Enterprise, when it wasn’t actively sexually harrassing T’pol, was great.
The problem is, the episodes where B&B are using Jolene Blalock as a sounding board for their fetishes are so bad, that it drags down the series as a whole.
when it wasn’t actively sexually harrassing T’pol
I never understood that need. T’pol was already fiercely exotic, what with her flawless face and remote Vulcan disdain. They could have put her into a spacesuit for the entire series and she would have still been attractive AF purely due to her personality and strength of character. About the only improvement I would have liked to see is more of her character arc being in conflict with her Vulcan upbringing, particularly in trying to deal with those infuriatingly irrational humans, and her emotional entanglement with Trip.
I’m not a huge trek nerd, but recently watched the whole series, and the two main irritations were the blatant/unnecessary/annoying/offensive sexualization, and the theme song.
It’s easy to skip the opening sequence but the gratuitous fetishizing was pretty awful. The whole series would have been better without.
The scenes in the isolation chamber in underwear applying gel to each other were totally unnecessary and unpleasant to watch, especially nowadays. They have aged very poorly.
The scenes in the isolation chamber in underwear applying gel to each other were totally unnecessary
I thought so at the time but later realized that was a key scene of the whole entire show. You missed a lot of the nuance. That was where T’pol developed her crush on Trip. Her crush on Trip was the only reason she became the first Vulcan to be able to stay aboard a human ship for longer than a few weeks. And T’pol’s presence on the ship advising Archer was what made Archer so successful in laying the groundwork of the entire federation.
After watching it completely through within the last few years, I can say I rank it higher than Voyager.
…i mean, let’s be fair: voyager set the bar so low the franchise nearly fizzled-out in its wake and arguably never recovered…
I don’t understand the hate for voyager. Sure it had some problems, but I thought it was great. Both at the time and looking back on it
As someone who watched it with no nostalgia glasses: it is not good trek.
I can’t think of a really outstanding episode off the top of my head (maybe the Tuvix one? But even that is just … rough?). And there are some episodes in there that I actively dislike in a way I don’t with most of the other series.
I like Kate Mulgrew, she was a strong actor for the role and the theme is a banger, otherwise … meh.
Star Trek really has 2 different genres, there’s action/adventure and there’s real hard sci-fi where philosophy is at the forefront. Voyager generally appeals more to the action/adventure fans, whereas the previous iterations appeared like the entire series was heading in a more philosophical direction with TOS to TNG to DS9 increasing in their thoughtfulness. VOY was seen as a huge backslide to people who were tuning in largely for the philosophical aspect of the show.
Considering there was and still are very few popular philosophical and thought provoking shows that challenge the viewer’s world view and biases, I think it’s fair to be upset that the new direction of the show is to dumb down everything and focus more on the action.
Of course, that’s not to say that Voyager was completely devoid of any philosophical debate, but I don’t think anyone can make the case that it’s equally as intelligent as TNG and DS9.
I’m retroactively annoyed at the stranded but in good repair situation. But voyager failing made Battlestar a thing so…
I also think it’s just a weird transition period for tv. Still had crap budgets and weird unpolished plotlines due to the need for season-long fillers. If you cut each season down to 8-10 episodes as we sometimes do today, could be a fine show.
Same here. I also don’t see the issue with it. It. Very much fits the vibe of DS9 and TNG and gave us some very iconic characters.
I’m a voyager fanboy since it aired, but it really doesn’t hold up well.
Nevermind the fact that it is low quality visually and will never be remastered, but the practically non existint continuity really really really hurts it.
I still recommend people watch it, but it would be 3rd of the ‘old’ shows I’d suggest. (DS9 1st always because it is fucking awesome, then TNG because it brought Star Trek to the masses and solidified a lot of ‘canon’)
It’s been a long road
LOL! But whether or not you like the theme song, I maintain that the visuals of the opening credits are the most imaginative of all the treks.
If not the most imaginative, certainly the most inspiring, and it evokes a strong insertion in our reality.
The song is heavily meh, but the visuals may as well be the best of any intro.
If they composed something more trek-y, it would be the best intro of them all!
Back when Enterprise was airing some fan took the opening video and put it to an instrumental instead of the song and it was awesome as hell. Really wish I’d saved a copy of that now.
I too would wish you have saved a copy of that, now I’m curious as hell SMH.
I found this but i’m guessing it’s probably not that one.
here they’re swapping themes from the archer one and sounds greeeaaat
Enterprise was my favorite star trek. I can’t even watch discovery, it’s horrible.
I agree. Discovery is the least progressive Star Trek series and is already aging poorly. The other series use the Star Trek universe to cleverly explore present day issues whereas Discovery lazily frames today’s social issues as if they’re universal truths. It was a real back step for the franchise.
It’s not that Disco isn’t progressive; it’s just lazily progressive. Case in point: the scene that bothers me to this day is Adira coming out as non-binary, just beyond cringe-worthy and very 21st century. As a viewer, the scene read like Adira was waiting to be judged harshly for their identity, and it just totally took me out of the era. By the 32nd century, I’d expect that being judged harshly for one’s gender identity would be at least a millennium behind us, and the conversation should either have not happened or been so matter-of-fact that it was treated as nothing. I get what the writers were trying to do, and it fell so flat and felt so bluntly obvious. I’m all for the message, but the delivery was not great.
The saddest thing about Disco to me is that there were great ideas and great intentions, but the execution of those ideas was so poor. Really, it just shows that you can have great actors, great directors, and great concepts, but if the writers can’t make it work, it just all comes apart.
That rather ignores the fact that Adira was an amnesiac stowaway at the time, with some pretty understandable trust issues.
It also ignores that the characters in the scene in exactly the way you’re saying they should have.
The scene you’re describing is a good example. Though I would argue that given this story line is set a millennium in the future, it isn’t just lazily progressive, it’s an ultra-conservative view of the future. It perpetuates today’s bigotries as universal truths instead of challenging the audience to perceive of a future without our current bigotries like the Kirk / Uhura kiss did 50 years ago.
I’ve only made it to season 2, so I’m holding out hope that it gets better, but lazily progressive seems to describe it pretty well.
The one that really rubs me rough it how Tilly is very clearly coded to be some type of neuro divergent, probably autistic, but also only when it is convenient and quirky and will not interfere with the plot too much.
Her suddenly being very socially adept when the plot needed her to pretend to be an evil commander or whatever, and she dropped all of her character flaws to make it happen just felt so out of character and lazy.
Also the scenes with Spock and “child abuse bad” at the start of the red angel arc was very ham fisted.
I much preferred how SNW handled the “our wonderful society is supported by horrible child labor and death” arc. Still about as subtle as a brick, but it at least felt like an attempt was made to encode a message, and not just saying it at the viewer like a pre-school cartoon recapping the message of the episode.
It also felt like it was shoehorning in all the progressiveness for the sake of being progressive which sends the exact opposite message than they hoped for. The crew was so amazingly diverse representing so many different things that any adult would look at it and go “the odds of all these different sexualities/etc. being on one ship at once are so improbable as to be impossible.” That makes it feel like pandering, not being progressive. That could work for kids, just being able to see someone like them on screen helps a lot, but Discovery is very much not meant for kids to watch.
Basically they tried too hard and didn’t understand what they were doing.
Can you give some examples of this? Admittedly I didn’t much care for Discovery and didn’t pay a lot of attention through it as a result, but I’m not picking up what you’re laying down ;-)
The original series was based in a post-race society. When Kirk and Uhura kiss, it wasn’t an interracial kiss in the show because the concept of race doesn’t exist in the 24th century universe. It got backlash when it aired because some people couldn’t contemplate a the future without their current bigotry existing. Star Trek explored current social issues by visiting some planet with a veiled version of that issue.
Contrast that to Discovery where Burnham is having a conversation with an Admiral and the Admiral brings up Burnham’s family’s history of slavery.
