I rewatched that ep a month or so ago. Thankfully with the magic of TiVo, it ended up being the most painless 10 minutes of my Trek viewing life. Usually I can find something nice to say about an ep, but man...that one reeked. It placed unnecessary comedy into the series, and I never found Enterprise to really warrant comedy. Moments of hilarity are OK, but overall the series really should have hinged every episode on the joy of exploration and the action that resulted. You can tell when the writers and producers forgot about that little fact, because you end up with episodes like this one.

The more I look back, the more I find myself lamenting how great Enterprise could have been. It was a golden opportunity to bring a lot of Trek history to life right before our eyes. And here and there they did a great job of that. But then they did silly things like introducing new races that we NEVER see anywhere else in Trek, and not providing us with a plausible explanation as to why. Other odd plot devices came and went throughout the four years of the show and it just showed the inconsistencies in how the show was treated by writers and producers. I think they just forgot what they were all doing there.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

enterprise should've been "omg the romulans are kicking the shit out of us, and by us i mean the vulcans, humans, andorians, and tellarites. let's form a joint millitary venture called starfleet to solve this." basically, season 4 was damn near perfect. the xindi arc was some kind of kneejerk reaction to 9-11, and it was awful.

enterprise does claim one of my all-time favorite hilarious trek moments though. i think it's in the first season, when they get a klingon onto that alien holodeck and the show him the klingon capital on quo'nos and he goes "hey, i can see my house from here!" fucking classic

 That was in the aformentioned craptastic Unexpected episode.

Also, for a brief respite from this thread topic, what is the Julee Cruise debacle, Amanda?

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

yeah i'm just saying my eyes tend to skid over text that's not broken up like skipping a rock across a lake

i have legitimately diagnosed and currently untreated add so dont mind me :)

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Went back and broke my paragraphs down into smaller paragraphs.

J, I'll send you a PM on the Julee Cruise debacle. Everyone here has already heard it a zillion times and is probably rolling their eyes for the billionth time.

I'm still irritated to this day that we never got to see the addressing of the Romulan Wars in the series. We all mused about it when the show first came out, whether or not they'd get to actually tackle that. Producers probably could have sped up the timing of the episodes so that we got through five years in three seasons instead of just four years (series begins in 2151, five years before the start of the Romulan Wars). But whatever. All in all, it was something many Trek fans were salivating over and something we were deprived of. I think the series would have become a bit more DS9-like at that point, mimicking the tone and temperament of the Dominion Wars story arc. Which is fine by me. :)

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

It just didn't seem like something a Klingon would say.  That is all.

Do you think the Romulans and the Vulcans look very similar?

Data doing comedy blows donkey dung.

T'Pols lips need a 3 episode-long story arc.

My eyes were bleeding too reading Amanda's posts!

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Jordan .

I like the Ferengi and their Rules of Acquisition.

Did the writers just assume they were going to get the usual seven seasons of Trek and were planning the Romulan Wars for Seasons 5-7?

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

I don't think so, considering that subsequent interviews with Manny Coto and Rick Berman after the show's cancellation indicated many things planned for season 5, none of them having anything to do with the Romulan Wars. I think they intended to gloss over it from the get-go. To address it would have meant that they'd have to care about attention to detail and implied history.

And J...the Romulans and Vulcans look similar because they share a common ancestor. The people that now make up the Romulan (and Reman) race are descended from a group of folks who were part of the original Vulcan race and had split off to form their own civilization after they basically rejected the notion of controlling emotions and becoming a logical species. That is why you see Vulcans being very controlled and logical and Romulans being very rash and warlike.

I can understand why they didn't start it closer to the Romulan Wars, because that would have completely missed the origins of the Enterprise which was the really cool part of the start of the series. However, they could have honestly moved more quickly through the timeline. There was no reason to do the 1 season = 1 earth year thing. I don't think anyone would have complained had there been, you know, a couple weeks' timeline gap between eps here and there. I mean, shit, there HAD to have been downtime somewhere. They can't always be having dramatic conflicts with the universe!

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

I am going to toss my Star Trek Encyclopedia in the trash and defer to Amanda from here on in.

I thought there was an explanation like that, but I still get confused when Romulans or Vulcans come onscreen and I can only differentiate them sometimes by their garb.

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Meh, I wouldn't toss that Encyclopedia in the trash just yet. There are still a great many things that I do have to pull out my reference books for from time to time. :) In general I'm just kind of a lore nerd. It helps that my roommates are bigger lore nerds than I am. Though I am much better at remembering episode names than they are. :D

Oh, and speaking of the Rules of Acquisition, I actually have a book somewhere of the rules. Someone gave it to me as a stocking stuffer a number of Christmases ago. I wonder if it's still in print? It was quite the hoot. My fave Trek books though were the Nitpicker's Guides. I think they only did through half of DS9...I never found any after that one. They were great though because they were in-depth episode guides that pointed out any inconsistencies in Trek lore from episode to episode, as well as on-screen bloopers, discussions on plot and character development, and favorite quotes. It was all done very tongue-in-cheek as well, so it wasn't straight-up nerdy.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

I want to someday drink Romulan ale (light blue superstrong alcoholic beverage).  I'm sure Amanda knows how to make it.

I would also like some kanar (?) that the Cardassians drink.  Which reminds me - how kick ass were the villians on DS9 - you have Gul Dukat (excellent Marc Alaimo), Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs), Damar (Casey Biggs), and the chameleon Garak (actor name on tip of tongue) who worked in the freakin' clothing boutique on DS9.  Hmmmm...

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

I once hosted a How to Host a Murder party that was Trek-themed back in high school and one of the beverages we served was Romulan ale. The recipe came with the game. It was awesome. I was Dr Crusher, but I made the mistake of inviting my boyfriend to be Riker and my best friend to be Troi. Ahem.

By the way, here's a fun Trek-related video...

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

The Andorians provided me with one of my absolute favorite phrases in all of Star Trek history..."pink skins". It makes me giggle every single time.

There's a later Andorian episode where we get to see Suzie Plakson playing a rather cranky Andorian. I recognized her by her voice about half a minute before I recognized her face for some reason. And it's not like she looks very different. (J, she played K'Ehlyr, Worf's HAWT ex-gf and mother of his child, Alexander. OMG HATE THAT CHARACTER. "The higher, the fewer." STABBITY STAB STAB STAB) But anyway. It was a treat. And of course Jeffrey Combs is still TEH AWESUM.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

The "pink skins" line was funny.  I hope to see more of the Andorians in future ENT eps.

I watched TNG's "Reunion" ep recently and I remember the hot Klingon and that stupid little Alexander kid.  Worf got around.

I LOVE the tension between humans and Vulcans on this series! P'Jem was the Vulcan monastery. 

Travis Mayweather has yet to do anything in the area of character development LOL.  I watched 2 eps last night which was fun so I will probably watch 2 tonight!

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper