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"Enterprise" (2001)

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First Ship, First Captain, First Mistake, 31 January 2004
Author: dunmore_ego from Los Angeles, California

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

*Premier Episode SPOILERS*

Merchandising: the final frontier.

With a theme song that sounds like Trey Parker ululating a South Park bit, Enterprise launches Scott Bakula and his mannequin cohorts onto the lids of lunchboxes and into comicbook and action figure mayhem across the known geek universe. Their mission: To boldly go where no B-actors have gone before.

Scott Bakula as a precursor to Captain James Tiberius Kirk? Oooo, I don't THINK so!

Turtleneck rolled suavely up to the third vertebra, Bakula plays Jonathan Archer aka The Cheese-Meister, captain of the first Enterprise ever, quantum-leaping his big-nosed way through his pioneering environs, valiantly doing his best haunting B-actor thrust into a role that will propel him into the annals of obscurity faster than the mythical Warp drive on his eponymous twin-pronged chariot of adventure.

Jolene Blalock curvaceously does `Leonard Nimoy with a great rack', the emotionless female Vulcan with big pointy ears AND big pointy silicone pectoral implants; showing more emotion than most of the human crew, except for the first mate, whose bellicosity was only offset by the squareness of his all-American jaw, and who maintained that humans had done away with war in this enlightened year of our lord 150 years B.K. (Before Kirk) - oh yes, I'm inclined to believe this assertion coming from the guy who hands-down STARTS THE MOST ARGUMENTS. (If there was anyone more in need of a Vulcan nerve-pinch massage.)

The decision to make the Vulcan officer a woman was obviously to recreate the sexual tension that was always so tangible between Spock and Kirk. We see the chemistry already flowering at the end of episode 1, as Blalock almost cracks a smile in the direction of Bakula's tenting trousers.

Now, some of you humans of AD 2003 are quite certain that 'Warp' travel is possible and that atmosphere constituents on random extra-solar planets contains nitrogen and oxygen in humanly-breathable quantities; you also may believe that sound waves are propagated in a vacuum; that alien life-forms can look exactly like humans except for maybe one differently-colored eyebrow or extraneous nose-ridge, and that a `phaser' can be set to `stun'. Well, media inculcation knows no bounds, but for now: please remove your purple cape, put the Klingon wraparound headmask down and step away from the 1/1 scale Bird Of Prey with the operational photon torpedoes.

We have some talking to do.

Having learned nothing from Mr. Lucas' Big Mistake in Star Wars, Episode I: Three Titles For One Wretched Movie, the Enterprise creators have endowed this film with technology that *supersedes* what is supposed to be FUTURE technology in the original series. (Now, was that a double-negative or an en passant?) This first Enterprise craft, replete with better technical efx, fuselage detail, and honey-ham-glow warp drive reactor cores, makes Kirk's later-model NCC 1701 look like your first Big Wheel - after your first accident in it.

It's a good thing that in the 23rd Century (which occurred around 1966) all these effects were lost to human beings, or we would never have been privileged to witness the unbridled scenery chewing of one T.J. Hooker aka William Shatner, who would have only been hampered by too much cinematic flavor had the Effects Department not gone awol.

There was no acting before Bill Shatner.

Now, I'm not one of those procrustean fans who possess a working model of the U.S.S. Enterprise, complete with floor plan blueprints and flushing toilets; my wardrobe is thankfully devoid of Star Fleet uniforms; I don't possess a Klingon facemask which translates English into Klingon syntax - No. I am the Trekkie Casuale, who simply gives love to Captain Kirk and his posse for the simple fact of their precedence. They WERE the first to go where no man had gone before - into a universe so camp you went in wearing an Adam West Batman cape and came out wearing your pants tucked into your boots, a two-sizes-too-small t-shirt with a Star Fleet insignia pasted to your left nipple and a flagrant lemon coloration that just screamed `boy toy' on the dance floor.

Bakula, whose memorable roles have run the gamut of characterization and impassioned humanity - recall his turns as That Guy in about 30 movies which don't matter? - brings the hammer down on his blue-skinned Suliban enemies quite distractedly, and is out-acted by his phaser-pistol in the last scene.

The Enterprise crew was never meant to use the matter transporter for humans, only bondage equipment, purple capes and sweetmeats. But in a desperate bid to escape the blue guy, it becomes imperative that Bakula be the first human to be beamed unauthorized through the transmitter. To wit: before there was `Beam me up, Scotty', *Scotty was beamed up!* Dance belt an' all.

Star Trek has always been about the CHARACTERS. The Trek family will never let their heroes die, and with every next generation (of fans AND series), the newborn take the place of the old to carry the flag like that staged photo of Iwo Jima that has circulated for five decades.

Star Trek is also about the FRANCHISE. With almost every new `sci-fi' series blanketed under the Star Trek banner (though none have the slightest resemblance to Gene Roddenberry's initial concept), bloated marketeers ensure capture of the core geek fanbase with the Klingon headpieces for a satisfying enough Nielsen rating to kickstart each visionless series into at least two more seasons. (Well, that's the Marketing Way - but is it the Janeway? -couldn't-resist - or should that be Resistance Is Futile-? D'oh!)

To the rest of the clear-thinking world who have attained the Age Of Reasoning or the age of 9 (whichever came first), this Enterprise endeavor is abjectly spurious, but for what it is - THE Star Trek for a generation weaned on Babylon Jive and The Outer Limits Rehashed - to our utter chagrin, it surely will live long and prosper.

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