More on Enterprise's "new direction" [Slight Rant, long]

[Orius]

B5 never really interested me. I tuned in from time to time over the run of the series and the acting just never seemed to improve. I tried to give it a chance, again and again, but it never grabbed me. As bad as some some ST episodes could be I never got that same feeling from any of the ST series. It's hard to explain. I felt like the actors on B5 were always aware that they were in a show, in a costume, in alien make-up, etc. If they weren't buying it, I couldn't bring myself to emotionally invest in it either. I couldn't lose that aesthetic distance as required by fiction in general and sci-fi even moreso. It may not have been the show, but perhaps just me at the times I happen to watch, but there were a lot of times.

::gasp::



BURN THE HERETIC!!!!!!

 

[Orius]

Perhps I can give it another chance, and enjoy the good portions while not allowing the reminader to bother me. I've also heard it would be best to watch straight from the beginning, though. Maybe collecting the series is the only way to ensure I see it in the best light.

Probably; to really enjoy the show, you have to see the story arc to apprecitate it. A lot of first season and some early second season episodes can be skipped (though even then JMS dribbles hints all over the place in those episodes), but most of the 2nd 3rd and 4th season is relevant to the overall story. Season 5 can be skipped totally. That was what made B5 cool, everything had a sort of unity to it. It's also what made it inaccessable to the casual viewer. I admit there are a hell of a lot of dull moments, such as filler material to make 22 episodes for a whole season, but the good stuff really outshines the boring stuff.

 

[Eternalknight]

Sounds good.



I think you're right about the extended freedom the writers will have with this new tact. The ratings were lower than anyone would have hoped for an ST series and I'm all for anything that ensures a better show and one that lasts for a full run.

Well the second series hasn't even began to be aired over here (Australia) - I have a friend in the States who sends me video tapes in case you were wondering.

I'm not sure what the ratings were like for Enterprise here, but traditionally Star Trek ALWAYS gets low ratings due to the time slot it is normally allotted (usually Tuesday at 11pm). I mean, we still haven't seen the end of DS9 or Voyager on TV yet (we have the videos in our video stores for quite some time though).

 

[Viking Bastard]

Oh, I'm not saying I particularly cared for Kes (except she's cuter
than Seven). That has nothing to do with it. I wasn't horribly
shocked or angry when they "evolved" her off the show, I just
find that the earlier seasons were more consistant. The later
seasons were all over the place. They did have more peaks of
brilliance but a lot higher percent of 'em were stinkers. I'd rather
watch a show that's consistantly mediocre but a series of stinkers
with a few great episodes thrown in here and there.

 

[Orius]

Oh, I'm not saying I particularly cared for Kes (except she's cuter than Seven). That has nothing to do with it. I wasn't horribly shocked or angry when they "evolved" her off the show, I justfind that the earlier seasons were more consistant.

Yeah, consistantly boring.

Seriously though, the show never grabbed my interest wih the early episodes. Some of the first season episodes weren't too bad, but Janeway's decisions and the crew's blind loyalty to her failed to grab my attention. I will agree with you about Kes, she was more attractive than Seven, but Seven was a more interesting character, at least until she started getting overused.

The later seasons were all over the place. They did have more peaks of brilliance but a lot higher percent of 'em were stinkers. I'd rather watch a show that's consistantly mediocre but a series of stinkers with a few great episodes thrown in here and there.

I think that's somewhat true of most of the Trek series. With TOS, the first two seasons were fairly solid, although they had moments of cheesiness. The third season was worse, and seemed to really ramp up the cheese factor ("Spock's Brain", "The Way to Eden", etc). However, the third season did have the occasional good episode, like "The Enterprise Incident" (maybe it was good because it had Romulans ).

With TNG, things seemed to be the same. The first four seasons were pretty good, but after that the show started cranking out some bad episodes. There were some great ones in there, but many were lame and stupid.

DS9 seemed to have been the exception. Perhaps the fact that they had a focused storyline helped, or maybe it's because Ira Steven Behr was made Berman's co-executive producer.

 

[Viking Bastard]

With TNG, things seemed to be the same. The first four seasons were pretty good, but after that the show started cranking out some bad episodes. There were some great ones in there, but many were lame and stupid.

There we disagree again. The first two seasons of TNG were very
lackluster but seasons 3-6 were really good, the peak being 4-5
IMHO. Of course, season 7 was somewhat bad, since all the best
writers had gone over to DS9 (Ira, Piller, Moore) or were developing
VOY (Ryan and uh.. more) or working on Generations (like Braga).

 

[Kesh]

My biggest problem with Voyager (aside from generally dull stories), was that they got away from part of their original concept. I remember reading in an interview that part of the plan was to show the ship as it deteriorated over time, due to constant battles and anomalies they encountered. The crew would become a little more diverse as they picked up more replacement crew from worlds they visited.

Instead, we had a shiny Voyager throughout most of the series, and the crew never really changed from its original Federation/Maquis complement.

 

[S'mon]

The later
seasons were all over the place. They did have more peaks of
brilliance (snip)

I can think of a couple...