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

[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.