Rant: Enterprise: Acquisition

[tuftears]

Since I started playing Star Trek Online the other month, I had a yen to watch the old Star Trek shows. My bro lent me a bunch of DVDs, and Enterprise was the only complete series in there, so... Sure, I'll start there.

I'm almost done with the first season. In general, Enterprise is really hitting the good old Star Trek nostalgia vibes. I've really enjoyed the feel of old-school nuts and bolts rather than the 'so future it's magic' feel of TNG. That said, there's this one episode that simply appalled me.

It's the one with the Ferengi.

In a word: there's no way that Ferengi developed warp technology. They are idiots. This episode made me want to bite the script writers.

I get the basic joke behind the Ferengis, they're hypercapitalists, obsessed with the pursuit of wealth. Sure. That's cool. But they can't be *stupid* because that's directly counterproductive, otherwise they'd be getting fleeced left and right by the smarter races, who should have all the advantage of their past experimentation with capitalism and knowing what breaks the capitalist model. Pillaging random stuff off of the Enterprise and stealing *perishable food* in the same "loot bag" as all the more durable equipment is just the mark of total amateurs who shouldn't be trusted with their own ship.

Sell the Enterprise the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge, that's a much better story. Or trick the crew into bumping into your ship, have the pre-stressed nacelle fall off, then charge them indemnities until their wallets cry. They are *capitalists*, not raiders like the Nausicaans. There are a thousand and one scams that would have made better episodes than this tripe that made me want to weep every time barely literate Ferengi struggled with technology that should be similar to their own.

Not that I like the Ferengis, but good writing can make you respect an enemy even though they're still on the opposite side. Bad writing just makes you want to stop watching.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'm arguing that the Ferengi (in this particular episode) behaved like idiots who could not possibly be smart enough to develop warp technology or operate a warp vessel successfully. I picture their ship's computer being a long-suffering soul who has to do its best with their random button-fumbling when all it wants them to do is to give the name of the next destination, and their clan leader having picked that ship to dump the most idiotic Ferengi that would otherwise constantly plague the actually competent ones.

They behave like techno-illiterate robbers. They are based on a highly advanced piece of technology, a starship. This episode would have been far better if they had written the Ferengis to actually *act* like smart capitalist thieves, rather than simple-minded muggers.

Don't get me wrong, I have actually enjoyed a lot of the Enterprise series. This was just the clinker, the lead coin in a pile of silver coins and some gold coins, figuratively speaking.

Guessing the Andorians are the 'blue Nazis'. They don't strike me as exactly Nazis; I'd actually characterize them more like 'Cold War USA' military types. They're military rivals of the Vulcans, they're violent but possessed of a warrior's ethics, and that's all I really know about them at this point. There's no evidence yet to support that they subscribe to a 'master race' ethos or the idea of conquering everyone.

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

Oh okay! Yes, that is very bad writing. I seem to recall on DS9 there were a few times when Quark seemed to know more about technology than he would really need to, being a bar owner, so I always figured the Ferengi are really quite smart, even if their smarts turn it to "how can I profit off this?"

I most recently watched the original series and found it fascinating to see how it evolved from Kirk trampling all over the utopias he found while claiming "Man is supposed to struggle!" to the ST:NG world where people don't have to work if they don't want to. (I always did wonder how the heck that worked...)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Post-scarcity civilization! I'm okay with that, they do document that replicators and cheap energy (from anti-matter reactors) provides all their needs.

I don't recall much in the way of original series Trek.

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

I hadn't watched the original Trek series in years (decades) and I had this vague idea that it was really goofy. There are always jokes being made about Shatner's overacting and some of the episodes have gained notoriety, but I found it quite good, and definitely the seeds of the later series were planted. They did approach some subjects with a heavy hand but something that really surprised me was how multiracial the background cast was, given the decade the show was shot in.

There was problematic stuff too, the whole portrayal of the Klingons for instance. It was interesting viewing it3-4 decades later.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

From what I can recall of both TOS and TNG, the Klingons were pretty much an expy of the Russians/Soviets, and their depiction evolved with the US's perception of Russia.

In TOS, they were a scary militaristic society with technological parity and superb spying. Klingons who appeared in-show were hostile but smart and sneaky. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union was winning the space race, boasting loudly about how much better its technology allegedly was than the US's, and was known for scarily effective espionage (this was right after the Red Scare).

In TNG, they were a race of thugs that weren't the social or technological peers of the humans, but were still a military force to be reckoned with. They'd recently made peace with the Federation, and much was made of olive branches and cultural exchange and getting to understand each other. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the US had clued in to the fact that the USSR was actually about 15 years behind the US technologically, and the cold war was in the process of ending. The USSR was still a scary military power but one that wasn't as cutting-edge as the US, and olive branches were being exchanged.

I'm not entirely sure who the Cardassians were supposed to be an expy of in DS9, but the general themes of the conflicts in each series has always been a mirror of what the US has been concerned about in the real world during the show's production.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have to wonder about how that "don't have to work" thing pans out. You mean, I can CHOOSE to either risk life and limb as a Red Shirt, possibly getting vaporized by the Alien Encounter of the Week in order to make a point, *OR* I could play video games all day in a world where the tech level allows for HOLODECKS?! Because I don't even have to drag myself out to go to work? Wow. How DOESN'T civilization come to a screeching halt? ;)

But then, we get to Deep Space Nine and it seems like some of the writers didn't get the memo. Why, there's this valuable stuff called latinum (which I'll guess just CANNOT be replicated, or it wouldn't be valuable anymore). And someone says "put it on my tab" in a bar. And there's gambling. And ... well, basically just other stuff that seems to suggest that there's some sort of economy, and just because you're from the Federation doesn't mean you've got an endless money supply. Perhaps there's some way to explain or regulate that, but I never got the sense that the writers put the least bit of thought into it. Over in TNG, we've got our smug heroes boasting that MONEY is a thing of the past, and yet ... surely there's some sort of *rationing* that happens? And what if someone, for instance, decides to TRADE his allotted holodeck time with some other crewmember in exchange for something else? Whatever is rare or in limited quantity might in effect become a new currency in the absence of anything else.

[rjbartrop.livejournal.com]

I think the "blue nazis" might be referring to a different race that was actually helping the Nazis when the Enterprise got sent back to WW2.