For purposes of research and black humour, I caught the closing episodes of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE last night.
The show's been renewed, as much by pressure from the producers to get their 100 episodes for syndication than anything else.
Now, these episodes weren't as bad as the closing pieces of ANDROMEDA, which has gone beyond incoherence into the rarified realms of senseless gibberish. It's been a long time since I've seen television that pompously bad. (For those who bailed on the show, the Kevin Sorbo character now turns out to be a mythic immortal being from beyond the birth of the Universe called The Paradine.)
But ENTERPRISE, bless it, has had its own classic Jumping The Shark moment.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to TV shows that have gone into the territory of total fucking nonsense in misguided attempts to keep concepts past their sell-by date creatively alive. Fonzie on water skies jumping over a shark.
So Scott Bakula, as tough and expressive as a balsa wood plank, is "killed" at the episode's climax. Not too convincingly. And Enterprise returns to earth. No radio noise from Earth. They send a shuttle down, obviously not having seen enough TV to know what this means, and old Scott not having told the crew that his old mate the time traveller popped by to inform him that if he dies the Federation will never happen.
They send the shuttle down, and it's attacked by WW2 fighter planes, and Scott is found in a medical unit on the ground being menaced by...
...Nazi space aliens.
Shark bukkake is when the sharks get out of the water wearing SS uniforms and jerk off in Fonzie's face.
And mine.
If ENTERPRISE had gone off the air, a great many good people would have been out of work, and that would have been a great shame.
But please.
-- W
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
How annoying. Why would someone put line breaks after every five words?
Anyway, judging a cliffhanger episode without knowing anything about the second part seems a little... premature? Perhaps even... pompous? "The resolution of this plot isn't so obvious that I know immediately what it's going to be, so it must suck."
I mean, TOS did an alien Nazi episode, too, and it had a perfectly reasonable explanation. I'm not sure why Nazis + aliens is supposed to automatically equal complete badness.
Oh, and a couple of factual issues: Archer's "death" didn't need to be convincing. If we were really supposed to believe he was dead, they wouldn't have shown him alive five minutes later. Also, there was only one alien Nazi, and he wasn't menacing anyone.
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
I thought, all nazis where aliens.
Posted by Captain Boh (Member # 1282) on :
Since everyone would assume Danials would yank Archer out anyway, yeah the death didn't need to convince anyone
Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :
Troll tastic.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
God bless Warren Ellis.
(Though, say, it seems to me that The Authority went to the Nazi prop department a few times, maybe, too.)
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
The Ultimates did, but Mark Millar is an egregariously poor writer.
And also probably wrote the issues of The Authority where Nazi Aliens Appeared. If they did (fuzzy memories).
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
(I have never read The Authority. My only actual comic book encounters with Ellis have been X-related. For which he would probably hit me with a brick. I would like to read, say, Orbital, though. A lot.)
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Comics are for stupids anyway.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I do keep meaning to buy Hostile Waters though, if that's any help.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Warren Ellis is one of those rare special people who in the space of one paragraph can totally restore my faith in humanity from the lowest of humanly reachable lows.
"I do keep meaning to buy Hostile Waters though"
Schmuck.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Wait...do sharks jerk off? I mean, how??? Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Who the hell is Warren Ellis?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Heh, "Shark Bukkake."
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Fuck Warren Ellis.
Posted by Epoch (Member # 136) on :
I agree with Jason. Ellis is just trying to make himself important by attacking TV shows in a base almost vulger way.
I admit that Enterprise isn't what can be called great TV but then very few shows can claim that. It is made for entertainment, if it doesn't entertain you don't watch it. It is as simple as that. What makes a person believe that just because they don't like something that doesn't affect them that they can try to change it. I disliked both Friends and Seinfield, so you know what I did, I didn't watch them. I know that many people did enjoy them, good for them.
It is all a matter of personal taste.
Posted by Obi Juan (Member # 90) on :
So we're not allowed to share our opionion of a TV show if it is negative? Hell, there would've never been a Voyager thread here if that rule was enforced.
Posted by Free ThoughtCrime America (Member # 480) on :
Ellis makes himself important by attacking everything that doesn't call him up on the phone and send him paychecks. He's a hired geek who has cyber sex with goth chicks because they don't look like his live-in girlfriend.
Anybody with an internet connection could be the next Dark Lord of the Graphic Novel.
Though I agree with him about Enterprise being shit.
Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
Attacking the person making the argument doesn't make the argument invalid. It just implies you can't win the argument on the merits of the points made alone.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Yes, mother. . .
Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
Now, go wash behind your ears. And eat your beets!
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Warren Ellis has a show pilot on WB. I think he knows a little something about Television Mastery.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I can't believe you used "Television Mastery" and "WB" in the same post.
Unless you were being....sassy.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I'm reserving judgement on the cliffhanger. I just finally got to see it last night. I don't have a problem with the ending since I'm going to wait and see what happens. My biggest complaint is that we didn't really get a breather to enjoy the end of the Xindi arc. It was like, "It's over... phew... WAIT, WAIT, WAIT...More stuff, holy crap, the end.
Here's my question... say this new stuff in the past becomes the main plot point for the next, oh, half a season. They're going to have to find a way to go back to the resolution of the Xindi arc because the crew will eventually get back to (their) present day Earth and have to tie things up. How they gonna do that after giving a whole new thing to deal with?
Anyway.
It's obvious their trying desperately not to go back to a week by week episodic exploration feel, though.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
It's just that this is a science fiction series (and particularly this show) that has never wanted for bad guys and it so seems a tad desperate to play the Nazi card now. I do think it's potentially kind of neat and when I watched the episode I definitely had a 'whoa'-type reaction. Of course, that might have been Archer's 'Hey, you got something on your shoulder. Lemme get it off for you.' moment just prior.
Warren Ellis is a bit up himself and he needs to find the no-line break function on his new Treo.
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)