 |
ENTERPRISE (2001)
Episode 1.01
Director: James L. Conway.
Writers: Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga.
Starring: Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock.
 |
Poffy
Tiberius Kirk
 |
|
First
Ship, First Captain, First Mistake...
by
Jon Dunmore © Sep 2001.
Merchandising:
the final frontier.
With
a title theme song that sounds like Trey Parker ululating
a poignant 80’s hair-band power-ballad, Enterprise
launches Scott Blakula and his vampire cohorts onto the
lids of lunchboxes and into comic book and action figure
mayhem across the known geek universe. Their mission: To
boldly go where no B-List actors have gone before.
Please
don’t make me kill again.
With
his turtleneck rolled suavely up to the third vertebra,
Scott Bakula, who has been called “the thinking man’s
Captain Kirk” (Dave Becker, USA Today), “the
twenty-first century’s answer to Jean-Luc Picard”
(Milton Sandler, Sci-Fi Log) and “a piece of
cheese” (Jim Davis, SunGard Trading), plays
Jonathan Archer, captain of the first Enterprise mission
ever, quantum-leaping his big-nosed way through his pioneering
environs, valiantly doing his best haunting B-List actor
thrown 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.
I’m
givin er all she’s got, Cap’n. If I push any harder,
she’s goin' ter blow…
I
know that some of you experiencing the very real technological
magick of this electronic mail are quite certain that Warp-4
travel is physically possible and that the atmosphere constituents
on any number of extra-solar planets will contain nitrogen
and oxygen in humanly-breathable quantities. You also may
believe that sound waves can be propagated in a vacuum;
that convergent evolution has made it possible for aliens
from the farthest reaches of the galaxy to evolve exactly
like humans except for maybe one differently-colored eyebrow
or extraneous nose-ridge, and that a “phaser”
can be set to "stun." That’s okay - media
inculcation knows no bounds – but for right 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…
Jolene
Blalock plays the emotionless female Vulcan with big pointy
ears AND big pointy silicone chest 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…
While
Blalock, whom many will remember for her magnificent scene
in which her t-shirt is stretched taut over above-mentioned
pectoral implants, tried valiantly to do "Leonard Nimoy
with a great rack," the token black guy and token British
guy bond in an improbable zero-gee sweet spot, which cannot
occur in a spacecraft which is not spinning – but I
promised myself I wouldn’t mention the physics.
Stephen
G-Dog Hawking be spinnin' in his wheelchair like a pulsar.
Having
learned nothing from Mr. Lucas’ Big Mistake in Star
Wars, Episode I: Three Titles For One Wretched Movie,
the creators of Enterprise have endowed this filmic piece
with technology that supercedes 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 background efx, shadow placement, 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 somewhere
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 has a working
model of the U.S.S. Enterprise in his spare bedroom, complete
with blueprints of floor plans and flushing toilets; my
wardrobe is thankfully devoid of Star Fleet uniforms from
any Trek mission or movie; I don’t possess a polystyrene
Klingon facemask replete with voicebox modulator which translates
English into Klingon syntax - No. I am the Trekkie Casuale,
who simply gives love to Captain James T. Kirk and his original
band of rag-tag adventurers 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.
Halfway
through this two-hour premiere, Count Blakula meets up with
another chick with fantastically tight clothes and a great
rack. Thus do we snatch a glimpse of the marketing department’s
deep psychological ploys to hold an audience’s attention:
tits.
Bakula,
whose memorable roles have run the gamut of characterization
and impassioned humanity – who can forget his turns
as that guy in Major League: Back to the Minors,
or as that other guy in Men, Movies & Carol?;
and how can one overlook Nowhere to Hide, in which
he played that guy? – brings the hammer down on his
blue-skinned Suliban enemies quite distractedly, and is
out-acted by his phaser-pistol in the last scene.
Ironically,
the Enterprise crew were never meant to use the matter transporters
for humans, only bondage equipment, purple capes and sweetmeats.
But in a desperate bid to escape the blue-skinned guy, it
becomes imperative that Bakula be the first human to be
unauthorizedly beamed through the matter transmitter. To
wit: before there was "Beam me up, Scotty," Scotty
was beamed up! Dance belt an’ all.
During
the second hour of Enterprise, I found something
better to do…
The
decision to make the Vulcan science officer a woman was
obviously to recreate the sexual tension that was always
so tangible between Spock and Kirk. The end of episode 1
already sees the chemistry between Blalock and Bakula flowering,
as this emotionless Vulcan almost cracks a smile in the
direction of Bakula’s tenting trousers.
Star
Trek has never been about how believable the storyline is;
was not originally a vehicle to showcase the expertise of
efx-junkies; was never concerned with the second-grade physics
laws that were incessantly broken each episode – it
was always about the CHARACTERS. The Trek family (much like
the Kiss Army or superhero fanatics, or baseball card collectors)
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. Consider: almost every
“sci-fi” series that has come down the pipe in
the last few years has been blanketed under the Star Trek
banner (Deep Space 9, Babylon 5, Voyager, et al )
though none of them have the slightest resemblance to Gene
Roddenberry’s initial concept, except The Next Generation;
bloated marketeers realizing that the core geek fan base
with the uniforms and Klingon headpieces will ensure a satisfying
baseline Nielsen rating to kickstart the visionless series
into at least two more seasons. And other supposed “sci-fi”
series all take on the same gloss-camp look of the Trek
universe (Farscape , Stargate SG-1, et al), relying
on the premise that geekdom knows no prejudices (well, that’s
the Marketing Way – but is it the Janeway? [sorry -
shout, but don’t hit]).
It’s
all about the lunchboxes. And spiffy uniforms…
Didn’t
the Sermon On The Mount specifically state the geek shall
inherit the earth?… What?…oh, blessed are the
cheesemakers – well, that still pretty much covers
Kirk and descendants.
We
are all well aware that anything aired on UPN 13 will exude
a stench that reeks of lowest common demographic, inoffensive
and banal, completely lacking grip and substance. Count
Enterprise in. On the other hand, this show is the latest
(and not the last) fun fan vehicle for the Treksters (where
else in this world can a line like, “You have no idea
how much I’m restraining myself from kickin your ass!”
be said with a straight face?), which will no doubt spur
heady, yet wholly inane debate as to Scott Bakula’s
suitability and demerits, the spacecraft’s particulars,
the crew’s butts in those tight black leathur jumpsuits,
the origins of many well-known phrases, procedures and dance
moves, and of course, Jolene Blalock’s magnificent
rack.
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.
END
|
|
|
ENTERPRISE (2001)
Episode 1.01
Director: James L. Conway.
Writers: Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga.
Starring: Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock.
|
|
