CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sun Aug 16, 2020 1:15 am
A major problem with Archer is that he immediately put off viewers by making his main problem being his antagonism with the Vulcans and belief they were holding humanity back. "Screw you Elves" is a TV trope because they are sanctimonious and nasty in many other properties if not outright racist like Skyrim.
However, Star Trek is not one of them, that DS9 baseball game besides. Trekkies genuinely think the Vulcans are the nicest race in the universe since the main ones we know are Spock and Sarek. Even when they're mean to each other, they're both solid good guys. It doesn't help that the history paints an ugly picture of Archer with human history going from FALLOUT to MASS EFFECT in 100 years after meeting the Vulcans.
ENTERPRISE tried to argue humans did ALL OF THAT THEMSELVES which kind of undermines the idea that we benefited from meeting other races. Which if we DID means that the Vulcans actually helped us escape our Mad Max hellhole and are our dear friends not our enemies.
So Archer comes off as a disgusting racist.
And, "GRRRR, VULCANS!" is Archer's one defining character trait for two seasons. Oh and dog lover.
What's telling that is that so many of Enterprise's circumstances feel like they were put in ahead of time to make up for how badly Archer would be written.
-Its an early Starship expected to have issues and possibly get into danger so Archer putting it out before it was ready and blundering his way into crises is justified.
-The Vulcans are characterized as being far more duplicitous and close minded so that his hatred towards them is understandable rather than bigoted.
-A Temporal Cold War is established so Archer can be defined as a great leader and pioneer in the future without actually portraying him that way.
-There's a remarkable lack of guidelines or directives by Starfleet so that he can make decisions and proclamations of dubious reasoning without violating orders.
Its a bad sign when you have to future proof your show to make your bad characterization seem less egregious.
MerelyAFan wrote: ↑Sun Aug 16, 2020 2:32 am
What's telling that is that so many of Enterprise's circumstances feel like they were put in ahead of time to make up for how badly Archer would be written.
-Its an early Starship expected to have issues and possibly get into danger so Archer putting it out before it was ready and blundering his way into crises is justified.
-The Vulcans are characterized as being far more duplicitous and close minded so that his hatred towards them is understandable rather than bigoted.
-A Temporal Cold War is established so Archer can be defined as a great leader and pioneer in the future without actually portraying him that way.
-There's a remarkable lack of guidelines or directives by Starfleet so that he can make decisions and proclamations of dubious reasoning without violating orders.
Its a bad sign when you have to future proof your show to make your bad characterization seem less egregious.
It's weird because I assumed the Temporal Cold War would be used to justify why things in the past were more futuristic and possibly different from the way Trekkies normally remembered things. This never got brought up and it turns out the writers hated the concept so they never used it the way they should have.
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sun Aug 16, 2020 1:15 am
ENTERPRISE tried to argue humans did ALL OF THAT THEMSELVES which kind of undermines the idea that we benefited from meeting other races. Which if we DID means that the Vulcans actually helped us escape our Mad Max hellhole and are our dear friends not our enemies.
I spent most of season one waiting for the twist that, actually, the Vulcans had stepped back to let humans figure things out on their own, and that the reason advancement had slowed down so much is that we were finally doing it all on our own.
Mind you, I actually like Chuck's view of Archer despite it being unintentional.
Captain Jonathan Archer was actually a pretty bad captain and probably the wrong person to send into space on behalf of Earth. However, he had a talent for diplomacy in peace time and after the first mission of the Enterprise finished, realized that he was much better suited for flag duties and never went to war again.
A contrast to the amazing Captains of Kirk, Picard, and Sisko.
It's just history has a way of lionizing people who make accomplishments and so Archer is remembered as an amazing Starfleet officer and paragon when he was an immense fuck up. I imagine a little Vulcan kid delivering a book report on how Jonathan brought peace between the Andorians and Vulcans.
"He was extremely racist to his allies and betrayed them out of spite, which impressed his allies' enemies."
MerelyAFan wrote: ↑Sat Aug 15, 2020 1:51 pm
Archer always felt endemic of how much Trek was taking the audience for granted by the time of Enterprise. He was a character that was expected to be liked and respected seemingly because he was the captain of the ship and because he was fighting against the close minded Vulcans.
That honestly is one of my biggest issues with Archer, Chuck and everyone else so far in this thread have made very good points on why Archer is the worst Captain, but the most damning thing is every one of his boneheaded decisions is framed as the "correct" one, which ties into the whole "my daddy told me to just not fail" rubbish, 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.
But in Star Trek Enterprises first two seasons, as far as the series was concerned, every decision Archer made was the right one, all because as you say, he's the Captain so he must be right.
"I think, when one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable like…like old leather. And finally… it becomes so familiar that one can't remember feeling any other way."
Part of the issue is the fact that Star Trek had become super-formulaic to the point of reusing scripts. Yes, that was something that was always present in previous Treks but the fact this was done centuries beforehand made it stand out REALLY BADLY. Forget the species they couldn't even make a substitution for (Tellarite for Ferengi or whatnot) or technology.
Archer's personality is whatever they need to be the CAPTAIN at the moment.
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sun Aug 16, 2020 1:15 am
A major problem with Archer is that he immediately put off viewers by making his main problem being his antagonism with the Vulcans and belief they were holding humanity back. "Screw you Elves" is a TV trope because they are sanctimonious and nasty in many other properties if not outright racist like Skyrim.
However, Star Trek is not one of them, that DS9 baseball game besides. Trekkies genuinely think the Vulcans are the nicest race in the universe since the main ones we know are Spock and Sarek. Even when they're mean to each other, they're both solid good guys. It doesn't help that the history paints an ugly picture of Archer with human history going from FALLOUT to MASS EFFECT in 100 years after meeting the Vulcans.
ENTERPRISE tried to argue humans did ALL OF THAT THEMSELVES which kind of undermines the idea that we benefited from meeting other races. Which if we DID means that the Vulcans actually helped us escape our Mad Max hellhole and are our dear friends not our enemies.
So Archer comes off as a disgusting racist.
And, "GRRRR, VULCANS!" is Archer's one defining character trait for two seasons. Oh and dog lover.
Well Porthos is a cute beagle
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.
I really do hope the latter is true as it just screams like the sort of nonsense that Berman and Braga would come out with back then.
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sun Aug 16, 2020 5:46 am
Mind you, I actually like Chuck's view of Archer despite it being unintentional.
Captain Jonathan Archer was actually a pretty bad captain and probably the wrong person to send into space on behalf of Earth. However, he had a talent for diplomacy in peace time and after the first mission of the Enterprise finished, realized that he was much better suited for flag duties and never went to war again.
A contrast to the amazing Captains of Kirk, Picard, and Sisko.
It's just history has a way of lionizing people who make accomplishments and so Archer is remembered as an amazing Starfleet officer and paragon when he was an immense fuck up. I imagine a little Vulcan kid delivering a book report on how Jonathan brought peace between the Andorians and Vulcans.
"He was extremely racist to his allies and betrayed them out of spite, which impressed his allies' enemies."
I get the impression that Archer was intended to be a fusion of Kirk, Picard and Sisko - the fists of Kirk, the diplomacy of Picard and the traumatic past of Sisko (Archer lost his father, Sisko lost his wife). Come season 3 you can argue there was even some Janeway in there too.
And if that is what we got he could have been really memorable.
Of course, arguably, that is also a route to create a Mary Sue. The best of all in one package.
