Voyager vs. Enterprise: the Final Viewing

kyrieee wrote:

I think that intro made me way more critical of everything in the show than I otherwise would've been.

Yeah, so far I have a pet theory that the intro song killed that series almost as much as anything else. The major problem was more that both it and Voyager suffered from airing on 4th and 5th networks like UPN and WB. They couldn't promote within their own networks, and the Internet was still a little baby Net at the time. They had no carryover from popular shows, and the network didn't even air in a lot of markets. But yeah, that song meant that you started every single episode with a bad taste in your mouth. It implied poor quality, and meant that everyone had to work harder to overcome it. It didn't pump you up like the openings to the original series, or Next Generation.

A little research suggests that the song played at the end of every episode was actually the original theme music. It matches up quite well to the opening sequence.

Wow. That's a lot better.

Enterprise theme song was better than Firefly's.

kazooka wrote:

The major problem was more that both it and Voyager suffered from airing on 4th and 5th networks like UPN and WB.

I used to be a huge Trek fan and UPN in my area made it downright impossible for me to watch Enterprise. I'd set my ol' DVR and 9 out of 10 times I'd end up having recorded the last 15 minutes of a small regional college basketball game that had run over its time and missing the end of the show or it was downright pre-empted for some other regional sports game. It was ridiculous. The show moved days and times so often I finally just gave up because I'd missed large parts of the story arc.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Enterprise theme song was better than Firefly's.

And now I can't trust anything you say, ever again.

spider_j wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

Enterprise theme song was better than Firefly's.

And now I can't trust anything you say, ever again.

Man, that line hung a long time with no nibbles.

Looked like trolling bait, so I just ignored it. :p

LiquidMantis wrote:

Enterprise theme song was better than Firefly's.

Shut your filthy whore mouth.

I haven't written a lot about Enterprise so far. Partly because I skipped "The Andorian Incident", since I half-watched it a few months ago and didn't feel like re-watching it again. But partly because I've been really enjoying it. The time travel stuff has not been as dominant I remembered, and the early humans-figuring-it-out-in-space has been the much stronger theme. It can sometimes be harder to write about what works as opposed to what doesn't work, particularly when a story isn't really pushing any boundaries. Failure is almost inherently more interesting than success. In these first dozen or so episodes, Enterprise isn't really pushing boundaries, other than getting Tripp pregnant. But what it's doing is creating a kind of familiar-but-interesting world, very similar to a Wild West setting, and using that setting to explore some fundamental and unexamined ideas about Star Trek.

Enterprise: Breaking the Ice
One of the things I really appreciate so far about Enterprise is the political relationship between Vulcans and Humans. In a lot of ways, Humans are the Vulcans' adolescent children. They've just gotten the keys to a used Ford Taurus, and they're close to open rebellion with the people to whom they're closest. In previous Star Treks, Vulcan-Human relations have always been incredibly tight. But of course there would have been this early, difficult period, where relations between the two very different people would have been somewhat strained, and the emotional humans were chafing at the implacable diplomacy of the Vulcans. It's been one of the strongest themes in Enterprise so far.

Enterprise: Civilization
This episode is a little bit forgettable, but still a fairly respectable rendition of Trek. There are a lot of funny moments, including Travis taking the Captain's chair. We also get to see Archer Kirk it up a little bit with a beautiful and brilliant alien gal.

Enterprise: Fortunate Son
This has one of my favorite scenes in Enterprise and perhaps in Star Trek: a shot of the captain and the first mate of the Fortunate Son throwing a football across a low-g cargo bay. A bridge between the common and the fantastic, between our world and a sci-fi spaceship world. Enterprise really did some solid world-building in this one. We learn about the "Boomers", a generation of men and women who grew up on low speed trading ships, vessels that took years to travel between destinations. This created circumstances that in a lot of ways resemble the Wild West, with the Boomers and their freighters forming a kind of cross between pioneer and freight train. A whole generation has grown up and is beginning to grow old on these ships, and the combination of much faster drives and expanded authority is causing a lot of future shock in this crowd, some of which results in the conflict we see in this episode.

To sum up briefly, a freighter is attacked by pirates, fights them off, takes one prisoner, and then goes looking for revenge. Enterprise comes by in time to see them engage not just the damaged pirate ship that they fought off, but two others who are intent on finishing what the original attacker started. If Enterprise can convince the crew of the Fortunate Son to give up their hostage, then the pirates will call off their attack. There's a very Star Trek ideal here, where Ensign Travis convinces the freighter crew to give up their hostage by asking, "What will happen to the next ship these pirates meet?" They'll get hit much harder, of course. Escalation is a dead end strategy for the Boomers. They have their families aboard. The pirates have nothing to lose.

But I'm not so sure that I agree with that argument from a practical standpoint. Maybe the pirates will learn not to mess with human freighters. Maybe they'll move on to other, less defensible regions. But the thing is, these sort of ethics are why I like Star Trek. I like that Star Trek morals are more considerate than my own. I like the fact that I can be challenged on basic ethical issues in an action-oriented TV show. I like that in most ways, Captain Picard is a better person than I am. Enterprise is beginning to follow along in this mold.

It's also worth noting the air date for this epsiode: Nov. 21, 2011. This attitude of live and let live is almost like a relic from another era. We many not see it again for a long time.

Enterprise: Cold Front
The time travel plotline reasserts itself. So far, the time travel stuff is not as terrible as I thought it was. There's kind of an interesting scene here where the creepy Suliban guy suggests that maybe they, and not the friendly Enterprise crewman, are actually on the "right side of history." But this seems unlikely, as we know how history turns out, and that doesn't include the dissolution of the Klingon Empire, an event which the Suliban were clearly working towards.

Enterprise: Silent Enemy
This episode is a little bit blah. An alien ship doesn't attack Enterprise, then attacks Enterprise, then the crew technobabbles a really big gun out of their butts and gives the aliens a good old fashioned whoopin'. The side plot in this episode is actually the more interesting storyline: Hoshi is trying to figure out Malcom's favorite food. Now, bear with me, because this sounds like a terrible setup, but what we end up getting out of this is that Malcom is a much weirder and more intense dude than has been let on so far. As an archetype, he's basically a British gun nut. But in interviewing his parents, friends and relatives, a more interesting picture emerges. Malcom was raised in an extremely regimented household, which has left him with a tight focus, but some serious gaps in his social skills. What starts to emerge out all of this is a character almost from the 19th century, a polite and proper Brit who nevertheless has no idea how to function outside of a work environment. In some ways, he seems to have stepped out of a Jane Austen novel. We get a lot of depth out of his character from this episode, and the actor, Dominic Keating, plays the character with a masterful bit of vulnerability.

Of course, all that's ruined with the following video:

Enterprise: Dear Doctor
A Phlox episode! Phlox should be an annoying character, and I'm not completely sure why he isn't. He's perpetually optimistic, always going on about some amazing mundane thing that humans do, and is played largely for comic relief. But he's not annoying, he's endearing. Part of that's the actor--if the guy who played Neelix had the role, we'd be seeing, well, Neelix--but part of it is that his fish-out-of-water routine has a bit of an edge to it. There's something a little dark about his amazement at basic human empathy. And when he talks to Crewman Cutler (who's been great in her recurring role, incidentally) about their fledgling relationship, it's with a degree of practicality and world-weariness.

The episode itself was also pretty interesting. Archer is again wrestling with the proto-elements of the Prime Directive. Here, he's given the choice to save a sentient species from a deadly plague, or to allow them to die and for a co-habitating but less-developed species to continue their development in the natural cycle. We see this decision play out on several different levels, as Phlox tries to decide whether to allow the captain to make this decision, and where Archer realizes that this is the exact same thing the Vulcans have dealing with for the past 90 years. In the end, Archer doesn't give the dying species the cure they need. They have 200 years before extinction, and Archer decides that they have to be able to make their own way, to fail or succeed under their own accomplishments.

There's probably a better solution here, but that's not really germane to the point that the episode is making. Star Trek as a franchise has made a lot of really good arguments about why you should violate the Prime Directive, but not a whole of great ones about why it's important not to. Arguably, the basis for the Prime Directive is the whole point of this season, as Captain Archer wrestles with the ethical dilemmas inherent in dealing with a less technologically advanced civilization, and the experience of being on the receiving end of the same.

Enterprise: Sleeping Dogs
Enterprise has fun with Klingons again.

One of the things that most surprised me most about either of these series was that I found myself really liking Hoshi Sato. I remembered her as being flighty, insecure and more than a little obnoxious in my initial and scattershot viewings. Instead, I'm seeing her as very competent, charming, sweet, and even a little puckish at times. Her insecurity is a personality trait, but it's not her dominant personality trait, which makes her far more believable and relatable.

----------------------------

So at this point, about halfway through the first season of both Voyager and Enterprise (Voyager had a short first season for some reason), what is it that Enterprise is doing that makes it so much more enjoyable than Voyager? Primarily, it's the characters. At this point in the series, I'm emotionally invested in almost every character in Enterprise. I like all of them. It's not necessary to like all the characters in a story, but in a Star Trek show, you probably want at least part of your crew to be likeable. But on Voyager, I'm getting a bunch of emoted personality traits, and not a lot of coherent characters. I know what each character is supposed to be: Harry Kim is supposed to be very buttoned down and a little insecure, Tom Paris is supposed to be a maverick, B'elana is angry, Neelix is comic relief, etc. A lot of them even have solid motivations for these traits. B'elana was basically abandoned by both parents, Kim was raised by helicopter parents, Paris is rebelling against his Admiral father. (In fact, most of the crew seems to be hung up on issues of parental abandonment or strife.) But something's gone wrong here. Part of it is that there's no competing influences in these characters. In Enterprise, Hoshi is driven by her desire for exploration and scientific discovery, but it competes with her (understandably) natural skittishness about dangerous situations. Archer is wrestling with the knowledge that Vulcan intrasingence, the thing that he's fought against all his life and which broke the career of his father, may well have been completely justified. Tucker's brashness and eagerness to explore constantly conflict with his inherent naivete and lack of street smarts. Pretty much all of Enterprise's crew have these internal conflicts, or seem like they may be set up to have them down the line. That's not necessarily the only way to make a great character, but it's certainly a great way to start.

Conversely, many of Voyager's characters had a lot of the basis for their motivations removed when Voyager was flung to the far side of the galaxy. Chakotay and B'Elana were fighting for the independence of the colonies annexed by Cardassia. On the other side of the galaxy, they don't have much to fight for anymore. Tom Paris is no longer a Starfleet pariah, and he can go back to being an officer as if nothing had happened. The one character that does work is the Emergency Medical Doctor, and he does have that internal conflict that much of the Enterprise crew possesses: his conflict between being programmed as a near-disposable resource, and the reality of him having actual desires and opinions beyond that of a holographic reference program.

Enterprise is also investigating ethical quandaries a little moreso than Voyager. Voyager walks right up to the edge of an ethical quandary, and then walks away. They don't have to make decisions about the future of the organ-stealing alien race in "The Phage," nor decide whether they should tell the people in Emanations (haven't reviewed that one yet) that their bodies are not becoming spirits on a higher plane, but are actually being dumped in an asteroid on a nearby gas giant.

So far, I'm watching Voyager largely through inertia, and because it is slowly improving. But I'm watching Enterprise because I like it, and because I want to know what's going to happen to the characters and how they'll develop. Voyager isn't giving me near as much of a carrot. "It's Star Trek," it says, "You'll watch it no matter what happens." And I suppose I do.

Just watched 'Dreadnought'. Even though the ideas in it have been done a hundred times in sci-fi I thought they did a good take on it. It was even a bit suspenseful, which is pretty rare since the outcome of these kinds of episodes tend to be so predictable. One of my favourite episodes so far.

Stele wrote:

The Doctor does get a name eventually. ;)

That's mean.

It's kind of a spoiler thread by nature.

Think about it carefully, and realize it's really not a spoiler.

Spoiler:

Since the timeline in which he chooses a name never happened.

Oh god, is Kaidan from Mass Effect on Voyager? It sounds like him.

kyrieee wrote:

Oh god, is Kaidan from Mass Effect on Voyager? It sounds like him.

Answer: Yes. Raphael Sbarge has also been in Independance Day, Once Upon a Time, L&O: SVU, Dollhouse, The Cosby Show, Prison Break, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Grim Fandango.

Huh, I didn't realize Jiminy Cricket was Kaiden. Since I killed him off way back in ME1, I never got familiar with Kaiden's voice.

Stele wrote:

Think about it carefully, and realize it's really not a spoiler.

Spoiler:

Since the timeline in which he chooses a name never happened.

Spoiler:

There are actually two separate episodes, several seasons apart, in which the Doctor chooses a name. By the end of each respective episode, that timeline no longer exists. I guess his name is like the Redshirt of time travel episodes - you know by the end it will be dead.

Gremlin wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:

By Season 3 of Enterprise, I loved that it seemed that every episode was a cliffhanger... I'm glad I didn't catch it when it was on TV and I would have to wait for a week for each episode. And finally... f*ck that intro song. The producer should've been executed by airlock for that sh*t.

If you squint you can kind of see how the sentiment...yeah, there's nothing that can redeem that choice. The imagery was cool, though. The mirror universe deconstruction of it was good, too.

Yeah, it was a great intro with the exploration cut-scenes. And I really enjoyed the Terran song way better.. the militaristic overtones fit that perfectly.

Of course, this thread had me gorge myself on Enterprise (and this thread came up as I was finishing Voyager), now I'm moving on to DS9.

A Star Trek thread that snuck under my radar? How'd that happe...

...Oh. Oh, Voyager and Enterprise.

Yeah. That's how.

Show us on the doll where Rick Berman touched you, NSMike.

kazooka wrote:
kyrieee wrote:

I think that intro made me way more critical of everything in the show than I otherwise would've been.

Yeah, so far I have a pet theory that the intro song killed that series almost as much as anything else. The major problem was more that both it and Voyager suffered from airing on 4th and 5th networks like UPN and WB. They couldn't promote within their own networks, and the Internet was still a little baby Net at the time. They had no carryover from popular shows, and the network didn't even air in a lot of markets. But yeah, that song meant that you started every single episode with a bad taste in your mouth. It implied poor quality, and meant that everyone had to work harder to overcome it. It didn't pump you up like the openings to the original series, or Next Generation.

A little research suggests that the song played at the end of every episode was actually the original theme music. It matches up quite well to the opening sequence.

That is tremendously better, and would've improved my opinion of the show overall almost instantly.

The finale of Enterprise was a real stinker though, probably because it was put together at the last minute. I remember reading an interview with Jolene Blalock discussing how she and several other cast members really despised it.

DS9 is probably my personal favorite at this point. The Ferrengi, Cardasians, fleshing out the Klingons, etc really impressed me. A couple of episodes, in particular the one where O'Brien was given the memories of being imprisoned for so many years, just gave me chills.

So, I thought Kes travled back in time with her memory intact. Right? She tells Janeway and the Doctor some important technobabble about the time torpedoes, then goes further back in time but at the end they make it pretty clear she still remembers everything. Does she not tell them that stuff again? Wtf? Because I just watched "Year of Hell" and apparently they don't know any of that stuff so what was the point?! Also, the whole time I was just thinking "please don't solve this by saying it never happened" and of course that's what they did.

kyrieee wrote:

So, I thought Kes travled back in time with her memory intact. Right? She tells Janeway and the Doctor some important technobabble about the time torpedoes, then goes further back in time but at the end they make it pretty clear she still remembers everything. Does she not tell them that stuff again? Wtf? Because I just watched "Year of Hell" and apparently they don't know any of that stuff so what was the point?! Also, the whole time I was just thinking "please don't solve this by saying it never happened" and of course that's what they did.

:(

Your disappointment is understandable, but ultimately, this result is not surprising, and would have happened even without the temporal reset button. If they had said, "yes, this happened, and it was terrible," they would have had 4 or 5 episodes where Voyager was being "fixed" with engineer extras in the background, scaffolding, stories about trading for things, etc., and then, suddenly, Voyager would be the same ship it always was. I mean, it only took them one episode in DS9 to completely ignore the psychological trauma that O'Brien had gone through in Hard Time, which drove him to the brink of suicide.

Don't forget Geordi's brainwashing by Klingons or Picard's by the Cardassians.

I was actually pleasantly surprised when they made Picard deal with being assimilated. That's one of my favorite episodes.

NSMike wrote:

I was actually pleasantly surprised when they made Picard deal with being assimilated. That's one of my favorite episodes.

Plus, Earth.

And Worf's parents.

So far season 4 is better than the first three, but I'm a bit fed up with Chakotay. It's like he's there only to come up with ideas Janeway will never agree with, and to go through with them whenever he gets the chance.

I just got done watching the season 7 finale of Voyager and it was disappointing, that final shot might be sufficient to end a stand alone episode, but not a two-parter and certainly not the entire series. Overall though I still liked the show, I have a hard time seeing why people hate it. There are some bad episodes, but a lot of good ones as well. Season 5 was probably the highlight for me, followed by season 4. The thing I liked the least as the series went on was how Tuvok got marginalized, he was one of the best characters but got way less screentime than goofs like Kim and Paris.

It's true that there never was any character development for most of the crew and they never got away from the "alien of the week", but as the show went on I think they came up with better aliens on average. The recurring ones improved as well, I'll take the Hirogen over the Kazon or Vidiian any day.

edit: oh, also, I noticed the actor who plays Zaeed in Mass Effect shows up for on episode, that makes two ME appearances :d

Honestly, I've not liked the endings of any Star Trek series overmuch. DS9 was probably the best of the lot but that's not exactly saying much. It might be because so many of them deal with time travel. Or, in the case of Enterprise, utter stupidity.