Star Trek: Enterprise

Or: F*** Continuity! Who needs continuity?

First off, let me vent about Archer. I hope he dies.

This isn't anything malicious, but he isn't a consistent character, and he has so much potential. Usually, he's like the ideal captain: Perfect in every way, always does the right thing, never leaves a man behind, etcetera, etcetera. The usual. Kinda boring, if you think about it.

But when Vulcans come up, he can become interesting. Cause, ya know, he really don't like the Vulcans. Except that that vicious dislike of vulcans only comes up when its pretty gosh darn clear that the Vulcans are up to no good. So its kinda mute.

Then again, I did like how he got a one-night stand in the third episode this season :).

Still, his character is rather shallow, while the best Star Trek Captain character, Sisko, had layers and layers of depth.

Ah, but T'Pol and Trip are so awesome. Trip could be the captain easily. Just kill off Archer, in some heroic fashion, and let that be the end of him!

Second, they are totally ****ing with the Star Trek timeline. This was obviously the only way they could make the series somewhat unpredictable, but still, its a cop out. You make a Star Trek show take place before TOS, then don't start throwing around Romulans and photon torpedoes, when those don't show up UNTIL TOS! Oh, and the Xindi storyline? Could've been a lot better. For example: Just end last season's finale before the whole "oh noe, we got transported back into the past! The timeline is totally fuxxored up! Yeah, we said we killed off Archer, but guess what, we didn't!"

This comic seems to sum up my feelings on that episode quite succinctly

All I'm saying is that if they want to change elements of a Star Trek society, like they are with the Vulcan's society right now, then they should've made a series set post Voyager.

What I am sort of liking is how they are making longer storylines. The Xindi arc was very interesting, the three multi-episode stories this season have been very interesting, but they could be so much better.

Other grievances:

They've done some good development of Trip and T'Pol, as well as some decent, although not good enough, character development of Archer and Malcom, but Travis and Hoshi are totally unknown nowadays, with their only development going on in the first season. However, this might be because they're running into some of the standard problems with large numbers of major characters.

If you have three characters, you need to have four sets of character interactions: Chars A and B together, B and C together, C and A together, and A, B, and C together. Four characters means nine sets: AB, BC, CD, DA, ABC, BCD, CDA, BDA, ABCD. So, they concentrate on Archer, Trip, and T'Pol. But that leaves three other characters out in the dark. Its the easy way out, one that isn't neccessary. DS9 managed to deal with Sisko, Kira, Odo, Bashir, Miles, Dax, Worf, and Quark by only focusing on two or three of them in any particular episode. Switching out the major characters was a very effective way of balancing out the character development.

Stop the one-shots. I know they're fun, and can lead to some very fun episodes, but if you're going to bother making an episode, make it have some kind of lasting impact!

Gah!