly written by committee
Yeah, my pet name for it is “Grunge is cool with the smart set and a Bush is in the White House again”.
I do like the montage it plays over though.
Ha! I call it “forget 9/11 for a minute”
much better without the vocals.
(the opening titles looked incredible in HD, but youtube adds its own artifacts.)
If ANYONE in this thread is not aware, the H&I network, available Over the Air in lots of places, and on many basic cable packages too, plays all the Series one after another just now, in order by season. 8pm-1am, weekdays.
The Nation had a great review of Enterprise when it came out.
The first series, which began in 1967, was an odd amalgam of manly Buck Rogers adventure, cold war pro-Americanism and utopian social drama influenced by the civil rights movement. When Star Trek was revived for TV in 1987 with The Next Generation, the show’s tagline was tellingly updated from “where no man has gone before” to “where no one has gone before.” And the changes went far beyond gender. Trek‘s depictions of racism and caste exploitation got acute, with a series of amazing shows about workers treated as things, and it explored torture and official violence daringly, bitingly criticizing them even as it showed our own implication in them. (TNG also utilized the skills of a heart-stoppingly talented Shakespearean actor, Patrick Stewart.) The next two series, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, steered Star Trek onward into the 1990s. (Voyager in particular took Trek forward, having three aggressive women as the show’s main characters, and also making them the sharpest scientific minds on the ship.)
So, watching the first season of the latest Trek vehicle, Enterprise, I’ve felt…nausea and horror. It takes Star Trek so far backward that it’s like Buffy becoming a sex slave chained to a bed for the rest of her television career. Set in Trek‘s “past,” 100 years before Kirk’s time and just 150 years after our own, Enterprise depicts the first humans to have contact with alien races. Emphasis on races: the interplanetary politics seem to have been framed by Pat Buchanan. Though there are two token humans of color on the ship, humans are heavily coded as white and male.
All the previous Star Trek series, over three decades, have been about becoming progressively more catholic, more aware of the astonishing diversity of the galaxy, the provincial limitedness of one’s own assumptions and one’s own potential to harm people who are different. The newest offering is a frank vehicle for white male suprematism and resentment.
