posted
The first regular episode aired on Tuesday for my area. Since "Enterprise" skipped the pilot stage and went straight to regular production, there were no real differences in story setup or props to be seen. What follows are tech-related notes about the episode of particular interest. Spoilers ahead...
-Name dropping: Dr. Phlox mentions the Nausicaans!Plus, the guest race in this epsiode are the Anxanar, and as a result of Hoshi they eventually get off on a good footing with them. The Axanar are androgynous and live around 400 years, by he way.
-Away missions (no offical term for it yet) are a really big deal. Lots of preparations go into it, and they tend to bring a lot of equipment over to accomplish their mission.
-And they use the shuttles to go there and back. Some sort of docking adapter is on the top on the ship, which rotates as necessary to attach to hatches and stuff. In this episode, they attach to the "top" of the ship to get in, and flip upside down. The shuttle has visible maneivering jets, too.
-Speaking of which, we see *why* the shuttlebay has two decks - you biard the shuttles throught the top, via a drop-down stair that extends to it! Pretty neat. Docking takes a bit of doing, and is a fragile process.
-The "plasma rifles" *are* apparently redresses of the Jem'Haddar rifles, themselves redresses of previous guest weapons. Oh well. The phase pistols have a top/front section that opens up like a revolver, and has a glowey power cell or something inside that can pop out.
-We see the armory this episode, which is probably one of two in the forward section. It features two loading cradles forward, with two tubes into which torpedoes are loaded. The four ports on the underside of the hull are the torpedo tubes. Aft, the torpedo is launched from the suspended pod(!). Whaddya know...
-The torpedoes themselves are long, metallic, pointed and with a pinched section in the middle. They're pretty slow when fired, and the episode is partly about getting them to target and explode properly. Even when they DO work, they still don't seem very powerful.
-This is part of what I am liking about this show - they seem to be clearly outmatched by other races thus far, and have to get out of situations by their wits instead of technobabble crap. Voyager, the E-D, and the E-nil tended to be on equal or greater footing with their antagonists tech -wise, or could use their tech to get out of situations. On the Pre-E, everything is experimental and realtively low-tech.
-The bad guys who were killing the Axanar are unknown, but come in a ship that looks like a Neitzchean fighter from "Andromeda". They have tractor beam technology but use boarding tubes a la later Vidiian episodes. They were killing the Axanar and extracting some compound for their own use. Finding the Pre-E, they start doing the same thing when another Axanar ship shows up to save them, after Hoshi learns their language.
-Speaking of which, this is mostly a Hoshi episode, focussing on her getting used to space travel and exploration. The clip we've seen of her screaming is actually a significant plot point: the first time aboard the ship, Hoshi freaks out when she sees the dead crew, and is really ashamed later about screaming "like a 12 year-old". She eventually gets through her crisis with the help of an obtuse metaphor involving a slug. Overall, not badly done.
Bah, that's enough. You guys fill in the rest tonight.
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posted
The Axanar (sp.) are a good nod to a couple of old TOS stories, and itll be interesting to see how their situation develops into the references made in those shows ('Court Martial', 'Whom Gods Destroy')
Actually i cant think of any good reason why there shouldnt be mention of Nausicaans on Enterprise. I think Enterprise needs to be a vehicle for established races (i.e. our first contacts with them) from the older series, not new races that will mysteriously disappear before the later series begin
posted
The Nausicaans were mentioned in a scene between Trip and Phlox in the mess hall. Trip was depressed that they'd been going for weeks without anything exciting happening, and Phlox countered that everything on the ship was eciting to him. Among things, the odor given off by a certain (female) crewman was remarkably like that of a Nausicaan to him.
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although i do hate little alien name dropping like that.. like Neelix with his.. look i have *alien name here* pasta and *funny name here* pate. unecessary
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But isn't it this sort of name-dropping that builds a coherent Trek universe, the sort of thing that the fans are crying out for? Isn't reinforcing the notion that this very much part of the same saga as the one that we've come to learn so many intricate details about just a subset of that term continuity?
Or is it just called continuity when Ron Moore does it and pointless name-dropping when Braga does it?
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
posted
As long as they don't mention Q or show him during the 22nd Century stint, I should be fine.
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Well, if you are going to refer to Andorian blues or something, yes i approve.. but the random things like Andonian tea, Tarkalean tea, ad infinitum builds up an array of useless and often contradictory references (because they are nearly impossible to keep track of) Who are the Andonians? who are the Tarkaleans? all we have of them is their tea.. are they species? it is approaching critical mass (see: five species of Talarians, Takarans, etc....) Why not concentrate on fleshing out things we already have? The Nausicaan reference seemed to have little to do with the Nausicaans themselves.. and if thats the way it goes.. does it mean Nausicaans smell good? or did that woman smell bad? Is anybody going to care later. Its like saying Vulcan has no moon, but nobody is really going to stick to that when they have a chance to show you this Big Moon over Vulcan
[ October 03, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
posted
It wasn't pointless. What do you think a woman's like if she's said to smell like a large angry ugly alien? What do you think of a person who delivers such a line? It's blunt observations like this that will give Phlox his alien-ness. Especially interesting about the name-dropping is the fact that Berman and Braga, are, *gasp*, writing something into the script that only a tiny portion of the audience will get. Few viewers will even know what a Nausicaan is, let alone put a name to a face to an episode.
As for name drops being useless. Well, let's take my favourites, the Breen. The entire culture was built-up in a series of little name drops here and there over six years.
You're right about there being essentially a criticial mass of already-established names, and "Tarkalean" being a throwaway line that is truly throwaway. But why complain about an episode that uses two already-established names and recycles them? How exactly is a Nausicaan reference any different than an Andorian one?
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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my problem isnt as much with Phlox's comment, as much as it is with how common this became in Voyager.. especially by Neelix
And the Breen thing was awesome, because they kept threading it through. Although they did lose track of the original reference, which was that the Breen used disruptors ('Hero Worship' & 'Generations', but by the time we saw a Breen they had left phaser burns ('Indiscretion'). but i had fun figuring that out too
[ October 03, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
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I'd guess Neelix' alien references were just silliness. After all, didn't he refer to things like "[random alien name] spaghetti", and such? Aliens wouldn't make spaghetti. Neelix was probably making spaghetti, and throwing in something that's associated w/ such-and-such race. Then he calls it "such-and-such race spaghetti". After all, that's what Neelix did. He mixed and matched foods to come up w/ a "new" and "exciting" menu for the crew.
At least Phlox' reference to the Nausicaans is a real observation about something on his part. If he had said something like "This food tastes remarkably like a Nausicaan spaghetti I once had...", then I would worry.
posted
Tim: Well, a Nausicaan foodstuff might be called "gorush-daana" and consist of a hardened extruded paste of grains from a native Nausicaan wheat-like plant that is subsequently boiled in water and served with a sauce made from the tails of an amphibious creature that lives in tropical swamps near Nausicaa's equator. The Universal Translator might work its hocus pocus and figure out that the stuff is pretty similar to spaghetti in concept and change "gorush-daana" to "Nausicaan Spaghetti."
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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Except that if they put that in the show it would be Neelix-like, it would suck, and i would hate them forever and ever and hope that they died
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The armory is definatly nice looking. Torpedoes are loaded just like the big guns on naval battleships.
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I just saw the first act of the episode, and I'm in agreement with The359. The torpedo/armory set is definitely nice-looking. It reminds me a lot of a submarine. That was a nice effect of the rapid loading of the torpedo and watching it get fired. I would really have liked to see the actual loading of the torpedo onto the launcher. I liked the console layout in the room. Is this just one of two rooms (since it had two visible launch tubes) or is there just the one room (with each launcher feeding two tubes)?
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
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