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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 879240" data-attributes="member: 177">No, but that raises the question of whether the oceans of Earth in 2003 are as apt an analogy as we can get.  We've got a situation where distances are large compared to the speeds of ships.  Policing and governance between shipping stops is mostly non-esixtant.  We might liken this to the high seas of the 1700s and 1800s, but even then cargo ships didn't carry anything notable in terms of ship-to-ship weaponry.  But only because cannon were heavy.  Put enough cannon on a cargo vessel of the time, and you'd keep her from carrying cargo.  In Star Trek, the limitations aren't the size of the weapons, but simply on how powerful they are...Which brings us perhaps to a more apt analogy - America, west of the Mississippi, in the 1800's.  Where yes, most "shipping" (by train and wagon) was done armed - armed almost as well as the military of the day.Maybe yes, or maybe no.  Perhaps we should put the issue of quality aside for the moment.  You have one idea as to what TV quality is.  I have another idea.  The production people for Enterprise have a third idea (and they have had three shows that each ran for seven seasons, which is no mean feat, and we shouldnt discount them as clueless merely because we are unsatisfied with their current offering).  Everybody's got an idea as to what's quality, but nobody knows.Or, alternatively, perhaps quality has far less to do with the success of a show than we'd like to think.  I'm told that fewer than half of all new shows make it through their second season.  That's pretty nasty competition.  When the odds of surviving get that low, you start wondering if the major powers behind survival are something other than simple "fitness".It seems to me that television these days is something like the toy business.  Making a "quality" toy - sturdy, entertaining, educational - isn't all that difficult.  The principles are well known.  But, to be called a "success", your toy needs to be better than quality. It's gotta be a Cabbage Patch Kid, a Beanie Baby, or a Pokemon.  And nobody's ever been able to predict what will be the next "hit" of the toy business.</blockquote>

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