It's a shame to lose Florida, though. :)

Not really, half of the state's population are at death's door any how...

It's a shame to lose Florida, though. :)

Not really, half of the state's population are at death's door any how...

I am really excited! I have been waiting for years for a sci-fi show with the courage to explore new themes like this...

A new outfit and a new hairdo for T'Pol...

Archer and crew meet the Borg and T'pol gets captured and becomes T'borg. Rick Berman commented "this is the first time that an Enterprise crewman becomes a Borg. T'Borg will be getting a whole new hairstyle."

"Mr. Berman, what do you mean the Earth has never been attacked before?! What about all the other..."
"Oh!"
"I get it... you are the Evil Berman from an alternate universe! Very good! Very clever!"

The neutral zone was always a cool piece of space for that reason. They could simply get near to it and it becomes more dangerous and exciting.

Berman said, "What we are about to do is a first for Star Trek...there has never been a Trek series built around a specific mission and specific stakes."

So what was DS9, particularly in the last few seasons? And does anyone else think that statement is telling? "Hey, we just realized that all of Star Trek up until now has been vapid crap and it's no wonder there's hardly any emotional investment."

the mysterious Xindi send a probe to Earth that devastates everything between Florida and Venezuela

Ok, so they blew up the Gulf of Mexico and it started some all-or-nothing war, and no one in over 400 episodes of ST:TNG, ST:DS9 and ST:V ever thought it was important enough to mention? And they're going to try to explain it away with some sort of alternate timeline cop-out?

The Xindi have obtained information that Earth will destroy their home world centuries in the future, and have decided to strike first

"... because this way, we'll can just explain it all away as a misunderstanding at the end, and then the Xindi and Starfleet can just forget about the millions of deaths they've caused each other and team up and go kick ass on the Suliban."

"Their bodies become anatomically inverted (skin on the inside, organs on the outside), yet they somehow remain alive."

Maybe, maybe you could get away with a lame gimmick like this in a fantasy setting. But in sci-fi?

a new outfit and hairdo for T'Pol

And that just has to be the lame cherry on top of the lame cake. It's one thing to have characters on a show that are primarly there to be eye-candy for a bunch of hollywood-brainwashed males who'll haven't grown out of their teenage mentality yet. I can understand that, and if that's what it takes to keep good shows on the air, sure, bring it on.

And I can even understand how you need to change up the eye-candy from time to time so those viewers don't get bored and start looking for Baywatch reruns.

But to announce it like it's something important, like it's a selling feature....

I just don't have the words to express my disgust right now.

...

You know, this makes me wonder if Kenny on Southpark wasn't a commentary about shows like Star Trek. It's really not much of stretch for the next episode of Star Trek to feature some mysterious alien that looks like Barbara Streisand travelling back in time to turn Archer inside out. Trip and Mayweather will say in union "Hey, they killed the captain!" and Mayweather will put on a stern face and slam his fist into his hand, saying "You bastards!" Afterward, Phlox, Trip and Mayweather can come up with some strange plan to save the ship that involves Archer's gay dog (voiced by George Clooney) and a bag of Cheesy Poofs. Meanwhile T'Pol asks Reed to go ice skating with her but Reed throws up on her feet, and Hoshi gets approached by a bunch of Germans about a movie they'd like her to star in...

And then of course in the next episode, Archer is alive again, and everything is back the way it was, until they find this strange starving Ethiopean kid floating around space in an escape pod..

And then of course in the next episode, Archer is alive again, and everything is back the way it was, until they find this strange starving Ethiopean kid floating around space in an escape pod..

Perhaps it will be these ever-so-mysterious Xindi (why haven't we heard of them? alternate dimension? what? cop-out? what?)

I can't fault them for coming up with races we've never heard of, especially when we're asking for just a little originality here, though it does seem odd that we wouldn't have heard about a swath from Florida to Venezuela getting wiped out.

What I can fault them for is the lame notion that the weapon that did it was a "test". Give me a break: no one in their right mind "tests" a weapon on its intended target for the very reason of what they've got planned for Season 3: if it don't work, they're gonna come kick your butt.

And what's this bunch of jocks they're going to put on the Enterprise? Space: Above and Beyond meets Trek? Talk about a culture clash.

I'll keep an open mind, and hope to be surprised, but it's going to take both stellar writing and acting to pull this one off.

...it's going to take both stellar writing and acting to pull this one off.

Not that either Berman or Braga read this, but if I were to give them a suggestion it would be PRETEND THAT TIME TRAVEL HAS NEVER, EVER HAPPENED, AND FIND A NEW PLOT DEVICE. This is Trek, not Doctor Who, yet this "primitive" version of Trek seems to deal more frequently with time travel and its consequences than even the Next Generation series.

OK, I'm done. I feel better. :)

Nice rant, by the way. :)

ON topic, I think the way they've handled this series borders on criminally incompetent. As you (and nearly every other Trek fan who doesn't try to excuse anything that Paramount does) said, there are so many things that could have been done within the continuity, rather than trying to screw it over with every other episode. DS9 even made a plot where they went to an episode from THE FIRST SERIES interesting and entertaining, where it could easily have been a nonstop groanfest we would all want to forget. Even the alternate universe where the Federation was evil was good (take THAT, grammar and logic!) on DS9. Both are examples of using continuity to your advantage.

Instead of exploring how the United Federation of Planets became big and great, we're "treated" to a show that seems to be almost entirely about time travel. You'd think that Scott Bakula would have looked at the scripts from the first season and turned them down cold on that basis alone (poor guy probably signed a multi-year contract based on the pilot script or even just the premise).

It's like they've tossed everything but the most basic framework of Trek (a human ship exploring the universe in search of new...). I just wonder if they've done it in a cynical (but at least understandable in a financial sense) effort to get higher ratings with a bigger cross-section of fans, or if Berman and company are so in love with themselves and their ideas that they can make a great Star Trek show by throwing out everything that came before..."before" to us, anyway.

I must be a bigger Star Trek fan than I thought considering I keep coming back to read and comment on Enterprise stories. :)