frandroid

What a hokey mess.

Also I think that some of the actors are bad at lipsyncing, even if it's over their own singing. I mean they don't have much time to practice and they're not songs they'll ever sing again, but it's something that really bugs me! Or maybe they recorded the episode before recording the audio that they dubbed on later, so there was no chance at syncing.

Also, come on, what a missed opportunity to have Klingons sing black metal!!!

So bonkers, funny and good. Even redid the intro sequence :)

And I'm not a fan of musicals, but I'm told that a musical episode is coming? The way this season has gone, my expectations are rather sky-high.

We are blessed.

Holy fuck that was fun!!!

And holy cow is Spock dumb as a rock. A big, dumb, lovable rock.

Poor third wheel.

(Spoilers allowed in comments)

So I have just finished watching the entirety of Star Trek: Enterprise. (spoilers galore)

It's by far the weirdest Trek ever. Right away you hear the theme song with Rod Stewart and you go, WTF?? (The only time the opening credits get better is when they swap the opening credits for the Mirror Universe episodes for custom alt-credits, ditching the Rod Stewart along the way.)

On top of that, the credits sequence is very American-centric: a continuation of the American space race until humanity gains warp. The first episode is all about "Earth" politics but is really just American.

A main thing that sticks is the low production values. It seems that they didn't have as much money for that series, especially when they use early 2000 computer-generated instead of models, or maybe the art direction just sucked. Not just for spaceships, but also for large-plan scenes, where CG characters look like animated Lego. I mean I know they want to make it look "retro" but even in 2002 their look was dated for 2002. So weird.

Of course SFX don't make or break a series, story-telling does. And this series just loves to abuse time travel. I mean that's a Trek thing (hi Discovery!), but we get a whole story arc about alien Nazis, which felt really rewarmed from Voyager, and then this whole goddamn thing about the Temporal Cold War, where the guy who runs the Suliban is never revealed. We get a season-long story arc about the Xindi, an alien race with 5 or 6 different species, in the most clichéd way possible: the aquatics, the reptiles, the forest dwellers, the insectoids, the primates and the rest of the menagerie. Was this written for children or what? Just like the The Killing Game was supposed to be a season but got shrunk to a couple of Voyager episodes, this Xindi thing should have been cut short.

Quite a few characters never get much growth: Mayweather, Sato and even Phlox. Actually Reed doesn't get any growth either. It's all about Archer, Trip and somewhat T'Pol. Even Shran gets more and better screen time!

Then of course there's the Berman factor, where there's lots of uselessly under-dressed people. The first two seasons has characters rub each other with decon gel while wearing only underwear (or less) as an excuse to bring people in more intimate settings and show off their bodies. T'Pol is Enterprise's Seven of Nine as male gaze eye candy, except that Jolene Blalock doesn't have Jeri Ryan's acting chops, and in particular, affects the most irritating duck face. She's finally given some character growth in the last two seasons but it was becoming late, after a couple seasons of "I'm Vulcan but I also have emotions that I deny having. Pout." On top of that, Scott Bakula has a phenomenal butt but they weren't going to highly that, right?

Finally we get to the final stretch of the 4th season, where we get treated to 4 consecutive episodes in the mirror universe with our characters, but there's no connection to the current universe whatsoever! The inherit the Enterprise in a universe where it's a clearly superior ship, but there are no characters that cross over from one universe to the other, and after four episodes, we jump back to our regular show as if nothing happened. It felt like it was just an excuse to show Sato and T'Pol in very low cut pants and short tops (it was the Britney Spears era, after all) and not much else.

Then there's that final episode. "Let's bring Riker and Troi back, because they're fan favourites!!" Jesus lord. That mixed with the Shran story line, and Trip's gratuitous death, was way too much of a jumble. How about a proper series finale?

An potentially interesting story line was the xenophobia after the Xindi attack, clearly meant to reflect the mood in the U.S. during the War on Terror, but that wasn't even given a ham-fisted treatment, let alone a good one.

On the upside, it was 4 seasons of Trek I hadn't seen before, which is better than none. Scott Bakula as Archer does a phenomenal job, though he's too much of a Goody Two-Shoes, until he decides that the Doctor can just shove it with his Hippocratic oath... I saw someone describe Trip as "a Young George Bush" on Twitter early in my watch and that kind of ruined the character for me.

Overall I just never really gelled on this series: too focused on its three main characters, lacked a coherent vision (Brannon Braga fired the whole writing crew after season 1...), characters that just weren't that likeable, lack of character growth, ugly art direction, and an even smarmier American inflection than what TNG had.

Alright, now I'm going to watch through Babylon 5...

AHHHHH CLAUDIA CHRISTIAN READ THE PART FOR 7 OF 9!!!

Imagine that. I totally would have been all over Voyager.