Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

1980? I get the rant, but unless they are going to Utah, I think it would not draw much attention if they went back in time to at least 1967.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Leaving the Nazi's chillin' at the White House aside (which really should have been a clue for them to not let Mayweather or the unnamed black MACO Archer beamed to the surface anywhere near Earth); unfortunately there was very violent resistance to integration, race riots, and a general disregard for black folk's safety by law enforcement throughout the country going into the 1970s. I chose 1980 to go with Louis C.K. joke about black folks and time travel

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Daedalus” one of the few standalone episodes of the season. I love Bill Cobbs to pieces but even his presence wasn’t enough to make this episode interesting. A story about the invention of the transporter could have been cool but this wasn’t it. BTW, at the beginning of the season T’Pol received an official Starfleet commission so why isn’t she in uniform?

“Observer Effect” now this was an interesting and an unintentionally ironic standalone episode. It’s probably the most continuous dialogue Mayweather has had for the entire run of the series. All of the senior officers are possessed by the aliens at one point during this episode. I thought it was absolutely hilarious that Archer had the gall to pass judgment on the aliens for letting Trip and Hoshi die from the virus. Uh excuse me captain, need I remind you of the events in “Dear Doctor” where you and Phlox sentenced an entire species to extinction rather than interfere. No different. We did get a little back story on Hoshi and Trip, better late than never I guess.

“Babel One” / “United” / “The Aenar” so the Romulans are trying to destabilize the region by having a remotely piloted ship attack everyone. Not a bad plan when you think about it but instead of having war humans, Andorians, Tellarites, and Vulcans end up working together. Oh it’s a little baby Federation, isn’t that cute. I don’t want to nitpick at what was an otherwise OK trilogy (not as good as the Augments or the Vulcan trilogy) but the last episode ended with Tucker requesting a transfer off of Enterprise. Really? The writers decided to make Trip that much of a wuss that he can’t do his job and get over T’Pol at the same time? I would chalk it up to well the show was ending so they had to do something but according to Memory Alpha the cancellation decision came down after “Babel One” aired so “The Aenar” would have been filmed already. This didn’t make sense then and still doesn’t make sense now.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Affliction” / “Divergence” so now we have an explanation for why the Klingons in TOS don’t have ridges but all the other ones do. I do appreciate what the writers did here: they knew they had to explain what the hell happened to the Klingons and they managed to tie it into an already existing story, the augments” and they made it interesting. I could have lived without the Speed shout-out but what can you do.

“Bound” Orion slave girls, good grief. You know, I get annoyed when women and people of color are characterized in piss poor ways. Why on earth aren’t men pissed when they’re depicted as complete morons who think with the organ between their legs instead of the one between their ears. Hey duchess, if every man on the ship is susceptible to the Orion pheromones, why in the wild, wild world of sports would you leave two male MACOs in charge of the prisoners and then have the nerve to look shocked with the slave girls end up on the bridge? Once Hoshi and T'Pol that Archer and Reed were completely bat poop crazy why didn't they grab a phaser and shoot them and the Orions (which thankfully is what Trip eventually did). Seriously, there's a stun setting for a reason. Tri['s transfer to Columbia ended here too for what it's worth.

“In A Mirror Darkly Pts 1 & 2” yes there are some flaws but these are still two of the best episodes of the series. It’s a lot of fun and I love, love, love the fact that Hoshi and Mayweather, the two characters who usually have the least amount to do, end up in charge at the end of the episodes. Sfdebris makes the sad point that the evilness Archer exhibits in the mirror universe aren’t that far off from how Archer is written in the regular universe; how sad is that. Another thing I love about these episodes is the opening credits. The new sequence complete with a shot I swear is from The Hunt For Red October, is awesome and the theme song is leaps and bounds better than the cheesy pop song that usually plays over the credits.

I was hoping I could finish my Trek endeavor before classes began and with three more episodes and one reboot film left, I should complete my journey next week!

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

"Demons" / "Terra Prime" so Robocop plays a xenophobic hypocrite who wants all aliens off of Earth to keep humanity pure while he's taking medication conceived of by aliens. Lovely. It's kinda sad that some of Robocop's speech sounds like it could come from an anti-immigration rally that took place today. When this episode originally aired I never thought it would be prophetic and that's not a good thing. Not as good as the other arcs this season but the ending was very emotional. Small nitpick: why would Archer allow Trip and T'Pol to infiltrate the mining compound where the xenophobic terrorists are hiding out? Let's leave out the brilliant idea of sending an alien into a nest of vipers who violently hate aliens, Enterprise saved the freaking planet, pictures of your bridge officers have been plastered on every TV screen for about a year. Is there really any human who wouldn't recognize them on sight? Bad idea duchess...bad idea.

If I hadn't spent the last eight months barreling through hundreds of hours of Trek I wouldn't bother watching the next episode. I'm firmly in the camp that views "Terra Prime" as the true ENT finale and that other episode is just a really late TNG episode. But since I've come this far I will try to watch the next episode tomorrow and then I'll be one step away from finishing.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

*sigh* "These Are the Voyages" what is there to say about this episode. According to Memory Alpha, Bergman and Braga intended this episode to be a valentine for all the Trek shows. Well if that was the case, you wouldn't have omitted Sisko and Janeway from the final monologue. What the episode is boils down to a giant middle finger to the ENT cast. They seemed to say: well since the show's been cancelled, it's obvious that you're not interesting enough so we're going to shove you aside and make you a supporting cast to more interesting characters.

You want to finish the series by looking into the future, fine, Babylon 5 is an excellent example of how to do that. You want to kill off a main character, fine, check Buffy or BSG to see how it's done. This was clumsy beyond belief. There was an insane amount of time between when the aliens beemed aboard and when Trip blew them up, where the hell was Reed, the MACOs and security? The writers just wanted to kill Trip for whatever reason. The writers completely tossed character traits out the window: I don't believe for a hot second that T'Pol would talk to Chef about her personal life nor would she be so indiscreet that she would have a conversation with Trip about their love life in a shuttle craft with the entire senior staff on-board while they were on a mission. Reed wouldn't open up to Chef either: Hoshi had to get Phlox to violate medical confidentiality rules just to find out his favorite food!

What a mess. Next up, my last stop, the reboot.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Yeah, "These Are the Voyages" is a really sucky episode. Much like other shows that were canceled long before the showrunners expected it to end, this series finale has a rushed and thrown together at the last minute feel to it.

I have heard there are some ST fans who don't like the show Enterprise at all and have expanded the holodeck part of this episode so that they prefer to think that the entirety of Enterprise was just a holodeck simulation Riker was running and none of it really happened in the Star Trek universe.

(Personally, I like Enterprise and prefer to think that only the NX-01 sections of this final episode were all just a made-up holodeck simulation by Riker and Trip actually lived to a ripe old age :) )

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Trip DID live to a ripe old age and was happily married to T'Pol. Obviously Fatty Riker & Troy were in some virtual reality contraption MADE to believe they were running a holodeck program about Enterprise. I refuse to believe anything else.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

[pedant] It is, " Wide, Wide World of Sports." [ /pedant]

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I stand corrected, thank you!

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

My favorite trek episodes are the tribal ones where they deal with sword and stuff. What are the TNG ones?

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

from what I've heard/read about, in the books Trip does live

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Free at last!

So the reboot marks the end of the Star Trek journey. When I saw the film in theaters I was prepared for a fun ride since that is primarily what JJ Abrams dished out and I wasn't disappointed. Yes there were a few too many lens flares but that's easy to overlook. Yes there were plot holes that you could fly a star ship through and that is a little harder to overlook.

So you want us to believe that our villain and his crew sat around twiddling their thumbs for twenty years waiting for the right moment to strike Vulcan? Why? Yes I know it was explained in the comic book, I read it, but I shouldn't have to read outside material to understand what's going on in the film. I could chalk this up to the writer's strike but the scene explaining that Nero and his crew were in a Klingon prison is on the blu-ray so why remove an essential element of the story? Several scenes including the Kirk having an allergic reaction and Scotty getting swept through the engine tubes went on WAY too long. Trim those, put the Nero/Klingon scene back in and you've added maybe five minutes to the overall run time and eliminated a big gaping hole in the story.

Since this was a reboot we could have toned down Chekov's accent. It was annoying in The Voyage Home and hasn't gotten less annoying as time moved on. The random creature chillin' with Scotty served no purpose at all - though the shout-out about Archer's dog was fun. Karl Urban completely nailed McCoy with his first scene and Nimoy was awesome as well. Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov were given more to do in this film than their previous incarnations were usually given and hopefully the sequel will not retreat into it just being a Kirk or Spock story.

This film really is an example of how much influence a director can have on a project. Now I remember there was a writer's strike so films that were released around this time didn't have the benefit of rewrites or writer consultations. In this film you have Abrams who, while not Hitchcock or even Spielberg for that matter, does try to tell a story and uses special effects to enhance said story. One month later you have the exact same writers, pair them with Michael Bay and you get Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which builds a "story" around special effects and infamously gave us the modern day Step-n-Fetchit robots. I'm never forgiving Bay for that POS but this isn't about him. Is the reboot perfect, good grief no but it's exciting and entertaining and that's really all I expected. I can't wait for the sequel.

If I were going to rank them, my list would be as follows:

1. Wrath of Khan
2. First Contact
3. Undiscovered Country
4. Star Trek
5. The Search for Spock
6. Insurrection
7. The Motion Picture
8. Generations
9. The Final Frontier
10. The Voyage Home
11. Nemesis

I'll come back and do episode rankings.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Very impressive lisadoris! Congratulations.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

It's amazing what one can accomplish with eight months of focused procrastination! I should be able to roll through the Stargate franchise in half the time when I get to it next year.

My TOS and TAS favs. Since TAS was only on 1 1/2 seasons, I only did a top 5.

The Original Series
1. City on the Edge of Forever
2. Space Seed
3. Amok Time
4. Trouble with Tribbles
5. Mirror, Mirror
6. Balance of Terror
7. The Menagerie
8. A Taste of Armageddon
9. Let This be Your Last Battlefield
10. Journal to Babel

The Animated Series
1. Yesteryear
2. More Tribbles, More Trouble
3. The Lorelei Signal
4. Beyond the Furthest Star
5. The Time Trap

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

That is generally regarded as being one of the worst TOS episodes, up there with the space hippies.

Though it was heavy-handed, I sort of liked the comment on racism where the Enterprise crew looked at Bele and Lokai and thought they looked the same, but to each other they were completely different. Clever comment on the nature of racism.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Good work lisadoris. I really wish i could have seen TAS though.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I watched it for free on startrek.com so if you can find some high-speed internet, it's available (libraries are good for this).

As for "Battlefield" yes it was heavy handed but still effective. I never thought it was as bad as the space hippies or "Spock's Brain" - at least "Battlefield" had a point and some interesting camerawork too.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

The Next Generation Top 10

1. Measure of a Man
2. The Inner Light
3. Best of Both Worlds
4. Yesterday’s Enterprise
5. Q, Who
6. Sarek
7. The Offspring
8. Chain of Command
9. The Drumhead
10. Cause and Effect

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

For DS9 I eliminated stuff from the super arcs in S6 and S7 because I view them as one large episode.

1. Far Beyond the Stars
2. The Visitor
3. In the Pale Moonlight
4. Duet
5. Trials and Tribble-lations
6. The Siege of AR-558
7. Home Front / Paradise Lost (2-parter)
8. Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast (2-parter)
9. Past Tense
10. Badda Bing Badda Bang

Voyager

1. Meld
2. One Small Step
3. Death Wish
4. Eye of the Needle
5. Living Witness
6. Tuvik
7. Message in a Bottle
8. Timeless
9. Latent Image
10. Course: Oblivion

Enterprise

1. In a Mirror Darkly
2. Similitude
3. Cogenitor
4. Shuttlepod One
5. Dead Stop
6. Minefield
7. Silent Enemy
8. Regeneration
9. Horizon
10. Twilight

I'm going to donate some funds to sfdebris for helping me get through this journey. I just have to decide which of these episodes I'm going to request. I would request "Far Beyond the Stars" because it's my overall favorite but I'd hate to drop $50 and have him clown all over it. We'll see.

Just in case no one chimes in on my favorite lists, I want to thank everyone for putting up with my rants. It was fun!

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

My Trek experience- I watched TNG growing up during the original run, and I've probably seen every episode multiple times. After TNG I back in the day I was totally turned off by DS9, I remember not liking Sisko and being in one place in a space station seemed boring so I didn't watch. I also watched Enterprise during it's run, although I didn't know it existed until I just happened to see it on at some point in season 1, so I know I've missed some early episodes. Haven't watched any Enterprise since it first ran(hard to believe it's been nine years). Once DS9 it hit Netflix I watched through it, then I went to Voyager and just finished. Took 1.5-2 years to watch both. I've also seen all of the movies at one point or another, although I don't think I've seen more than bits and pieces of the original series, and this is all spread over a long time in different order.

So now I'm going to start over and go through all of Trek in chronological order, going by this- http://thestartrekchronologyproject....r-trek_19.html

If people are interested I can post my thoughts as I go through this.. and if anyone wants to join me and do what I'm doing watching in chronological order that would be fun. It will take awhile, other than TOS I've seen virtually everything already so I'm in no hurry. I won't say anything about my current opinions on Trek seasons/movies in this post, although as I go through it all I may compare what I thought before about things I've seen with what I'm thinking after I see an episode/movie.

I watched Broken Bow last night(I had missed some of the first season but at some point I remember having already watched the pilot). I really liked it and if this was 2001 and I was watching on that first night I would have been pretty excited. One jarring thing was the Vulcans all seemed off in their portrayals..emotional. I just got done watching seven seasons of Tuvok and T'Pol is very different. The temporal cold war stuff seemed like it would be cool after watching the pilot, and I really liked how they have to try to actually figure out languages instead of a 'magic' translator.

This does lead me to a question though about Trek that I've wondered about for awhile. There's the universal translator, so regardless of what language someone is speaking, the person hearing it hears it in their language..do I have that right? There are many times in Trek where someone will purposefully say words and phrases in Klingon..so why do we hear the Klingon and not English(in our case)? Shouldn't the people in the scene hearing the Klingon hear it in English(or whatever their language is) and not even realize they're speaking Klingon?

Which brings me to Broken Bow. They go out of their way to say how they don't know Klingon, never heard it before, so Hoshi is trying to translate. They even subtitle parts. So why do they hear the Suliban speak in perfect English? And if they're not hearing things through a universal translator, if the Suliban(and Phlox for that matter) are actually speaking English, why don't they at least make the actors attempt some kind of accent? I could buy that the Vulcans we've seen have probably been on Earth for a long time and could have lost their accent, but Phlox who is new to humans and the Suliban wouldn't be able to speak perfect English with North American accents. The one Suliban is shown speaking to someone in English with no humans around. But he's talking to future guy, and to be honest I don't remember who that future guy is or if he's human or what(don't spoil since I don't remember!). If so then those genetically engineered Suliban working for future peeps perhaps have spent a lot of time learning English, so that may not be an issue. Even if that's the case, they should have made Phlox at least speak in an accent.

I know I probably shouldn't over analyze this, and it hasn't/won't affect my enjoyment.. My only problem is the lack of consistency, especially on Enterprise- Broken Bow with Klingons speaking Klingon but other aliens speaking perfect English. Then again, I could be thinking about some of this wrong and how it's supposed to technically work..am I missing something or are these indeed huge consistency issues that I should just forget about?

edit> Another thing I forgot to mention, the decontamination chamber rubbing the sensual oils over each other was stupid, and it appeared that Blalock has crooked implants which is a turn off.. And man if I was Trip I wouldn't be able to have a conversation so easily when sensually rubbing my hands all over her like that.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Chronological order should be fun though it seems to me that First Contact would need to be the first thing you'd need to watch especially since some of the incidents that happen in that film will influence a couple ENT episodes.

Anyway, the way you described the universal translator is how I've always understood it. On ENT, the universal translator doesn't quite work just yet which explains the inconsistency in "Broken Bow." Hoshi is the official universal translator and the Vulcans who work with the Federation learned to communicate in English.

I'm going to start making my way through The West Wing in September but I might watch an episode or two to keep up with you. Please post your thoughts, it will be fun to read. This reminds me I still haven't donated those funds to sfdebris, I need to get on that.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I took your rec and did watch First Contact first for the heck of it. I've seen it a few times but it did make sense to watch it here, and I'll watch again when I get to that point later on. One of the things that should make this fun and seem like new is that I know I didn't originally watch Enterprise in HD, and of course now I am. On Netflix it streams in 1080p but was surprised the audio mix is only stereo which is kind of a bummer. Then I can also watch the next two series as well in glorious HD. Hopefully by the time I go back through TNG DS9 will start getting the same treatment as well!


I also watched Enterprise ep. 2 "Fight or Flight" last night. As the jump off of their exploration I liked it and hit the right notes. What I wanted to see from Enterprise as a series was them going out into the unknown and seeing how they met all the species and started putting things together. I thought that was a nice start showing their anxiousness waiting for something exciting to happen. There's definitely more of a unknown..scariness aspect to this compared to the last three series, which have that safe, sterile feeling, it feels like they're flying blind with a ship barely held together by nuts and bolts.

One thing, I did find it surprising in Broken Bow that a trip to Kronos at low warp takes four days. I figured it would take longer. Perhaps Earth and Kronos both happen to be near the (future) Federation/Klingon border, or something. At warp nine it must take like a day. Yet they were out in ep. 2 for two weeks not seeing anything, going much farther than it would take to get to another world that's far enough to be beyond (future) Federation territory..and the Vulcans somehow don't have records for where they went even though the Vulcans have assuredly traveled further in most directions than for two weeks, despite what T'Pol said about them not having an explorer nature.

Anyway, I am enjoying my re-start of this series so far. I'm picking apart things with travel distances and languages, but it's never kept me from liking Trek, I just accept some of those type of issues. After watching I do remember this episode vaguely as well.. maybe I didn't miss as much as season one as I recall. I really like the look of the show and effects, it doesn't feel 12 years old like Voyager does(probably mostly because it's in SD). The musical score is definitely in line with TNG/DS9/Voyager though.

Favorite character so far: Porthos (my dog is one of his ancestors) ;)

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Enterprise 1x3 "Strange New World"
Tucker and Mayweather begin to suspect that T'Pol is conspiring with mysterious aliens when they land on a planet that looks idyllic from space.

Started well enough, everyone is all excited to find a nice planet that seems uninhabited. Several of them go down, including Porthos, to frolic about, then have a camping trip where Mayweather tells a ghost story. Up to that point I like the episode..didn't like it from there on with the hallucinations, just boring and felt unoriginal. That happens plenty in Trek, which doesn't bother me too much when done well. Trip did put on a nice performance..and the first time they've used non-regular crewmen in a story. I didn't think this was terrible, just the worst of the four I've watched so far.

Enterprise 1x4 "Unexpected"
After what he believes is a platonic encounter with a Xyrillian, Tucker is astounded to find himself pregnant."

I thought this one was a lot of fun. It's also the first episode so far that I dont' think I've seen before. We see them encounter strange aliens, and things actually felt alien, with him having to adjust to the alien ship environment, and the ship itself seemed more alien than most Trek. This type of thing is part of what I was hoping for in the show..but so far it seems we mostly see aliens we've never even seen them show in the 'future.'

The fun part was Trip getting impregnated without realizing it from the alien chick after sticking their fingers in bath salts. Trinner put on another great performance. The scene of them eating in Captain's mess cracked me up.

That said while it was funny, it was totally a comedic episode regarding those parts. Trip didn't seem too pissed or freaked out about it or mad at the alien chick. They could have really gone into some serious stuff with this that Trek has been good at before which may have been interesting. Maybe a missed opportunity. But at least it was fun.

They also run into the Klingons which was cool as well.

I've gone into this Enterprise re-watch with low expectations, and maybe that's why I'm just slightly pleasantly surprised so far.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

"Unexpected" is a weird episode for me. When it orignially aired I thought it was a funny, lighthearted episode. The next couple times I re-watched it, the storyline made me feel a bit uneasy and I think you're right Shady12, the writers should have gone into some serious stuff here. In reality, Tucker didn't know he was engaging in a sexual activity with the female alien and in my little corner of the universe, that means Tucker did not consent to having sex with her. In most places, the lack of consent equals rape. Everyone on Enterprise thinks the situation is funny and T'Pol literally blames Tucker for the whole incident. Ugh.