Posted on 02/20/2005 6:43:05 PM PST by pabianice
"Timing is everything." We've all heard that one and it's true. Example: "Star Trek: Enterprise."
Paramount and UPN announced on February 2 that the show was being canceled at the end of this year's run in May. "Enterprise" had hit an all time low, with just a 2.5 rating the week before the announcement. UPN's decision to have placed it on Friday nights in the 'death slot' against the monster SciFi Friday lineup of "Stargate SG-1," "Stargate Atlantis," and a white-hot reincarnation of "Battlestar Galactica" almost certainly played a major part in the ratings drop for "Enterprise." However, weak to terrible writing until this season was also a big factor.
Well, the cancellation is official ... just in time for the new creative team headed by Manny Coto ("Odyssey 5") to have kicked in, and the change in the show is startling. The most recent shows have been fast, sharp, and nasty, breaking with the "I'm OK, You're OK" pablum spooned-out starting with Roddenberry's lobotomized "The Next Generation." This past week's "Enterprise" had espionage, danger, and an explanation of that 39-year-old riddle: why did the Klingons in the original "Star Trek" look so human when compared to later versions.
Now that the show has been canceled it is coming into its own with tight writing and interesting stories. Well, maybe Coto can find another show worthy of his talents. Paramount really screwed the pooch with they way they mishandled "Enterprise."
That has always been one of my favorite ST movies.
KHAN!!!!!!
Her and Hoshi both.
I've seen a few bits of episodes and saw the old "evil military" attitudes, and have read episode synopsis which tell abortion stories without having abortions in them, which is what a lot of SF is about, and it's the same old leftwing PC garbage about choice. I can't recall episode specifics because we're talking a long time ago, but the whole show is relentlessly PC. Are you saying Gene Roddenberry was a closet conservative?
First, the military forces are show in a very good light in Enterprise and second, they abortion 'eposide' was just a minor portion on one show where a woman said she would rather abort her child then have her child grow up in a world we his/her only fate would to be cannon fodder.
You keep saying the show is PC. Why not provide concrete examples?
""RE: Wesley Crusher
I think a lot of people hate child prodigies, no matter who it is. They can be irritating, as well as overdone.""
Then they're going to hate "Ender's Game." But, they should love "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
The problem is that sci-fi is not science fiction or "SF." I will be very interested in how Hollywood treats Ender, who is age 6 to 11 in the book.
Where are the movies about Honor Harrington, Jan Killian and Miles Vorkosigian????
The Enterprise D (Galaxy class) was one of the best ships in the entire ST Universe. So far the only one (unless you count that prototype in Voyager controlled by the two holographic doctors) that had a detatchable saucer. The Enterprise E is also awesome and my other favorite. The NX-001 is my third favorite. Looks sleek yet preserves some of the elements from the Enterprise from the original series (like the warp nacelle shapes).
Personally, I loved Wesley Crusher . . . to be a victim of a Klingon gang bang.
I loved it when Dax was in that skimpy TOS uniform. It was pricless.
You Trekkies need to stop being so anal. You might get a date occassionally with someone other than a fat chick wearing spock ears.
You made a series of statments and then when asked to back up those statements you refused. It isn't my fault that you are making unfounded statements based on 3rd hand information.
I fail to see how asking you to backup your statements equals 'getting on your back'
OK, I surrender, Trek was the sci fi version of the Reagan Administration, you happy now?
The "E" sucks.
Nothing will ever beat the one in the first movie, a watershed moment in model building.
"We have a winner!"
:^)
Just my opinion ... But I believe he would haved liked that idea
TV-Commentary - Star Trek: The Next Generation Did Riker have an abortion when he phasered his clone? Remember in "Up the long ladder", where the clones ask Riker and Pulaski to donate cells to revitalize the clones' gene pool? When Riker politely refuses, the clones stun Riker and Pulaski and take cells from them for cloning without their permission.
Riker eventually figures out what has happened. (For some unexplained reason, he and Pulaski don't seem to recall being stunned.) When he discovers the cloning chambers with clones forming that look like him and Pulaski, he destroys them with his phaser.
But consider his actions from the perspective of abortion. Riker, the owner of the cells that were taken, is acting like a host mother who is simply deciding to terminate her unintended pregnancy. He even remarked that it was his right to choose, echoing the "woman's right to choose" refrain of women's and abortion-rights advocates.
But what kind of abortion was it: of a first, second, or third trimester fetus? When Riker looks into the cloning chamber, he doesn't see a microscopic embryo, or even a small fetus; he sees a large, man shaped object that looks well on its way to becoming sentient. In this regard there is no other way to refer to the abortion than as a third trimester abortion; the "fetus" is much too well-formed to suggest otherwise.
But while Riker, in effect, is performing the equivalent of a third-trimester abortion, it is obviously not one on a fetus that is "viable." Viabity means the ability to survive outside the mother's womb. But clones are not gestated in a human womb. Instead, the cloning chamber serves as the womb. And since Riker zaps them in the cloning chamber, he is shooting them while they are still short of viability, from a symbolic perspective.
So what conclusion are we to draw from Riker's pregnancy? First, that Star Trek is making an unabashed statement that abortion is a morally acceptable choice for the host mother, even for termination of "pregnancies of convenience," even in the third trimester, just as long as the fetus is not viable. That's an important distinction to note because the US Supreme Court has ruled that once a fetus is "viable," that the government can ban an abortion. And, after all, one cannot imagine Riker phasering a clone of himself that was up and about and walking under its own power.
http://www.allscifi.com/Board.asp?BoardID=229
With all this said, I do have two problems with the episode. First, it was admittedly fluff. This could have addressed some sort of serious issue, even if it was whether or not Trip was going to be a deadbeat dad. I'd almost rather NOT have the abortion issue touched, but there was something remarkably flippant about the way all of this was dealt with that it probably offended more people than it would have had the show taken a side.
http://www.trekweb.com/stories.php?aid=zvdnxzPsIAhqo
Did Riker "out" himself in "The Outcast"? Remember "The Outcast"? The ostensible story was that the Enterprise had encountered a planet inhabited by the Jenai, a race of single-gender androgynous individuals. Riker falls in love with a Jenai named Soren. Unfortunately, Soren's race outlaws sexual contact with beings who have a gender, like Riker. They consider her to be "sick" because Soren feels that she is a woman and she is attracted to Riker because he is a man. She is tried in court, found to be mentally ill, and then brainwashed (presumably with psychoactive drugs, or the 24th century equivalent) to "want" to be non-genered again. When Riker sees her again at the end she expresses relief at being "cured" and marvells that she was so "sick" to begin with.
This episode covers a lot of ground in a very short period of time. First, consider the reaction of Riker's shipmates when they learn he is in love with Soren. They all seem very supportive, even though they know that Soren is a non-gendered individual. But it's more than that. Soren mentioned that she reproduced by "inseminating a fibrous husk". That, at the very least, would indicate that she has some sort of male genitalia. Whatever else she might have or be, Soren is a man, and so Riker is having a gay relationship with him/her.
In other words, Riker's shipmates, and by extension the Federation, and by extension the show is saying, finally, that gay relationships are perfectly acceptable. What a long way the show has come since Dr. McCoy zapped the suction cup monster!
But there's another larger message here. The intolerance of the Jenai towards people with gender is a metaphor for our society's intolerance towards gays. The Jenai thought that Soren was mentally ill for wanting to have a man-woman relationship, just as some in our society think that men who want relationships with other men are also mentally ill. In fact, some people believe that gays can be "cured", just as the Jenai believed about Soren. Some states like Georgia have anti-sodomy laws that are aimed against homosexuals. In fact, the US Supreme Court, in a famous case called Bowers v. Hardwick, ruled it was permissible to have such laws!
Ironically, the unisex Jenai society is a society that persecutes heterosexuals. It was meant to show heterosexuals a little of "the shoe on the other foot", how they would feel in an oppressive society ruled by intolerant gays.
http://www.allscifi.com/Board.asp?BoardID=182
Have liked that is
As far as Star Trek is concerned.. You left it's book version out..
Find a copy of "Voyage of the Space Beagle" by A.E. Va n Vogt..
and read about it's "5 year mission to explore..", etc..
( Of course, the Science Officer is the real hero, not the captain.. )
Wasn't there plans to do a movie version of "Rendesvous with Rama" ??
GASP !
"Voyage of the Space Beagle" !
This is more than I can stand !
One book responsible for 2 different movie concepts ?
Incomprehensible !
Such an idea is...well, pure Science Fiction..
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