Red Shirt Volunteer

Something like that, yeah.

Curiosity is what inspires children to open Christmas presents early and kills cats. Need and the desire to improve also inspire discovery. Let's see what Trip's intelligence has brought the crew:

- getting himself pregnant.

- losing his shirt on Risa, and not in the way he wanted to.

- bad relations with an alien race due to indirectly causing a suicide by forcing his mores on one of its members.

- pretty well killing himself in an experiment inspired by curiosity, but luckily subsequently receiving the benefits of having a clone grown conveniently.

Hmm, what's next?

To be honest, Trip's my favourite character, but I can't see him as a leader. Too hot a temper and too quick to take action without thinking of the consequences.

Yup, T'Pol's the smartest. Archer seems to be, but I think...

Archer is portrayed as making decisions that work out in the end, but T'Pol's character shows much more forethought and experience before doing things. It's lucky Archer's the captain - that way the writers can make a happy ending even when he makes a stupid, rash decision. Let's say T'Pol was the captain and things worked out - who would you all think was smarter: The person who wings it and goes on a gut feeling or the person with experience who can back up their actions before they even take place? The only reason Archer looks smarter than T'Pol is that his decisions often go against hers and actually work out; however, we don't know what would've happened if he'd actually follow her advice once in a blue moon - it might be even better.

Malcolm was pretty thick at the start and just wanted to whip out his phaser and start shooting anytime an alien appears. Trip also likes to whip out his phaser pretty fast, but I don't mean his sidearm. Phlox is very smart, but too constrained by morals which makes him less than pragmatic at times. Hoshi and Mayweather may be idiot savants, but I'm still waiting for their skills to actually be of real value more than once every 15 or so episodes.

Porthos should get some points just for not making bad decisions (compared to the others).

Well I think that Xindi trench is a pretty big change to the timeline. I can't see how something that catastrophic would not be referred to in the future - and here's a challenge - I bet there's an external shot of Earth lurking somewhere in the other four series where we see Florida, Cuba and Venezuela happily intact!!! (I immediately went to First Contact but the Earth doesn't get round to America).

 

In fact the whole Xindi undertaking of season three seems so huge that it must have repercussions which of course we never hear of. Having said that, the season isn't over yet and they may have already thought of and answered this problem and yet the only way I can see them doing it is by having the whole thing not really have happened.

I think the timeline is pretty solid, but I have to agree with Chunderfish that these are two major events that leave B & B some accounting to do. On the other hand, it doesn't really bother me if they do make some changes for the sake of a better series, as long as they don't throw away the spirit of the show - and I think they've done a pretty good job of keeping it together so far. I have better things to do with my time than cross-reference Stardates from old episodes and/or books (as some do) and Ent events.

I'm curious to see how they resolve the Xindi issue and the scar from the weapon, but not expecting anything great. I think they're going to have to wipe the Xindi out entirely and destroy all records or go back in time and prevent that initial contact with whoever it was that told them Earth would attack them to make me believe it. The main thing is that the episodes this season have been vast improvements on previous efforts and the Xindi storyline is helping the show, although viewers are still low as you can see here:

Enterprise Ratings

Let's avoid the whole UPN vs. quality of Ent. argument as the reason why ratings are dropping if we can. The point is that the number of viewers are kind of stabilising now.

I've made a list of some of the episodes I thought sucked. Season 3 has been great and I have no problems with it, but here are a few stinkers from the first 2. If you disagree, please explain why these episodes were either good, exciting or just what the heck the point was because it eluded me at times. I felt that my time could have been far better spent doing almost anything else after watching these ones, just because at least I would .

"Horizon" "Vanishing Point"

A good chance for Mayweather and Hoshi to develop as characters in these episodes which they starred in respectively, but neither did very much and have seen ever reducing time on screen, except for Hoshi's "Exile" ep. We haven't seen either of them do much of anything this season (3). Why they bothered making these ones, I don't know.

"Rogue Planet"

No connection to the main storyline and not much character development. Just the usual we have higher moral standards than you storyline.

"Oasis"

Hmmm. Why?

"Shadows of P'Jem," "Detained," "Acquisition," "Desert Crossing," "The Communicator," "Canamar" and "Bounty"

Archer and co. are either captured or held somewhere against their will in some way. Repetitive, boring, uncreative. I liked the episode "Acquisition," but they might have made an effort to avoid the whole capture theme being repeated so often. Some of these episodes were good, but what were they thinking by repeating the capture theme. I didn't even mind most of them, but I think the combination of these eps must have driven away more than a few fans.

"Precious Cargo"

Let's face it, this story was just plain cheesy any way you slice it and the acting was absolutely terrible. Padma Lakshmi was a brick. As beautiful as she is, she was awful in this appearance. I was really watching the clock during this one. It would have been better to watch some parts with the sound off.

"Dawn"

Some will disagree, but this story has just been done too many times and is basically a copy of the film "Enemy Mine," which may be a copy of something else. So predictable they'd help each other in some ways, with the human being the one to do the better deed in the end. Lame, lame, lame.

By the way, regarding panels and technology, I agree with Picard. The panels are a sign of our own technology and reflect our own expectations of the near future. It would look ridiculous to have TOS-style panels and such. Look at the thing in front of you right now - it's more advanced looking than anything we ever saw on TOS.

On the other hand, we saw some pretty weak stories from time to time in the first two seasons that didn't do much to develop the characters or push the story forward.

Look at your own life & see, is every day, every second meaningful?

 

or don't you have some dull pointless days/moments before?

 

no offense intended.

 

My point is, same goes to stories be it books or video. Not every episode have to be something great.

 

I wouldn't mind if there's an episode where everyone just sit down quietly for the whole 40 minutes episode. It'll still be great, knowing such episode exists.

 

IMO

Sorry, but just what is your point supposed to be? Nobody's making a TV show about my life. I'm not saying every ep of Ent has to be spectacular, but there should at least be a point to it. You've admitted indirectly that you agree some of the episodes were boring. It's entertainment - it's supposed to entertain, not put me to sleep. At any rate, I said I like it a lot, which you should probably take to mean that I enjoy most of the eps, but there have been a few serious duds. I'm not saying every ep has to be exciting and I agree with you that an episode based mainly in dialogue can be great, one case in point being "Shuttlepod 1." I'm not all that interested in action, if that's what you mean by "sit down quietly for the whole 40 minutes episode," except insofar as it moves the story along. As I said, I like Ent a lot, but fans have a right, if not a responsibility, to criticise when the production team puts out a lame episode.

Now onto your comments about my life...

Do I have dull days? Yes, everyone does. But they must have endless dull days on Ent that don't become television. Bear with me all before anyone spazzes out and overreacts. We see 26, soon to be 24 I believe, hours of their lives a year. These are presumably the most interesting events in what is generally a year in their lives, though not necessarily so. 95% of the time they must be floating through space with nothing to do but wipe the dust off their monitors or check readings from sensors, most of which would consist of useless information. I think I could pull together 24 interesting hours in a year of my life, so how can they not manage it with a Sci-Fi scenario at times? I will never accept boring eps. As soon as you do that, you're letting them off the hook and removing all accountability from their job. Fans that love a show just because it's there and blindly take what they're given only contribute to weaker writing.

Do I have pointless days? No. I spend most of my time doing my job, preparing for my job or researching/studying (yes, at a university) to help me become better at my job. The rest of my time I either spend socialising with friends, exercising or better yet, with my girlfriend. So my life is far from pointless. Here's a little piece of advice: Whenever you make a comment like that in the box above and assume something about someone else, you merely reveal something about your own life. So, no, I don't take any offense.

I like it a lot, but it has good and bad points. Unfortunately, a lot people either seem to just want to whine about it and not see anything good in it or gush and ignore obvious weak points.

Visually, it's the best among all the series, as you'd expect of a later entry into the mix. It's also got some of the best acting I've seen on Trek, particularly Billingsley, Bakula and Trineer. Blalock has done well to evolve T'Pol's character very gradually and seems to be moving in the right direction. The production values are clearly higher than any of the other series. The stories have far better internal continuity than other series and have shown the development of the crew as a working unit in much more detail than we've seen before in my opinion - they do a great job of referencing events occurring earlier in the series to build on what we already know. I also like the direction the show has taken in the Expanse and the time-travel theme, which has allowed the writers some freedom to surprise us. A lot of people moan about how it breaks with continuity, but how boring would the show be if everything went exactly as we expected? I'd say extremely.

On the other hand, we saw some pretty weak stories from time to time in the first two seasons that didn't do much to develop the characters or push the story forward. Also, Park and Montgomery don't get nearly enough time on screen and are pretty much just a waste of space in the opening credits; still, I have yet to see any particularly good acting from them and wouldn't miss them if they disappeared at this point. I'm not saying they can't get the job done, but rather that the writers need to make more effort to give them meaningful parts in episodes instead of turning them into wallpaper. I also think that Bakula gets way too much screen-time, which is getting in the way of me enjoying some aspects of the show. It'd be nice to see how Trip or Malcolm dealt with the Andorians in more detail (instead of just a couple of quick scenes) instead of only seeing everything through Archer's perspective, which is at times very predictable.

What I mean is, sure, we've seen the "ship" from each series get destroyed in a "reset the timeline to save the ship" episode.  We've also seen the Enterprise destroyed in the TOS movies and the Enterprise-D destroyed in the TNG movies.  However, what has not been done before is to have the ship destroyed durring the series and not be saved.  However, to avoid the cost of designing a new ship, the replacement could be the same class and have the same name (the show is named after the ship), but with upgrades sets, model, and registry number.

 

The reason why I'd like to see this happen is not for kewl-factor like in "Twilight", a cool episode, but to have the audience go, "OMG!  I can't believe the NX-01 was actually destroyed!  Oh, crappity crap!"  Why would the Humans need to show up the Vulcans?  They could prove themselves by saving Earth from a very dangerous enemy, the Xindi, and going as far as sacrificing their first warp-five ship, the NX-01 Enterprise, something Humanity invested so much in.

 

I think it could be pulled off very effectively.

Allow me to reiterate my previous comment:

No.

It's ridiculous that ships get blown to bits and none of the main actors buy it. I guess they could kill off at least one of two people whose names are in the credits but don't actually do anything to warrant it nor are needed on the ship - that'd make it somewhat less pointless. It would just be an action stunt and a lame excuse to suddently have a better ship, with new goodies to write into the story.

This duck is lame. Somebody put it out of its misery.

No.

Here in Fort Myers the city would make a killing in cash from people that run red lights. When the lights turn green here you have to count to 10 to make sure all the cars running the light have past. I see this every day!

It's the same where I live now, especially at night when all the drunks are on the way home. I used to count to 3 (literally) when I crossed the road, but now have a better feel for things. I actually feel safer crossing the road (on foot) at places other than intersections because I know where I stand. The lights just add another element of unpredictability to the whole procedure - at least when there are no lights, it's just me and whether there are cars in range to factor in.

I've been on the other side of the equation, too. I was once stopped in Canada for "running" a red light, though how you "run" a red light at the low speed (30kph, about 20 mph) is a mystery. The intersection was covered in ice so I decided to go through without tapping the brakes to avoid what I knew would be a more dangerous situation - I was able to judge that the light was just about to turn red as I was going to enter slightly before I got the intersection. The fool who stopped said I should've been going more slowly in the first place. Maybe so, but I'd say the city had a bigger responsibility to make sure the ice wasn't smooth enough for a game of hockey at a busy intersection.

Only if it's Porthos, but in general...

Not really, no. I've never understood why people get vaporised anyway. Is there a special button on the phaser to perform that function? I wish my microwave had one.

Well, someone's bound to mention that they use phase pistols/cannons/etc., not phasers, but let's face it, a gun by any other name would fire just as straight with the same sound and damage, at least on a Trek series.

Maybe it was an error... or...

Maybe the writers were just attempting to subtly show that Sim was different from Trip, at least in one dimension.

Maybe it was just too subtle for Trek fans.

At any rate, he certainly did mention the pecan pie preference in a way that was hard to forget. I doubt the writers could make this kind of mistake. Otherwise why would they choose to make a reference to another type of pie? If they'd really forgotten, surely they'd say Sim liked some kind of cake, jello, chocolate, cookies, any other form of dessert or perhaps that he didn't like sweet foods at all.

Stardate:213655.9

 

 

Well i saw it at Wal-Mart for $30.00 but i downloaded it instead for free(long live Kazaa!!!)

Argh. Thank-you for increasing the price for those of us who obtain software legally.

Basically, I think the program is fine as it is; but, there are a few things I wouldn't mind seeing and I do have a few beefs with the show even though I enjoy each episode.

1) Bring in more ships/personnel. Having one ship wandering around the expanse taking on the Xindi is idiotic at best. They'll be bringing more in later,,, right...

Click for Spoiler:

2) Do something about Hoshi. I'm not 100% sure I agree with killing her off, but it would at least add some tension to the show. She's pretty much redundant given the presence of UTs. It's absurd to have someone with the ability to pick up languages as fast as she does and remember that many. Either that or make her useful in some other way. I thought they were heading this way when she "saved the ship" (or hallucinated that she did) in the transporter accident - they really should have used this as a turning point for her if they were going to. Her character is virtually useless as it is and I always feel like stories that involve her are extremely contrived. The last episode in which she had a big role, "Exile," didn't need to be her. They could've rewritten it to use another character.

At least put her to work on analysing Xindi data.

3) Make the combat more realistic and tense. Watching T'Pol's martial arts makes me laugh (I have a black belt) and when the MACO's start playing laser tag with aliens I never really feel that there's any tension - it looks more like me and my buddies playing paintball ("Ooh, I nearly got shot... I'll just conveniently crawl into this corridor and hide until they go away."). Ditto for Malcolm's impaled leg in the Romulan minefield, where I never wondered once whether he'd make it out alive. I'd like to see the crew deal with the effects of combat instead of just using it at the end as a quick and clean resolution to a problem.

The best episode so far re. combat situations for me has been the one where there wasn't any. I can't be bothered looking up the name, but the one where Archer and co. infiltrate the Xindi base. There was good tension in that episode as I waited for them to be found, but they never were (Was it "The Shipment?").

As for the other stuff mentioned so far...

Keep B & B on: How is that a change? That would be not changing something.

Sexuality: Make it real or give it up. This teeny-bopper fantasy stuff is almost painful to behold. Either have them go at it or cut it out. It's really grating on me and just getting in the way of better story-telling. And please, for goodness sakes, no romance - they're on a space-ship and supposedly under a lot of tension, but sometimes it feels more like "Titanic" (DiCaprio's) than a paramilitary vessel.

Friendships: This is a good idea and some of the best episodes and scenes have explored the depths and limits to friendship. "Shuttlepod 1" is a good episode example and Archer getting angry at Trip in the episode where he ends up indirectly causing a suicide and Trip getting crusty with Reed are a few scenes that stand out. I expected T'Pol and Hoshi to form some sort of relationship as the 2 female officers, but it hasn't developed. T'Pol's condescending attitude towards Hoshi built some tension into the show in the early days.

Click for Spoiler:

Argh. Neelix was the Jar-Jar Binks of Trek. B)

Hi Mofo,

Thanks for the tip. I didn't think it could be as bad as it was. I'm not sure why they bothered to release that one as a demo, but anyway. I'll probably take a chance on it as you did. The graphics are nice and it runs smoothly, so it can't be all that bad.

Cheers,

Red Shirt Volunteer

Anyone else played this? I DLed the demo but it was pretty lame. It looks good, but there was a silly part where if you don't do something within a certain time-frame, you die and have to keep repeating it until you get it right. There seemed to be pretty well no way to do it right the first time except by a lucky choice of which corridor/room to walk into, then hitting the right button - no time to think about it. This kind of thing drives me nuts in games since you can end up having to repeat the same sequence again, and again... and again. Ugh.

It looks good, but is no better than similar games. I just got BF1942 which seemed way better based on the demo.

While I am not trying to be contrary, I can think of a situation where just having "unfortunate labels" could create a really uncomfortable situation. And that is when unpleasant people take it upon themselves to use such terminology to harass a single minority person, while pretending to have a conversation about the technology.

Hi mjham,

You've got a good point here - thanks for adding it to the debate. I didn't quote the whole thing because I think you've summed it up well in the introduction.

I agree that there may have been issues not described in the article that lead to the problem. Someone could have made some kind of inappropriate (i.e. racist) comment that was said in the context of master and slave VCRs and the person who was the victim of this comment may have developed feelings that it was partly the fault of the naming of the technology. Your examples clearly illustrate how this can happen.

However, I think ultimately the problem is that there are people who will abuse the terminology. The problem is not with the technology, but with the racists who takes advantage of the situation where what they say would not necessarily be construed as racism (such as was the case with that professor you mentioned). The root is the attitude of these people, their overall (mis)education and lack of basic common sense, civility and manners. Changing the names of machines isn't going to fix this - they'll just find other ways to discriminate.

I myself come from a place where discrimination used to be rampant (it's still there, but not the same degree). Segregation was normal and people liked to stay with "their own." People would be denied access to good jobs based on their beliefs. Eventually, the government made this illegal. What ended up happening was that employers who wanted to discriminate found new ways to do it - instead of asking an interviewee about their religion, they would just ask what school they went to, which is a legitimate question in most circumstances. Unfortunately, due to segregation, revealing your school pretty much revealed your religion most of the time. The only way to stamp out such attitudes is through integration of different groups in our respective societies. Changing words is just a patch.

And yes, "Brave New World" is a great book, though I prefer "1984" and am more worried about the big-brother world portrayed in it. I think both books come at problems of the future from opposite directions, but both portray the citizenry as subdued by the government in the form of control by either intimidation and invasion of privacy ("1984") or dumbing-down through government sponsored entertainment (cue drugs) ("Brave New World").

Cheers,

Red Shirt Volunteer

Yes, there are certainly some similarities to the book, but I don't think we're quite there yet. I thought that book stunk the first time I read it, partially because I saw the movie soon after and it left a "burning" impression on me, shall we say? The second time I read it I enjoyed it. It raises a lot of interesting issues.

np Oh, I don't think you even need to be registered to send mail.

I just checked and it's the "Big Book of Manners," which contains some Trek-related site. Undoubtedly they registered here and mailed you (and possibly others here and elsewhere) using the mail feature to attract users.

Glad to see I'm not the only one rolling eyes at this one. I'm by no means conservative and generally in favour of politically correct language, but this one goes a bit too far. Everyone draws the line between PC language and going too far in a different place, but I have to say that I think this is just silly. Master and slave are perfect descriptors for some types of technology since one controls the other. If somebody said primary and secondary I'd think, "Oh, good, if the main one breaks there's a back-up that'll do the same thing," but that's not what it means. I think it's sad that PC has gone to the point where people who clearly don't have much knowledge about what they're talking about (like the person who started this furror and basic technology) and are getting all riled up based on a lack of information, then pile confusion on the rest of us with constant changing of words that already work.

I just read this interesting article on the use of terminology to describe technology that some people may find offensive. As many of you know, a computer with, say, 2 hard drives has a main one called the master and the other one is called a slave (often used to store data, back-up info or whatever). Someone in L.A. County has taken offence to these names in reference to their use with 2 VCRs and requested a change (and even that the county doesn't buy equipment from manufacturers using those terms). I presume the master had some tape in it and the slave was either a back-up or recording from it. The county is now trying to remove such terminology.

Here's a link to a brief BBC News article that describes the problem.

Apparently, they may use the words primary and secondary now in such cases, which actually doesn't make as much sense since a secondary implies the same thing, which what many of us know as master and slave (technology) does not. One wonders now if high school students might not take offence to the new technology as it now casts secondary things (like secondary school) as being subordinate to primary ones (like primary/elementary school).

Am I the only one who thinks the County has gone too far? I'm not from L.A. and I'm not even from the States, so it really won't affect me one way or the other, but wouldn't it be more useful to spend tax money on educating people as to what these words mean in the context of technology instead of wasting money renaming things?

welll if it makes a difference, pretty much all the shows with a considerable online fan base, have the episodes posted online..myself, i download Enterprise episodes on tuesday and decide whether  to watch it again on the live broadcast on wednesday...dont fret, like i said, any show worth watching is online @ www.suprnova.org

Downloading TV shows is very illegal. If you download after watching the broadcast, in the place of a VCR, I see no problem with this, as long as it's for personal use. However, if season sets are out, I would recommend not downloading. Piracy is a very big issue these days. I don't download squat if I can go out and buy the CD/DVD. The only shows I download are those that are current and not on DVD, as I said before, in the place of using a VCR.

 

Anywho, my advice is to watch on TV with commercials, then download. Otherwise, you're condolling piracy, which is theft.

Yeah, but dled shows tend to suck pretty hard for quality. I doubt anyone who'd consider buying a DVD set would ever be satisfied with dled eps. Your right about it being illegal, but I don't do it just for the quality issue. I happened to see a few dled eps and was so frustrated by it I gave up. I'd rather wait to see it on TV.