Remove ads

Athene Watches Star Trek Enterprise: How To Get Away With Franchise Murder

Reader mode
Athene said:
Garibaldi rescues a Markab man from human supremacists. The beaten man raises his hand for help and Garibaldi takes it, picking him up without hesitation and carrying him to get help.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The scene is more powerful than that, because Garibaldi does hesitate. Just for a moment. He looks down at the probably dying and diseased man who needs help, who raises a hand to beg for it, and he hesitates. And then he takes the hand and pulls him up anyway.

Because B5 is the good shit.

Athene said:
Mira Furlan channeling being forced to escape her homeland during the Yugoslav Wars and the intense hatred directed at her, is definitely an unfair comparison to an absolutely miscast Scott Bakula channeling who the fuck knows what lol
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He was channeling that time he went to Africa and saw a gazelle, weren't you listening? Because that was clearly just adlibed, there's no chance someone was actually paid to write that drivel right? ...right???
 
Last edited:
I do find an entire multi planet species being killed by one plague a little hard to swallow, yes even after covid, but do agree with the broader points that B5 is better than enterprise and that particular episode is better than Dear Doctor.
 
LilyWitch said:
I do find an entire multi planet species being killed by one plague a little hard to swallow, yes even after covid, but do agree with the broader points that B5 is better than enterprise and that particular episode is better than Dear Doctor.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's heavily-hinted that said plague is engineered Shadow awfulness. Cause in B5, the people in favor eugenics and mass murder are the worse of the two bad elder races.
 
LilyWitch said:
I do find an entire multi planet species being killed by one plague a little hard to swallow, yes even after covid, but do agree with the broader points that B5 is better than enterprise and that particular episode is better than Dear Doctor.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm not sure how much the Markab were a multi-planet species. Most of the League members seems to be one main planet plus a few small colonies and outposts - hell, even Earth Alliance isn't much more than that. A lot of those are going to have fairly small and dense population centers, especially on planets or moons without a breathable environment.
 
Stardust&Scotch said:
the 'Laugh' face helpfully doubles as a scream.

I love a good B5 digression (just about every time we're in an elevator, my sisters and I start doing G'Kar & Londo's bit and alarm/confuse the hell out of everyone else onboard). I would say to keep bringing them in whenever Enterprise eats shit on a theme/idea that B5 does better, but if you did that we'd have to change the thread name.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm sorry, but you what? You bang on the walls talking about a fire while your sister talks about being happy to watch you die?
 
So much that I didn't get a chance to talk about, like the fact that the solution in the end is the future tech of...an mRNA vaccine.

Yeah, we live in the fucking future.
 
slybrarian said:
I'm not sure how much the Markab were a multi-planet species. Most of the League members seems to be one main planet plus a few small colonies and outposts - hell, even Earth Alliance isn't much more than that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Colonies take a long time to get big, at least if you aren't doing intensive propaganda campaigns for large families or exporting large portions of your core population.
 
Athene said:
So much that I didn't get a chance to talk about, like the fact that the solution in the end is the future tech of...an mRNA vaccine.

Yeah, we live in the fucking future.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Still takes us months to whip up a new one, they took what, a couple days? A week? Using a box of scraps in a spinning metal cylinder?
 
Compellor said:
I'm sorry, but you what? You bang on the walls talking about a fire while your sister talks about being happy to watch you die?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The fire detail, no - c'mon, that could cause like actual emergency problems, and we're not crazy. We're just gadflies. The three of us usually, if it's a long enough elevator ride, will just trade off who's playing straight the "we need to work together" and the other two just have fun with the "as the humans say: up yours, die. bwahahahhahaha!"

Granted, we can also be calmly riding an elevator, when one of us just starts humming "not many fishies left in the sea", and all three of us lose it.
 
Space Oddity said:
It's heavily-hinted that said plague is engineered Shadow awfulness. Cause in B5, the people in favor eugenics and mass murder are the worse of the two bad elder races.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
...the Vorlons did that too. Which is honestly kind of the point. Vorlons, Shadows, six of one, half a dozen of the other. (Though, to be fair, the Vorlons were the ones who wrote the script, so I'd say they're slightly more guilty than the Shadows. Slightly.)

Tylonius said:
Because B5 is the good shit.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The funny thing is that B5 had no business being good at all. Its production was a trainwreck from start to finish, half the cast had some sort of issue, the show was constantly underfunded and getting the rug pulled out from under them, JMS basically wrote several episodes practically as they were starting filming... Everything about B5's production says it should have failed utterly.

By contrast, Enterprise was an established franchise staffed with veterans from previous installments of said franchise. I don't know much about the production, but I doubt it was anywhere near as fraught as B5's.

And yet B5 stands as one of the titans of the genre while Enterprise is really only memorable thanks to it being attached to the Star Trek name.
 
slybrarian said:
I'm not sure how much the Markab were a multi-planet species. Most of the League members seems to be one main planet plus a few small colonies and outposts - hell, even Earth Alliance isn't much more than that. A lot of those are going to have fairly small and dense population centers, especially on planets or moons without a breathable environment.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hark! I hear my cue. The Markab are actually pretty old by League standards, having some spaceflight capability back during the previous Shadow War (Around 1260AD), though I don't think they were at the point of being active combatants. Like a lot of the League, though, they have higher priorities than conquest and expansion and only have 2 major colonies by the time of the show. They were generally pretty isolationist and very theologically-focused until they came out of their shell after the Dilgar War.
 
LilyWitch said:
I do find an entire multi planet species being killed by one plague a little hard to swallow, yes even after covid, but do agree with the broader points that B5 is better than enterprise and that particular episode is better than Dear Doctor.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The long incubation time, low number of planets they had and relatively easy interstellar travel of the setting make it more plausible than it would otherwise be. And if they'd approached the issue more sensibly they'd have likely only been decimated rather than annihilated.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
Still takes us months to whip up a new one, they took what, a couple days? A week? Using a box of scraps in a spinning metal cylinder?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh for sure but the concept at the time was still extremely new and futuristic. Also it's after I've been watching a bunch of Star Trek where it's often a trihydroxychloroquine injection or some product that sounds like a marketing exec at Merck had a stroke and can only communicate in bad drug brand name pitches. Or Enterprise where he's like "Don't worry, the Drexlerian Lipid Wombat will solve this problem".

He uses actual horsepaste on a burn victim next episode, well that or a homeopathic acne cream.
 
Danel4d said:
That gazelle speech seems especially weird, or perhaps appropriate, given his tendency to throw tantrums and refuse Vulcan help.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's a speech that is supposed to come in off as humble but when taken in context becomes an excuse to be idiots.

If you really understand that you are new at this whole space thing wouldn't you want to listen extra hard to the people who have been out here before?
 
You know, Archer being someone's attempt at a deniable strike in The Temporal Cold War does make a lot of sense. With Daniels having to continually fix Archer's screwups and getting drunk with the Time Agents that have to deal with Janeway since the last Agent that was Braxton went mad.
 
looker said:
It's a speech that is supposed to come in off as humble but when taken in context becomes an excuse to be idiots.

If you really understand that you are new at this whole space thing wouldn't you want to listen extra hard to the people who have been out here before?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Quick tip for giving a speech as a captain: Don't compare yourself to a human baby, who we generally don't let independently command a space ships. Though I am open to replacing Jonathan "Trained Diplomat" Archer with a human newborn, since the baby will statistically make better decisions.
 
Last edited:
Zimmerwald1915 said:
Still takes us months to whip up a new one, they took what, a couple days? A week? Using a box of scraps in a spinning metal cylinder?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As I recall reading, actually designing the vaccine took like a weekend. Basically a matter of gluing already-established sequences together. It's testing and approving it that took (and takes) months. So for once, the sci-fi is actually realistic about research times. Presumably in the future they're more confident in the safety of their genetic sequence library.
 
Last edited:
This might be taking things in a slightly off-kilter direction, but I have to say that I am personally fascinated by the difference in how Babylon 5 was seen over the years in comparison to another seminal sci-fi show that had a particularly shoe-string budget, that of Doctor Who.

But
Shane_357 said:
What I'm hearing is that I should watch Babylon Five.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes. B5 is among the alltime greats.
 
Shane_357 said:
What I'm hearing is that I should watch Babylon Five.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Very much yes.

You will periodically have to remind yourself that you're not here for the production values, for the first couple hours (maybe as much as the first season or so). Weirdly, your brain starts to acclimate to the atmosphere after a while and you stop noticing the dodgy-at-best CGI or the 'Star Trek in a garage' levels of set production.

For damn sure it's better than any live-action Trek series since 2000
 
Red Rationalist said:
Quick tip for giving a speech as a captain: Don't compare yourself to a human baby, who we generally don't let independently command a space ships. Though I am open to replacing Jonathan "Trained Diplomat" Archer with a human newborn, since the baby will statistically make better decisions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hilariously because of the ways skills are divided up in Star trek Adventures any random Green Orion Dancing Girl probably has a higher Command skill than Archer demonstrates. Seduction is a use of Command in STA.

But then of course, thanks to this being a prequel, Kirk never mentions Archer, preferring to squee over Kahn and Garth of Izar, before their feet of clay showed.
 
Firehawk242 said:
...the Vorlons did that too. Which is honestly kind of the point. Vorlons, Shadows, six of one, half a dozen of the other. (Though, to be fair, the Vorlons were the ones who wrote the script, so I'd say they're slightly more guilty than the Shadows. Slightly.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Vorlons didn't make it their raison d'etre the way the Shadows did, just did it every now and then when they thought it furthered their goals. What I'm saying is that the Vorlons, awful as they are, might theoretically not run the galaxy as a slaughterhouse if given a chance, the Shadows would insist that doing so is in everyone's best interest. Again, the TWO bad elder races, and a lot of what made the Vorlons better is 'can occasionally produce someone decent'.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top