- Joined
- Jul 6, 2020
I just happened to be watching the O'Brien Keiko marriage episode in TNG when I read this (Data's Day). She wanted to cancel the wedding on the day of the wedding, she was literally terrible from the first episode.
Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier
- Thread starter Snorlaxative
- Start date
-
Want to keep track of this thread?
Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
Create account
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2020
Definitely a case of Ethan Philips elevating his character. Which was often the case with Voyager; actors actually made the character better than what was actually on the page. It's the sole difference between VOY and ENT. Most ENT cast members didn't elevate their characters and that's why the show got the hate it got. Orville (which is the true Star Trek sequel, not ST: D) is right in the middle; main leads and producers are meh, but supporting and character actors are good.
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2018
I literally taught that when I rewatched it, "Omg, Keiko was a bitch the very first time she showed up." the next episode she tries feeding Miles some garbage fished out the bottom of the ocean for breakfast.
ditto
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2019
Oh no. I just started Enterprise and thought the pilot was kind of rough and boring. But the scrappiness of the ship is refreshing after Voyager and Dr Phlox is not bad at all, just very low-key. T'Pol so far is all of the hotness of Seven without any of the personality.
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2020
I like Phlox too and he's definitely a case of learning from the mistake of Neelix, but name the personalities of Sato or Malcolm. And that's not getting into Archer's overall incompetence. Connor Trinneer MIGHT be the only cast member where his performance elevated his character (they certainly kept making him the focus of a lot of episodes), but it was rarely the case among everyone else. On the other hand, Voyager's worst actor was Robert Beltram, but he's the only cast member I can name who wasn't exceeding his character's limitations. Even Garrett Wang made Ensign Kim interesting and he spent his time playing his clarinet.
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2019
A good chunk of that was because Jolene Blalock was a genuine airhead.
Standardized Profile
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2018
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2018
Sato is the one that cries a lot.
That's all I got.
Edit: Wait that was Garrett Wang's playing in the show?
Edit again because I can google: Oh, no he did not but learned to fake it good.
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2017
Fair, but that was never Mulgrew's fault. The writing for Voyager was unstable as fuck. Janeway in particular was Jeri Taylor's personal self insert, but Jeri Taylor wasn't the only one who wrote for Janeway. She had a completely different vision about Janeway from the other writers of the show, so of course any time somebody else wrote for Janeway, she came off as a completely different character every other episode. No wonder she appears to be the most batshit random captain... (Archer is a pretty close second, but that's a totally different story.)
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2016
NEVER BEEN CONVICTED AND NEVER WILL BE, SEE Y'ALL IN THE GREAT FOREST
I think the place Voyager occupies for me is kinda like the Star Wars prequels. It has huge, gaping flaws that just shouldn't be there and you'd have to be insane to argue otherwise, but I still enjoy it. People saying it sucks doesn't ruin it for me in the slightest (actually talking about why it sucks is half the fun) because I attached none of my ego to liking this show. And honestly, that's true for half of Trek in general. If you really want to enjoy this franchise to the fullest you gotta learn to enjoy the trash as much as the good stuff, mostly through irony and community in-jokes. I can watch Star Trek V and have a good time and that's kind of the level I enjoy Voyager on, by engaging my mental filters and running psycho_janeway.exe.
There are only a few things I couldn't to enjoy on that level: the TNG movies (I've said it before but I can enjoy the bad TOS movies because they kept the characters intact, not the case here, they kinda felt like the beginning of the "Star Trek is embarassed to be Star Trek" trend) and everything since JJ Trek. I might include Enterprise in that but I'll probably watch TAS before I watch that. There's also a whole lot of EU shit I never bothered to look at.
It's definitely an acquired taste though. Or just Stockholm syndrome, much like what Naomi felt for Neelix.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2020
Trip and Phlox are probably the best written characters on the show. Archer is fun when he goes full No Fucks Given.
T'Pol is just there for eye candy and that never changed at all in three seasons. I didn't mind though.
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2018
I hate T'Pol for being such a poorly written Vulcan. Especially when that was following up Voyager's Tuvok which, IMHO, was one of the better written characters on the show. Tuvok's performance and his dialogues just perfectly represents what Vulcans are like. I thought T'Pol was too emotional, she's supposed to be cold but all her deliveries oozed with contempt and annoyance and it just made for a very annoying and condescending personality which I think was far more annoying than any other Vulcan portrayed on the series. I didn't watch that much Enterprise, admittedly, but she constantly had this resting bitch face took that annoyed me.
I will never defend T'Pols actress, but her character does represent how Vulcan's saw humanity at this very early time. With Contempt and annoyance.
While I never liked that Vulcan's were portrayed as militaristic in Enterprise, it was supposedly influenced by decades, if not centuries, of Romulan infiltration. Leading to Vulcan's embracing an intentionally warped understanding of their guiding edicts due to its original meaning being lost to history. With its eventual rediscovery leading to a massive schism that nearly caused a civil war.
T'Pol character is core to this narrative of Vulcan's being caught between two worlds during this massive period of change. Militaristic conquest guided by cutting off emotions entirely and embracing cold hard logic vs. peaceful cohabitation guided by integrating and resolving said emotions to achieve a true logical mind.
Her character does warm up to humans to the point where she even wholesale abandons her people to join them. We also get a pretty interesting arc in Season 3 where she gets addicted to a material that breaks her mental conditioning and allows her to feel emotions. Its an interesting interpretation that Vulcan's cutting themselves from emotions entirely would find emotions to be almost like a drug. Obviously, not really an issue for the more modern Vulcan's who learn to deal with these emotions rather than close them off.
Its a shame the actress could never pull most of this off due to her incredible lack of talent. T'Pol could have been one of the greats of star trek in my honest opinion if her actress was better.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
IIRC you're bringing up late season episodes where they are trying to patch over earlier missteps. I certainly don't believe the showrunners had the above in mind from the start considering all the other evidence of unplanned things.
I mean that's obvious. But its hardly the first time this has happened in star trek. The first season of TNG is famously rough after all. I am also fine with retcons and course corrections if they are good and not jarring, and they are pretty fucking good in the later seasons of enterprise.
I mostly was pointing this out simply because most people don't really give Enterprise its due because early seasons were weak. Season 3 and most of 4 are really strong seasons for a trek show.
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2020
It's not like anyone else wants to play with his clarinet.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2014
One of the story arcs that was being considered for Season 5 before it got cancelled would have had T'Pol being half-Romulan with her allegedly dead father turning out to have been a Romulan spy who was recalled.
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2018
This all sounds like making up for Joleen's piss poor active that oozed so much emotions they kinda went "She had emotions all along, it was planned!"
While yes, Humans irritate Vulcans they never acted so overtly annoyed and curt about it as much as Joleen did. I can imagine many early take trying to direct her to be colder and then eventually just giving up to get their damn shots.
Until her, Tuvok was the most nagging Vulcan in the series but he still managed to come off as impassionate and logical even while being pitted against the irritation tsunami that is Neelix. (Except that one time where he choked him like a bitch on the holodeck.)
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
I mean... fair. But then while I'll give credit to a writer for coming in and cleaning up a mess, that does not make the previous writers geniuses for making the mess in the first place.
Especially considering the experience the show runners had at that point, they should not have taken that long to fix their mistakes.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2019
This is still the most baffling thing about Voyager, Enterprise and to some extent early DS9 before it got to do its own thing. The people in charge of these projects were very experienced, especially by the time of Enterprise, yet they continually greenlit really idiotic ideas, allowed bad writing on the shows and clearly didn't work hard enough to motivate their actors. There's this whole air of complacency as if the producers really didn't care about the success of the show and would have rather been making something else. To this day I still don't know why a lot of good ideas for Voyager and Enterprise got left on the cutting room floor or ignored completely and none of the producers have spoken much on the topic. The Rick Berman meme is kind of dead now that everyone despises Discovery so much, so I guess I won't hold my breath on ever getting an explanation.
Last edited: