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Star Trek - Enterprise

Star Trek - Enterprise

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Awful
Review: Everyone remembers the ads shown during the Voyager finale, or the ones shown throughout the summer of 2001. Viewers were tanatlized with clips of the cast and the ship, with nice music in the background. Come September--- however, when Enterprise premiered, low and behold was it (is) awful. I will admit, the first seasons of TNG, DS9, and VOY were not always that great, but they showed promise, and were at least entertaining. I saw the pilot, and was uninterested in the Temporal Cold War that was seemingly being used as the show's central arc. Time Wars have been cliche in written SF for the longest time (and were never that interesting to begin with). TOS had excuses for being poor--- the show was the ancestor of all TV SF.

So far, Enterprise has poor actors working with poor and/or contrived scripts. The only good episodes so far were "Breaking the Ice" and "Carbon Creek". That's it. Two. The writers are running out of ideas , and without Micheal Piller, the characters might all be played by Scott Bakula, since they're so poorlt defined. Saying that the dialogue is terrible is being nice...

The problem I think is that science fiction has taken us to the far reaches of space for too long, and is beginning to run out of new and cool ideas. The best SF shows on TV right now are probably Jeremiah and Stargate Sg-1 (although Sg-1's current season isn't shaping up to be as good as the last, but I digress...).

In short, don't waste your time on Enterprise.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Interesting...
Review: Star Trek stinks no matter how you slice it. The original series back in the 60's was fresh & introduced now-legendary characters like Cap. Kirk & Mr. Spock. Still, it was pretty flawed. The special effects weren't all that special & it was campy as all heck. The 1st 6 Star Trek films were entertaining & better than the series. In the last 15 years or so, television has been bombarded with absolute Star Trek garbage. The Next Generation was fair to weak, Deep Space Nine was abyssmal, & Voyager was a horrendous mockery of science fiction.
Now the monkeys in charge of Roddenberry's show have gone back & decided to explore Star Trek's roots. The result: pretty good stuff actually. There are continuity flaws galore, of course, but the show is still getting its space-legs. The cast of characters, headed by sci-fi vet Scott Bakula, has wonderful on screen chemistry. The crew lends an innocence & sense of awe that the other (newer) shows severely lacked. The ship is very sleek & the "new" technology is quite bright. The episodes I've seen are very exciting & generally fun. And lets face it, Jolene Blalock is the sexiest woman in sci-fi.
You cant do much with Star Trek overall, but this show does quite well for itself. It's definately worth seeing, so get the DVDs when they're available. The pilot episode works as a pilot for all the Star Trek series, if you want to start from the beginning.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A new frontier
Review: Enterprise starts with two small dummies in orange astronaut gear, depicted bravely behind a small window of acryl glass. Subsequently, the camera tilts and shows us the face of the boy that is building the space-shuttle model. The kid dips a pencil into his inkpot and continues painting. The first words of a new Star Trek series are spoken: 'where no man has gone before.' The boy's father in the background nods approvingly, confirming the pride he holds for his son. 'Dr Cochran would be proud of you.'

Innocence, promises of youth and quiet domestic life ' a good enough start for a series that over the years has come to rely much on elaborate action episodes. A series that has somewhat satiated itself, one that lost its sense of adventure to continuity and Borg assimilation.
Obviously, the producers had concluded that the farther advanced Roddenberry's universe became; the less there was to throw before the lions. Humankind in the days of Voyager had become enlightened enough so that when you needed to show a human social weakness, you had to bring in another species that had to serve as vice. Morality conquers all. Even the overwhelming technical and quantitative superiority of say: the Borg. When reality had gone with the wind, optimism proved to have brought the fan.

So - what to do? Stop while you can with a bad taste in you throat? Give up before it really got too bad for even the dieest of hardest to enjoy?
Or could you perchance give in to the more 'Gladiator' side of audiences and bring the tick back into the metronome? In the end with Voyager, it did not feel as if they had gone all the way ' as if they had not hurdled all those light-years through space. Because they never discovered anything that was truly new. It felt merely as if never before encountered: Borg-space - quantum drives - life from another dimension - holograms and Borg-drones with blossoming individuality. It was all mere interpolation. The adventure had gone. Not that we did not enjoy, but it was nothing like a Data, Q or Spock.
So, why not hark back to the good old times of exploring? The years in which humankind's elevation was but budding and level of technology was ridiculed by most interstellar species. Where Federation crewmembers literally had to make up the laws of diplomacy - the directives of stellar travel ' as they went. Sure, one could no longer remain up to date with all new present Real Life scientific theories, but in many ways, we would be closer to home.

Star Trek: Enterprise was born. Much hyped ' to anyone's surprise ' the very concept of the series promised revitalisation. Fans and spectators drooled at the sight of a titular ship that seemed a somewhat foetal version of later ships. Whispers of Warp 4 and phase-pistols went down the office hallways. Posters of Vulcan science officer T'Pol in leopard-spot bikini sold like warm bread. The magazines and websites had enough pages to fill. All were happy.

Honestly, I would be disappointed if that merriment was fading now that the series can be bought on VHS and DVD. It deserves praise and credit. Broken Bow is a wonderful pilot. It is intelligent, suspenseful, mysterious, humorous, and dramatic and yes - even action gets a well share. The new characters seem less clichéd than in previous series. They have flaws, sometimes as big as a house. They also have accents and a sense of humour. One could pick on the traditional Hollywood approach of 'mostly American and white, but with a Britt here and a coloured there and an alien as well', yet would you be reading this review if you actually fundamentally disproved with it?

At the time of writing, the reviewer has seen the series to 1.4, and although there had already been two truly disappointing episodes, the good ones made up for them richly. Should you think of collecting this series, now would be a good time to start ' since you are not too far behind still. I at least expect this series to last more than a season and perhaps even more than two. Should you however simply want to buy the pilot to see if you like the new Star Trek series, there can still hardly anything be said for you NOT getting this film.

It is above average all around and good on the rims.

This one gets four stars
Bram Janssen, The Netherlands

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fantastic - Another Trek Series
Review: This series may be criticised by some, but for a diehard Star Trek fan, any Trek series is great. There are some memorable humorous moments in Enterprise and it is refreshing to see the crew and Captain Archer bumbling around the galaxy without the Prime Directive to tie his hands. Thumbs up to this series of the Star Trek universe.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: reinventing the "star trek" universe
Review: as far as i can remember all the other shows with the famous "star trek" in name, i must say that this one is the best i have ever seen (i have seen the complete first season by now). the problem of the older shows was mainly that there were seldom believable plots. and even if i loved the old original series - at last star trek became (exept for the second and sixth movie) a ridiculus whatever. i missed original ideas and somehow a realistic science fiction feeling. its maybe like "mission to mars" - a good idea and good movie with the most unbearable ending that kills the whole movie down to a b.
but this series ist different, offering truly new ideas with believable charaters (execept for a forty language speaking phenomenon *g*) and really GOOD stories. and that makes every episode an experience with movielike atmosphere, special effects and plot.

thank you for reinventing the "star trek" universe, which was needed so badly fo so many years...

oh yes - and this show has the first acceptable title theme *g*

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: There goes Star Trek.
Review: Enterprise had the best chance to ressurect the entity known as Star Trek. I am a long time fan of Star Trek, and enjoyed all of it's incarnations from TOS to VOY. DS9 was my least favorite, as it played too much like Babylon 5, and really seemed to rehash a lot of TOS and TNG scripts with a nice twist. The space battle sequences were the best I have ever seen in episodic television, the acting much more solid than the stories. Of the 4 series, Voyager is my favorite. I get a lot of grief over the female captain thingy, but Kate Mulgrew really pulled off the character, after she setteled into the role. Even though most of the stories, like Death Wish(2x18 Production # 130)Q's first appearance on Voyager, were "bottle" shows, the stories were much stronger than DS9. The strongest acting and stories of any series is the 3rd though 5th seasons of TNG. DS9 seemed to get into that zone around the 6th and held it till the end of the series, but Voyager hit this point early in season 3 with Future's End(3x08 Production # 150), and held through the end of the series.

Enterprise on the other hand rehashes the ole Time-Space travel thingy. It seems that Braga, Piller, and Berman, (the nutz that crashed the D) are trying to rewrite Gene's ideas. Here is one of the biggest problems I have with this series.

FERENGI!(Acuqisition 1x118 Production # 019)

It was ESTABLISHED in the TNG episode The Battle(1x09 production # 110), that first contact with the Ferengi occoured between the Stargazer and an unknown Fereingi ship.

So here is another paradox in the Star Trek timeline, placed there by INEPT and FORGETFUL writers and producers.

Paramount needs to clean house before anything else gets screwed up!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Regarding The Next Generation and Original Series......
Review: To the person from New York, the first few shows of the original series weren't so grand. Neither was the first season of The Next Generation. If Deanna Troi had been any more of an empath, she would have had to have locked herself away just to live... In Season two, they toned it down. Give it time.... It is really good-- the writing and acting. I don't think they will bring Romulans in, and if they do I am positive something will occur so that memories are erased and no one even recalls the encounter. This is SCIENCE FICTION-- hence, anything CAN occur. It isn't like ER or something. Now, Adromeda.... uggggg..... that show really needs some epinephrine. STAT!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very Smart
Review: This show is very well put together. It looks nice. It feels right. And it's fun. Best ST yet? I don't know. But it is very good.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: So much promise...yet so little fulfillment
Review: Enterprise had a chance to be a great series. It could have told the story of the beginnings of Earth's foray into the cosmos on an interstellar starship. It could have held on to the spirit of The Original Series. And it fails miserably. Brannon Braga and Rick Berman, instead of going BACK in time (in regards to the ST timeline) have basically fowarded their own dreams of basically making Enterprise take place in the centuries like VOY and DS9. The main storyline of the series, so it seems, is the Temporal Cold War. In this war, during the very far future, the technology of time travel is being used to manipulate the past, changing the way things are. From Broken Bow we see how reliant the show will be on the later timeperiods for its main storyline. Instead of it being in the spirit of TOS, with the crew learning about civilizations, it is basically a let's say hello to everyone and "help them."
The crew travels to a new planet each week (impossible given the distances between planets and the speed they are using) and have some adventure. Unfortunately, not many are interesting. In fact, only one or two episodes stand out, them being Shuttlepod One (a filler episode featuring Malcolm Reed and Trip Tucker, officers on ENT who are left on a shuttlepod believing the Enterprise is destroyed) and Cold Front (a temporal story arc episode which features directing from VOY star Roxanne Dawon- B'Elanna- and furthers the story line). The season finale features two cliffhangers: Enterprise under danger of destruction, and Archer in the future with no way back. Shockwave, the finale, is pretty good but other than that...the season is at best mediocre.
Braga and Berman are riding on thin ice with continuity. THe problem is, that ice is breaking. Season Two is shaping up to possibly destroy a major point to the series, fans hope, regarding the war with the Romulans, who are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SEEN by any Federation members until TOS.

Don't waste your time buying this.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Best Trek Yet!
Review: The new Trek series has finally begun to "go where no man has gone before" (er..."person", has gone...). That is, there are likeable characters (as opposed to wooden ones (ala ST/Voyager). There's action (at last, some visionary sci-fi CGI), and even a little sex thrown in for good measure. But the upshoot of it all is that overall, these episodes are more well written and paced than any in a long time. "Planetary" stories are sometimes filmed on locations, that evoke other worlds.
The studio should release the first season ala ST/TNG. Soon! Since I don't have cable (much ado about nothing usually overpriced to boot) and the only local channel that carries this is way fuzzy, I haven't been able to enjoy fully. So get going, Paramount! :)


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