Enterprise, hows and whys

[subplotkudzu]

At a friend's suggestion I made use of Netflix to snag a disk from the last season on Enterprise, with the goal of seeing their Mirror Universe stories. I have to admit, the those two episodes were a whole lot of fun. Regarding the rest of the show, WTF? 

Starting from the top, could they have made a more boring opening sequence? No, I'm serious. It's the first with lyrics and it's dull, dull, dull. The Mirror Universe episodes re-edit it to strong martial music and replace all of the scenes of ships named Enterprise and exploration with warfare and battles (because, ya'know, they're Eeeeeeevil!) and for all the humor value it was a much stronger show hook. 

Second, could you quit it with the fan service already? I was willing to accept the three Orion slave girl belly dancers 

in the first episode on the disk as the belly dancing green chicks are part of the canon. I'm not sure we needed the 5 minutes of dance sequence, however. And how do you make it to be captain of a starship without considering that when members of a criminal syndicate give you a trio of slave girls as a gift they might, just might, be a threat? This one was a let down not just for that, but because the plot idea had been so much more skillfully executed on Firefly in Our Mrs. Reynolds. 

But back to the fan service. I know that when they did the Mirror Universe DS9 episodes the evil Kira was in skintight black leather, but that's classic evil. I know that the mini skirts of the original shows uniforms were also there for cheesecake value. I accept that. But i still can't grasp a military organization accepting low-riders and a belly shirt as the standard female uniform.



Nope. Not processing. And to make sure we're clear on the titilation value here, Commander T'Pol's bikini tan lines are visible on her hips in some scenes.  Please people, just a modicum of restraint. 

Add in some wooding acting from some of the primary characters to the mix of iffy pacing, predictable plots and gratuitous fan service and is it any wonder why the show didn't take off? I have one episode left on the disk, but based on what I've seen so far, this might be my last exposure to Captain Archer and crew.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I had given up on Enterprise by that point. I gave the show a lot of time to shake down; after all, the first few episodes of Next Generation struck me as pretty weak, and it seemed possible that Enterprise might eventually improve. Then they began the sequence about a sexual relationship between T'Pol and Trip, and I just could not endure to watch more than the first episode of that; I have seldom seen two actors with that little chemistry playing that sort of scene. An obvious attempt at fanservice, and an unconvincing one. Strange what it takes to tip the balance into disgust. . . .

Now, if they'd done a relationship between T'Pol and the British weapons officer (was his name Reed?), I would have gone on watching; they'd hinted at an attraction between them before, and I found that interesting. Not least because they could have kept it ambiguous for most of a season as the two of them struggled against their senses of duty. But I suppose ambiguity isn't what you go for when you're doing fanservice—no matter how well it worked for, say, Steed and Peel.

(Or if they really wanted to do fanservice big time, there's always T'Pol and Hoshi.)

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Prior to this I had only seen the 2 hour pilot and bits and pieces of episodes while trapped in hotel rooms on work trips. The first episode pissed me off by the immediate use of Klingons and the apparent use of Romulans in the silly temporal cold war. I'm not a total fanatic to the canon, but if you're going to do a show set in the early days of the setting you might want to block out what's established about those early days and stick to it. There really wasn't too much to work around, so why violate it right out of the box? And why open with something as confusing as the setting being the battleground of a time travel war?

As far as T'pol and Trip, I saw that coming in episode 1, when the fan service was watching the two of them lather each other up with decontamination gel. That scene was just missing a boom-chika-wah-wah soundtrack to make it complete. But since Joline Blalock doesn't have chemistry with anyone - something I wrote off in the pilot as being Vulcan reserve but is apparently just limited range - I don't think it would have mattered who they decided to have her Pon-Farr with.

T'pol and Hoshi? They managed to give the two of them a cat-fight in the mirror universe, both in their belly shirts and low-riders. Since Trek never does homosexuality, I guess it's the best they could do.