A Look at Archer

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don’t understand why Rey’s backstory is a problem when Luke’s is pretty much identical - except that Rey is more likely to know how to use a weapon before she leaves her planet.

The first power she exhibits is the mind control, and the first thing we know about her is that she has to haggle as a matter of acquiring bare necessities.

[RobbyB1982]

True story, even though Porthos is meant to be a boy dog, the producers always got girl dogs to portray him. I have heard two reasons for this and I don't know which one is true:
1) The girl dogs they got hold of were just better behaved.
2) The producers were shit scared of accidentally showing off his boy parts on screen.

Sometimes animals are cast with how their *coat* looks in mind. For instance, Lassie, despite being a female dog, has always been portrayed by a male because female collies have thei coat thin when they go into heat (twice a year.)

I don't know what a female Beagle brings to the table that a male doesn't, but behavior would be a reasonable guess.

Of course, over on TNG Data's cat Spot changed breed AND gender over the years, so...

[Taurian Patriot]

I'm ok with characters (even the Captains) in Star Trek making mistakes and failing, even in the future no one is perfect, or even deliberately making a morally grey or outright wrong decision, as long as they acknowledge that they made a mistake or that what they did was wrong.

That could have made Enterprise exceptional. If the show really wanted to get that feel of humanity taking its first big-kid's steps into the galaxy, let the crew stumble, fall, and make the effort to get up again. Not all the time of course, because that would lead to another kind of frustration, but just once in a while they could screw up royally and make an effort to either fix it or learn from it, and maybe in a future episode we see how they do better.

Besides, some pretty good episodes have been about captains regretting their decisions. "Obsession" had Kirk blaming himself for the deaths of much of the Farragut's crew - and busting down on his own - for something that he later learns is entirely beyond his power. "Tapestry" had Picard wondering if he should've been more serious in his youth, not realizing how that outlook would result in a life of total inconsequence. "Rules of Engagement" had Worf make a tactical error while commanding the Defiant, one which would have been a full-on war crime if it weren't a hoax (and Sisko still rips him a new one, because Worf really did screw that one up). "In the Pale Moonlight" probably needs no explanation.

Enterprise could have taken stories like those and built on it, not just showing us a Starfleet out of its comfort zones like DS9 did and Voyager could have done, but one that doesn't have a comfort zone to begin with. Everything is uncharted territory, and mistakes will be made. Unfortunately, it was made for the same network that dropped the ball on Voyager, so... yeah.

[CharlesPhipps]

I don’t understand why Rey’s backstory is a problem when Luke’s is pretty much identical - except that Rey is more likely to know how to use a weapon before she leaves her planet.

I love Rey but Luke can shoot a blaster, barely, and it takes pains to establish repeatedly he's an amazing pilot before he shows he's an amazing pilot.

[Scififan]

Go on then, explain to me why the left dominated entertainment industry thinks that the Star Wars fanbase wants a Mary Sue protagonist, a Sarah Connor who isn't Sarah Connor or a black female Dr Who.

Because Rey is awesome and Daisy Ridley does an amazing job with the athletics and being immensely likable with almost little too no script support.

You know who was also good at everything, a genius scientist, a masterful warrior, and beautiful?

Jadzia Dax.

And no one hated her.

Take a moment to think, though, on Sarah Connor and the other problems you have and maybe the problem isn't the gender or the ethnicity of the characters but the fact sometimes they're bad writing. Also, maybe sometime you're seeing things that aren't there.

Like it or not, society expects different things from men as they do from women. For a man to be an action hero all he needs to do is grab a gun. For a man to be a slapstick star all he needs to do is get kicked in the nuts.

That is not true of women. Female heroes who act like men rarely work. I am not saying that is a good thing, but it is true. Which is why the majority of female action heroes who make it big are also sexy. And before CrypticMirror accuses me of needing to see a therapist again, let me pose this simple test: promotional material. I guarantee you that 99% of the promotional material you will find for successful female heroes will have her tits, butt or legs emphasised in some way. We're not in some great age of female liberation where kick ass women have taken media by force, we're in the same old one where looks are just as important as being a badass.

We have even seen this put to the test twice this year.
1) The Birds of Prey movie. The thing that most men remember about Suicide Squad is Margot Robbie's ass in short shorts. The thing those same men remember about Birds of Prey is Margot Robbie wanting to cover up and calling them perverts for disagreeing with her decision.
2) The Last of Us 2 with Abby's biceps which is now so infamous a discussion it has overshadowed all criticism.

And BTW, shall I tell you the BIG DIFFERENCE between Jadzia and Rey? Jadzia is a trained professional who has 7 lifetimes worth of experience inside her head. Such a woman has every reason to be good at everything. Rey on the other hand is a junk dealer from a desert planet in the ass end of space. She has no formal education, no formal combat training, no formal piloting training, and has never been in any other environment other than the desert. She didn't even know what the Force and the Jedi were until Han told her and yet within what is apparently a couple of days she was able to match anything we have ever seen Luke or Anakin do. Her skills do not match the backstory we are given.

In defense of Rey, if you remember way back in Episode 1 The Phantom Menace young kid Anakin was able to make his own Podracer by himself with materials from a junk yard. In fact Qui-Gon mentions how Anakin's ability to do that was because of the force. And don't forget that Luke Skywalker was able to fly an X-Wing despite the fact that he had trained as a fighter pilot.

[Link8909]

I'm ok with characters (even the Captains) in Star Trek making mistakes and failing, even in the future no one is perfect, or even deliberately making a morally grey or outright wrong decision, as long as they acknowledge that they made a mistake or that what they did was wrong.

That could have made Enterprise exceptional. If the show really wanted to get that feel of humanity taking its first big-kid's steps into the galaxy, let the crew stumble, fall, and make the effort to get up again. Not all the time of course, because that would lead to another kind of frustration, but just once in a while they could screw up royally and make an effort to either fix it or learn from it, and maybe in a future episode we see how they do better.

Besides, some pretty good episodes have been about captains regretting their decisions. "Obsession" had Kirk blaming himself for the deaths of much of the Farragut's crew - and busting down on his own - for something that he later learns is entirely beyond his power. "Tapestry" had Picard wondering if he should've been more serious in his youth, not realizing how that outlook would result in a life of total inconsequence. "Rules of Engagement" had Worf make a tactical error while commanding the Defiant, one which would have been a full-on war crime if it weren't a hoax (and Sisko still rips him a new one, because Worf really did screw that one up). "In the Pale Moonlight" probably needs no explanation.

Enterprise could have taken stories like those and built on it, not just showing us a Starfleet out of its comfort zones like DS9 did and Voyager could have done, but one that doesn't have a comfort zone to begin with. Everything is uncharted territory, and mistakes will be made. Unfortunately, it was made for the same network that dropped the ball on Voyager, so... yeah.

Exactly, and Star Trek Enterprise was a perfect premise to do this, the first deep space starship going farther than any ship that that time, being the first to chart unknown planets or doing things like undercover exploration of new civilisations for the first time, this was a show that would allow us to see the challenges of exploration that would have been taken for granted in other Star Trek series, and how this crew would learn and adapted so those future starships wouldn't have the same issues.

The problem however was that one: its was poorly executed, rather than unforeseeable elements causing problems, most times it was Archer's own stubbornness and incompetence that got the NX into trouble, if some episodes had been similar to the real live Apollo 13 incident and show that even when an unforeseen crisis occurs that the crew are quick thinking and resourceful to pull the starship out of danger it would have been good.

And two: Archer never really learned anything, how much better if at the end of "Strange New World" Archer apologised to T'Pol, saying along the lines of "I allowed my own prejudices to ignore your advice, and It nearly got you and the rest of the land party killed, I can't afford to make that mistake again, from now on I will try and not let my own personally feeling dictated my command decisions, not then peoples lives could be in danger" and future episodes would see Archer asking T'Pol on her opinion or options, instead he never really had that humbling moment till he got Vulcan Jesus stuck in his head, he even still blamed the planet and not his own dumbass decision to not scan the planet more because "we didn't come here to tip toe around" tripe.

[CrypticMirror]

There was one simple change that could have helped fix ENT. Switch Travis and Trip's roles. If Mayweather, the young and non-Starfleet but highly experienced at deep space living, had been the Chief Engineer he could have not only brought all that deep space boomer stuff he was supposed to have but also have had the authority to challenge Archer over being in space. He could have been a foil to T'Pol in a way Trip never was, the overly conventional Vulcan and the unconventional new human, with Archer in the middle as the Kirk figure trying to balance the differing approaches. Engineer Travis would have had the experiential weight that Trip never had.

Then put Trip in the helmsman seat where he can be Archer's friend, a crony from the test flight program, and give colour commentary as well as mucking up the command structure a little, and be the little devil on Archer's shoulder. That brings the helmsman position into the main cast without it being just about "course laid in, Captain" types of lines.

Ah, Enterprise. You could have done more, with just a little forethought.

I don’t understand why Rey’s backstory is a problem when Luke’s is pretty much identical - except that Rey is more likely to know how to use a weapon before she leaves her planet.

I love Rey but Luke can shoot a blaster, barely, and it takes pains to establish repeatedly he's an amazing pilot before he shows he's an amazing pilot.

Luke says he is a great pilot, but all we are shown is him waving a model around or driving a hovercar. That is it. Rey is no worse than that.

[Link8909]

There was one simple change that could have helped fix ENT. Switch Travis and Trip's roles. If Mayweather, the young and non-Starfleet but highly experienced at deep space living, had been the Chief Engineer he could have not only brought all that deep space boomer stuff he was supposed to have but also have had the authority to challenge Archer over being in space. He could have been a foil to T'Pol in a way Trip never was, the overly conventional Vulcan and the unconventional new human, with Archer in the middle as the Kirk figure trying to balance the differing approaches. Engineer Travis would have had the experiential weight that Trip never had.

Then put Trip in the helmsman seat where he can be Archer's friend, a crony from the test flight program, and give colour commentary as well as mucking up the command structure a little, and be the little devil on Archer's shoulder. That brings the helmsman position into the main cast without it being just about "course laid in, Captain" types of lines.

Ah, Enterprise. You could have done more, with just a little forethought.

That's does sound so much better, would have been a more interesting dynamic between the characters.

[Nealithi]

To summarize what I think of the geek culture war in two sentences:

"The problem with the Ghostbusters reboot wasn't the fact they were women. The problem was it wasn't funny."

This.

I want an upvote for things like this.

[Nealithi]

There was one simple change that could have helped fix ENT. Switch Travis and Trip's roles. If Mayweather, the young and non-Starfleet but highly experienced at deep space living, had been the Chief Engineer he could have not only brought all that deep space boomer stuff he was supposed to have but also have had the authority to challenge Archer over being in space. He could have been a foil to T'Pol in a way Trip never was, the overly conventional Vulcan and the unconventional new human, with Archer in the middle as the Kirk figure trying to balance the differing approaches. Engineer Travis would have had the experiential weight that Trip never had.

Then put Trip in the helmsman seat where he can be Archer's friend, a crony from the test flight program, and give colour commentary as well as mucking up the command structure a little, and be the little devil on Archer's shoulder. That brings the helmsman position into the main cast without it being just about "course laid in, Captain" types of lines.

Ah, Enterprise. You could have done more, with just a little forethought.

I don’t understand why Rey’s backstory is a problem when Luke’s is pretty much identical - except that Rey is more likely to know how to use a weapon before she leaves her planet.

I love Rey but Luke can shoot a blaster, barely, and it takes pains to establish repeatedly he's an amazing pilot before he shows he's an amazing pilot.

Luke says he is a great pilot, but all we are shown is him waving a model around or driving a hovercar. That is it. Rey is no worse than that.

I need two takes here. First, I rather like your take. With the guy who was in space he pulls off something Tripp did in a later season earlier. "Yeah a guy sitting at a desk in a lab wrote that. He has not been out there and seen what actually works." So agree that the dynamic shake up could have been better.

The Luke as a pilot thing. One scene was cut for pacing introduced Biggs and a follow up had Biggs inform Red Leader that Luke was one of the best bush pilots he was ever going to get. Luke only said. "You're damn right! I'm not a bad pilot myself." When he balked at Han's price for the trip. When we saw Luke flying he got 'cooked' a little bit. He got tailed by a Tie and would have been shot down had Wedge not saved him. And again but Han saved him. He had two force guided moments. "Reach out with your feelings." And he did a better strafing run, taking out a gun emplacement. And "Let go, Luke." Where he turned off the targetting computer and visualized the shot before taking it.
Luke did not stand alone doing those things. He had backup and he had the spirit of his mentor guiding him both times.
Compare Rey. Not knowing what the Force was and it all being true. To counter reading someone's mind. A tiny flutter on force suggestion, her second attempt worked fine and she added for him to leave his gun. Then she was able to force pull a lightsaber away from a Sith so she could use it. And a sword and a staff are not the same weapon so she did a bit too well with it even with Kylo Ren being injured. Odd as it may be, I did not see Mary Sue prior to Starkiller Base. She crashed the Falcon on take off. She was flying in desperation. And even her stunt to get the jammed cannon to point the right way was 'luck' since Finn still had to make the shot when she gave him the opportunity.
I even respect her for seeing what was a rich reward and being tempted before turning it down to keep the droid.