Wanted: Ent-Era Trek Reboot Main Theme Ideas

[Vondy]

Problem was that I stopped watching after half way though season 1 (I am sure that I am not the only one who did so). I didn't care for Scott Bakula's Archer. He just didn't seem to have any charisma and leadership (which was why the Mirror Universe Eps were so wonderful when we saw him get eaten alive by the universe).

 

The whole series was bad decisions by both the Producers and the Studio. All of the extra crap just turned me off. I started watching again in the middle of the crappy zindi thingie and got bored again. Then there was T'pol and Trip's kid. I just seemed like no one could get the Star Trek spark right. That thing that made TOS and the TOS movies so fun to watch. Enterprise just seemed devoid of anything that I could care about.

 

I started watching on Hulu after it was already off the air! The Internet experience is different than the live TV experience. You don't have to be in a specific time and place, can click around in episodes, or just move on to the next one. I know a lot of people hated enterprise -- and there was definitely what to hate -- but there were also some great episodes. I'd say there are 30ish great Trek episodes amid the chaff.

 

And, I didn't mind Bakula as Archer. Didn't love him, Didn't hate him. But, that may have been the problem -- he should have inspired love or hate rather than "meh." And, that was the case with a lot of the main cast. Mayweather? Underutilized and boooring. Reed? Loathe him. T'Pol, had her moments -- but was basically hotsuit spock with girly bits. Trip? Likeable. Hoshi? More interesting. But, Shran was the best character on the show!

 

For me, the biggest Enterprise blunders were the Temporal Cold War and Xindi War -- which sadly comprise 60-65% of the show. A total waste! Those were extremely ill-advised and should never have come to pass. This isn't to say there weren't a handful great episodes during the Xindi War arc, but that's a lot of bantha doo-doo to sift through to find them. Still, Enterprise had some episodes I really like.

 

However, this is all aesthetics and personal preferences. While I enjoyed some of the TOS movies -- which are what pulled me into Trek along with the EU -- I absolutely cannot stand the TOS television show. And while I love Shatner as Kirk, I simply can't abide by Nimoy. The dude just rubs me the wrong way in every way imaginable. No Spock! And, Vulcans? Meh!  There are maybe a dozen or so TOS episodes I really enjoyed -- and I admit I enjoyed them!

 

IMO, the first 3.5 seasons of TNG sucked as bad, or worse, than Enterprise did. It just got seven years and, half way through season four, found itself. The last three seasons of TNG and its films are core Trek for me, and DS9 remains my favorite Trek of all time. I'm a Niner to the core. Then there was... Voyager. Ugh! Hate Mulgrew as Captain Katherine Hepburn. Oh, wait, was it Janeway? The show was just... stale and off-putting and a bridge too far all at once.

 

Let alone the fact that one ship took out fleet-crushing Borg cubes right and left...

 

If I had to rate Trek I'd go:

• DS9 (Seasons 3-7)
• TNG (Seasons 4-7)
• ENT (Season 4, and key earlier episodes)
• DS9 (Season 1-2)
• TNG (Season 1-3)
• ENT (Xindi Arc)
• TOS
• VOY
• ENT (Temporal Cold War -- because time travel annoys me)

If I had to rate movies, I'd go:

• First Contact
• Wrath of Kahn
• Insurrection
• The Undiscovered Country
• Into Darkness
• Reboot
• Generations
• The Quest for Spock
• Nemesis
• Save The Wales
• The Motionless Picture
• The Final Frontier

[Lawnmower Boy]

Problem was that I stopped watching after half way though season 1 (I am sure that I am not the only one who did so). I didn't care for Scott Bakula's Archer. He just didn't seem to have any charisma and leadership (which was why the Mirror Universe Eps were so wonderful when we saw him get eaten alive by the universe).

 

The whole series was bad decisions by both the Producers and the Studio. All of the extra crap just turned me off. I started watching again in the middle of the crappy zindi thingie and got bored again. Then there was T'pol and Trip's kid. I just seemed like no one could get the Star Trek spark right. That thing that made TOS and the TOS movies so fun to watch. Enterprise just seemed devoid of anything that I could care about.

 

Archer was a pretty big problem, I agree --one that can't be laid to Bakula's feet. They just simply had a problem writing the characters. Mayweather was a problem, which was tragic, because he was also the connection to the Spacers, who ought to have been a bottomless well of stories. I have no complaints about Hoshi, and Trinneer did fine with Trip, and by the end I was excited about the direction they were taking his interspecies romance --not the only person in that boat, to be sure, and the last vision of him in the follow-on novels as a Vulcan patriarch is heartwarming.

 

Reed was a disaster, I agree. Without strong direction, the show tended to be blown in the direction of that week's writers, meaning that the character's hook is key. And the prissy Englishman is not a good hook when he does not have reason to impose his character. Now, if the whole "Warriors Three" thing that they occasionally tried to do with Reed, Trip and Mayweather had worked, he would have played off the other two just fine. But it didn't, and he didn't.  The Fourth season inspiration of having him as the Section 31 agent on the ship was a great redirection of the character --one that did not have time to gel.

 

The captain, though, is the key problem. I agree with Vondy that the first seasons of TNG were weak. What saved it was Patrick Stewart as Jean Luc Picard, and, again, it is the hook factor that I want to focus on. Stewart could do the "stiff upper lips Royal Navy captain" thing in his sleep, so stories that called for him to do that thing just sang.

 

More than that, TNG established that the Captain was pretty much the key role, and showed how to do that. If the scripts are going to come walking off the street, you want to inhabit a stereotypical role and make it your own. Once Avery Brooke was allowed to play Sisko as Hawk, DS9 was set. Everyone knows how to write the tough, streetwise Black sidekick, and, paradoxically, he worked even better when he wasn't a sidekick. You can see this idea working on TOS even without deliberate calculation. Kirk was the centre of a typcial Western ensemble. He knew how to do that, the writers knew how to write for it, every member of his cast had a counterpart in a classic Gunsmoke story, and, as a result, the science fictional setting was liberating rather than constraining. 

 

But Archer --who was he? The story did not have a template for him, and the writers never found one. (So too Janeway.) In my opinion, they should have fleshed out the character right to start with. Not just the backstory with Cochrane and his dad; not just the dog, although Porthos was a huge step in the right direction. I have some ideas about what they should have done, but the Time Patrol won't let me go back and reboot the series. Something about starting World War III EARLY with space Nazis? 

[Vondy]

Archer was a pretty big problem, I agree --one that can't be laid to Bakula's feet. They just simply had a problem writing the characters....

 

But Archer --who was he? The story did not have a template for him, and the writers never found one. (So too Janeway.) In my opinion, they should have fleshed out the character right to start with. Not just the backstory with Cochrane and his dad; not just the dog, although Porthos was a huge step in the right direction. I have some ideas about what they should have done...

 

I'm curious: how would you have done it?

 

Personally, Bakula is best as a guys' guy. Having him play stoic introspective philosopher captain didn't play to his strengths. Or to the role of captain -- which, as you say, needs to be the pivot point for the ship (and crew). Archer needed to be defined as more of a man of action to sit in the chair of the first deep space explorer, IMO. Not necessarily brash, but at least Bold and Going! Instead, they wrote him as circumspect.

[Lawnmower Boy]

I'm curious: how would you have done it?

 

Personally, Bakula is best as a guys' guy. Having him play stoic introspective philosopher captain didn't play to his strengths. Or to the role of captain -- which, as you say, needs to be the pivot point for the ship (and crew). Archer needed to be defined as more of a man of action to sit in the chair of the first deep space explorer, IMO. Not necessarily brash, but at least Bold and Going! Instead, they wrote him as circumspect.

 

See, I'm inclined to disagree. They took a tentative step or two in the direction of the Captain-philosopher, and then backed off in favour of a guy who gave lots of speeches that are meant to sound philosophical, but which were actually sanctimonious carp, making Archer's character seem even more unpleasant when the bendy-twisty-reversey plots required him to be a hypocrite.

 

Actual philosophers in the real world do not give lots of speeches. They like to drink beer, hang out, and watch reruns of STNG. They even glare at you if you ask whether it was actually possible for Data to "have no emotions." The only guy who actually talks philosophy is a Humite goober who is clearly not on the same level as everybody else. (True story, as you might guess.)

 

So what does an actual philosopher, who has been out there and encountered stuff and is going to be the ship's Dad look like? One word for you: the Fonz. Er, two words. 

 

Oh, sure, he's no Arthur Fonzarelli directly. He uses big words, he doesn't have a motorcycle... But I'm sure that he has a leather jacket, which he wears on ship, and to hell with the uniform dress code, and, no, that doesn't mean that you can break the dress code, too, Trip. 

 

And he has that copy of Surak's teachings that T'Pol gave him, which he is reading slowly, and carefully. (One of the things I'd establish about his backstory is that his almighty grandmother was a philosophy prof, who will give anyone who talks trash about Vulcans the fisheye, from childhood memories of a Sybarrite Vulcan doctor in her DP camp.) A heckuva lot more carefully than any modern Vulcan ever has, because that's the thing with religious teachings handed down from the ancients. Sometimes, they're not read carefully enough.

 

At some point, Archer is going to tell T'Pol what is really up with the Sybarrites. At least as far as he knows, which happens to be a lot. But not 'till she's ready.

[Vondy]

Essential Enterprise -- the Trek-canon centric and well done episodes:

1. The Andorian Incident
2. Breaking the Ice
3. Dear Doctor
4. Sleeping Dogs
5. Shadows of Pjem
6. Fusion
7. Acquisition
8. Fallen Hero
9. Carbon Creek
10. Minefield
11. A Night in Sickbay
12. The Seventh
13. Stigma
14. Cease Fire
15. Judgment
16. The Breach
17. Regeneration
18. First Flight
19. Bounty
20. Borderland
21. Cold Station 12
22. The Forge
23. Awakening
24. Kir'Shara
25. Babel One
26. United
27. The Aenar
28. Affliction
29. Divergence
30. Bound
31. In a Mirror Darkly I
32. In a Mirror Darkly II
33. Demons
34. Terra Prime

What is not included -- Xindi & Temporal Cold War related episodes; episodes that did not add to Trek canon or history. However, there were a handful of Xindi episodes that were well done / watchable -- if you can forget they are a part of an ill-advised and dark war on terror criticism that doesn't ring true to Trek.

1. Impulse
2. Twilight
3. Carpenter Street
4. Proving Ground
5. Azati Prime
6. Damage

Note: the Trip-Tpol relationship was well-developed and watchable, but most of it was built up during the Xindi arc and the fourth season episode Daedelus (which I didn't like very much except for the T&T content).

[Vondy]

See, I'm inclined to disagree. They took a tentative step or two in the direction of the Captain-philosopher, and then backed off in favour of a guy who gave lots of speeches that are meant to sound philosophical, but which were actually sanctimonious carp, making Archer's character seem even more unpleasant when the bendy-twisty-reversey plots required him to be a hypocrite.

I would note, for the record, that Picard was also prone to giving sanctimonious, hypocritical, and often morally indefensible speeches. Picard just gets a pass because Stewart delivers pure bovine feces like the Shakespearean powerhouse he is. His full commitment and straight-face lends a patina of authority to unadulterated nonsense. Janeway was given to pontificating and being vacuously high and mighty, too. Her blowhard speeches usually boied down to "I'm right because... Captain!" That's Trek writers for you -- including Roddenberry -- a whole lot of speeches and moralizing aimed at delivering their dogma of the week like an anvil on the viewers head.

 

Actual philosophers in the real world do not give lots of speeches.

No True Scotsman, eh?

 

They like to drink beer, hang out, and watch reruns of STNG. They even glare at you if you ask whether it was actually possible for Data to "have no emotions."

This is a personal preference and aesthetic rather than a meaningful criteria. Its not a bad aesthetic and preference mind you, but it is hardly definitive or exclusive. Though, I concur philosopher's tend to have philosophical discussions about all manner of things without -- usually -- directly referencing philosophy.

 

The only guy who actually talks philosophy...

Back to No True Scotsman, are we? I know plenty of intelligent people with real world experience who discuss philosophy -- and a wide array of other arcane, academic, and highly technical topics in a philosophical way -- when the mood strikes them and the circumstances are right. Its not exclusive or all the time, but talking philosophy hardly disqualifies one from being a... philosopher.

 

is a Humite goober who is clearly not on the same level as everybody else. (True story, as you might guess.)

This sounds more like a bad experience coloring perceptions than a meaningful rule. I'm sympathetic -- we've all had bad experiences with intellectual Luddites who quote people they don't fully ken with unsettling and ironic certitude -- but that doesn't render this any less... ad hominemically ranty. Yes, I did just make up two words to say that. I believe I understand the thrust of your rant -- and even find myself nodding to a degree -- and, yet, even as I accept the general aesthetic and sensibility of it, I know the criteria you present suck. Basically, if you can't boil your philosophy down to an Iaccoca Pitch, you probably don't understand it.

 

So what does an actual philosopher, who has been out there and encountered stuff and is going to be the ship's Dad look like? One word for you: the Fonz. Er, two words.Oh, sure, he's no Arthur Fonzarelli directly.

Can't just bang his fist on the warp drive to get it working? To each his own! Fonz is a bit too cool for school for me. Fun, but not very substantial. I might have gone for Papa Hemingway...

 

He uses big words,he doesn't have a motorcycle...But I'm sure that he has a leather jacket, which he wears on ship, and to hell with the uniform dress code, and, no, that doesn't mean that you can break the dress code, too, Trip.

Remember: Iaccoca Pitch...

 

and

 

He has Enterprise...

 

but

 

Part of being a good leader is knowing 1) why the rules exist, and 2) when you can break them. I could go either way on your dress-code example, though. There's a time and a place.

 

And he has that copy of Surak's teachings that T'Pol gave him, which he is reading slowly, and carefully.(One of the things I'd establish about his back-story is that his almighty grandmother was a philosophy prof, who will give anyone who talks trash about Vulcans the fisheye, from childhood memories of a Sybarrite Vulcan doctor in her DP camp.)

Mere books?! Once Archer was walking with Surak in his head... yet, I guess I get the fisheye from grammy. I'm not a huge fan of Roddenberry's space elves -- esp. as depicted via Spock and TOS. Though, the Vulcan episodes in ENT worked well and provided some additional and much needed nuance for them. I actually prefer ENT Vulcans.

 

A heckuva lot more carefully than any modern Vulcan ever has, because that's the thing with religious teachings handed down from the ancients.

Funnily, ENT did sort of go down this road with Awakening-The Forge-Kir'Shara. Archer ended up being Mighty Whitey to the Vulcans -- and forcing T'Pau to reconsider her beliefs and prejudices. And, incidentally, Tpol was initially supposed to be Tpau herself, but there were major royalty issues that caused them to scuttle the idea.

 

Sometimes, they're not read carefully enough.

Your telling me?

[Lawnmower Boy]

I guess that I start with the premise that if you're going to make a Star Trek series, you've got two kinds of episodes. "Arc" episodes write themselves, plot-wise. Then you just have to worry about ensemble maintenance.Characters shouldn't go against established characterisation to get the plot resolved. That just requires that you define the characters closely enough to know what they won't do. 

 

Second, you have episodic stories --your planet of the week bits. Here, you're dependent on what walks through the door, and a great deal of this is going to be highly derivative. A writer submits a script on spec. Often, the process starts with the writer grabbing Darkover Landfall and asking themselves, "How do Archer and company react when they're placed in this specific situation?" 

 

As a showrunner, it is your job to make sure that these questions are easily answered: in-universe continuity is clearly really hard. Look how often it gets screwed up! That's why it is best to have key details hard and fast: villains, politics, if you're going to have them. The Vulcan High Command has a distorted view of the teachings of Surak and represses mind melding. That's a good place to start....

 

The real challenge, though, is character. A consistent vision of what your character is supposed to be is a crucial support for writers, who are, obviously, not all on the same page. If you don't have that vision, the characters, especially the central figures, above all the captains, are going to be a problem. I do not think that it is much of an exaggeration to suggest that by the end of his run, Archer seemed insane --and not in a nice way, either. What's worse, the deeper the hole, the more Mary Sue the character becomes as writers try to dig him out of it. 

 

In my mind, you can understand how this came to happen by looking at the three Star Trek captains who were successes, and the two who were weak. Shatner, Brook and Stewart were able to lean on broad strokes characterisations that both they and the writers understood. From this starting point, it was easy for talented actors and good writers to synthesise a compelling individual who could deliver bad speeches well, exude sex appeal, and make viewing audiences believe that they were inspiring their crews. 

 

Mulgrew and Bakula never had that support. As a result, Kathryn Janeway ended up annoying people, while Jonathan Archer ended up repulsing them. That is not the Scott Bakula I know from other work. I took a brief look at the TV Without Pity recaps, which I read along with as I was watching Enterprise on DVD three years ago, and I was struck by the recapper's comments in the last episode, when she fulminates over just how unlikable Archer has become, and how relaxed and funny Bakula was on the first season outtakes. It really looks as though Bakula was caught in the character as much as the writers were. 

 

So how do you go back to the beginning and avoid that plunge into darkness? You start with a simple, clear instruction. You, as a writer, are asking yourself: "What would Archer do?" You don't know! Of course you don't know. The script bible says that he's "philosophical" and "thoughtful." Gah! You end up writing a script where he gazes out of his window at the stars and then gives your best interpretation of a "philosophical" speech to the bridge crew. Which, of course, doesn't sound like what many perfectly good philosophers would say in this situation. It sounds like something you'd say, because you, the writer, have probably never heard a philosophical starship captain give an improvised riff on the Vulcan non-interference doctrine as he tries to get the transporter working. 

 

So what do you write in the script bible that will help a writer trying to put this scene together? I don't know: I've never been a show runner. I do have a proposal, though. Bearing in mind who Bakula is, and the context from which he comes, I cast around for a solid, sympathetic, male lead who meets the key criteria of being competent, experienced and a leader, in spite of not having any of the obvious distancing mechanisms available to previous successful captains (Kirk: only conventionally handsome leading man; Stewart: accent, intimidating shaved head; Brook: Black.) Is there an actor/character like that? Yes! So, my touchstone question is: "ask yourself: What would the Fonz do?" Yes, the Fonz was vastly overdone, to the point of being a walking caricature after 11 seasons, but that's because he was so writable. Forget what happens after you jump the shark. First you have to get to it! Having a sympathetic, compelling character at the centre of your ensemble is a huge part of getting there.

 

At this point, it all comes together. Lets look at a specific episode, the one that, more than anything, brings to mind to me the wasted potential of the series: Season 1's Strange New World, which I have already mentioned. (TV Without Pity, Wikipedia playing it straight.)

 

As I have said, this episode seems to me to be based, pretty clearly, on Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Landfall. In that novel, the survivors of a shipwrecked Earth colony ship end up on the uncharted planet of Darkover. Trying to recover from the crash and orient themselves in their strange new world, they are overtaken by the "Ghost Wind," a turn of the spring weather on Darkover that causes certain flowers to release a pollen containing a psychoactive substance that causes hallucinations, disinhibited behaviour, and, most importantly in the long run, psychic experiences. For Darkover is not uninhabited, but rather contains a small population of space elves, possibly with mysterious ancient connections to humans. Anyway, they come out, have sex with the hoomans, and, ultimately, originate the future Darkovian psychic aristocracy.  And while from reading this recap, you might think that I am reaching, I note that in Strange New World as it actually develops, "rock creatures" with an affinity for Vulcans become an important plot point. The connection with what was, perhaps, Spock's most famous mind-meld can hardly be accidental.

 

The elements here in which T'Pol has the first stirrings of her mind-melding potential get so entirely lost in the wash that I would be going out on a limb to argue that they even happened. I don't know. Were they edited out? Are they there on close reading? Probably not. Probably, they were written out, for reasons I'll explore below, that come out if you focus on Archer.

 

i) The basic plot is: Archer makes a mistake and exposes his crew to an unsuspected danger lurking behind the facade of this benign, uninhabited world. And yet there is another level to this. It is benign. Flowers bloom: spring springs, people cut loose. T'Pol certainly gets loose, getting emotional towards the end of the episode. We do not, however, want to say that Vulcans shouldn't repress their emotions. That's part of being Vulcan. Emotional Vulcans are not good things. Instead, we have tentatively decided that Vulcans are repressing the ready, empathetic reaching out via the mind-meld that will be a universal and healthy part of Vulcan civilisation in another 150 years. Since we, the audience, know tht Vulcans do mind-melds at the drop of a hat, and that it is an intensely personal kind of sharing, why not just go with this. It is very much true to the theme of the source novel. 

 

So: dilemma: T'Pol presents Archer with rules that will prevent him from doing something that he wants to do. (Vulcan first contact doctrine calls for an extended planetary survey before you go down and look around. ARcher wants to skip right to the "Go down and see this potentially "Minshara-Class" planet.)"

 

Writer's solution: make Archer look like a somewhat crazed, adolescent douchebag, contradicting well-established Vulcan protocols because it's the Vulcans who said it, and rubbing T'Pol's face in it. Uncool, to say the least.

 

Alternate solution: Ask yourself: What would the  Fonz do? Is the Fonz a rules follower? No! The Fonz doesn't always follow the rules. His real-life experience on the hard streets of Milwaukee have taught him, the hard way, that Officer Kirk uses to make his life harder. Others, of course, make sense. The Fonz's experience doesn't always suffice to tell him whether a rule is correct, or just another bit of authoritarian, fun-sapping nonsense but it does teach him confidence in his own ability to get out of any scrape that results from breaking a good rule whose purpose is not immediately obvious. 

 

So that's how the Fonz phrases it. He knows what he is doing. Maybe not well enough to avoid trouble, but certainly enough to get out of it. Archer being a leader, he frames this in terms of his team. "Fine. We will do a full survey. But we only have two days here, and with a crew as talented as this, there is no reason to hang around in orbit when an away team of my best people can gather all the data needed on the surface in a few hours."

 

Down they go, to look around. At this point, (as the wind begins to spring up?), T'Pol wants to stick around. Archer lets the away team stay, letting the story unfold. Why? In the story, this does not make any sense at all. But the Fonz is a successful lady's man and teacher because he understands and respects people. In this case, he understands T'Pol's (and Trip's) responses to this beautiful planet and idyll. I propose that what is going on here is that T'Pol, her inhibitions shredded by the Ghost Wind and her psychic powers enhanced, is subconsciously probing Trip; and Trip, with no training in repressing or even recognizing this, is responding. Archer/Fonz has no way of knowing what is going on, but he intuits it, and enjoys playing matchmaker. So he steps back to see what happens. 

 

So the camping trip goes wrong, as Trip succumbs to paranoia and draws a phaser on T'Pol. On Enterprise, we have weird shenanigans involving modes of transport. The shuttlepod can't get through, and the transporter can't lift people off the planet. It is good to keep the transporter wonky and dangerous, so that it is not available as a plot crutch, but the way this is solved is to work within its limits to get a hypnospray into T'Pol's hands so that she can sedate Trip. Fine: nnfortunately, this means that the climax has T'Pol being the rational one, solving the problem by play-acting, manoeuvring to get her hands on the hypnospray, and knocking out Trip. So much for exploring the the Ghost Wind's effect on T'Pol. 

 

So what would Fonz do? He'd hit the transporter beam and make it work right. Now, I can hear you saying something along the lines of "What?" But hear me out. I "hit things and make them work" at my job all the time. Not because I'm a magical sitcom character, but because I have almost 16 years of experience, and the clerks who are having trouble are lucky to have a year's. Their tills and power streaks don't work because they're pressing the "off" instead of the "on."  That is Fonzie or Archer hitting the transporter beams. Thanks to years of experience with space and with the equipment of NX-01, he can make it do stuff. Of course, he can't do everything, all the time, but that's why he's training his crew! Archer makes the transporter work, beams down himself in a gas mask, knocks Trip out, then has to knock out T'Pol, who turns out be as crazy as Trip under her facade. 

 

So, back to the ship come our bedraggled crew the next morning. Did Archer make a mistake in letting them stay down there over night? Was he wrong? What does he do about it? Give a stupid speech? What would the Fonz do? Not give a speech. Fonz does not admit to being wrong in public. It undermines confidence in his leadership. Besides, the precise thing that he is wrong about is not something that he wants to talk about in public.

 

That doesn't mean that Fonz doesn't know when he is wrong, and when he is wrong, he learns from it, and teaches others. As the series progresses, he goes from a juvenile delinquent dropout to a high school teacher, after all. So Trip gets a bawling out. Don't be such a cracker! (The lesson about staying in orbit for 48 hours when you only have 24 hours to do an "astrobiological survey" is a non-lesson, however. Space exploration requires some risks to be taken.)

 

The real problem is that Archer/Fonz cannot trust T'Pol in these situations as far as he thought he could. Instead of being an equal upon whom he can rely, she is one of his crew, on her own voyage of self-discovery that it is Archer/Fonz's job to facilitate. Sigh. The burden of command is heavy indeed. Unfortunately, Archer/Fonz doesn't know Vulcans well enough to  know what is wrong with T'Pol. Trip can be handled with a good old fashioned "Give your head a shake!" T'Pol, though...

 

So Arthur/Fonz starts with his original intuition, that T'Pol engineered the sleepaway to spend more time with Trip. If that is sound, it means that T'Pol is acting in a most un-Vulcan manner.This shouldn't be surprising, since drugs were involved, but, in vino veritas. 

 

When Fonz has a book with the answers in it, Fonz reads that book. So we close with a last scene, with Archer cracking open The Big Book of Surak and looking for answers. 

 

In this rewrite, I've tried to bring out how having a clear character touchstone can improve the writing of the Archer character, underline how to do  "philosophical captain," and set up some plotlines that will lead through the P'Jem episodes right through to the fourth season, allowing Archer to earn the right to carry Surak's katra, hopefully without being a Mighty Whitey. (Mainly, because, in the end, he doesn't reason his way to the correct interpretation of Surak. The Sybarrites have already been done that. His reading just helps him realise that they are right.)

[Vondy]

So Arthur/Fonz starts with his original intuition, that T'Pol engineered the sleepaway to spend more time with Trip. If that is sound, it means that T'Pol is acting in a most un-Vulcan manner.This shouldn't be surprising, since drugs were involved, but, in vino veritas. 

In vitro veritas?

 

In this rewrite, I've tried to bring out how having a clear character touchstone can improve the writing of the Archer character, underline how to do...

 

I understand what you are getting and generally agree. Well, except for the Fonz bit. I would be inclined to pick a different touchstone. But, for Bakula, Fonz works well enough. He's best a guys' guy -- and Fonz fits that mold well enough.

[csyphrett]

LB

Your analysis was hilarious

CES

[Vondy]

One thing I've been considering is using the back-story to explain the apparent anachronistic impulses and interests so many Trek protagonist's seem to have. Examples: Papa Sisko's hand-crafted traditional cajun cuisine, Picard's dead-tree formal books, Riker's love of 20th century jazz, Tom Paris and Picard's love of pulp holo-deck simulations. The list of such "old earth" references is, of course, lengthy -- Jadzia and Kira (alien chicks!) doing Camelot holo-sims!

 

On a meta-level, in the absence of lengthy discursive prose, television and movie writers want touchstones readers can immediately riff off of. And even harder, you can only take world-building so far -- what does future cuisine taste and smell like, what does future music sound like, what narrative trends abound? That makes sense for the writer and reader, but not for the motives of the actual protagonists in the stories to care.

 

But, what if there were societal and psychological reasons humans were holding on the culture and history of "the earth that was?" What if archeology, cultural anthropology, and history -- collective memory -- were emotionally critical components of the civilization of the emergent United Earth? Having lived in the religious Jewish diaspora community, and then Israel, I can tell you an exiled people fighting to maintain identity become experts on "what once was." What if humanity lost the Earth (as we knew it) while enduring hard-times? Would we hold fast to traditional foods, musics, literature, and languages?

 

I think its reasonable to posit "yes." At lest, in the time-frame leading up to Enterprise, I think its reasonable. By the time we get to Kirk, and then Picard and Sisko et all, it makes much less sense.

 

Some thoughts...

 

First, even today with technology advancing and the world getting smaller and social media and globalization, I'm experiencing a return to local economy, local politics, and local community. What's more, despite the ubiquity of cheap goods and big farma, there is a revival of the traditional ways of doing many things, and of hands being busy with traditional crafts (and there are benefits to this as we age). Sustainability and self-sufficiency may be global trends, but the real work and experience is grassroots.

 

It could be that I'm biased due to "vashon weirdness" and being "pacific northwest guy" -- but I know a lot of people who buy eggs, milk, and produce from local farms, have their meat slaughtered and butchered by someone they know, and engage in traditional charcuterie and cheese-making. The latter two are passions of mine. On the other hand, my mother, who lives in the Shenandoah Valley and those around her are also inclined to buy local and pursue traditional crafts, and concern themselves with reviving local communities etc. Maybe its rural vs. urban -- but I would say it thus "art is to man as science is to nature."

 

We know we're disconnected and want to reconnect -- for instance, the sensual experience of holding and reading physical book is distinct from the experience of reading pixels on a screen. Perhaps Picard's copy of Moby Dick is in dead-tree format because of the visceral and personal experience a real, tangible, quality, and (seemingly) permanent thing. Its not just data in the stream -- its anchored in the book. Or Papa Sisko, he didn't just replicate that food -- he made it with his own two hands. He crafted it, he worked over it, he poured himself and his love into it -- its artisan cuisine. It is his art -- and man needs art. Trek may be science fiction, but its ultimate commentary irrespective of the aliens, is on the condition of man.

 

Second, ubiquitous access to an unprecedented array of media spanning several decades on the Internet has turned "what was old" into fads. I know a sixteen year old who is obsessed with 80s music and fashion and style -- and pesters me about details I had forgotten (and don't necessarily care to remember!). It doesn't have to be contemporary to trend and have communities of interest spring up around it. The data itself is timeless -- there's no reason a 24th century Riker wouldn't stumble on dixie-land jazz and fall in love with it. Just like a millennial might fall in love with... the 80's.

 

Third, during periods of catastrophe cultures are interrupted. You have to survive, and only after that does thriving matter.  What is worse, information and infrastructure and industry are interrupted as well. If you can't rely on modern techniques to build, craft, and preserve things during the hard-times, then you will revert to what worked (until you can climb back out). What is more, memories of better times will warm the heart and remind you what you are scraping back towards. When you take enterprise into account, humanity is recovering from a tragic and near-fatal period of war and strife and destruction. People in their 40's will have know people who lived through it -- and 88 years isn't as long as it seems.

 

So, my thinking is that my Trek background will dip more into the horror of our times than that of the 1960's -- and Roddenberry's generation. We don't have the deep atomic horror of the cold war the way we once did. Rather, we have climate horror, and to a degree technology horror, and chaos (terrorism) horror. I'm thinking my reboot backs-story will posit decades of volatile climate change that led to a protracted series of resource and eugenics wars, which included a limited nuclear exchange. However, even as man was beginning to come out of this the Earth slid into an advancing ice-age that would -- within a few short decades -- be a global deep freeze.

 

The result is that the human population imploded and resources and energies would be almost entirely devoted to surviving. At 88 years after post contact I'm thinking the human population will be just over a billion souls. About 75% of those will reside in massive self-contained arcologies down in the gravity well (on Earth!). The other 25% live in the orbitals at the Lagrange points, the lunar manufacturing and mining colonies, and the martian colony. Humanity has also sent the initial colony ships to Terra Nova and Vega, and established orbital colonies in the Proxima system.  Terraforming Terra itself is a principal concern.

 

An example of this I want to include is that outposts and arcologies maintain orchards of bio-sphere's on the snow-swept plains that include assorted trees and plant-life from different biospheres. This is akin to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, in which owning and caring for a real animal is considered not only a status symbol, but also an anchor for being human. I think my captain is going to be from a scientific outpost / research station which is very proud of its garden of tree globes!

 

I think, under such circumstances, even though humanity is entering a proto-post-scarcity economy with power and shelter and food issues essentially solved, that a pervasive sense or "cultural conservationism" -- and an interest in traditional arts, crafts, and ways of making and preparing things -- might prevail.

 

 

[Gary Miles]

You both are right. I like the speculative Season 5 Refit, which was talked about in one of the Enterprise Novels.

 

I couldn't find a good TOS looking Miranda Class. Thanks for the nice looking render.

 

In the TOS days (pre movie Trek) there was an idea that early Human Federation ships weren't all saucer shaped. With them being more square looking. Starting in one of those blocky ships with Armor and no shields would be very interesting to me.

If you like that shot, look at the entire thread here on the TrekBBS...

 

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=166732

[Vondy]

TIMELINE

 

I confess I've been watching a bunch of Enterprise and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles over the past few months. My wife has never seen the latter and has been enjoying it. I'm enjoying re-watching it. Its gotten my juices pumping.  

On the one hand, Trek is very optimistic about the march of technology and the colonization of the Sol system. And yet,  we don't really see much in the way of "proper AI" in Trek. In TOS and ENT computers are just advanced versions of our modern computers. This only changes cosmetically in TNG, DS9, and VOY.

True, we see holodeck programs become self-aware in TNG. But those appear to be plot-specific exceptions.  We never see Starfleet or the Federation adopt "true-AI" in any meaningful way.  Even in the TNG-era Federation computers appear to be highly-sophisticated smart systems with user-friendly interfaces (voices) lacking self-awareness or direction.

What's more, aside from Data -- as a unique plot and theme hook -- Trek doesn't really "do robots" either. No AI, no Robots, genetic augmentation is illegal (a riff on nazi-eugenics, no doubt), an absence of unconventional weapons and a preference for stun-settings (a riff on the cold war, no doubt), a temporal prime directive, etc.

This led me to ponder "The Edicts" in Dream Pod 9's Jovian Chronlicles setting. Basically, some scientific research and technologies are highly restricted, or outright illegal, due to humanities prior bad experience with them. For all of the plot-of-the-week technological singularities in Trek, the Federation seems inclined to "prompty forget" them.

It appears United Earth (and the Federation) has its own version of the "Editcs" in play. It got me thinking about the Trekverse backstory and technology. WWIII, the augments, etc. How would I expand this to include AI and robots, more or less? And all by the 1990's.

It also made me wonder: , since the Trek timeline is already headed into alternative universe territory -- how does humanity come out with such advanced tech in 2151 -- despite a catostrphic war, likely population implosion, and "hard years scrabbling to survive and rebuild"?

Then it hit me -- Skynet!

2030: John Connor born
2046: Zefram Cochrane born; Ares IV manned mission to Mars
2049: Judgement Day; nuclear winter; slide into ice age; population implosion
2080: Kahn makes bid for power in Central Asia.
2081: Skynet destroyed; tech-com stands down; last of "the machines" decommissioned
2082: Colonel Green's former tech-com forces begin genetic purges
2083: Flight of the Pheonix; First Contact
2084: Kahn forced into exile via the sleeper-ship "Botany Bay"
2086: Global ceasefire declared during San Francisco Accords
2090: San Francisco Mega-Arcology (SFMA) completed
2091: United Earth Government declared at SFMA; Edicts ratified; Vulcan embassy established
2093: Daedalus subspace array and "farside" research stations built on Luna  
2197: Lunar mining, manufacturing, and mass-driver projects begin
2100: Century Station goes online in Earth Orbit
2101: Martian project begins
2112: Jupiter Station online
2117: First colonists arrive at Alpha Centauri
2119: Warp Five Program funded; UESPA Uniformed Officers Corps ["Starfleet"] founded
2126: Jupiter Station online
2127: First colonists arrive at Altair
2136: First colonists arrives at Vega
2143: "First Flight"; NX-Alpha (AG Robinson) and NX-Beta (Jonathan Archer) break Warp 2
2144: NX-Delta (Liora Darvash) breaks Warp 3
2149: Human population breaks 100 million mark!
2050: Final holdouts join UEG
2151: NX-01 launches from spacedock -- ahead of schedule.

[Vondy]

Duplicate

[Vondy]

I am so glad Trek writers have a time-honored tradition of ignoring Gene Roddenberry....

 

http://io9.com/5846344/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-star-trek-the-next-generation

[BlueCloud2k2]

They are probably making up for George Lucas ignoring the Expanded Universe stuff.

[Lawnmower Boy]

 

TIMELINE

 

I confess I've been watching a bunch of Enterprise and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles over the past few months. My wife has never seen the latter and has been enjoying it. I'm enjoying re-watching it. Its gotten my juices pumping.  

 

On the one hand, Trek is very optimistic about the march of technology and the colonization of the Sol system. And yet,  we don't really see much in the way of "proper AI" in Trek. In TOS and ENT computers are just advanced versions of our modern computers. This only changes cosmetically in TNG, DS9, and VOY.

 

True, we see holodeck programs become self-aware in TNG. But those appear to be plot-specific exceptions.  We never see Starfleet or the Federation adopt "true-AI" in any meaningful way.  Even in the TNG-era Federation computers appear to be highly-sophisticated smart systems with user-friendly interfaces (voices) lacking self-awareness or direction.

 

What's more, aside from Data -- as a unique plot and theme hook -- Trek doesn't really "do robots" either. No AI, no Robots, genetic augmentation is illegal (a riff on nazi-eugenics, no doubt), an absence of unconventional weapons and a preference for stun-settings (a riff on the cold war, no doubt), a temporal prime directive, etc.

 

This led me to ponder "The Edicts" in Dream Pod 9's Jovian Chronlicles setting. Basically, some scientific research and technologies are highly restricted, or outright illegal, due to humanities prior bad experience with them. For all of the plot-of-the-week technological singularities in Trek, the Federation seems inclined to "prompty forget" them.

 

It appears United Earth (and the Federation) has its own version of the "Editcs" in play. It got me thinking about the Trekverse backstory and technology. WWIII, the augments, etc. How would I expand this to include AI and robots, more or less? And all by the 1990's.

 

It also made me wonder: , since the Trek timeline is already headed into alternative universe territory -- how does humanity come out with such advanced tech in 2151 -- despite a catostrphic war, likely population implosion, and "hard years scrabbling to survive and rebuild"?

 

Then it hit me -- Skynet!

 

2030: John Connor born

2046: Zefram Cochrane born; Ares IV manned mission to Mars

2049: Judgement Day; nuclear winter; slide into ice age; population implosion

2080: Kahn makes bid for power in Central Asia.

2081: Skynet destroyed; tech-com stands down; last of "the machines" decommissioned

2082: Colonel Green's former tech-com forces begin genetic purges

2083: Flight of the Pheonix; First Contact

2084: Kahn forced into exile via the sleeper-ship "Botany Bay"

2086: Global ceasefire declared during San Francisco Accords

2090: San Francisco Mega-Arcology (SFMA) completed

2091: United Earth Government declared at SFMA; Edicts ratified; Vulcan embassy established

2093: Daedalus subspace array and "farside" research stations built on Luna  

2197: Lunar mining, manufacturing, and mass-driver projects begin

2100: Century Station goes online in Earth Orbit

2101: Martian project begins

2112: Jupiter Station online

2117: First colonists arrive at Alpha Centauri

2119: Warp Five Program funded; UESPA Uniformed Officers Corps ["Starfleet"] founded

2126: Jupiter Station online

2127: First colonists arrive at Altair

2136: First colonists arrives at Vega

2143: "First Flight"; NX-Alpha (AG Robinson) and NX-Beta (Jonathan Archer) break Warp 2

2144: NX-Delta (Liora Darvash) breaks Warp 3

2149: Human population breaks 100 million mark!

2050: Final holdouts join UEG

2151: NX-01 launches from spacedock -- ahead of schedule.

 

 

This is fun. Now, if someone set this down in front of me, I'd --well, I guess I'd smear garbage all over Vondy's vision. But here's where I'd take it

 

i) Tone: TOS had a spirit of youthful optimism, a wide-open Sixties feel. Because it was made in the Sixties! The remake has a 2014 tone, suitable to our Zeitgeist. It's still optimistic, if I'm reading it right, but optimistic in a 2014 kind of way. That's tough in our pessimistic age.

 

So here is what I've got.

 

"It is the hour between the last star at night and the first light of dawn. So they say. But realists understand that the sun has gone out. It will never rise again. Optimists babble New Age nonsense about artisanal cheese. Who do you think is right?  

 

What is the mission of the NX programme? Optimists talk about a new age of exploration and colonisation. Realists say we know what's out there. We are a population of a hundred million, all too many of them living in arcologies that will fail one day. Let's face it, Earth is too large and complex a system to be saved. It's going to be in an ice age for ten thousand years. Mars is an artificial environment and a tiny toy of a home, even if we can terraform it.

 

Faraway colonies? Post-scarcity humans don't reproduce that quickly. Don't really reproduce at all. Humanity's future is as an auxiliary to a powerful ally, Vulcan. Vulcans may be alien, but, as a wise former prime minister of the United Kingdom on Earth said in an address to the Vulcan High Command eleven years ago

 

Vulcan must listen as well as lead. But don't ever apologise for your values. Tell the galaxy why you're proud of Vulcan. Tell them that when Kali'Surak starts, Vulcans get to their feet ... whatever race, colour, class or creed they are. "Infinite diversity in infinite combinations." Being Vulcan means being rational. That's what makes them proud. I come from a part of Earth called Britain, and as Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible; but in fact it is transient. The question is, what do you leave behind? What you can bequeath to this anxious universe is the light of reason ... destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time and the task is yours to do.

 

 

 

That statesman was calling Vulcan to a sacred mission, to extend its progressive, rational, human politics to a troubled galactic sector. This is humanity's goal, too. Only when the local community is united can we eexpect to stave off Klingon expansionism. And remember that it is imminent. When the Klingons develop Warp 7 ships, they will bring us into their Empire.

 

Unless we can stand on our own feet here in the local neighbourhood. Right now, obstreperous neighbours stand in the way: Andorra, Telluria, Orion, other, lesser powers. Together, Vulcan and Earth can end this chaos. 

 

Then you can embrace your passion for exploration. In the meantime, the need for a much more rapid naval buildup requires that we take stern, unpopular measures. This Council must move to shut down funding for further expansion of the arcology programme and the grandiose, futile "geoengineering" that goes with it. We have killed the Earth, and we are sorry. At least we can refrain from molesting her corpse.  

[Vondy]

This is fun. Now, if someone set this down in front of me, I'd --well, I guess I'd smear garbage all over Vondy's vision.

Why smear garbage on anyone's vision?

 

i) Tone: TOS had a spirit of youthful optimism, a wide-open Sixties feel. Because it was made in the Sixties! The remake has a 2014 tone, suitable to our Zeitgeist. It's still optimistic, if I'm reading it right, but optimistic in a 2014 kind of way. That's tough in our pessimistic age.

 

"It is the hour between the last star at night and the first light of dawn. So they say. But realists understand that the sun has gone out. It will never rise again. Optimists babble New Age nonsense about artisanal cheese. Who do you think is right?

 

What is the mission of the NX programme? Optimists talk about a new age of exploration and colonisation. Realists say we know what's out there.

Cheese makers have dairy that lasts more than a week. People who make fun of cheese-makers watch their milk spoil. And I make some tasty artisan cheese! Humanity coming to grips with itself and its place in the universe. Man overcoming his circumstances and nature and rising both? Both are straight out of Roddenberry's notes. After all, he was double-down with New Age nonsense. But, more practically, redundant planetary settlement is a good "robustness" and "survival" strategy -- from a realist's perspective.

 

We are a population of a hundred million, all too many of them living

My numbers were extremely conservative -- perhaps ridiculously so. Human populations tend to boom post crisis. The decades after the the end of the key crisis may have had a birthrate of 5+ rather than 1.2+. On the other hand, low numbers serve a narrative purpose in driving home how close to the precipice of extinction man came.

 

in arcologies that will fail one day.

I'm not sure how this follows in a proto-post-scarcity economy wherein Earth is undertaking major orbital construction projects, lunar industrialization, and a martian terraforming project? Oh, and a W5 project. Oh, and the arcology projects themselves. Oh, and....

 

Let's face it, Earth is too large and complex a system to be saved. It's going to be in an ice age for ten thousand years. Mars is an artificial environment and a tiny toy of a home, even if we can terraform it.

We would have to ignore that mars is shown already being terraformed in S4 of ENT. However, the efficacy of the project could be in question -- maybe its a pre-terran-terraforming endeavor. Get it right up there before trying it down here....

 

Post-scarcity humans don't reproduce that quickly. Don't really reproduce at all.

As noted above, human populations boom in the wake of disaster, tragedy, war, and crisis. And -- if you have overcome scarcity why not breed like bunnies to repopulate the Earth and celebrate life and prosperity. It could well be that United Earth has an unusually high value on motherhood, children, and rebuilding for the future -- which has a certain spartan-women proudly bearing the soldiers of tomorrow vibe to it...

 

Humanity's future is as an auxiliary to a powerful ally, Vulcan. Vulcans may be alien,

 

Realists -- and realism -- need not apply on the Roddster's writing staff. He had a lefty-sixties-hippies-in-space-utopian vision of tomorrow. Trek has, for all its aliens, been about humanity, the human spirit, and man rising above and finding his place in the universe. If man becomes the space-elves sidekick you lose the essence of the show. For all their popularity with fan-wankers, the elves only exist as a commentary on what it means to be human. Heck, Spock was a narrative tool for exploring what it means to be human clothed in an angsty hybrid form. Indeed, Vulcan was such a power player in TOS that Spock was the only elf in Starfleet and his planet was filled with reactionary isolationists. It was humanity who built the federation, manned starfleet, and turned to the stars.

 

but, as a wise former prime minister of the United Kingdom on Earth said in an address to the Vulcan High Command eleven years ago

 

That statesman was calling Vulcan to a sacred mission, to extend its progressive, rational, human politics to a troubled galactic sector. This is humanity's goal, too. Only when the local community is united can we eexpect to stave off Klingon expansionism. And remember that it is imminent. When the Klingons develop Warp 7 ships, they will bring us into their Empire.

 

Unless we can stand on our own feet here in the local neighbourhood. Right now, obstreperous neighbours stand in the way: Andorra, Telluria, Orion, other, lesser powers. Together, Vulcan and Earth can end this chaos.

 

Then you can embrace your passion for exploration. In the meantime, the need for a much more rapid naval buildup requires that we take stern, unpopular measures. This Council must move to shut down funding for further expansion of the arcology programme and the grandiose, futile "geoengineering" that goes with it. We have killed the Earth, and we are sorry. At least we can refrain from molesting her corpse.

All good -- and explains why arcology expansion would be significantly slowed -- and it continues to work with my [probably ridiculous] low numbers on a narrative level. This, at least, explains how it is man comes to the fore.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Sorry, Vondy; my intended tone didn't get across. What I should have said is that as I look at your timelline, I think about what a "realistic" observer who is completely wrong would say. (That's why I riffed off Tony Blair's 2003 address to Congress.) It's the optimists who are right. The realists are encouraging the worst trends in human and ​Vulcan society --and throwing away the potential of the NX programme. 

[Vondy]

Sorry, Vondy; my intended tone didn't get across. What I should have said is that as I look at your timelline, I think about what a "realistic" observer who is completely wrong would say. (That's why I riffed off Tony Blair's 2003 address to Congress.) It's the optimists who are right. The realists are encouraging the worst trends in human and ​Vulcan society --and throwing away the potential of the NX programme. 

 

Which makes total sense. Thank you for the clarification. I initially assumed it was your tone, but on a second reading asked myself "is he assuming the meta-tone" of a dogmatically realistic "vulcan douche"? I actually liked the "british politician" speech part -- read for nuance, it could be taken as an optimist speaking in terms realists will nod their heads at.