Star Trek: ENT Reviews - From Start to ... well, you know

Ah, the Xindi - what was it? Four or five more different sorts of aliens that must have died out before Kirk started banging his way through the Galaxy.

When you do these reviews, do you write them after watching the episode? During? If the former, do you take notes?

I've always wondered.

Those of you who think the show got better in the fourth season are seriously delusional. It was all suck.

It's like you've been bleeding on and off from your eyes, nose, ears and ass for three years, when suddenly you stop bleeding from the ass. And you think to yourself, "Hey... it's not so bad. At least I'm not bleeding from the ass any more."

At least your hemorrhoids cleared up

I don't necessarily accept that criticism. We didn't see Andorians or Tellarites in TNG, and we barely saw Vulcans. There were a bunch of one and done TOS aliens we never saw again. Does that mean TOS fails as a prequel to TNG, or does it simply mean different crews were operating in different parts of the galaxy?

The usage of clips showing aviation/space history never bugged me, but even as a 15 year old with my only other exposure to Trek being the forced viewing of TNG at my aunt's house because it was the only show she allowed us to watch (and pick our brains about the philosophical issues ), I never cared for the theme song. I cared for it even less when I learned it was apart of the Muslim-on-German gang raping that was the Patch Adams movie.

Admittedly, I had a crush on a Trek nerd, which is why I initially tuned in...but I was okay with the drama. It could've been done better and without Archer coming off as a Stormfront poster, but compared to the Starfleet/Maquis thing that dissolved by the second episode of Voyager and the number of conflicts withing the crew of TNG being countable on one hand with digits to spare...yeah, I'll take this.

Lastly, the time travel time was one of the mandates by UPN to have at their disposal, probably as an excuse to drag Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew or any other Trek actor of note onto the show during the then almost guaranteed season six or whatever. I'm glad season three ignored this as much as possible and that Coto jettisoned that shit at the beginning of season 4.

Even with the noticeable uptick in fucks given in the last third of the show's run, the damage was already done. The ratings reflect as much.

That said, one of the proposed ideas for season five involved the Borg Queen. No commentary is nessesary, and anyone that needs explanation is in good need of a brain trainsplant.

For earlier Voyager stuff, I was able to watch, then review. But as I started getting into the episodes I had only seen once of Voyager, I've had to watch the episode, then re-watch it as I write the review. Thus far, I've had to do the same with Enterprise. Otherwise, you have to pause it every ten seconds or you miss so much lunacy that needs reporting.

So technically, I'm watching this shit twice. I'm surprised it isn't an "advanced interrogation technique."

The problem I have with it is that if you have a group of aliens that tries to destroy Florida, they probably would have come up in conversation at some point. Enterprise often does an admirable job of filling in the blanks, as a good prequel should (just look at the Axanar!), but if they're going to be additive, they can't be so blatant in it that the omission in the other series is so obvious (like, say, another Enterprise with another captain that nobody has ever mentioned before...)

This is the only Trek series I've never bothered to watch.

And, now, with this review thread I will never have to!

Thanks Kyle!

Step 1. Destroy Florida.
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit.

Basically, virtually by their own admission, Brannon Braga, Rick Berman and others when it came to Voyager AND Enterprise was that they wanted to basically do The Next Generation with only a few changes in general setting.

IIRC Brannon Braga basically said to the effect that "I hate not using all these years of backstory and technology that we spent 7 years on TNG building up"

IIRC that's garbage.

I'm 51% sure.

You're using that 51% thing improperly.

Besides.

Why do you think Brannon Braga would never have conveyed that message?

I had no idea that species from the second episode was one from TOS!

Well they were really not technically in The Original Series. The "Axanar Peace Mission" was mentioned once in TOS. Later through the Star Trek Role Playing Game and of course the recent "fanfilm" it was converted into being a crucial point in the first war between the Federation and Klingon Empire.

Wasn't Axanar mentioned specifically in the TOS episode Whom Gods Destroy? Captain Garth earned his cred at Axanar, after all . . .

Enterprise was marginally better than the God-awful Voyager. But really, the only way I can tolerate it is as an alternate timeline spawned by the events of First Contact. Berman and Braga just shit all over established continuity with Enterprise.

That reminds me. I cannot wait to see that Axanar fan film. Hope that project is going well!!!

I hear it's going as well as Star Trek: Foundations.

Gandhi was reborn and now he gets to write reviews of Stargate SG-1, Firefly, and Person of Interest. Were you a guard at Auschwitz in your previous life or something? What kind of heinous sins could you possibly be paying for?

It could be one of those things that gets glossed over decades later, considering it happened between WWIII and the Romulan war. I always hear about the American Revolution and the Civil War from American media, but I never hear about the War of 1812, during which Canadians burned down the White House. You think Americans would remember that more often.

Great point! Don't know what happened to the quoting there though, as that was @Kyle you're responding to, not me.

Which could've been explained away with the TCW, a nice morality tale where the leaders of a civilisation use technology they barely understand to try and make themselves dominant, but instead wipe themselves out of reality.

Archer, moving from being vengeful, to pitying, to finally shouldering the weight of witnessing the self-destruction of billions and of being the only person in the universe to remember a once proud power.

We'd actually have had use for the TCW then.

Americans don't like to dwell on the White House being torched because they would have to then admit that the British only did it after the U.S. burned down a number of government buildings in Canada.

We totally like to dwell on the battle where Andrew Jackson kicked British ass after the war was technically over already, though.

Legally over but not actually over.

As has been noted, if the British had won big at New Orleans they could've reneged on the treaty.

The British general at New Orleans had orders to continue the fighting regardless of news of any peace treaty.

I swear, only here could a thread about Enterprise lead to a discussion on the War of 1812.

The War of 1812 was a prequel that contained lots of elements Star Trek later used. For example, the pirates helping defend the city were the Maquis from Voyager. Chakotay's ancestors also fought there. Andrew Jackson had a talking parrot that could swear, which you see reflected in countless Star Trek characters. The Americans targeted and eliminated many British officers with targeted weapons fire, including generals, and took some out with grape shot - "full spread". Star Trek would later use all those elements. After the battle the Americans treated a British bugle boy as a hero because he kept on bugling as bullets whizzed all around him. He was the first Wesley Crusher.

Don't forget: no matter what the revisionist American history books say, the British won the war of 1812. The United States was the one who first declared war (for various reasons) but by 1814 they hadn't achieved a single objective, including the successful invasion of Upper and Lower Canada.

In fact, you could say that Upper Canada was America's first Vietnam.