Saturday, April 23, 2005

Looking in the Mirror

Most people know that I've looked down my nose at Enterprise for quite some time. When it started up four years ago, I really wanted to like it. Voyager had been so bad, and Enterprise had Scott Bakula, who I loved from Quantum Leap. I gave the show every chance to win me over. And there was this period right around the end of the first season where they had like four really good episodes in a row, and I thought -- well, this looks like a big improvement.

But then there was season two, which by and large was terrible. And I know the Xindi arc in season three won some people over, but I thought the whole season was a complete lost except for the episodes "Twilight" and "Similitude."

I have no problem walking away from a Star Trek series. Sure, I'm a Trekkie (I'm not one of those people that cares whether you call us "Trekkies" or "Trekkers" or "geeks" -- whatever), but I did give up Voyager for a while in the fourth season. I was finishing school I think, and doing plays steadily, and I thought Voyager basically sucked, so I quit watching it for about 2 months. But then I got my job at Decipher, and I needed to start watching again to keep current. (Eventually, I did catch up on all the episodes I'd missed.)

A similar story applies to Enterprise. I would have given up on this show long ago, except that I felt I needed to stay current for the sake of Star Trek CCG, which I was working on. Well, that all changed on January 24th. (I can personally vouch for what that British psychologist said, it is the most depressing day of the year.) Thing is, it was announced that Enterprise had been cancelled quite soon after that. So at that point, it became, "well, dammit, they've trapped me for this long -- can I really walk away now when there's only like 9 episodes to go?" So, I'm still watching.

Which brings me to this week's installment, the first of a two-part episode taking us to the Mirror Universe established on the original series and continued brilliantly in several great episodes of Deep Space Nine.

For Enterprise, it was pretty good. The reuse of footage from First Contact in the opening teaser was quite inspired. The re-done opening credit sequence was quite entertaining, and I was ready to stand up and cheer at not having to listen to that damn Patch Adams song again.

However, I found a lot to dislike as well. For one, I was rather annoyed that in many cases, the mirror universe versions of the characters were better, more fully-developed characters than the normal versions. Poor Travis Mayweather, for example, delivered more dialogue in this episode than he has in the last two seasons, combined. (I don't count the episode where he was possessed by an Organian, since it wasn't really him.) Mirror Archer's an exception. Regular Archer is a stubborn, pig-headed, stand-offish jerk that yells at his crew on a regular basis, so as far as I was concerned, the only difference between that and the mirror universe version was the haircut.

And even though I'm not normally part of the Continuity Gestapo on shows I watch regularly, I am bothered when Enterprise messes things up. Mainly because they do it so often, it's like they don't care. Some examples from this week, and my "fan-wank" attempts to explain them:

1) We saw the Tholians construct one of their webs in the original series. It took like hours to do. How'd they do it so damn fast in this episode? I suppose this was like 7 ships doing it instead of 2, so maybe there's some exponential math involved. And it's the mirror universe, so maybe they're just better at it.

2) "The Emperor's New Cloak" established that there are no cloaking devices in the mirror universe. Apparently, though, this doesn't count one the Suliban invented (and the Terrans stole) 200 years earlier though. Now, very geeky DS9 fans will know that even DS9 screwed up this bit of continuity, since the first mirror universe ep had decloaking Klingon ships even though five seasons later, they'd change their minds. Still, since they did a whole episode about there being no cloaking, you'd think they wouldn't go and write an episode where there was. It's not like the cloak even turned out to be a major story element. They could have snuck their way toward the Tholian installation using some other form of crap technobabble like they always use on Enterprise. So I guess we have to assume this Suliban device was a prototype or something, and the only one in the entire universe, and since it was destroyed on Enterprise, that's why the technology doesn't exist by the time of DS9. Or something.

Point being, I shouldn't have to work this hard to explain away sloppy fact checking. Fortunately, there's only a few episodes left to go before I can finally give my brain a rest.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude...I have found you Evan. You thought you could hide from me...Muahahahahaha.

Anyway, I like the opening sequence as well. I was like..dude, it's Zefram. And then..BAM he shoots a Vulcan. How cool is that. And then the opening sequence was hella cool. Marnie watched it with me and got the whole mirror universe aspect of it. She hated the fact that you couldn't be a female and wear a non-half shirt.

BTW - the Girard household is very very sad that we can't see Danny Crane anymore

DrHeimlich said...

Yeah, the loss of Boston Legal is very disappointing... but it will be back next fall. It'll have 5 extra episodes next season too, because they aren't coming back this spring to air them.

And welcome to the blog. :-)

Anonymous said...

I love arguing with you on your blog! :D

Also add that one of the Tholian ships in "Tholian Web" was disabled and wounded... :)

AND

It's possible that the Terrans destroyed their cloaks when they fell. :)

Just thoughts :)

Anonymous said...

Wait! Wait! I had another idea!

As a weapon, it has to be like it was on Enterprise, because really, if it took 25 minutes to build a web, any ship with an O2 thruster could escape it... heck a person could sneeze and get out of a Tholian Web... To be effective, they have to be like they were on Enterprise... :)

GiromiDe said...

The fan-wank in question deals with the Cardassian/Klingon Alliance's cloaking capabilities. In the first DS9 Mirror episode "Crossover", a Klingon ship is shown decloaking. Years later, the writers decided to ignore that for the sake of silly Ferengi/Mirror hijinks.

Anonymous said...

Woah... good point... I had totally forgotten that one...

GiromiDe said...

The wife and I finally watched Part One. (Thanks, TiVo!) I think my wife's one comment could sum up everything -- "Why should I care about characters in another universe?" While the episode gave us some cool glimpses at aspects of both universes, it failed to really grab me. As Evan said, the name-dropping is cute, but the story just didn't go anywhere for me, and I doubt Part Two will be much different.

This two-parter further solidifies my once uncertain stance that the franchise deserves to be shut down. There's nothing left to do but fill in the blanks for the fans, and what good is that? How about telling compelling stories with compelling characters? Even Manny Coto's more sane guidance of the franchise just keeps the franchise spinning in circles.

I have a friend who put himself through the horror of Voyager because "it was still Star Trek, so [he] should keep up with it." Paramount has depended on this mindset for too long, and after a while, Paramount has realized those with that mindset are actually in the minority. If an entire series exists for the sake of some sacrosanct continuity, it's nothing.

DrHeimlich said...

They could still tell interesting stories in the Star Trek universe if they truly knew how. I firmly believe Deep Space Nine could easily have run another year or two. I'm okay they stopped before the quality seriously dipped, but they could have kept going. Why? Because the characters were compelling, and the vast majority of stories came from facets of those characters rather than random outside technical problems.

I still really don't think the powers-in-charge of Star Trek actually get that. Maybe they'll watch some Battlestar Galactica during their down time over the next few years and come to understand it.

"Say... this shows pretty good. Didn't that guy used to write for us? Why did we ever let him go?"