Star Trek

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carlos_b_fly

Jolene was definitely one of the shows real bright spots. She had the issue of coming in the immediate wake of Jeri Ryan and in every way Seven was a better character. They'd have been better to cut down on the sex bomb side of T'Pol as it always made her seem like a poor mans version of Seven.

There was plenty you could do with T'Pol in terms of story (like the emotion addict she clearly was under all the Vulcan layers), they were just too desperate to try and recapture the Seven of Nine formula.

Its funny hearing Keating be so dismissive of Jolene as there are probably about four things or so I could really say that made the series good and Jolene was one of them. I'm very comfortable saying the casting across Enterprise was very compared to previous shows and Jolene was about one of the only ones they got really right.
 
Mikey1701

Mikey1701

They/them, he/him
carlos_b_fly said:
Jolene was definitely one of the shows real bright spots. She had the issue of coming in the immediate wake of Jeri Ryan and in every way Seven was a better character. They'd have been better to cut down on the sex bomb side of T'Pol as it always made her seem like a poor mans version of Seven.

There was plenty you could do with T'Pol in terms of story (like the emotion addict she clearly was under all the Vulcan layers), they were just too desperate to try and recapture the Seven of Nine formula.

Its funny hearing Keating be so dismissive of Jolene as there are probably about four things or so I could really say that made the series good and Jolene was one of them. I'm very comfortable saying the casting across Enterprise was very compared to previous shows and Jolene was about one of the only ones they got really right.
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Of all the people to come for Jolene’s acting chops, Keating should be the last person. The definition of wooden. He can’t even hide behind the idea he was playing a reserved British guy. He was just flat out bad.

I’ve also been enjoying Linda Park as Hoshi, but as the show went on she became more and more under-utilised till they may as well have replaced her with a potted plant. It’s strange because in the early episodes, she was very prominent.
 
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carlos_b_fly

Mikey1701 said:
Of all the people to come for Jolene’s acting chops, Keating should be the last person. The definition of wooden. He can’t even hide behind the idea he was playing a reserved British guy. He was just flat out bad.

I’ve also been enjoying Linda Park as Hoshi, but as the show went on she became more and more under-utilised till they may as well have replaced her with a potted plant. It’s strange because in the early episodes, she was very prominent.
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They just seemed to give up on Hoshi almost as badly as Mayweather, who literally they just seemed to reduce to extra after the middle of Season Two. Apparently the producers felt Anthony Montgomery was a really bad actor which makes you wonder why they cast him in the first place?

The rest of the cast were pretty weak and it makes you wonder did they start writing around so many of them to mimic the Kirk / Spock / Bones Trinity as claimed or genuinely because they just weren't a very capable cast.
 
RHOPJ

RHOPJ

Mikey1701 said:
I’ve been watching quite a bit of Enterprise lately (not sure why) but it’s really reinforced my belief that Jolene Blalock carried the show. Anytime she is on screen, I cannot take my eyes off her.
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I always thought T'Pol and Trip were the only two characters in the crew worth caring about. They had such good chemistry. The rest were fine to forgettable, really.
 
MarkB

MarkB

Phlox was great, and even when he wasn't it was the writing that was the problem, never John Billingsley. Similarly Connor Trineer did a solid job with Trip. Scott Bakula and Linda Park were fine. Never spectacular, but reliable. Dominic Keating had his moments here and there, but for the most part Reed was an utterly boring character with an actor incapable of elevating him. Anthony Montgomery really is one of the weakest actors ever to be a Star Trek regular. Beautiful, beautiful man, but not much of an actor.

T'Pol/Jolene really got stuck with the whole "sex bomb" casting, and unfortunately kind of inherited the worst parts of her predecesors. She had Seven's tastelessly overt male-gaze chasing; had the same inexperienced actor issue as Dax, requiring a couple of seasons for Terry/Jolene to really settle in before they shone; and had a similar level of poor character writing as Troi. Like the show itself, she got there in the end, but it was a bumpy ride and I can't really blame the people who gave up on her/it early on.
 
Mikey1701

Mikey1701

They/them, he/him
Scott Bakula was woefully miscast and he was wooden as hell as Archer. He just didn’t (and still doesn’t) have the range to be a series lead. He had two expressions: bemused and comical anger. Nothing in between. The only actor on the cast who was worse was the bloke who played Admiral Forrest. Not only can he not act but he has the most irritating cadence to his voice. It literally sets my teeth on edge.

There’s an episode late in the third season (Damage, I think?) when Archer resorts to piracy to repair Enterprise and what was needed to sell that was a dynamic actor. Instead we got Archer scowling and barking at people for forty five minutes.

Meanwhile Jolene is absolutely killing with it T’Pol’s addiction storyline, but she barely gets anything to do because the focus is all on Captain Wooden and her cringe-worthy “agonising”.

Rick Berman really is a garbage human being and the fact he’s never worked since the end of Enterprise is a blessing. Get in the bin, scum.
 
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carlos_b_fly

Mikey1701 said:
Scott Bakula was woefully miscast and he was wooden as hell as Archer. He just didn’t (and still doesn’t) have the range to be a series lead. He had two expressions: bemused and comical anger. Nothing in between. The only actor on the cast who was worse was the bloke who played Admiral Forrest. Not only can he not act but he has the most irritating cadence to his voice. It literally sets my teeth on edge.
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I didn't hate Bakula, he gave a reasonably comfortable performance but it was a bit one dimensional and going through the motions. Bakula almost being Bakula more than anything. Certainly not as rich and encompassing as anything we'd seen from Stewart, Mulgrew and Brooks.

I'd probably rank the cast -

GOOD
T'pol
Phlox (just needed more to do)

AVERAGE
Trip
Archer

BAD
Hoshi
Reed
Mayweather
 
heartmightmelt

heartmightmelt

carlos_b_fly said:
I didn't hate Bakula, he gave a reasonably comfortable performance but it was a bit one dimensional and going through the motions. Bakula almost being Bakula more than anything. Certainly not as rich and encompassing as anything we'd seen from Stewart, Mulgrew and Brooks.

I'd probably rank the cast -

GOOD
T'pol
Phlox (just needed more to do)

AVERAGE
Trip
Archer

BAD
Hoshi
Reed
Mayweather
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Jolene was brilliant once she got her teeth into the role and she really never got her roses for it. Phlox was so likeable and always watchable, John Billingsley managed to avoid turning him into Neelix Part 2.

I grew to appreciate Bakula about a decade or so after the show aired, but he essentially picked a lane and a
leisurely speed for Archer in season 1 and stuck to it, aside from the season 3 angry Archer variation, which was just him thrusting his head in angles faster. Hoshi, Reed and Mayweather just never did much for me; Mayweather really got on my nerves for being a Hollywood Brit stiff upper lip sir tea and crumpets by golly old chap.

I did *not* get Connor/Trip in 2001, but now I absolutely get it. The camera loves him.
 
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carlos_b_fly

Hoshi I think was another example of Trek trying to do a green, unsure junior office like Harry Kim but making it just as dull. It wasn't until Tilly that they really nailed this idea well.
 
heartmightmelt

heartmightmelt

The thing with Hoshi is, that she is clearly supposed to be the audience replacement character. She's saddled with being the crewman who has to act like she's a human who just got here from the year 2001 and have everything explained to and generally be clueless about everything that's going on, despite being a Starfleet Officer. Enterprise unfortunately ended up making her look like she was useless beyond her Duolingo streak.

Where DS9 got it right was, that any one of the characters could be the audience replacement depending on what's being explained. Whenever there's a scene with lots of Federation exposition, one of the Starfleet characters could explain to Kira or Odo, for example. A really good one is in "Rejoined", when Bashir and Kira explain to Quark about the marriage of Dax and Khan, it lays out exactly what the audience needs to know if they happen to have missed absolutely every Trill episode before that. In season 4 and 5, characters regularly give Worf some catch ups on things that happened before he was on the station, instead of doing an "as well you know". That's not to say that DS9 didn't regularly drop some brutal infodumps, they just were generally really good at doing an opening scene that clued everyone in without making one character always look like they'd never read Memory Alpha.
 
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carlos_b_fly

If any series can make a Lower Decks crossover work, it'll be SNW. It being successful could hopefully lead to more crossovers in some form. Even if its, I dunno, a holo-Burnham in SNW or something.
 
Gemini

Gemini

There's a new story-driven choose-your-own-adventure type Star Trek game called Star Trek Resurgence that came out this week. Anyone check it out yet?

 
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carlos_b_fly

Gemini said:
There's a new story-driven choose-your-own-adventure type Star Trek game called Star Trek Resurgence that came out this week. Anyone check it out yet?

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I'd give it a go. The story is pretty good, graphics are okay but it really does feel like you're playing in a 90s Star Trek episode or reading a good Trek novel. You'll be playing it for the story over the gameplay.
 
Mikey1701

Mikey1701

They/them, he/him
The way I had completely forgotten that Strange New Worlds was returning this week. I fear it’s going to be such a comedown from the highs of Picard. To me, it is the beigest Trek show ever produced- a series held hostage by it paralysing fear of angering the racist, bigoted fanboys that screamed in moral horror over a black woman leading a show with queer and trans characters.

The season one finale basically being Balance Of Terror: The Re-Up highlighted absolutely everything wrong with the show. An over-reliance on fanservice to the point where entire scenes from TOS were practically transcribed was particularly galling. There’s a thin line between using fan service positively and it ruining a show. Picard navigated that adroitly by merging it with characters who have moved on in their lives. Compare that to SNW, a show that relentlessly beats us over the head with it needlessly and has absolutely nothing to say.

Take La’an for example: there is absolutely no need for her to be related to Khan. Her objection to Una being genetically engineered is hand waved away in one badly written scene and Khan is literally never mentioned or referenced by her again. She could have been given a completely different surname and the character would not have changed in the slightest.
 
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The_Rani

The_Rani

Mikey1701 said:
Take La’an for example: there is absolutely no need for her to be related to Khan. Her objection to Una being genetically engineered is hand waved away in one badly written scene and Khan is literally never mentioned or referenced by her again. She could have been given a completely different surname and the character would not have changed in the slslightest.
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She is the worst, totally unlikeable.
 
Mikey1701

Mikey1701

They/them, he/him
The_Rani said:
She is the worst, totally unlikeable.
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Thing is, I actually really enjoy the character. I’d actually go as far as to say she’s my favourite. I’m much more invested in her dealing with her Gorn trauma than I am about Spock’s relationship drama, Pike’s existential angst, or Ortegas being nothing more than a sassy quip machine.

I just don’t see why she has to be a Noonien-Singh. It does not enrich her character or drive her arc in any way. Aside from one conversation with Una, her being descended from Khan is not at all important. And even then, after said scene- all her views on genetic engineering are promptly dropped. They are literally never mentioned again. The only reason she is related to him is for fan service. It’s just like Rey being a Palpatine and then deciding she’s a Skywalker…. why? what is the point other than to be self-referential for the sake of it.
 
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carlos_b_fly

Mikey1701 said:
I just don’t see why she has to be a Noonien-Singh. It does not enrich her character or drive her arc in any way.
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It really doesn’t and they could have ditched the Khan stuff without taking anything away from the character. La’an is definitely one of the stronger characters but she’s got a needless backstory.

That said, I won’t be shocked at some point if we end up seeing La’an meet some of the Khan augments that didn’t end up on the Botany Bay.
 
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