Watching Century City last night (not the whole thing, and mostly for keckler's sake), I thought of Roddenberry's original idea of Trek: Close enough to our time that the characters are recogizable to us (as opposed to, say, Dune or Star Wars or Foundation), yet far enough in the future that the futuristic stuff isn't new to them, so they're not constantly explaining it and reacting to it.

Last night was full of "Whaaaa...?"s, as in, "Whaaaa? You're seventy!?" or "Whaaaaa? You cloned him!?" It's a little disrupting, especially because you'd figure that people would know about such advances even a few decades from now.

I giggled. A lot.

Brought over from the "Zero Hour" thread, where my response was getting woefully off-topic:
Where? I mean, yeah Trek retells its stories. But so do other shows. Tell Trek's stories, I mean.

For example, the first episode of Buffy that I watched for more than five minutes was the one where Willow's vampire double turns up in town. And I came in halfway through, but I got it right away. Because of Trek. I instantly recognized the "evil double" story. Today I'm a big Buffy fan, and that's one of my favorite episodes. But it's a rehashed Trek plot.

Even the most innovative show I've seen, Farscape, is old Trek plots stirred up in interesting ways. The arc with Crichton's double (not "evil double"), and him being in two places at once for much of a season, was great. But it was done on TNG before that. Farscape had the great idea to keep the double around for a season, instead of an episode. It's innovative, but it's still an old Trek plot.

It's about telling a good story. Have you enjoyed the telling in the details? Do you like spending time with the characters? It's not about the overall story. This season wasn't good because it was a story about saving the Earth from aliens. It was good because of the way they told the story, taking the whole season to do it and all that.

I maintain that there are no new stories. Everything is a Greek myth in some form or another. The gods should sue (they should particularly sue that Wolfgang Wossname from Troy).

What has been will be again; what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new!"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

- Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

See? Even the sentiment isn't original! :)

Hee! Funny, Irish!
And people who are quantitatively driven have tried to pin down exactly how many plots there are. Some say 20, some say 9, etc. There are books on the subject in the writing section of nearly every library and bookstore.
I think it's more obvious on TV than in books, simply because so bleebleeblahblahboo is episode based -- they try and fit a story complete in one episode. Multi-episode or season long "arcs" allow for more exploration of issues and more subtle variations.
The original Star Wars trilogy is supposed to be based on some really basic common themes. A book I have, called "Star Wars: the Magic of Myth", talks about use of myth and universal archetypes in the movie series. I think Trek could be analyzed the same way.

I got given a book on Star Wars linking it to the bible. I felt the linkage was perhaps a tad tenuous but that may have been because it was so badly written.

"In the beginning, Roddenbery created the Heavens and the Earth."

"Thou shalt not interfere in the development of pre-warp civilizations, except when it dost benefit thee and thy producers."

"And let he that be of learning calculate the name of the beast. That name is Bermaga."

OK, I'm going to hell.

Oh, dear, cuiusmodi, I seem to have just ruined an otherwise perfectly good laptop via Diet Coke...

Ach... sorry about that.

I dug this topic out because if I'm thinking correctly (and I rarely am) then Enterprise and Battlestar Galactica are the only major sci-fi series currently running (with the exception of Stargate, which isn't set on a ship exactly so it gets a tentative look over from me).

I've been watching both, and I think that Battlestar just completely blows my much beloved Trek out of the water. There is no reset button to speak of, the characters are all interesting (and in some cases totally crazy), and there's a geniuine feeling that someone might just die at any minute and who knows what's going to happen next. And of course there's Starbuck, who has more ass kickability than any Enterprise character I can think of.

I just wish that someone on Enterprise would take notes.

I watch them right after each other and have noticed the same unfortunate contrast. Even though I liked this most recent episode, I thought it was very in line with Trek conventions. The BSG episode on the other hand, was awesomely intense and unpredictable.
To me it's the age (and number of previous episodes) that weighs Trek down when it (in theory) could be its greatest strength.
(And yes, Starbuck does kick some serious ass without wearing a catsuit. Could do without the Cylon chick though.)

Hell, even Number Sex blows Seven of D-Cup out of the water--and I liked Seven, fer chrissakes--and the Veloured CRACK WHORE! I don't particularly like Cmdr. Adama, but he is still a more watchable character than Archer--Adama show multiple layers, while Archer...well, you know, asshole and all that. What BSG has done in, what, seven episodes, ENT hasn't been able to do in four seasons. And that's a damned shame on ENT's part. In just seven episodes, BSG has created a palpable sense of desperation, fear, joy, whathave you. I actually care about the characters and even when they piss me off (I wanted to throttle Adama when he pissed on Lee about choosing sides), I still care. Enterprise just throws us a bunch of exposition and calls it "character development" Hoshi is now a black belt? The hell? Is this because she's a lesbian?

Hell, I'll throw in Voyager too, seeing as that would be BSG's closest Trek analogue. Try watching Voyager with the pristine starship and Stepford Maquis against any episode of BSG, and Voyager fails on almost every level.

I thought the opposite. While BSG had some nice scenes and was nicely shot, a lot of the 'drama' was brought about by the characters being too stupid to discuss the problem fully, and then 'surprising' the audience at the end with information about the legal situation that would otherwise have capsized the suspense. We ended up with a sort of 24-lite scenario, but without the follow-through. The character development was nicely handled, but the scenario has been done a lot, and better, elsewhere. Enterprise, on the other hand, also had a well-worn plotline but from it fashioned a coherent structure where we found out more about the characters, reflected on the relationships between science and humanity, pushed the cast, and had a nice structure with emotion and some nice down-to-earth humour. Of course, if you compare the two series, BSG is much more promising after a few episodes than Enterprise was after the dizzy joys of "Unexpected" and "Strange New World". But if you compare Enterprise right now, with the season 4 writers, to BSG right now, I have to say, Enterprise is the stronger show. Whether it remains that way, however, remains to be seen.

I'm sorry, but BG's fight scenes in the credits alone far outstrip anything Enterprise has EVER done. In fact, I'd rather watch BG's credits sequence on continuous loop than watch any episode of ENT. And yes, I'm including the current season in that judgement. This season might be better than any of the previous three but the show still sucks and it's still not good TV.

Not by a long shot.

Plus, Starbuck would kick T'Pol's scrawny little ass simply by blowing cigar smoke in her general direction.

Word to your whole post, keckler, especially this:



Serious word. Hell, Cally could kick T'Pol's no sandwich eatin' ass.

I think someone earlier said that part of Enterprise's problem is that it continues to stick to Trek conventions--which might have been good for the Original Series and, to some extent, the Next Generation, but those conventions don't make for compelling science fiction today, especially with other excellent shows like Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and Farscape. For an example, time travel on Enterprise has been done very badly--I mean, the premise of the Nazis in control of the US is interesting, so how could Enterprise fuck it up? A) Wretched casting (Golden Brooks from Girlfriends on Star Trek? Puh-lease!), B)Using Aliens of the Week who are more plot contrivances than they are integral to the plot, and C) using the reset button--compare that to the use of time travel on Babylon 5 (specifically, War Without End, pts 1 &2, or Babylon Squared) or Farscape.

I think what's even worse about ENT is how they tend to ignore Trek conventions and previously established points (and, when they have to fix 'em, sometimes make even worse blunders). For example, Vulcan strength. It's been established that Vulcans can kick a human's ass six ways to Sunday. However, during the Kir'Shara arc, did Archer not kick a Vulcan's ass? How many times have we seen T'Pol the Victimized Vulcan get tossed around like an origami swan? On B5, Minbari superiority in fighting was a plot point--JMS never let that slip. Farscape never let the viewer forget that Aeryn Sun could whup. major. ass. Trek has, of late, done a pretty poor job of being internally consistent. Don't even get me started on the technology. Photonic torpedoes. Puhlease.

I think it also helps that as assholish as the Commander might be, he's got a fucking Academy Award. Take THAT, Quantum!

I was too afraid of backlash to start a ENT vs BG topic but now that the avalanche has begun via this old thread, might as well chip in.

For me, it is all about the overall feel that is created on these shows. Both shows were saddled with some pretty silly background stories, but the difference is that in BG the whole environment is superbly executed. The ships make sense - they look like ships that we might build in a couple hundred years. The weapons make sense - a little more advanced that we can think of now but not much. The human society on-board is more familiar.

There is no reason ENT couldn't have done a better job. The whole idea of the "prequel" - before big starships, before weapon advances, before much alien contact - left all of these items open for experimentation. But instead, the writers went right back into Kirk-mode and designed familiar looking (and illogical) ships, whose crews don't even blink at aliens and who now have all of the toys of the later series. Totally unbelievable and it shows.

By any indicator the torch has been passed. ENT's episode threads here on TWoP now drift down to 6 pages of comments vs 12 for BG. Battlestar ratings on a cable network are passing those on a supposed Big 5 broadcast network. Google news search result comparisons favor the newcomer. The decendant of a 1980's show (in essence) can't stay as fresh as one that follows the changes of 9/11 and "24". One can only hope that BG will provide some strong lessons for the next Star Trek show.

Olmos has one Academy Award nomination to Bakula's none. Olmos lost the Oscar in 1989 to Dustin Hoffman.

Honestly one thing I hated about Enterprise was what I like to refer to as the humiliate-the-repressed-guy idea of humor. I see that a lot in sitcoms too, and it makes me cringe. Maybe Enterprise is better about it now, but something I really couldn't take was how incredibly embarrassing stuff seemed to happen to Malcolm Reed. (I suppose I tend to over-empathize with those sorts of characters a little and being faced with that sort of situation over and over again is very close to my idea of Hell). I suppose this could also relate to the make T'pol a crack whore theme as well. It really sucks to be an emotionally-restrained character on Enterprise.

Galactica has yet to take that route. No one has yet to get into any really stupid/embarrassing situations for mere comic relief. (Except maybe Baltar, but that's a completely different scenario, as he doesn't seem to care). As portrayals of emotionally restrained/tightly-wound/uptight characters go, I'd take Lee Adama over Reed or T'pol any day. He's given the opportunity to show some emotion and personality in a manner that doesn't involve humiliation played for laughs.

Also, another plus for Galactica. In a single episode (Bastille Day), the characters of Billy, Cally and Dualla have had more character development than how many years of Travis Mayweather? Even if we don't actually know the two women's first names...

I agree that some embarrassing stuff happened to Malcolm, but I think that the prize goes to Trip, who can hardly be considered repressed. He got pregnant, he was right there with Malcolm on Risa, he got caught in his underwear with that horrible princess on that tropical planet, he ran around the ship in his underwear when the Ferengi took over the ship, he was trapped in tons of goo.... Oh, I could go on and on.

To me, the most intense scene on BSG was with Boomer and the other guy on the decimated Caprica. As they stroll through the deserted city, they hear a noise, and the camera cuts to a hand with rats eating at it, the angle of the shot is kind of funky, and so is the color saturation when more rats run across the lower end of the shot with Boomer and the other guy in the background with a really crazy perspective.

I watched that one part of the scene at least twice.

I keep missing the new episodes of Enterprise, haven't been taping it either.

Oh well...

The BSP ep was directed by Allan Kroeker (sp?), a frequent director of DS9 eps.

My problem, mainly, is that most of the main BSG characters have to work hard for Mayweather level character development. The two leaders remain ciphers, the pilots copied from fighter jock movies, and there's way too much telling as opposed to showing. Enterprise is guilty of that as well, but not as much.

Ha ha! It's been tough for me to keep up with both the BSG and ENT forums, but I just ran across this recent Pixel Challenge...