Ths issue of continuity - how important it is, and so forth - has been done to death. So too has the question over the target audience, but I'd like to look at it in a different way. I'll get back to B&B later.

We're told that Enterprise is returning to the very soul of Star Trek. This is simultaneously a very clever idea, and a very brave one.

Clever, because Star Trek is a part of popular culture - and by 'Star Trek' I mean TOS. People who remember Kirk will identify with Archer, see McCoy in Tucker, Sulu in Mayweather, Uhura in Sato, and Spock in T'Pol. They'll click with setting the phase(r) pistol on stun, beaming down and "Ahead Warp 5."

It's brave because it's so easy to screw up. And, while they may not care, they run the risk of alienating the hardcore fans who've kept them employed this far. It'd be VERY ironic if you people - who never really got Star Trek, grew up on Star Trek: Funny Forehead of the Week, really liked Star Trek: Space Battle of the Week and got so annoyed with Star Trek: Spatial Anomaly of the Week - ended up hating Star Trek: Continuity Nightmare because it wasn't what you'd come to expect expect after 14 years of Braga fodder.

Which is where story comes in. If there's one thing I can say with certainty after all these years here, it's that story doesn't matter to the likes of 'us.' "The Sound of Her Voice" was a nice little story but all I've ever seen discussed about it here was what class the Olympia might be.

Trek has gotten really stale. Even the non-arc eps of DS9 were pretty turgid most of the time. Why? Because the stories weren't very good. In a fundamental sense, the crews were encountering much the same situations that, say, David Banner did when he came to a new town in The Incredible Hulk. That's a sweeping generalization, which most of you will nitpick in a way only teenagers can. Indulge me in my aged vices.

Berman and Braga are partly to blame for this. Voyager may have been a very flawed show, but it could have been turned around. Look at Babylon 5 - something I know most of you REALLY hate to do, but indulge me once more. It survived the departure of its leading man after one season, and turned it into a bonus. Shame it couldn't do the same with the departure of its leading lady in the last season. . . All I'm sayting is, Voyager could havebeen turned around.

But we're also partly to blame. Why should they put a lot of time into the story and the actors when, in the final analysis, just giving us a glimpse of a starship with a partly-visible registry will keep us occupied for months?

So. Never mind that the SS Enterprise is just an Akira with its nacelles pointing upwards (and it is: no amount of "the hull's a slightly different shape" apologism can contradict that). Also, no matter that they CAN make contact with, say, the Betazoids without violating any continuity that'll really matter. They need good stories. Different, unusual, X-Files-like episodes that make you say "whoa, neverseen that before." A good arc structure that leaves you guessing where they're going with it, not telegraphing each new move like The Jem'Hadar - "oh no! These are our new enemies and they're really mean!"

That's what made DS9 a great show, because on a station, a space station, you have to suffer for what you did the week before. Then you have continuing story arcs such as Gul Dukat and the Dominion among other story arcs

Oh, come on!

I disagree that we are just watching Star Trek for the ships and tech to debate about. I think it was pretty well understood that story is the deciding factor of how we rate a show or entire series. Of course "In the Pale Moonlight" and other deep episodes have made us think of the message behind them, and when story fails, many people express their opinion on it.

Just look at Voyager! That series had a new CGI "cool looking" sequence, new tech, ships, and aliens practically every week. Lots of things to discuss (and argue about). So why is it thought of as the weaker of all four current Star Trek incarnations? The stories, of course. When "Endgame" aired in the US, the first topics were reviews of the plot, not the flashy things put in (just check the older topics). Sure, later we wondered about the registries of some ships and the way some new things worked, but our first reactions were of the story.

Insurrection didn't fare as well either, even with new shuttles, ships, and effects.

Why did we watch TNG and DS9 with anticipation?

We cared about what happened. We wanted to know how the Dominion War would end. We wanted to know what the Prophets meant when Sisko would suffer great sorrow. We wanted to see how Picard would deal with the new threat of the Borg. We wanted to see how he would defend humanity to Q.

We cared about the characters and the setting they were in.

What about VOY? Well, that's the problem: What about Voyager? We didn't care what happened in the "bottle" episodes that lasted just one episode and didn't make a difference overall in character or series development. At the end, they were still lost. Nothing mattered. When the ship was damaged last week, we knew it would all be fine and dandy this week. They treated us like idiots. If the crew were in trouble, you knew the senior staff would live and the extra guy would die. They didn't develop their recurring characters like TOS (only Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were the stars), TNG (Barclay), or DS9 (too many to name). Besides basic sadness over loss of any life, we didn't care if the extra guy died.

If Enterprise has a good overall "series plot", it will succeed and be thought of well compared to the other series, and if it has cool tech, all the better.

[ August 06, 2001: Message edited by: Ace ]

Which in my oppinnion should have been the best trek series. Afterall it had so much potential, a ship lost in space, on its own, its crew part starfleet and maquis, a new quadrant of wonders to see and face....it should have been so great...

but it turned out in general so bland...so boring...the only reason i watched every episode was because its trek and i wanted to see the ships...LOL

"If there's one thing I can say with certainty after all these years here, it's that story doesn't matter to the likes of 'us.' "The Sound of Her Voice" was a nice little story but all I've ever seen discussed about it here was what class the Olympia might be."

Well, for one thing, you're hanging out at a place that started out as a Treknology board. We're a bunch of tech junkies. Of course we're going to discuss that stuff.

Not to mention, what do you expect us to discuss about liking the stories?

Trekkie 1: "Hey, did you see 'The Sound of Her Voice'? Good episode."
Trekkie 2: "Yeah, I liked it. It was good."
Trekkie 1: "Yeah, I liked it, too."
Trekkie 2: "'The Sound of Her Voice', you said?"
Trekkie 1: "Yeah."
Trekkie 2: "Yeah, good episode.
Trekkie 1: "Yeah, I liked it."

...as opposed to...

Trekkie 1: "Hey, did you see 'The Sound of Her Voice'? Good episode."
Trekkie 2: "Yeah, I liked it. Say, what class do you suppose the Olympia was supposed to be?"
Trekkie 1: "Well, given the time frame, and the fact that it was a deep-space explorer, I'm guessing it was a Constellation."
Trekkie 2: "Yeah, you could be right. I thought I saw a nacelle in that wreckage."
Trekkie 3: "This screencap clearly shows that it was an Oberth! Look! (Oh, and I really liked the episode, too!)"
Trekkie 1: "Hm... He could be right. I dunno..."
Trekkie 2: "Yeah, I wonder..."

Oh, and if Berman or Braga or both of you are reading this, start pushing the envelope with your stories like TOS...

[ August 07, 2001: Message edited by: Michael_T ]

OH MY GOD! They were sleeping together and having sex?!

You do realize, of course, that the term "sleeping together" usually means that two people are engaging in sexual intercourse?

"Yeah, I'm sleeping with this girl Kate," doesn't mean, yeah, you know, we just share the same bed. That's all. Hell, I've never even seen her naked.

No, it means we're engaging in some sort of primal mounting behavior, involving the insertion of one body part into another.