Questioning the Enterprise premise

Hmmm... even if the borg were cataloged by the Federation after Enterprise (they ID themselves in the episode), would we have ever seen a situation where Picard could have known about them? They wouldn't be there in the first place if he hadn't gone back in time in First Contact and blown them up... and anything we saw during TNGs TV run was *before* First Contact happened... it can give you an awful headache (G)

Wow, you should do that with Star Wars, too.

Not sure I'm following you.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
They wouldn't be there in the first place if he hadn't gone back in time in First Contact and blown them up... and anything we saw during TNGs TV run was *before* First Contact happened... it can give you an awful headache (G)
Everyone together "God I hate Temporal Mechanics" :)

C-ya
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Hmmm... even if the borg were cataloged by the Federation after Enterprise (they ID themselves in the episode), would we have ever seen a situation where Picard could have known about them? They wouldn't be there in the first place if he hadn't gone back in time in First Contact and blown them up... and anything we saw during TNGs TV run was *before* First Contact happened... it can give you an awful headache (G)

And people wonder why the Temporal Investigations guys hate their jobs... :D Imagining tracking stuff like this down for a living.
 
Ever notice how racist Star Trek is? Everything is about race. Vulcans are so and so. Romulans are sneaky. Borgs are bad. Except Hugh. Ferengis are greedy. Klingons are circling Uranus. :D :D :D
 
I've heard a few things now and then about Star Trek and Rick Berman. Rumor has it that Berman actually *hates* TOS, and personally tries to ignore anything which would require TOS continuity.

As for the rest, someone up above mentioned it was all about $$$. Sad but true. Consider that Babylon 5 (a far more entertaining and all-encompassing storyline) had to fight for all five years of its life. It was only intended to be a five year program, with a defined start and end. Yet every year, they didn't know if they'd be able to continue it. The fact that you had to actually put a little *thought* into what you were seeing was apparently enough to seriously scare TV producers.

Trek suffers from being pap. It can be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, and fed to the masses as bland, tasteless pap that looks pretty, but says nothing. The only reason to have this show on the air (from Paramount's perspective) is to draw in the people who watch it, so they can run ads four times an hour.

Paramount won't provide the kind of show we want, because it rocks the boat. Why risk killing their money machine, for as long as it works? When it doesn't, they'll just drop it for a decade or so, then release new Star Trek. By then, people will be so happy to see a new ST show, they'll ignore all its imperfections.

Finally, I've done a lot of analysis of ST episodes, from TNG through Enterprise, and I've noticed a sickening trend. The entire series Berman has worked on has suffered from a single, overriding delusion. Roddenberry believed in creating a vision of a future we might someday hope to become more like. Maybe we won't be that egalitarian, maybe we will. But it was a message of hope in a dark time that he was trying to show to us. That we could be better than we are today.

Berman shows us a vision of a bland, moral minority tomorrow, where every significant event in our history will be resolved with TIME TRAVEL. Go over the TNG, VOY, DS9, and ENT episodes for a moment. *Every single event* of any real significance, or turning point in the Star Trek historical timeline during the last twenty years has been brought about by TIME TRAVEL!

Let's not forget that in the 27th century, it's been established that Starfleet has a TIMESHIP, whose job it is to protect history Presumably more than one, since it didn't look exactly like a prototype to me. In Berman's view, the entire Star Trek history is about mankind's rise from obscurity to total mastery over TIME TRAVEL. A vision which offers us nothing to believe in, no-one to wish we could be like, and nothing substantial between the ears for year after boring year.

Stick to the books. At least Paramount leaves them alone.

Dragonflight
 
Dragonflight said:
I've heard a few things now and then about Star Trek and Rick Berman. Rumor has it that Berman actually *hates* TOS, and personally tries to ignore anything which would require TOS continuity.
Oh, I'm sure there's much worse rumours about Rick Berman out there. And I'm sure they're all just as fictitious. When fans don't like a product that's a part of the franchise they're fans of, they will always blame the producers. That doesn't mean that the producers in question hate the franchise or are incompetent in any way - it just means that it's easier for fans to project their disappointment onto an individual than to abandon their fandom altogether. If you gave a moment's thought to this, you'd realise that it would be very much against Viacom's best interests to allow somebody who hates a franchise to be in charge of it.

As for the rest, someone up above mentioned it was all about $$$. Sad but true. Consider that Babylon 5 (a far more entertaining and all-encompassing storyline) had to fight for all five years of its life. It was only intended to be a five year program, with a defined start and end. Yet every year, they didn't know if they'd be able to continue it. The fact that you had to actually put a little *thought* into what you were seeing was apparently enough to seriously scare TV producers.
OH MY GOD, THEY WANT TO MAKE MONEY!

Duh. Yes, Babylon 5 had to fight for every year of its life. It's not the only show that did, though. So did every single other television show ever made. Whether it's X-Files, Buffy, The Simpsons, Friends or Neighbours - it doesn't matter. If people don't watch it, it will be cancelled. Producers don't get scared by a show that requires its audience to think - if anybody gets scared, it's the audience. That Babylon 5 had trouble every year does not prove that the producers hated it - just that the audiences did. You might think that Babylon 5 was the best show ever made, but it doesn't matter, because the vast majority of the audience doesn't agree. In such a situation, the producers' hands are tied - they might love a show, but they can't afford to keep it going if it doesn't earn money.
 
Dragonflight said:
I've heard a few things now and then about Star Trek and Rick Berman. Rumor has it that Berman actually *hates* TOS, and personally tries to ignore anything which would require TOS continuity.

It's slightly odd, then, that he was the producer of Generations... also strange that he got a writing credit on that one. For somone who tries to ignore anything that would require TOS continuity he sure appeared to be well involved with the last movie featuring TOS characters from the get-go.

Dragonflight said:
As for the rest, someone up above mentioned it was all about $$$. Sad but true. Consider that Babylon 5 (a far more entertaining and all-encompassing storyline) had to fight for all five years of its life. It was only intended to be a five year program, with a defined start and end. Yet every year, they didn't know if they'd be able to continue it. The fact that you had to actually put a little *thought* into what you were seeing was apparently enough to seriously scare TV producers.

I enjoy both watching B5 and spoiling the plot for Trelane. It is not, however, a series that requires an insane amount of thought. The 'thought' comes straight out of pop culture or a first year philosophy or religious studies course... It's an entertaining story, but it doesn't really bring anything overly thought provoking, or new to the table.

I'll also point out that, except in the most extreme cases, once a show is already on the air, network execs and other people that purchase shows could care less if a show requires 'thought'. If it gets good enough ratings to justify its costs, they'll keep it... If it doesn't, they won't.

Dragonflight said:
Trek suffers from being pap. It can be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, and fed to the masses as bland, tasteless pap that looks pretty, but says nothing. The only reason to have this show on the air (from Paramount's perspective) is to draw in the people who watch it, so they can run ads four times an hour.

I will, of course, point out that this is pretty much the reason any large corporate entity has for doing anything...

Dragonflight said:
Finally, I've done a lot of analysis of ST episodes, from TNG through Enterprise, and I've noticed a sickening trend. The entire series Berman has worked on has suffered from a single, overriding delusion. Roddenberry believed in creating a vision of a future we might someday hope to become more like. Maybe we won't be that egalitarian, maybe we will. But it was a message of hope in a dark time that he was trying to show to us. That we could be better than we are today.

Berman shows us a vision of a bland, moral minority tomorrow, where every significant event in our history will be resolved with TIME TRAVEL. Go over the TNG, VOY, DS9, and ENT episodes for a moment. *Every single event* of any real significance, or turning point in the Star Trek historical timeline during the last twenty years has been brought about by TIME TRAVEL!

What the hell? Except, of course, for all those pivotal points in the last 20 years that haven't...

Dragonflight said:
Let's not forget that in the 27th century, it's been established that Starfleet has a TIMESHIP, whose job it is to protect history Presumably more than one, since it didn't look exactly like a prototype to me. In Berman's view, the entire Star Trek history is about mankind's rise from obscurity to total mastery over TIME TRAVEL. A vision which offers us nothing to believe in, no-one to wish we could be like, and nothing substantial between the ears for year after boring year.

I'm not exactly sure how any of that has anything to do with having things to believe in, or people to admire... I'll also point out that almost every episode with 27th century people in it involves them screwing up horribly... They are, apparantly, not very masterful with that whole time travel thing, since they keep screwing things to hell.
 
Hmm..

Well after Mr. Okuda and his wife lovingly and painfully hashed out two (or three now?) editions of "Chronology" in the contemporary Trekness time period, "mistakes" you guys have meantioned like the Klingon BC, Romulan Cloak, and the Enterprise looking almost exaclty like a ship in First Contact shouldn't have slipped by.

But for me, I have seen one episode of Enterprise. One episode involved the captains sick dog ( I thought that was a neat idea) and I did see a little of the Mine Field episode.

I stopped watching Trek on a regular basis after seing an episode of Voyager when they were experimenting with Transwarp drive (on a shuttlecraft) and Captain Jainway and Lt. Paris were piloting it... and they turned into frogs.. or..... something. I never tuned in after that. I did see the movies and I was dissapointed each - where was the common thread, except for Data as a story focus? The second, third, and fourth were about Spock's death and rebirth - First Contact, Nemesis, and Insurrection were just two hour long TNG episodes, and we already have a few hundred of those. Why not have them all about the Borg? Or bring back Q, he did leave us hanging after the last episode of TNG.

I do maintain a love for everything up to the first 10 minutes of Generations, and I had thought long ago that a good trek show could have been made using Captain April or Captain Pike (there's a fair number of people that look like the late Jeff Hunter) and a retro looking Enterprise using modern production methods. No asking Star Fleet Command and lots of mistakes - kinda like the captain of Enterprise does now, he does his best but we all make mistakes.

It seems to me that they want to make the best show possible that will attract the audience that they want - why make a prequel then? If you don't want to constrain yourself by cutting out many of your plot devices, and can't think of new ways to carry the story, I think it would have been better to just carry the story forward, or just not go *that* far behind. There were 75 years between the movies and Encounter at Farpoint and the Chronology itself gets really thin, they could have stayed away from both 'Classic' and '90's' Trek in that period.

I think the prequels of Trek and Star Wars have only emphasized the shortcomings of thier producers. George Lucas either can't write scripts or he's writing bad characters just as a fetish and B&B are doing a good job of aleinating a fanbase while trying to reach another by changing the product's asthetics little by little. The question is whether that new fanbase exists and to what extent does it exist?

I think though, in both Trek, Star Wars, and Wing Commander that there is a lot of universe to play around in, even if some parts make your stomach sour.

There were, afterall, many movies and 4 TV shows after the misadventure that was Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Cheer up, my little Viking! For I am Artie, the strongest man.... in the world! (Watch Pete and Pete re-runs, they are good for you!)
 
The Adventures Of Pete And Pete are run on an Nick spin-off channel called "Noggin" or "The N". I'm going to suckerpunch Chad for even saying he was Artie...
 
I hate to argue with LOAF since I know he is a veritable fountain of knowledge, but I am 99% certain that the Borg do not identify themselves in Regeneration. They do an abbreviated "resistance is futile" speech, but I don't think they ever say that they are the Borg.

Beyond that, I am of the school that the first season is not a barometer for the entire series. Especially considering that the second season is, in my opinion at least, already better than the first in many respects.

Just thought I'd drop my 2 cents in :)
 
But the insinuation is completely clear, and thus your point is defeated.
 
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