I just finished watching the pilot for enterprise, the latest star trek television franchise.
overall opinion – not bad, better characters than voyager, some of the same writing flaws.
as always, I have a “3 strikes, you’re out” rule. if the show doesn’t grab me by the third show, forget about it. if two out of three are crap, and one is good, the same. (that’s why I stopped watching next gen, until someone told me the show was getting better 2nd season. I thought the first season of next gen was kakadoodie, as was 70% of the voyager episodes I’ve seen. (I’ve seen maybe ten episodes total, 6 of which were just because they were on at a friends house.) I really liked next gen, later on in the series, the original series, and ds9.
Things I liked – most of the characters
the doctor. a pleasant alien. nice, bubbly guy, and not irritating like the other guy from benson, not odo but the freckled warthog guy, on voyager. dang if I like the doctor one every one of the series, for different reasons…(Even Crusher… a pretty redhead, that has a desire to preserve life. go figure)
the engineering buddies – good way to fill in the audience on the tech and background…
No kids / socially immature folks on board. so far as I can tell anyhow. ugh, I *hate that*. Data/Wesley/Worf syndrome. my least favorite aspect of next gen.
Minimal Transporter use. Good.
More of an ‘astronaut feel’ than a cruise ship feel. hearkens back to more of the frontierish idea.
The ship looks keeno, a lot like the reliant.
The phasers look like guns again.
Things I didn’t mind so much-
obligatory “this is a starship, these are flight consoles, this is a wacky alien healing turd (I’m not making that last one up)” sidebars that probably could be introduced more slowly over the course of the series, but added to make it more exotic.
Next-gen looking uniforms – eh. no biggie to me. jumpsuits make more sense to me than the classic star trek uniform. The “boobies in a skintight catsuit” on the vulcan girl is borderline, but it’s as acceptable as the non-functional miniskirts on the classic show.
the “every character gets a line syndrome”… it makes sense on the pilot. hopefully, though, we won’t have to see every character every episode, whether the plot warrants it or not.
Vulcans aren’t so controlled as on the other shows. Fine by me, we don’t need robot sidekicks. Funny seeing Sykes from alien nation in pointy ears.
Thinks I disliked –
transparent application of sex and action inserted just to have “sex and action” in the story, “anti spore hot oil massage” being the most transparent of them all. I didn’t mind the bodypainted flycatchers, though.
Time travelling villains. (well taking orders from the future, anyhow)… that plot device is going to get old for me, fast.
Same ol’ Crappy voyager level writing. some poorly executed dialogue. that’s me being nit-picky though. I’ll still give it two episodes before getting snippy about it.
so many new aliens…. where did they all go, 80 years into the future, where kirk is? or however many years later where everyone else is? I would have preferred more ‘classic trek aliens, like andorians, tellarites, that sort of stuff. again, time will tell)
overall? I’ll watch it again, so far it looks good, maybe a six out of ten. potentially better than next gen and certainly better than voyager… if they get good writers, I might like it as much as ds9 and classic.
