"The Abomination"

[Alelou]

I didn't mind the grin, but I think he winked too, didn't he? And I remember thinking maybe Connor was overdoing it a little for once? Or maybe this was supposed to be some secret signal to the fans that this wasn't for real? It took me out of the moment ... not that I wanted to be IN that moment.

They could have killed Trip off in a good, meaningful way and I would have been fine with it. But they should have respected the relationship THEY had built between Trip and T'Pol. And not used a lame TNG episode to frame it -- except that I'm glad for the total out it provides.

Fourth season, I think you could literally watch them backing away from their own show in favor of an amorphous general Star Trek thing. Maybe it was their own way of coping with separation anxiety. As an old Trekkie I enjoyed some of it, but I don't think it really respected the show or its fans. I think I may have hated the MU episodes even more than *the_abomination*. Thank God they snuck Demons and Terra Prime in there.

[Aquarius]

Yeah, I think Trip winked there, too, but some of the details are a little jumbled for me because i was in the middle of such a big "Oh, HELL no!" while watching. "wink"

For me, the "overdoing" it part was before that, when Trip was going against Archer's orders and setting the bad guys to get killed. THAT didn't seem "natural" for Trip--not that he wouldn't try to protect ship and captain, but just the way the scene was acted, the way it flowed (or didn't, as the case may be), etc. So much of the episode seemed so contrived to me, and that scene was at the top of the list.

In the bonus material, they did mention trying to incorporate more Star Trek "lore" into it--show us things we never really got to see in the later-occurring incarnations and how some things came to be, reconcile some "inconsistencies" (crunchy vs. smooth -headed Klingons, etc.). So I don't know if it was so much that they were backing away from their own show, or if it was a desperate attempt to reclaim an audience who maybe felt more tied to one or more of the other series, by making Enterprise get back to its "roots." I have a friend who won't watch Enterprise because she STILL insists it's completely contrary to Roddenberry's vision and canon....even though by her own admission she's never seen some of the episodes that reconcile and explain some of her assertions. So maybe by doing what they did, they were trying to get that viewer back? Three episodes of Spiner, three episodes of cool Vulcan mojo stuff, two versions of Klingons explained, a trip to the Andorian homeworld, and early labor pains from the birth of a Federation...all of this seems like stuff that would probably interest fans who might've backed away from the show at one point or another, so instead of creating distance, I wonder if instead they were trying to save their show?

Sorry. That was probably pretty incoherent. I'm on medication today...

[justTripn]

I decided the wink meant that Trip wasn't facing up to his own death. Was still being an optimist. I thought the best acting in that was the looks Archer and Phlox exchanged as soon as Trip was out of sight in the chamber.

[Alelou]

Yeah, Aquarius, your reason for all the Trekness is much more rational than mine. I could see them pitching that to the suits.

Some of it I really liked (the Vulcan arc, except for Super!Archer, the Klingon Augments arc, though I think it could have been shorter). But as I'm getting ready to do weights and plugging in "Babel One" last night it really struck me that in some ways this whole arc was just a lazy rip-off of the original "Journey to Babel." I mean, Romulans, Andorians, Tellarites. The A plot is pertty much the same. The B and C plots are different, and they're all developed a lot more, but still. Meanwhile those Spiner eps were stretched out to the point of boredom. And MU wasted two precious episodes with no actual presence of our own beloved characters, just their evil twins. And *the_abomination*... Well, you see my point. Enterprise was always a bit hit or miss but I thought it was at its best in the Expanse, when it was really breaking new ground and finding its own way.

[Aquarius]

Me? Rational? Today? You have no idea how scary that notion is...!

I know what you mean by the hit-or-miss-ness of it. So far I tend to like Season Three the best, too, but I like a lot of the TnT stuff in Four. It's a shame that no matter what they did, they just couldn't get enough of an audience to keep going. Again I have to wonder if most fans were pretty saturated with Trek by the time Enterprise came along, so it might not have mattered what they did. Next Generation kind of "mainstreamed" Trek to a point where it had even casual fans...the kind who get bored and stop watching if they've had too much or have moved on to the next hip, cool thing. I don't think all those people who were watching TNG, DS9 and Voyager were all die-hards, if you know what I mean...but it seems like t that's all Enterprise might've been left with by the time it was over.

[Alelou]

I think Enterprise was very uneven out of the gate but it was also just really unlucky -- it had to deal with UPN's birth and death throes among many other things, including Star Trek fatigue. I had given up on ST during Voyager, and I don't think I ever caught a full episode of Enterprise in first run. I had a young child to put to bed at whatever very early hour they ran it (7pm? Does that ring a bell?), and when we moved to Albany it wasn't even on that I could find. But I still think it was much truer to the original series/TNG gestalt than DS9 or Voyager were. Those shows were just so dark and gloomy (even if DS9 was arguably deeper and more complex).

[Aquarius]

I think out of all of them, I lost the most interest in DS9. The religious/political angle just seemed to get too heavy-handed at times. Yeah, these are the types of topics Roddenberry liked to tackle, but it just seemed to overpower the show sometimes.

I can't remember what time they used to show Enterprise in first-run. 8 or 9 sounds about right...but that was part of the whole problem of why I didn't stick with it, too, because it kept getting preempted for hockey, and it seemed like the alternate show day/time was never the same. Like, sometimes it seemed to be Sunday at noon, or Tuesday at 8, or any other kind of craziness.

It's such a shame this show couldn't even buy a break.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Well, in case you (or anyone else) are interested, here is the lengthy review I wrote almost immediately after having seen *the_abomination*.

[Aquarius]

OUCH!!

...but extremely accurate and well-thought-out. It echoed many of my own sentiments. I think that if TPTB had run it past you first, we definitely would've gotten a different finale--and a much better one.

Your points about dramatic tension if Trip and T'Pol still had their relationship are spot-on, too.

So I'll just follow it up with a big "Yeah, what he said!!"

.

[Alelou]

Well, in case you (or anyone else) are interested, here is the lengthy review I wrote almost immediately after having seen *the_abomination*.

But what do you really think, KTR?

But it's true. It's all true.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

You know, re-reading that review makes me p*ssed off all over again. And to think it's been 3½ years!

[Asso]

You know, re-reading that review makes me p*ssed off all over again. And to think it's been 3½ years!

No word must be added!

[Aquarius]

In a way this is good news, because if I stay good and mad, then I will be good and prolific.

[WarpGirl]

Well I've just seen it, and I can describe my feelings in one sentence. IT WAS POINTLESS! The concept, the character assassinations of Enterprise's crew, the character assassination of Shran, everything about it was POINTLESS. But honestly I didn't freak out as badly as I thought I would. I guess it comes from not expecting anything good to come out of it. But the little girl Tala was a cutie. I actually liked seeing Deanna and Will, but I think it was a stupid way to put it in. Why revisit the Pegasas? (I know spelled it wrong but I'm on cold meds.) They could have been doing something on the Titan and needed a program. POINTLESS! I find it really rather funny that the only person in the program that was in character at all was Archer. It only convinced me that it has always been the Super! Archer show. Still, I'm with AQUARIUS it's just a holo-program. And I have always loved Will and Deanna. I've been loving them since 1987 when I was 3 years old. So I'll take seeing them whenever I can. I enjoyed their proformances and ignore the rest because IT WAS POINTLESS!

You know something funny I called my mom to tell her I was watching it and she said "Don't cry you can barely breath" I had no urge to cry it was too rediculous to cry over.

[Aikiweezie]

Well, WarpGirl - this is definately something we agree on!

IT WAS !!!!!!!!!

If you haven't read Kevin Thomas Riley's Review (see previous page). He says it all perfetly.