{"id":218,"date":"2005-05-18T00:52:12","date_gmt":"2005-05-18T07:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=218"},"modified":"2017-09-13T20:20:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T03:20:18","slug":"bed-breakfast-on-the-deck-of-the-titanic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=218","title":{"rendered":"Bed & Breakfast on the Deck of the Titanic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not an ENT<\/a> fan.\u00c2\u00a0 I gave up on it shortly after the pilot.\u00c2\u00a0 But I have to chime in on the ENT program finale.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neither awful nor brilliant.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just pathetic.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the perfect capstone to the Berman<\/a> & Braga<\/a> era, a testament to their dramaturgical tone deafness.\u00c2\u00a0 The vast array of missed opportunities and self-congratulatory gestures is just typical of their work these days.<\/p>\n

Days?\u00c2\u00a0 More like the last few decades.\u00c2\u00a0 And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what gets me.\u00c2\u00a0 They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been working in one capacity or another on the Trek planation for almost a generation.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 And they still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing.<\/p>\n

Study the 20-year mission of the USS B&B:\u00c2\u00a0 to constantly explore the same old, same old…to seek out weak plots and mental shortcuts…to blandly go to the same ol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 place we keep going to.\u00c2\u00a0 Going where no one has gone before?\u00c2\u00a0 No way.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard work<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the creative decisions that were the foundations of this finale, they demonstrate a fundamental lack of skill or interest in making noteworthy Star Trek<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0 With B&B, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about killing time.\u00c2\u00a0 Fill the time slot.\u00c2\u00a0 They insist on a certain kind of Trek story, calling it quality control, to avoid creativity or thought.\u00c2\u00a0 Berman himself said, “Star Trek is a formula.”<\/a><\/p>\n

So, Trek fans, how do you like your formula<\/a>?<\/p>\n

B&B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attitude comes through loud and clear in the ENT finale.\u00c2\u00a0 Check me on this.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 “These Are The Voyages….”<\/a> is the final episode of Enterprise<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0 But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about Commander Riker.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00bfQue?<\/a><\/p>\n

No, really.\u00c2\u00a0 Riker is busy noodling a moral crisis, so naturally he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on the flippin’ holodeck.\u00c2\u00a0 He, Commander Troi, and the rest of TNG crew are the only “real” people in the episode.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Basically he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s playing with a holonovel about the holographic crew of the holographic original Enterprise<\/i>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final holographic mission.<\/p>\n

(“Oh sure, I always fire up a video game whenever I have an existential quandry on my hands.\u00c2\u00a0 And if I’m being attacked by alien invaders, I’ll drop everything and make the time.”\u00c2\u00a0 C\u00e2\u20ac\u2122mon!\u00c2\u00a0 Is everyone in the 24th Century that morally abstracted from reality?\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes the holodeck idea feels like a mistake, in many ways like another well-intentioned trope of the Trek universe, namely the Prime Directive.\u00c2\u00a0 Cute, clever, problematic, mishandled, and eventually ruined.)<\/p>\n

The NX-01 crew, who should be the dramatic focus of the show, are treated as little more than props for Riker’s benefit.\u00c2\u00a0 They get the most screen time, but Riker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moral crisis define the plot structure.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He zips through the events of Archer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last mission, interacting with the crew, hoping all this will help him solve his problem.<\/p>\n

Archer and company are handled with indifference.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh sure, Riker and Troi make semi-reverent about these historical figures (from their perspective).\u00c2\u00a0 But it all comes off as smug, self-indulgent, and self-absorbed.\u00c2\u00a0 Riker’s plight is the only one with any dramatic weight.\u00c2\u00a0 Riker and Troi show little, if any, emotional involvement in the fate of Archer’s crew.\u00c2\u00a0 Troi mentions in passing, with dull displeasure, it’s a shame Trip dies on this mission.\u00c2\u00a0 You can hear the halfhearted shrug in her voice.<\/p>\n

Yeah, the show’s most popular character dies.\u00c2\u00a0 And it happens in such a pointless, half-assed way.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because he was cornered, not because it was necessary to the plot or continuity\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe died because B&B ran out of ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 They couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find a better way to build some drama, so they laid the foundation for Trip\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death in a casual mention and kept the audience waiting to see how long it’d take them to drop the other shoe.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all it was.\u00c2\u00a0 They can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make the distinction between that and a noble, tragic, inspiring sacrifice like Sydney Carton<\/a>, Ranger Marcus Cole<\/a>, or that guy with the ears<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the best they can do.<\/p>\n

Even when Archer is about to make history, the big payoff of the entire ENT series, Riker stops the holoprogram\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand the story\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddead.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 He got what he needed.<\/p>\n

His needs.\u00c2\u00a0 Screw ours.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the message.\u00c2\u00a0 B&B claimed their message was something else, a Valentine card<\/a>, a tribute<\/a> to the Trek universe.\u00c2\u00a0 They can make that case.\u00c2\u00a0 But it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stack up against the preponderance of evidence.\u00c2\u00a0 One series, one cast<\/a>, became props for another, diminishing one<\/a> to prop up another.\u00c2\u00a0 Their colleagues and their audience are left to fend for themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 The finale\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s overall subtext is that of a hard plink on the nose:<\/p>\n

“Screw you, I got mine.”<\/p>\n

The previous storyline of “Demons”<\/a> and “Terra Prime”<\/a> was a better coda.\u00c2\u00a0 It gave Archer a chance to be heroic, a chance for characters to grow a little, and a glimpse at the birth of the Federation.\u00c2\u00a0 They could have gone with that.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, ENT “isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the Manny Coto Show.”<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 They couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let that stand.\u00c2\u00a0 They had to stomp that sand castle flat.<\/p>\n

They attribute the end of ENT to the overexposure of the entire Trek franchise.\u00c2\u00a0 (God, I hate that expression.\u00c2\u00a0 They make it sound like a fast food joint.)\u00c2\u00a0 Ironically they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d spent years denying such a thing was taking place.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently they changed their minds when the only other alternative was taking responsibility for its poor quality.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet everyone knows they killed the goose that laid so many golden eggs.<\/p>\n

The only question that remains in my mind is whether they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re that devoted to the crocodile god<\/a>, as my wife Jamie would say…or are they really that stupid?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not an ENT fan.\u00c2\u00a0 I gave up on it shortly after the pilot.\u00c2\u00a0 But I have to chime in on the ENT program finale.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neither awful nor brilliant.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just pathetic. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the perfect capstone to the Berman & Braga era, a testament to their dramaturgical tone deafness.\u00c2\u00a0 The vast array of missed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,6,27],"tags":[35,61],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livejournal-postings","category-offtopic","category-personal","tag-livejournal","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}