As a way to get my mind on other things...

[ru]

Watch your step--these are the opinions of the Ru and should be taken with a shaker of salt.

As I mentioned in a couple entries earlier, I watched the last ep of "Enterprise" the other night, more out of duty than anything else. For those of you not in the know, this basically means that this is the first time in something, like, 25 years or so that a Star Trek series hasn't been actively running. Which means we're going to be sticking to reruns, I guess, until they come up with a new series. Somehow I doubt that we'll be going without for too long. There are still a lot of Trekkies out there, myself included.

Heck, I was *born* a Trekkie. Both of my parents were of the Star Trek-loving type before me, my mother more than my father. iirc, my mother said the first thing she saw on a color TV was the original series ep "Spock's Brain". One of my earliest memories of going to the movies was going to see "Star Trek V". I remember living in NY and watching what I called "Star Trek, the Whales" constantly(it was in fact, "Star Trek IV". Still love that movie.). There was that guy that looked like he was covered in trash bags, Armus, from TNG that, as a small girl, scared the EVER LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of me. So yes, to one degree or another, Star Trek has been a part of my life. Sometimes it was like, the evening thing to do, like when they started showing reruns of TNG a while back. Other times, I've largely been oblivious to what's going on.

The big two where I was like that was with DS9 and Enterprise. In the case of DS9, iirc, my family and I were such busy bees at the time that we really kinda lost track of it. That was one thing that I found rather interesting about DS9 though, that it actually had an ongoing plot. I thought that was rather new and different. I think if given a second chance, I would probably be more prone to keeping track of what was going on, and not having to just catch an ep or two here and there.

Then there was Enterprise.

*sigh* I think Enterprise had a LOT of potential. It was an interesting concept--go back to the beginning of things, before the Federation really got off the ground, and see how things worked! Watch the humans meet people like the Klingons and the Romulans for the first time! Watch them gaze in total AWE at a ship that can make warp 4, like that is the highest things get! Watch them cringe at transporters! I think it would have been a lot of fun to see the evolution of things, things leading up to the original series and beyond. The problem though is that it fell flat. After the first couple eps I lost complete interest, though on occasion we ended up watching it for lack of nothing better on. While I watched the last ep, I was still not impressed. If nothing else, it fell flat. In the end, I think the whole series fell flat. My problems with it included:

1.) The theme song: Okay, I'm SORRY, but hearing a Star Trek opening that I recognized from *another* movie, with LYRICS, made me start to worry a lot when I saw the first ep. Star Trek themes have always been these lovely little instrumentals, sometimes with "Space, the final frontier...", but that's the extent of the wording in the opening credits. DS9 had to be the best of the lot--it had this beautiful, sweeping theme that just made me sit in awe as I watched the station pan by. Lyrics in a Star Trek theme, imho, just do not belong. They make it too...how shall I put it...generic. It makes it sound like we're about to go on a five year mission to get some decent cheetos, so let's turn on the radio!

2.) The character development, or lack thereof: Except for a couple exceptions, the characters didn't really sing for me. Now granted, this may be because I only watched a few eps, and maybe there was some decent character development when I wasn't watching, but there weren't really any characters I could really sink my teeth into. The one thing that springs to mind was the weapons guy's undying focus on "Let's find out how these aliens blow stuff up, and maybe we can learn how to blow stuff up like them!". It may just be because hey, he's the weapons guy, and that's his job, but it would've been nice to hear him say something like "...I wonder what sorta eggs they use for making omlettes on this planet." or something like that. Shiny technology and special effects are all good and all, but I'd really like some good characters to be in center stage.

3.) The unnerving amount of sex emphasis: This was the big one that turned me off. There has always been a bit of sexiness in the Star Trek series: Captain Kirk and all his flings with various alien women, Riker, a.k.a. the Kirk-in-Training, and his subsequent flings, romance between crewmembers, and so on. I can handle that. Adding a bit of romance can be fun. However, as far as I could tell, Enterprise was all about the sex appeal. First, there was T'Pal. Sure, she seemed interesting, but there were times I got the impression that someone went "Hey! Seven of Nine worked out great! We should get another hot emotionless chick on the show!". Secondly, there was the usage of, well, kinda pointless scenes that were obviously there to be sexy. An example: I remember one of the eps involving T'Pal and...Tucker I believe, having gotten infected with something or other, and needing antibacterial lotion. Okay, fine. But did we have to see them rubbing it on themselves and each other in a dim-lighted environment with CAREFULLY PLACED CLOSE-UPS? I didn't.

In fact, I think that was what ultimately bugged me. It seemed like they were trying way too hard to get people(teenage boys in particular, by my guess) interested in the show, by playing up the sexiness. Personally, I would be much more interested in an engrossing concept with characters I can learn to love.

That's why I loved TNG. Even though it was a primarily episodic series, wherein you can watch one ep and kinda figure out what's going on, you watched it for the plotlines of each episode, which were usually quite good, and for the awesome characters. I mean, come on, Worf declaring reverently that prune juice is "A warrior's drink" or Picard reciting Shakespeare? By the end of the series you've really gotten to know these characters, how they interact with each other, and so on. And, as I mentioned, the plots were usually pretty good. Well, written, engrossing, both dramatic and funny, and usually with a universal meaning that can be applied to us in the primitive 21st century, I loved watching them. If the producers recognized that some of us like shows that don't necessarily have to depend on special effects and sex appeal, then maybe Enterprise wouldn't have been cancelled.

As mentioned earlier, I think that there'll be another Star Trek series along sooner or later. There are still things to be explored. It can focus on another ship, another century, it can basically go anywhere. Maybe by then though, things will have been fixed, and I won't have to resort to watching reruns when I catch them.

Comments

[liich.livejournal.com]

i never was able to watch enterprise. i found it way too boring and, well, flat, like you said. and very grey. i'm very visual and colour is a good thing to me and i found that show very very lacking in colour. ^^;; i know, odd thing.
i liked DS9 but, at the time, never got into it as i was just too busy. TNG was my favourite and i loved picard and data. picard's hot for an old guy (hee hee). i liked worf in the newer episodes. i liked voyager a lot, too but i never watched it as much as i liked. i found it was more like TNG than DS9, but not as good. i still watch TNG reruns and original star trek reruns. gotta love captin kirk. hee hee so great!