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Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay:
[QB]
I hope Trip doesn't "get over" his sister's death in this episode. This should be a recurring theme throughout the season.

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Do I detect a possible romance with Trip and T'Pol? Probably just my imagination.

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My GOODNESS could Hoshi and Mayweather be any MORE ignored?

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Here's hoping they get some chances to shine later in the season.

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I thought stumbling into the trap was a sort of bonehead move to make by Archer,

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but I guess his anger got the better of him.

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Consider this therapy, as I've felt like shit all week so far.

Through magic, I watched the first episode of the new season
of ENTERPRISE this morning. As regular readers will recall,
I follow these things through a kind of Darwinian interest in
tv drama.

Everyone knows that theme tune because everyone hates it.
A sort of sub-Creed pomp rock. Music for old people. Again,
the regulars will know of my slightly bizarre fascination with
credit sequences. They stamp the identity on the show,
require great skill and invention, and can make or break the
thing. The only intelligence evident in the vile STAR TREK:
VOYAGER was in the quite beautiful credit sequence, if you
turn the volume off. ENTERPRISE's credit sequence, too,
is clever and attractive. If you turn the music off. If you've
got the music on, well, you poor bastard... but you can at
least see where work has been done to match the visuals
to the sound. The point where the International Space Station
morphs and grows in speeded-up time is matched by a
howling guitar from Session Musician #1143, for instance.
So, yeah. The music is a horrible horrible misstep, but
there was at least thought.

How do you make that theme tune worse?

Simple. Keep the vocal line and make a new mix, adding a string
section, lots of strummy guitars and a new percussion track, making
it into a full-blown oldie AOR nightmare. Also, due to your new
and yet somehow festeringly ancient mix, mistime all the sound-to-vision
cues in the original, so that the music just sits there totally independent
of the visuals.

It really would have been much easier and cheaper for someone to
record a voiceover along the lines of "We really don't know what
the fuck we're doing here. Hold on, this'll be over in 40 seconds"
and run that instead of the music. Using the original mix in the
first two series at least made a statement, even if that statement
was "We are very old. Is this what the young folk of today like
listening to? Does this sound like one of those popular beat
combos from the hit parade?" Using a remix -- particularly one
this ugly and tired -- just says "We know something's wrong
with this, but we don't know what."

I use credit sequences the way shamen use animal entrails.
You know, instinctively, that Something Is Wrong.

You can extrapolate that out to the show. They know ENTERPRISE
isn't working, but they really don't know why. So they introduce
Terrorist Aliens -- a race comprised of five divergent intelligent species,
the equivalent of humans, dolphins, mantises, bears and lizards
all sharing the same intelligence rating. They live inside The Delphic
Expanse, a kind of Afghanistan of space where spooky people
hide in metaphorical caves and Nothing Makes Sense. And they
add the MACOs, who are basically the Marines from ALIENS, except
terribly polite and middle-class, like everyone else in the future.
(Steven Culp, who plays the head of the marines, is actually a
bloody good actor who did a fine turn as Bobby Kennedy in
THIRTEEN DAYS.)

Because the Enterprise crew aren't hard enough to take on terrorist
aliens alone.

There you go. Right here. That's the point where the producers
should have gotten their coats and gone home.

Imagine you've been watching this show for the last two years. Just
for a second, no need to call the bloody doctor's. Assume you've
been enjoying the adventures of presumably tough and resourceful
spacefaring types exploring and taming their little bit of the galaxy.
And here's the third season of stories, presenting their greatest
challenge yet.

And they say fuck it, we better take on a bloody great squad of
Marines to do the tough stuff for us, eh? I might break a
fucking fingernail fighting terrorist aliens.

Game over.

Or, if you will:

"Well... Spock. I've considered the.... situation. And. I. Think
it would be best if... we turned around, went back home and got
a lot of soldiers todothefightingforus."

"Dr McCoy, please observe. The Captain's entire penis has broken
off at the root. Fascinating."

Basic rules of serial storytelling: don't totally fucking undermine
your protagonists unless you have a damn good story-driven
reason for doing so that leads to a decent conclusion without
pressing the reset button.

It's a release to know that I won't need to keep tabs on what
ENTERPRISE is doing. Because, like VOYAGER, it's not
going to be doing anything. It's probably going to be dragged
out to seven series because all the others were, and to do
less is to look like a failure. But you can write them off. Because
the production team admit it in their work right here: we don't
know what's wrong. We don't know what to do.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, finally, the conclusion of the
Star Trek franchise. And thank Christ for that.

In another couple of years, STAR WARS will be all over, and the
lifting of these two things from the world will be like removing
a toxic waste dump from the landscape of the mind.

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Originally posted by Harry:
The ending was a bit strange, IMHO. I mean.. the story just.. stopped. "All right, you've seen T'Pol's boobs! Show's over!"

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