Final Star Trek Tonight (May 13, 2005)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Last, but not least, tonight is the series finale of Star Trek Enterprise. This will be the first time in eighteen years that new Star Trek shows won't be on the air. I know some Wing Commander fans have been parallel Star Trek fans for quite a few years and are taking this just like a game cancellation. We'll be watching in #Wingnut beginning at 8:00 pm if you'd like to join in.



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Original update published on May 13, 2005
 
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That was fantastic and sad at the same time. Really well done. I understand why they did the double-episode thing now. I wondered from what time frame they'd come from, and they worked it into the Pegasus storyline pretty well.
 
I'll have to wait a while before watching it, as I havn't got Sky and Channel 4 are still show Season 3.

But it sounds interesting
 
It's ironic that a thing that doesn't exist on Star Trek - money - would make it go away.
 
I think that the lack of money thing is sort of an exaggerated ideal. There are numerous references to Starfleet officers not working for money, yet throughout the series we see them make purchases and conduct business. While the drive for money may not be the reason, it's pretty clear that there is some form of currency for the economy to function.
 
Here's the livejournal entry I haven't posted yet.
Last Thoughts on Star Trek Enterprise

After twenty five seasons in eighteen years, Star Trek has ended. Allow me a moment to be maudlin solely for sorrow's sake: I watched the first episodes of Next Generation as a boy and I have grown up alongside modern Star Trek. My earliest memories are of my father introducing me to the original series. The idea that no matter what is wrong with myself, no matter what is wrong with the world there would always be another new space adventure in the near future has always been comforting. At its worst, Star Trek was enjoyable televison -- at its best, it changed the world.

Beyond this nostalgia, however, I'm pretty angry.

The world in general is partly to blame; my generation is no longer interested in what Star Trek offers. I do not mean of this the popular claim that Star Trek proposes an impossible vision of future society. This idea has never been anything more than a visual trapping, wholly invalid in practice; an actual utopia would make for very uninteresting storytelling.

Rather, Star Trek offers a number of things which no longer pique our attention: episodic drama, heroic characters and a subtle social commentary. During the last two hours of Enterprise, UPN taunted its few remaining viewers with commercial after commercial for a TV show of Britney Spears' home movies. The dramas we choose over Star Trek are insipid, based wholly on how many dark turns a week their characters can be forced through and on how directly the networks can imply things about sex. When they are socially conscious, it is in a way that is so mind bogglingly obvious - characters literally stating their generic political and moral opinions and walkinng off stage. These things are transitory; we crave them because they are different and because they offer an immediate rush... they will not last.

Star Trek has always been a product of its times, and I believe that Enterprise more than any other recent incarnation will be looked back upon in this manner. We often look back on the original series and talk about all the things it tried to say. We like to point out how things like Let This Be Your Last Battlefield discussed racism in a manner nothing else on TV could at the time. A Private Little War is probably still the single fairest commentary on the Vietnam War, bar none. While the rest of the world still does little more than demonize the opposing sides over the war, Star Trek literally forced its beloved heroes to come to odds over the same questions. We will someday remember Enterprise for doing this as well. Following September 11th every television show in the world forced their opinions on us: from flag waving patriotism to scolding everyone in no uncertain terms for being flag waving patriots. Enterprise did it differently, forcing the parallel issue on the crew in a very obvious manner with the Xindi attacks... and then under the guise of a "war arc", dealing with it in an ultimately fair manner over a season. Given the chance to sit down with all of these episodes at once, people will better recognize this.

More than that, though, it was fun -- adventures in space with ray guns and monsters and sailing ships. Star Trek's nominal successor, Battlestar Galactica, is "edgy"... and edgy is defined as sex-and-drugs plots stolen from the likes of 90210 and launched into space. For all the ratings stunts it might have pulled, Enterprise never stooped so low as to stop believing in larger than life, heroic characters. Captain Archer, Commander Tucker and the rest never wavered from the very basic idea that they were all good people at heart; unfortunately, that just isn't cool anymore.

Moreover, I am angry at the modern Star Trek fan. The internet has twisted and crushed the spirit and the mind of Star Trek fandom; Enterprise would appear to have had no bigger detractor than the average fan.

Our little global community somehow did Star Trek wrong -- instead of bringing together the truly incredible, diverse and intelligent fan base that endured for thirty years it put together an unlikely band of incredibly vocal rubberneckers.

Compare them to the Star Wars fans. They are a group of people who are legitimately excited whenever a new Star Wars mass market novel shows up. These novels have nothing to do with George Lucas' supposed "vision", and they are literarily identical to the cheesy Star Trek paperbacks that wind up on my night table each month. The Star Wars novels are loved and waited for each monnth -- the Star Trek novels are not discussed, as they are not considered 'canon'. Never mind that this distinction applies practically only to the people who write future Star Trek adventures (which, of course, without Enterprise airing is now no one). We have no Star Trek comics, Star Trek video games or similar diversions anymore because the market does not support them. Why?

Star Trek fans on the internet today legitimately believe elaborate 'reverse cult of personality' about the production of the series. Not a week goes by in my little corner of the universe, #WingNut, when some casual WingNut mentions how much he hates Star Trek producer Rick Berman. "Do you know what a producer does?", I ask. No. "Have you ever seen an interview with Mr. Berman?" No. "Did you enjoy any Star Trek in the last fourteen years, when he was in charge?" Yes, but -- and here's the kicker -- whichever series I liked he was secretly not involved with, despite writing and producing credits.

Star Trek fandom has legitimately convinced the average fan that the people running the show are part of an elaborate conspiracy, and that everything they do must be wrong before it even happens. What's more, they have done this based on nothing more than the names they see in the credits of the episodes. It is really, really easy to pick a name out of a hat, or off of a screen, and blame everything wrong on that person. Heck, in the case of Rick Berman, taking the blame for such things is literally his job. It's just bizarre to see an entire fan base sure that they have an enemy who's twirling his moustache and plotting to create continuity errors.

In 1993 we would say "Hah! What a goof! Klingon ships don't have rear firing weapons!" and we'd laugh like the nerds that we are and pat eachother on the back for being familiar enough with the lore to notice such a thing.

In 2005 the average fan would say "Hah! Klingon ships don't have rear firing weapons! This proves that Rick Berman is trying to secretly ruin Star Trek, and because of this nothing in this episode can be appreciated at all!". They believe this. Instead of loving a show the fans decided beforehand to tear it down. Case in point, finally, is last nights finale: knowing the "surprise" premise beforehand - as this great web of ours allows us to do, now months in advance - the episode was critically dead before it aired.

If I had tuned in to an all new Next Generation episode in the early nineties and found that it had a guest star from the original series I would have been absolutely stunned. We were amazed when they so much as mentioned Spock in Sarek. So the conceit behind the Enterprise finale -- the Star Trek plural finale, as far as we know -- was amazing to me. For the first time ever, let me put on my English Major hat: the idea that the Enterprise finale had a framing story along the lines of Frankenstein is about as literary as a TV show can get these days. Not only that, but now putting back on my Star Trek geek hat, it did exactly what I have wanted to see more of on Enterprise for four years -- tie the new show to the old one. What's more, it was emotional and a fitting end for our beloved characters.

So what is the fan reaction? It was all a holodeck adventure, so it didn't really happen - it wasn't 'canon'! What an awful 'trick' for those evil producers to ruin the show. Etc., etc. They're not crying for the dead hero or lamenting the end of the very thing they feed on for their vitriol. The lampreys have eaten the shark and have I most sincerely hope doomed themselves. Good riddance to bad eels.
ance to bad eels.
 
ChrisReid said:
I think that the lack of money thing is sort of an exaggerated ideal. There are numerous references to Starfleet officers not working for money, yet throughout the series we see them make purchases and conduct business. While the drive for money may not be the reason, it's pretty clear that there is some form of currency for the economy to function.

Oh, I agree, economy doesn't work without money. They never really explain what motivates starfleet officers, or why you almost can't find private civilian ships, and things like that. There are lots of ethnic and cultural groups, but no religion. Star Trek assumes that mankind will 'grow' out of those things because, supposedly, their creator didnt' like them or the zeitgeist of the 60's thought they were not part of the utopia. Well, this is my impression. It's strange, because I watched a lot of Star Trek things, but I only realised all those things after all that, but they kind of make sense. That and the fact that they seem to solve most problems by inverting something's polarity!
 
Well said LOAF. Maybe this break is exactly whats needed to (just for fun I'll quote wc3) "shower off the bull shit around" the star trek fandom.

I for one always find a poor star trek episode infinitely more entertaining than, say, a new episode of American Idol or The Bachelor.
 
Oh, I agree, economy doesn't work without money. They never really explain what motivates starfleet officers, or why you almost can't find private civilian ships, and things like that. There are lots of ethnic and cultural groups, but no religion. Star Trek assumes that mankind will 'grow' out of those things because, supposedly, their creator didnt' like them or the zeitgeist of the 60's thought they were not part of the utopia. Well, this is my impression. It's strange, because I watched a lot of Star Trek things, but I only realised all those things after all that, but they kind of make sense. That and the fact that they seem to solve most problems by inverting something's polarity!

Despite how common it is to do so, it's very very hard to ascribe one 'ideal' to Star Trek. The "utopia" concept that's banndied about was something Gene Roddenberry championed after Star Trek became popular again following The Motion Picture. Practically, it only really affected the first season or so of Next Generation from a writing standpoint -- and that comes off as fairly hokey in retrospect (though more for its eighties anachronisms than its grand social theories).

Since that time, the idea of the Federation as utopia hasn't gotten anything more than lip service -- heck, I'd say that the only time it seriously resurfaced was when Deep Space Nine used it as a counterpoint, claiming that the Federation was 'perfect' because it did immoral things to survive.

(And with all due respect to Mr. Roddenberry's varied visions of the future, the "no money" concept is almost certainly repeated today throughout the fandom solely because it was played for a one line *joke* in Star Trek IV.)

Well said LOAF. Maybe this break is exactly whats needed to (just for fun I'll quote wc3) "shower off the bull shit around" the star trek fandom.

My fear is, though, that it isn't a break. The idea of "giving it time to rest" is rhetoric -- you don't *promote* your product by shutting down production and laying everyone off. Enterprise was a failure from UPN's ratings-based perspective, so I don't see them putting even *more* seed money into a new series in the immediate future. Any predictions of more Star Trek in X years should be taken with a grain of salt.

I for one always find a poor star trek episode infinitely more entertaining than, say, a new episode of American Idol or The Bachelor.

I'll drink to that. Hell, there's like three truly awful episodes of Star Trek out of nearly 800 -- and those few episodes have in and of themselves provided an infinite recompense just in how they've allowed us to make fun of them. I can smile right now thinking about all the silly jokes I've told about Riker's stupid clip show or Janeway's lizard babies.
 
Delance said:
Oh, I agree, economy doesn't work without money. They never really explain what motivates starfleet officers, or why you almost can't find private civilian ships, and things like that. There are lots of ethnic and cultural groups, but no religion. Star Trek assumes that mankind will 'grow' out of those things because, supposedly, their creator didnt' like them or the zeitgeist of the 60's thought they were not part of the utopia. Well, this is my impression. It's strange, because I watched a lot of Star Trek things, but I only realised all those things after all that, but they kind of make sense. That and the fact that they seem to solve most problems by inverting something's polarity!
hi,
This shows one of the problems Trek has goten into, during the 1970's Gene Rodenberry started to forget why Trek worked. He rememebred the moral Parabel we would see but forgot it worked becuse the Orignial crew were regular folks with a some times tough decision who would decide bassed on what they thought was right, where Next Gen we started to see Vulcans. DS9 I thought was more in the spirit of the original since the crew had flaws and some times faught like real people do.
 
ChrisReid said:
That was fantastic and sad at the same time. Really well done. I understand why they did the double-episode thing now. I wondered from what time frame they'd come from, and they worked it into the Pegasus storyline pretty well.

Can you explain how it worked well with The Peasus story?
 
The finale was an embedded narrative; 'The Pegasus' was the frame story.

As I mentioned in my post above, think of Frankenstein - Captain Walton bookends the story with his letters to his sister - he begins and ends the story in the 'current' time period, but at the same time introduces Dr. Frankenstein and the monsters' narratives which take place in the past.

These Are the Voyages... worked because there was a special purpose to all this: firmly attaching the idea that Enterprise was a prequel to the rest of 'modern' Star Trek. For four years one of the big criticisms of Enterprise was that although it was supposed to be the 'beginning' of Star Trek, it was telling a story that had never been referenced by the later shows. Since apparently people are too stupid to just step back and realize that it would be impossible for previous shows to have referred to something that didn't exist when they were written, Enterise 'found a way'.

Literally involving Enterprise in a 'known' Star Trek story (other than First Contact, which has already happened on a few tangents) brings it firmly into the pantheon... and it celebrates the show by reaffirming the fact that Archer and company really *are* the pioneering space heroes of the later years.

(As for how it works with The Pegasus - I suppose I am above all impressed that they chose a fairly minor episode with which to connect the show rather than the obvious one, The Best of Both Worlds. This is an unusually subtle continuity for Star Trek writers, who are usually of the go big or go home mindest when it comes to such things.)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Despite how common it is to do so, it's very very hard to ascribe one 'ideal' to Star Trek. The "utopia" concept that's banndied about was something Gene Roddenberry championed after Star Trek became popular again following The Motion Picture. Practically, it only really affected the first season or so of Next Generation from a writing standpoint -- and that comes off as fairly hokey in retrospect (though more for its eighties anachronisms than its grand social theories).

I agree. It mostly reflects generic opinions. Hey, money is bad. So, no money on Star Trek. Hey, religion is bad. Ditto. Hey, private ships are egotistical, so everyone flies with the government. And so on. It’s not systematic, because they never explain how all those things happened, or how it supposedly works. It never surpasses the level of a secular humanism self-help book. I’m not sure it had anything to do with its decline, but I got really tired of it.

And I stopped watching Enterprise when the doctor figured out he should let an entire race dies a horrible death for because he didn’t like them, using 'science' as a justification - who can argue with that (they managed to make it worst than Pickard speaking about the "evolution" of the immortal people)! Somehow I can't imagine TOS crew doing the same thing, if they were confronted with same problem.

Kirk: But... isn't killing bad?
Bones: But Jim, they are evolutionary suckers. Let 'em have it.
Spock: Oh, ethics are so illogical.

Bandit LOAF said:
(And with all due respect to Mr. Roddenberry's varied visions of the future, the "no money" concept is almost certainly repeated today throughout the fandom solely because it was played for a one line *joke* in Star Trek IV.)

Hahaha. They mention it sometimes, like on First Contact, but you're most certainly right.
 
Aquamonkey said:
Can you explain how it worked well with The Peasus story?

In addition to what LOAF said there, I saw some good parallels between what was going on aboard the NX-01 and 1701-D in These Are The Voyages. In the Pegasus episode, Riker had to weigh personal self sacrifice versus loyalty to his captain. Behind the scenes of that episode, Riker was trying to determine if he should break his Starfleet Intelligence oath to come clean to his commaning officer and friend. He ultimately makes the "right choice" and confides in Picard despite the risk to his career.

So to help make his decision, he goes back and tries to learn from past crews of the Enterprise, specifically, to (spoiler: ) watch how Tucker sacrifices himself to save Archer at the culmination of NX-01's mission. There are layers within layers of this. Tucker's sacrifice also let Archer go sign the founding papers of the Federation unscathed, the same Federation that people in the 24th Century might take for granted, the same Federation whose treaty Riker broke by remaining silent about the Pegasus incident.

It's pretty sad to see what happens to Trip, but his final actions really make the rest of the series more powerful. Going back and watching any random first season episode, you can see that Trip really really admires Archer. Whether he's trying to photograph Archer in a good light so people can see him properly or running around aboard the ship in his underwear to rescue the captain being held hostage by Ferengi, Trip comes to Archer's aid again and again and the finale really seals it.

Riker posing as the ship's Chef provides a good opportunity to have a private dialogue with each member of the crew. If I'm not mistaken, the Chef is not actually ever shown, but he's often refered to, and having Riker take the role is pretty neat. He talks to Trip last, after he watches Trip's death, and like LOAF said, this is a very powerful literary device. By the time of the Trip-Riker scene, we already know Trip has sacrificed himself to save Archer, but Trip doesn't, and we can hear from Trip's own mouth how much he trusts the captain to always be there for him, so he must do the same. So yeah, I just think the episode works on so many levels. Terra Prime and Archer's speech at the end is perhaps a fine conclusion to the 4 year run of Enterprise, but These Are The Voyages really caps the 18 year run of Star Trek.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
So what is the fan reaction? It was all a holodeck adventure, so it didn't really happen - it wasn't 'canon'! What an awful 'trick' for those evil producers to ruin the show. Etc., etc. They're not crying for the dead hero or lamenting the end of the very thing they feed on for their vitriol. The lampreys have eaten the shark and have I most sincerely hope doomed themselves. Good riddance to bad eels.

Waitwaitwait.

I was too damn busy w/ school to watch, but...

Was the entire series a holodeck adventure?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
(And with all due respect to Mr. Roddenberry's varied visions of the future, the "no money" concept is almost certainly repeated today throughout the fandom solely because it was played for a one line *joke* in Star Trek IV.)

Ah, no, it wasn't. It got mentioned *repeatedly* throughout TNG, particularly the first season. It even got mentioned in First Contact, IIRC.
 
Penta2 said:
Ah, no, it wasn't. It got mentioned *repeatedly* throughout TNG, particularly the first season. It even got mentioned in First Contact, IIRC.

That's not what LOAF's saying. That's what he's saying silly internet people are saying. This whole "no money" thing that people like you make a big deal about now was originally based upon a ST4 joke.

However, as I said above, for every "we don't work for money" reference, there's a "bet you a week's pay on one hand" type of reference as well.

Penta2 said:
Was the entire series a holodeck adventure?

No.

AND LEARN TO EDIT YOUR POSTS PEOPLE. Stop double posting to add something two minutes after your first post.
 
They were responding to two different posts.

Edit: I don't care if they're from two different posts. Learn how to edit your replies into a single post.
 
The thing that didn't fit is the fact that Riker said he was ready to talk to Picard but in The Pegasus he DIDN'T tell Picard what was going on, infact Picard went as far as saying that if Riker risking the Enterprise he would re evaluate the command structure of his ship. And Riker still said nothing.

I like the majority of Enterprise fans, and yes I am a fan not one of the nerds who sit around and scream "canon violation". In my opinion the rest of season 4 did a fantastic job of fitting Enterprise in with TOS, and if their is to be a new star trek down the track it needs to be made by people like Many Coto, not Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.

Interesting that they chose to take an episode written by old mate Ron Moore who's own show is going great guns to put a bullet in their own......


Note to anyone who hasn't watched These Are The Voyages, watch Terra Prime and let it end there!
 
If Trek were to ever be revived they would need to make sure the anti capatlist junk
such as the "we don't get payed and have no investemnt" lines are not viewed as canon as those were part of the reason that Trek was jumping the cahricters iin next Gen and Voyager in my view were some thing other than human. I loved DS9 becuse they faught had argument loved laghed and had what seemed to be real personalites. Where Voyager especialy we had card bord cut outs. (Yaaaawn)
 
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