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Herc Loves His ENTERPRISE 1.x DVD!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
In my view, the prequel premise was inspired. The temporal cold war premise, no less inspired. The “Enterprise” pilot itself, absolutely terrific. I truly don't think series creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are idiots. I think they're just worn out.
If “Enterprise” failed, it not was for lack of appreciation, or effort, or imagination. If “Enterprise” failed, it failed because good writers were driven from the franchise. It failed because those who oversaw it (not necessarily its producers, but maybe the producers) feared too many changes would alienate the fans.
Having said this? A lot of love went into the “Enterprise.” A lot. Research reveals I gave the pilot four stars back in 2001. Jolene Blalock’s work as T’Pol is absolutely worthy of Leonard Nimoy, and there are not a lot of better ways to praise someone playing a Vulcanian. Linda Park, the Empress Sato, has never failed to impress. Trip, Phlox, Reed, all first-rate. The decon gel was one of the best ideas ever.
The show’s big sins? 1) It wasn't wonderful every week. 2) It hired Scott Bakula instead of Steve Buscemi to play Archer.
Even so, I spent the better part of Saturday blissing out in front of the show’s first-season DVD box-set, which goes on sale Tuesday. I can verify that at least nine of the first-season episodes are actually worth your valuable time:
“Broken Bow”? Great episode. “Cold Front”? Even better. “Shuttlepod One”? Great episode. “Breaking the Ice”? Pretty great. “Dear Doctor”? Pretty great. “Fusion”? Pretty great. “Oasis”? Admirable. “Two Days and Two Nights”? Pretty great. “Shockwave”? Great episode.
Here’s how the extras shake out. There are deleted scenes from nine of the 26 hours. Michael and Denise Okuda provide typically excellent text commentary on “Broken Bow” (1.1), “The Andorian Incident” (1.7) and “Vox Sola” (1.22). The “special” features are short and largely only semi-special. (Though there are very cool outtakes demonstrating what Blalock looks like when she laughs really hard.)
Oh, and? Even though the box says "Star Trek: Enterprise," nobody bothered to add the words "Star Trek" to any of the first-season episodes.
A huge highlight for “Trek” geeks like me is the only audio commentary, as series creators Berman and Braga discuss, post-cancellation, their two-hour pilot. Unlike George Lucas, they’re surprisingly unafraid to contemplate what might have gone wrong. Some of what I learned:
* The chief engineer was named “Spike” until just days before shooting, when it was pointed out that a popular genre series airing at that time already featured a major character by that name.
* The producers refer to FutureGuy as “FutureGuy,” even though I’m pretty certain I made up that name in my review of the pilot way back when. Seriously! Did anyone else call FutureGuy “FutureGuy” before Sept. 25, 2001? I’d almost bet my AICN 401k that everybody was calling him “Future-Man” until like two weeks ago!
* Melinda Clarke, who went on to embody evil MILF Julie Cooper on “The O.C.”, inspires the best line of the pilot: “That never happened before.”
* The guy who plays Archer’s pop in the pilot flashbacks now plays an evil guy on the horrible “Desperate Housewives.”
* Due to netlet demands, Archer has two hairstyles in the pilot. In some shots it’s combed forward; in others, not so much.
* The adorable Porthos is actually a girl-beagle named Prada.
* Archer enjoys water-polo because Berman’s son Eddie plays the sport.
* Though the commentary was obviously taped very recently, neither Berman nor Braga can say who FutureGuy is, though they speculate he could be FutureArcher or FutureBorg.
* The “Bow” in “Broken Bow” is pronounced like a ribbon in the hair, rather than what one does when greeting a Japanese dignitary.
* Producers went to the trouble to hire someone to grow an entire field of corn for the pilot’s opening sequence, because cornfields were otherwise impossible to find at the time of year the pilot was filmed.
* The farmer in the pilot’s opening sequence is named “Moore,” after “Battlestar Galactica” revival mastermind Ron Moore, who co-wrote “All Good Things …” and “First Contact” (among other things) with Braga.
* The audio commentary was recorded so recently that Berman and Braga reference Vaughn Armstrong’s “second” death in “In a Mirror Darkly.”
Seasony Star Trek Goodness:
Star Trek: Enterprise 1.x
Star Trek: Enterprise 2.x
Star Trek 1.x
Star Trek 2.x
Star Trek 3.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 1.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 2.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 3.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 4.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 5.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 7.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 3.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 4.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 5.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 6.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 7.x
Star Trek: Voyager 1-7.x
Star Trek: Enterprise 1.x
Star Trek: Enterprise 2.x
Star Trek 1.x
Star Trek 2.x
Star Trek 3.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 1.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 2.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 3.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 4.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 5.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.x
Star Trek: The Next Generation 7.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 3.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 4.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 5.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 6.x
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 7.x
Star Trek: Voyager 1-7.x
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Hmm...not really a fan.
Sorry Herc
By the way...this is my first post...ever -
May 03, 2005 2:18:42 AM CDT
Oh look, Herc decided to insult Desperate Housewives in an artic
by ashfett
What a fucking shock...
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I sense you'll enjoy it.
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I mean, just fucking ridiculously stagnant. I understand the eagerness on the parts of many to take a contrarian position, but... ENT was shit. Absolute shit. Stale characters, flat acting, poor writing soaked in technobabble, an over-reliance on repetitive ship-fights and "Walker Texas Ranger"-level combat moves... Mengele couldn't have devised a better method of torture himself. And Season 4? Even worse. Season 4 wasn't even ABOUT anything--it was just about TOS.
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tv dvds are usually pretty bad. Once in a while theres a good set, firefly was pretty stacked for example but they are generally not worth the money. Compare a season recorded with tivo and the box set and the only difference is the box and $60 missing from your bank account. Star trek though takes this to a new level of mediocrity and insult. Not only are the few extras they offer vacuous fluff but they actually have the balls to charge almost twice what most series cost. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, BUY ANY OF THE THE TV BOX SETS. I troll the dvd isles on a regular basis and they are, hands down, the worst rip-off I've run accross by a large margin (I say this as a long time fan).
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May 03, 2005 3:10:53 AM CDT
Herc, I love ya man, but in this case you're on crack...
by robogeek.com
(...unless you're taking sarcasm to unprecedented extremes.) Far be it for me to plunge this Talk Back into tired "Enterprise sucks" terrain, but... Holy Mother of God IT DOES, and sure as hell did in season one like no Trek had sucked before (not even the suckfest that was Voyager). First and foremost, it's just not Trek, dammit. It's smug revisionist continuity porn, wherein B/B decided to rewrite Trek history in their own impossibly lame image, as a final "fuck you" to Roddenberry & Co. (and the fans, who deserted the franchise by the _millions_ in a virtually unprecedented ratings implosion). But even worse, it's shallow-minded tedium -- one of the most uninteresting, uninspired, and uninvolving pilots and series I've ever seen. Poorly written, cast, designed, directed, produced, you name it. And I'm frankly shocked, especially given the benefit of time and distance, that this isn't glaringly obvious to anyone with the capacity of conscious thought. Decon gel was "one of the best ideas ever"? Shamelessly exploitive embarrassment is more like it. I mean, Enterprise - esp. in season one - was almost Andromeda-bad. And Trek deserves to be _great_, remember? It once was, and hopefully will be again someday. In the meantime, I'm thankful for Galactica.
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When I saw it I was so jazzed. I thought the show was going to be diffrent to anything else in Trek or TV. The pilot kinda feels like a movie. Alas, they couldn't hold and it stagnated. B & B took too long to hand the reigns over to someone else. They ignored fans pleas to ditch the song. A show like this NEEDS to listen to its fans, as evidenced by cancellation. Braga even said recently at some shindig "How many of you hate me?". He's known for years that fans disliked his output but he plugged on. Maybe out of pride, maybe he felt he could turn it around. Sigh. I don't hate these guys, I pity them. And await a newer and fresher Trek on the horizon...
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Seasons 2 & 3 must have REALLY sucked the way people bitch about it. Due to the on again, off again availability of UPN in my area, I've only ever seen the first and now last season and quite enjoyed both. Voyager was much, much worse IMHO, even with the gigantic Borg boobs.
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People forget that more than half the episodes of TOS, TNG, and DS9 were awful, too. It's just how shows work. We remember the good over the bad. The percentage of Enterprise shows that were well-written, kick-ass sci-fi was in line with every Star Trek series to date. (Well, maybe a little better than Voyager.) How soon we forget.
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Though I did liked the pilot, season 4 is the best.
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May 03, 2005 4:17:21 AM CDT
I haven't bought any of the Trek TV series DVDs, but I'm thinkin
by tall_boy
Why? Nostaliga. Show gone before its time. And I dug those last two seasons.
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May 03, 2005 4:59:13 AM CDT
TFMinistry: "Season 4 wasn't even ABOUT anything--it was just ab
by commando cody
Actually Season 4's been great BECAUSE it's been more about TOS, thus making the show more of the "prequel" it was promised to be. Truth be told, your complaint's got it wrong. If ENTERPRISE had been MORE about TOS it would've been the show's saving grace. If ENTERPRISE simply lived up to the promise of BROKEN BOW (which wasn't a bad premiere at all) as well as the recent fourth season, this show would have succeeded far more, alienated less fans, and easily sailed a full 7 seasons like the other incarnations. And no matter what, all it's episodes combined -- good AND bad -- ENTERPRISE in the short term was still infinitely better than the utter shit that was VOYAGER from day one. How THAT piece of crapola survived 7 seasons is anyone's guess. In fact, I'd argue that because VOYAGER lasted as long as it did (it's the show that should've been canned by season 4) THAT was really the cause of a downturn in Trek enthusiasm overall and VOYAGER was the show that really burned people out, hence they had far less patience with ENTERPRISE to let it find itself properly (which it did in seasons 3 and most certainly 4).
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Continuity porn does not mean a series is great. Strong drama, powerful writing, and interesting characterization makes a series great. Enterprise has absolutely none of those things in the slightest, Season 4 especially. It is a fan-film with multi-million dollar funding. That's all it is. Continuity to prior shows can help and enrich a show, but it can't be the backbone for drama and plot. A Trek series needs more than hardcore Trekkers to survive as a show. A prequel series does have potential in the premise--which is to say, to tell tales of exploration in a time when humans weren't so technologically advanced or perfect in a Trekverse sort of way. Instead, they still had highly advanced weapons, massive speeds, functioning transporters, and so on. Humans were just as flawless and sanctimonious as ever. The Xindi arc was flat, convoluted, and essentially meaningless. Season 4 is even worse. And I'll most certainly agree that Voyager was insanely, skull-fuckingly terrible, but at least it knew how to handle a cast of nine--where as Enterprise barely has enough plot for Trip/T'Pol/Archer, uses Phlox as Dr. Exposition McTechnobabble, throws in out-of-the-blue developments for Reed after four years, and can't even remember to give Sato or Mayweather a line once a season. Enterprise started off with north of ten million viewers and finished with south of three. That doesn't explain the supposed malaise of the viewers that Voyager caused (though I do agree there should have been at the very least a year before the finale and the ENT premiere).
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the last trek series (for a while anyway) was facing it's last season. The actors, writers, producers... basically everyone that's been riding the trek train finally realised the ride is actually ending. So who gives a shit? "payday ends this year so we can do whatever the hell we want". Lo and behold, the series started to suck less. There's a lesson there, just don't ask me what it is.
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...If you ignore the overwhelming contempt for the original series expressed in every frame. ENT can suck my ass.
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were a great cure for insomnia. This will be their legacy to humanity.
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It's kinda lame they never tied up the "Future Man" theme. Especially when they gave so much time to the story over the seasons. Now that would have been a gift to the fans. Warp 11 is playing the Enterprise finale on UPN Sacramento! Warp 11 rocks! www.warp11.com
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"The show
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Scott Bakula's poor performance as Archer is the main reason I stopped watching. He was stiff, dull, humourless and unsympathetic. His one facial expression was a sort of furrowed-brow intensity as if his haemmorhoids were playing up. He communicated mostly in a semi-shout. He was crap. I think the writeres realised they'd made a big mistake and so concentrated on Trip instead. Another crap character was that young black guy, he's so insipid I've forgotten his name. They should have just called him "non-threatening black man". Jolene Blalock was excellent, she's a good actress as well as being too gorgeous for words.
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May 03, 2005 11:29:37 AM CDT
Yep, Herc continues to piss on DH, yet he won't admit how many e
by minderbinder
If any.
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May 03, 2005 11:37:16 AM CDT
All things considered, Connor Trinneer would have made a better
by cookylamoo
He's got that Chuck Yaeger quality and at least he can act. For that matter, you could have made Linda Park the hot Vulcan babe, Blalock the Weapons officer, Montgomery the engineer, Billingsly the Communications officer and Keating the Pilot. This would leave Count Backula to play the red shirted security officer (at least in the first episode)
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???????????????????????????
maybe when they make a sitcom version of trek -
May 03, 2005 12:11:36 PM CDT
The creative malaise that happened with Enterprise's early seaso
by jim jam bongs
That's a fact: A show's producers and writers don't work as hard, creatively, if they are not facing cancellation or a shortened season order. Laziness and complacency sets in. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga has a cushy job with the Trek franchise -- cancellation was unheard of, so they didn't need to innovate whatsoever, except for when it came to spending their checks. This is why it is ALWAYS a bad idea for a network to guarantee a full season order for a new series, especially more than one season. Remember when NBC gaves seaQuest DSV a full two-season order, and what crap that series was? I fear the same thing will happen with the Star Wars live action series: Some network will probably bend over forward, grabbing ankles, and give Lucas a full three-season order, and thus, the resulting TV show will be like the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: technically brilliant but boring as fuck to watch.
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Deatils, man, we need details!
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What is with you Desperate Housewives defenders? What a sorry piece that is! Even their goddamned commercials look like shit. "There's a really big fire!" Cue couple falling in pool. What a shitstain it is. Thank God Deadwood is on opposite that tripe masquerading as quality drama. And no, for the record I don't think ENT is in the same league as Deadwood or 24. It is not meant to be that type of show. However, DH portrays itself as a "Sopranos" or a "Six Feet Under" and it has no right to. Rock on, Archer. Rock on, Herc.
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...besides the obvious , I thought it was great how she was always honest with the press and the fans. She was never afraid to stand up and say, "This sucks!" B&B always slagged her in interviews as the cast member who shoots off her mouth, but in the end it turned out that she was right all along.
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When they got back from the Delta Quadrent.
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Strangely enough, they were both completely devoid of life. One of the planets has a small moon...Porthos.
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May 03, 2005 2:28:12 PM CDT
Much like the series; I **tried** to write something good here,
by techtite
I agree 100% with Herc's early opinions about Enterprise. T
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Stand alone episodes where nothing happened hurt Enterprise the most in seasons 1 and 2. Some of the more memorable eps I can remember were ones that referenced Temporal Cold War and the psuedo two-parters, like when the ship hit a Romulan mine, which then carried over to the next episode about a self-aware repair station. But the bulk of seasons 1 and 2 were typically about some lame space fight or Archer/Trip/T'Pol being kidnapped on some planet with bad forehead prosthetic aliens. I'll probably Netflix Herc's recommendations, but I'm really looking forward to the Season 3 set.
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Nice of you to suggest I watch Desperate Housewives Herc, but I already do. It's part of my current viewing schedule along with Lost, 24, Alias, Arrested Development, Battlestar Galactica, The Amazing Race, The Shield, Survivor and Veronica Mars. DH isn't amazing, but it's good soapy fun. I don't care that you don't like it (though the HATE confuses me), but I am really sick of you bringing up your hatred for it in every other article, regardless of what the topic is.
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Well not really, but at least remember the opening two-parter was probably the best Star Trek series premiere of them all. And once a season, they had a pretty awesome ep. :)
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What was the point of that whole story arc? I thought back in the first season when everyone was speculating about his identity that someone at Trek was giving hints (he is someone you've seen before etc...). Now you're saying B&B are still speculating on who he was? So they don't even know? Godamnit. Rap that plot up fuckers!
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The problem with Enterprise, aside from the terrible casting, is the fact that hardly no episodes dealt with exploration. There was never really a sense that these were the first humans to ever go into space. They gave the concept lip service, but it never FELT like they were exploring this strange new terrain.
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No naked T'Pol. Think how much better the show would have been in Blalock was running around bare-ass nekkid at least once an episode!
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I meant to say that DS9 took time to develop long-term stories, without sacrificing the weekly episodes. Enterprise failed at that. The show was either a weekly show OR a set up, but never effectively both.
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Why does Herc hate DH so much? It's a diverting, funny show with a good degree of intelligence. Is their even a point to beating up on it in an Enterprise review?
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Not necessarily about Herc being an idiot but about Enterprise missing the mark. The prequel premise may have been inspired but way the idea was carried out was anything but inspired. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga ARE worn out and their cries of oversaturation just a convvenient excuse. Give people a good product and they will definitely watch no matter how many star trek reruns are on the air. The fact that fans are shelling out a 100 bucks a shot for these box sets just proves plenty of people thirsty for star trek.
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Borrow a friend's copies. Hell, download them illegally if you need them that badly... anything! Just do not buy them, it's the single worst deal in the short history of dvd's. This goes for all trek tv on dvd, they charge TWICE what everyone else charges for fuck sakes. I can understand a dollar or two more but twice the norm? it'd still be offensive if they offered 20 hours of extras but there's almost nothing else... it's essentiaaly just the shows. It's like paying $100 for a glass of water while you are standing beside a water fountain. Sorry for ranting, it's just the outrageous cost that sends me into a blind fury. It's as if the series makers walked up to the fans, shake their hands and then kick them in the balls while laughing.
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May 04, 2005 8:16:46 AM CDT
Plus, they're in those stupid cases that mess up your bookshelf.
by cookylamoo
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May 04, 2005 9:49:18 AM CDT
"It's like paying $100 for a glass of water while you are standi
by big jim
Well said! I was in HMV yesterday and saw the Enterprise DVD. I didn't even pick it up to look at. No point because there is no way it is close to being worth what they are selling it for. If it was around $40 I might consider it. There is so much else out there that is a lot less expensive and much better product.
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