DS9 - Soldiers of the Empire

[MerelyAFan]

honestly I think that's one thing I would credit Enterprise with in its best moments, despite Andorians existing in Star Trek from the very early days it was the first one to really DO anything with them, and of course the entire season 3 arc, while not without problems overall, was premised around a divided and complex society as antagonists.

(Why they decided to spend the entire first half of the show doing EVEN MORE VULCANS, and in a way that was guaranteed to piss off some fans even if they did it well, is beyond me.)

The sad thing is I can see their thought process with utilizing the Vulcans in that role, flawed as the final result was.

-Enterprise's status as a prequel meant it would involve the early Starfleet/Federation, which based on both First Contact and stuff like Journey to Babel states that Vulcans were there from the beginning.
-Vulcans were a familiar race to the audience and thus were an easy draw to get curious Trek viewers in.
-Given Archer's characterization as a determined frontier pilot type often driven by emotion, a potential clash with the Vulcans would make sense.

That third element has potential, but has to be done very carefully to work and Brannon & Braga just ended up botching the whole thing. Their fundamental inability to write Archer well often meant the Vulcans were made to look worse in order for him to appear better. Even beyond the fact that's a dubious way to make your protagonist more appealing to an audience, that very familiarity with the Vulcans the audience had made them all the more likely to dislike the extreme direction the latter were taken in.

it was symptomatic of the Trek machine taking the audience for granted at that point and assuming that turning a beloved race into a group of two dimensional, smug, and intolerant assholes would be fine because fan sympathies would be with Archer and company. A story arc involving the likes of Syrrannites would have never been written by the likes of B&B because its likely the disconnect between the Vulcan depiction in Enterprise and other series was not something they seemed to either notice or care about.

[Rocketboy1313]

honestly I think that's one thing I would credit Enterprise with in its best moments, despite Andorians existing in Star Trek from the very early days it was the first one to really DO anything with them, and of course the entire season 3 arc, while not without problems overall, was premised around a divided and complex society as antagonists.

(Why they decided to spend the entire first half of the show doing EVEN MORE VULCANS, and in a way that was guaranteed to piss off some fans even if they did it well, is beyond me.)

There is nothing that was learned about the Andorians during Enterprise that could not have been explored in a sequel series to Voyager.

You could do most of Enterprises stories in the time after Voyager without changing much at all, the only real difference is that you would be expanding the canon rather than filling it in.

[Thebestoftherest]

honestly I think that's one thing I would credit Enterprise with in its best moments, despite Andorians existing in Star Trek from the very early days it was the first one to really DO anything with them, and of course the entire season 3 arc, while not without problems overall, was premised around a divided and complex society as antagonists.

(Why they decided to spend the entire first half of the show doing EVEN MORE VULCANS, and in a way that was guaranteed to piss off some fans even if they did it well, is beyond me.)

There is nothing that was learned about the Andorians during Enterprise that could not have been explored in a sequel series to Voyager.

You could do most of Enterprises stories in the time after Voyager without changing much at all, the only real difference is that you would be expanding the canon rather than filling it in.

Heck it would make more sense because a lot of the episodes they have to bend iber backwards for why they didn't recongize stuff like the borg, ferengi, or romulans later on.

[CmdrKing]

There is nothing that was learned about the Andorians during Enterprise that could not have been explored in a sequel series to Voyager.

You could do most of Enterprises stories in the time after Voyager without changing much at all, the only real difference is that you would be expanding the canon rather than filling it in.

You certainly could tell Andorian-centric stories from an early 25th century perspective, but it’d be an entirely different one and overall more difficult to do unless you did something entirely different. That sort of passionate, romanticism-driven perspective is simply easier to establish as a rival/enemy who is won over through loyalty and an expanding web of personal connections. Getting across that sort of character in a setting where that trust was established two centuries ago and before anyone seen on screen was born would be very difficult and would probably devolve into lore dumps about how Andoria joined the federation anyway.

Now was that story worth all the added narrative hurdles of making an entire prequel series? I dunno. But it’s not one you can just move forward in time and tell in the same way or as well.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Andorians are the biggest black hole of out of touch I am with Star Trek. I've only seen TOS once and my only real memory of them is from Enterprise.

[Dilandau3000]

Given the reference to this episode basically being "Star Trek: Klingon" both in the description and at the end of the video, I wonder if Chuck would ever consider reviewing the real "Star Trek: Klingon", the 1996 FMV game. Or its "sequel," Star Trek: Borg (which isn't really a sequel, it has nothing to do with Klingon, but it's another FMV game by the same creators).

Or even some of the older Trek adventure games, like 25th Anniversary, Judgment Rites, and A Final Unity. I'd be interested to hear Chuck's opinion on those.

[CharlesPhipps]

Andorians are the biggest black hole of out of touch I am with Star Trek. I've only seen TOS once and my only real memory of them is from Enterprise.

They were a really minor race shown once or twice but the lore nerds got books that said they were founders of the Federation. Enterprise is the only show that made them important and now DISCO.

[CmdrKing]

I'm not *entirely* sure they even appear in TOS, although I'm pretty sure they do. The first appearance I actually remember is like... a background extra at Kirk's trial in Voyage Home.
But that design is just close enough to a classic "cool alien" design to still provide a "hey what did I just see" moment so they stuck around in the fandom's memory long enough for Enterprise to decide "oh hey the lore said Andorians are supposed to be important"

[CrypticMirror]

I'm not *entirely* sure they even appear in TOS, although I'm pretty sure they do. The first appearance I actually remember is like... a background extra at Kirk's trial in Voyage Home.
But that design is just close enough to a classic "cool alien" design to still provide a "hey what did I just see" moment so they stuck around in the fandom's memory long enough for Enterprise to decide "oh hey the lore said Andorians are supposed to be important"

They were an important part of Journey to Babel in TOS, an Andorian even got to stab Kirk.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Right. They totally make sense as something that popped up once in TOS once that's regularized later, like nerve pinch and mind meld.