We just finished watching the Third Season of Star Trek: Enterprise. The season offered some of the all-time favorite Star Trek episodes, but I have to say, the story was able to sustain itself for about 20 episodes - unfortunately, not for 26 episodes, though. We did feel like there was a little bit too small lump of butter to be spread on a bit too big loaf of bread. And how did we end up with? Nazis? Space Nazis? It's a strange move to play the Nazi-card this late... but maybe it's going somewhere. Who knows.
We're, anyway, quite close to finishing this beast, only 20-something episodes to go. So, the time to celebrate the last Star Trek is also closing! We're going to need some ideas on how to celebrate the last day of Trekathon! Obviously, it will center around watching Star Trek - the JJ Abrams movie - but what is the best way to celebrate? Ideas are welcome.
Now, it's time to pop open Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 4!
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Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 21 - E2
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 22 - The Council
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 23 - Countdown
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 24 - Zero Hour
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TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. We didn't quite succeed, and are now 96 days past the due date. But we're still going strong.
So far, we've seen 697 episodes, and we have 22 episodes and 1 movies more to go.
Last week was a good week for Trekking. On Wednesday, Friday and Saturday we were out partying for various reasons, so Thursday and Sunday were absolutely perfect days to catch up on Enterprise few more episodes than usual. On Sunday, we actually slammed a good 12 episodes - and it's quite easy, because we're rushing through the third season of Enterprise, which is by definition very damn good Star Trek season. Some of the episodes we saw yesterday were the best of Enterprise, and one of them jumped all the way to the top-10 Star Trek episodes of all time (Twilight). Some great episodes, even a Western episode which didn't quite suck ass.
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Episodes we saw yesterday:
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 5 - Impulse
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 6 - Exile
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 7 - The Shipment
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 8 - Twilight
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 9 - North Star
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 10 - Similitude
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 11 - Carpenter Street
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 12 - Chosen Realm
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 13 - Proving Ground
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 14 - Stratagem
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 15 - Harbinger
Star Trek: Enterprise - season 3 - 16 - Doctor's Orders
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TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. We didn't quite succeed, and are now 90 days past the due date. But we're still going strong.
So far, we've seen 689 episodes, and we have 30 episodes and 1 movies more to go.
Although Star Trek: Enterprise hasn't been specifically very bad, it took a little while for the show to find it's tracks, and now - running through the end of the second season - as it's firmly on them, the brilliantness of the concept is showing. It's shortcomings - mainly, the "other guys" (that's Mayweather, Reed and Hoshi) - are not quite interesting enough to carry an episode, and when they try to relay on them (like in in the Mayweatherisode Horizon), things get boring and slow. But out of yesterday's episodes, The Judgement was by far the best. A proper Klingon-episode, like the best ones in TNG, which left us both almost in tears.
Archer, sipping a bit of that ol' bloodwine.
Enterprise's second season - especially the latter part of it - is rocking hard!
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Episodes we saw yesterday:
Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 2 - 19 - Judgement
Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 2 - 20 - Horizon
Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 2 - 21 - The Breach
Well, let's state the obvious. We didn't succeed in our primary goal - to watch all the Star Trek episodes and movies ever made in one year. We didn't even succeed in our secondary goal - to watch all the Star Trek episodes and movies ever made in one year, plus the 50-something shooting days we spent on set all over the world doing our own movies. So I guess it's good to say that in one way, we failed the Trekathon. And to make things worse, I managed to bust my leg 2 months ago, and haven't been able to train for the Marathon, and now it seems like I may not be able to make it, no matter if the leg gets better; the training perioid should've started long time ago, and I'm way behind the schedule already.
But let's not throw the axe into the well, as we say here in Finland. Schedules may break, legs may break but no-one's gonna bend or break us: we will go through the Trekathon, and I will run the Marathon wearing the damn Star Trek shirt - if not this year, then next year. So let's quit whining, and take a quick look at what we are facing.
The good news is that we never actually ceased watching; we just felt bad for failing the schedules, so we ceased reporting. But now that we're back up, I'm happy to tell that we've already gone through the first two seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, so we have only two more season of it remaining, and one more film, and then we're done! Not a long road ahead of us anymore; we'll get there - soon, I hope. Because I really, really, really miss movies. For 446 days, we haven't been able to watch proper films with a good, honest heart, because we've always felt that instead we should be watching Star Trek.
Let's turn our focus to Star Trek: Enterprise. What is it? How does it feel? What's good about it? What's bad?
Let's state the obvious first:
Star Trek: Enterprise is not a bad Star Trek series. It's actually better than Voyager, at least on some terms, and it's quite well written. The characters are not bad, although the scale of really active characters is quite small. Unlike in earlier Star Treks, Enterprise really focuses on circling around the main guys and girls: Archer (Scott "The God" Bakula), Trip (Connor Trinneer), T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) and Dr. Phlox (John Billingsley). Others are more or less just secondary cast, and there's only very few episodes built around them. And the reason is clear - the main quartet is far more interesting than the others.
And yes. T'Pol is hot.
The setup is good, and it's delivered quite well. One thing I don't quite understand is the language - sometimes, it's a problem; sometimes, they really don't give a shit... It's just random, which is worse than the "all-around universal translator" that we've had constantly switched "on" all through every earlier series. Now, there's no logic, and that annoys me, although hats off to the lingosodes, where they really have created a proper-sounding language and play with it all the way. Another thing is the sad fact that no matter how well-written stuff there is, it does feel like Star Trek Universe feels a bit out of ideas, and they're re-using more and more older episodes - almost re-making older episodes (say, for example, Darmok and Dawn have quite similar themes). And one last thing... the opening theme. What the hell did they think when they put that horrific 5-cent country anthem there? Oh lord.
But we are not the sons and daughters of yesterday's grouse as we say in Finland; we take the fun out of that, too. Instead of skipping that hellacious piece of shit intro, we jump into it, and SING IT OUT LOUD from the BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS together, in unison, every damn time! We've even created the most ridiculous gesture show to accompany that song. So it's part of the fun.
Yeah. Well. Anyhow. Star Trek: Enterprise - could be worse, could be better, but definitely worth the watch. It's by far the sexiest Star Trek series, but it does feel like it's stomping in one place all the time - there's no clear direction there, and not enough big background plot there to keep it together enough. But it's enjoyable, fun, sometimes it even gets to be really good.
While waiting for Enterprise DVDs to arrive, we decided to jump ahead of schedule yesterday and watch the last The Next Generation Star Trek movie Nemesis (2002). According to our schedule, it would've been scheduled around mid-Enterprise, but as it turns out, the film was actually *shot* during the Voyager-Enterprise -hiatus, so in one way we hit the mark quite well.
The movie, on the other hand, didn't. Actually, it was shit. I don't want to waste my fingertips writing about it, but Plinkett's review sums it quite nicely:
TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. Apparently, we failed. But we gave ourselves 59 more days to complete the mission - approximately the amount of days we've spent in film shootings during the last year. Thus, our new deadline is on 6.5.2011.
So far, we've seen 621 episodes, and we have 105 episodes and 1 movies more to go - and 50 days and left to complete our mission.
That's it for Voyager. The crew returned back home and everything is nice and dandy. I have to admit Endgame wasn't much of a series ender - a kind of anticlimax - although it did try it's best to be something special. But then again, if there's seven seasons of achieving one goal and one goal only, when you finally reach it, it will feel anticlimatic, no matter what you do. I still enjoyed the last double-episode, and it did tie the whole thing together: Robert Beltran (Chakotay) has criticized the episode, saying
This is what we're going out with?"
"I was right, [the writers] are idiots. So I feel vindicated but unfortunately, you're going to have to sit through it."
"Frankly, I don't think [the writers] really cared what happened at the end. Voyager has been the ugly step-child of the Star Trek family, and that's the way we've been treated. We're also the only show that's had to carry a whole network [UPN]."
I don't feel that strongly about the last episode, and definitely disagree with his point about being the ugly step-child of the ST family, but I can see where the opinions are coming from, and what they are based on.
We're through the seven seasons of it, seven seasons which many people told us to be the most horrific piece of shit in TV history, but it actually turned out to be a really firm and good TV series; it did have its shortcomings, and without question it is the worst live-action Star Trek series so far (we haven't seen Enterprise yet...), it still was much better than I expected, and when Voyager was at its best, the episodes really stood up to challenge the best TNG, DS9 and TOS episodes. A thrilling ride, a good crew (which did take some time to get to know), and heaps of great moments.
TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. Apparently, we failed. But we gave ourselves 59 more days to complete the mission - approximately the amount of days we've spent in film shootings during the last year. Thus, our new deadline is on 6.5.2011.
So far, we've seen 621 episodes, and we have 105 episodes and 2 movies more to go - and 51 days and left to complete our mission.
Yesterday we watched the rest of the last season of Voyager, save the last double-episode "The Endgame", which we will watch today. The Seventh Season has been a really strong Star Trek season, and although I had been expecting that they would reach the Alpha Quadrant a bit more - they are still stuck in Delta Quadrant. I'm interested to see what'll happen with the last bit, but having watched this far I can say that the strength of them being stranded in Delta Quadrant has been a really good idea, and when Voyager has been working, it really has been kicking serious ass. When Neelix left in the episode Homestead we watched yesterday, we went all teary-eyed.
While U.S.S. Voyager is approaching the Alpha Quadrant in our TV screens, the real Voyager, probe sent in 1977 in the space, is about to leave our heliosphere behind, pushing slowly towards its target: Alpha Centauri, still fully functional, gathering data and sending results back to NASA. Godspeed!
After this, it's time for Enterprise. It's a funny thing since neither of us knows anything of Enterprise; it's a stub Series anyhow, with only four seasons, and quite different from rest of Star Trek for what I've understood, but I'm eager to jump on it. Unfortunately, although we ordered Enterprise DVDs already few weeks ago, it still hasn't arrived, which is a bit annoying.
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Episodes we watched yesterday:
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 19 - Q2
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 20 - Author, Author
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 21 - Friendship One
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 22 - Natural Law
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 23 - Homestead
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 24 - Renaissance Man
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TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. Apparently, we failed. But we gave ourselves 59 more days to complete the mission - approximately the amount of days we've spent in film shootings during the last year. Thus, our new deadline is on 6.5.2011.
So far, we've seen 619 episodes, and we have 107 episodes and 2 movies more to go - and 56 days and left to complete our mission.
Despite the fact that yesterday was Monday, and a normal working day, we managed to watch altogether 5 episodes. I smacked together an excellent chicken salad, and we enjoyed some damn good episodes. The Seventh Season has really been a positive surprise, and it's moving on with a nice pace. I've suddenly started to believe and actually feel for B'elanna's and Tom's relationship, and Janeway has been really a good leader, Neelix is as lovely as he always is, Seven of Nine has been laid back just a little bit - unlike in fifth and sixth season where it was basically her show, and other characters like Chakotay, Tuvok and Harry and whatever you have all work nicely...
Actually, looking at the whole crew of Voyager, it seems like it has finally found it's perfect working order, and all the roles have been clarfied to both the writers and the actors. It's a great fun to watch.
In addition to that, we also got a confirmation yesterday that we're moving! Yes, sir; on 1.5. we'll be moving to Urheilukatu in Helsinki, into a much bigger apartment. We're for sure going to miss this place, it's really been a lovely home for us for the last almost two years, but we do need a bigger place.
But the bad news was that Essi started to feel like shit in the evening, and as the night progressed, her fever jumped close to 40 degrees of celsius. It's a Tarkelian Flu, our EMH is suggesting, and she'll just have to fight it off.
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Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 10 - Flesh and Blood, part II
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 11 - Shattered
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 12 - Lineage
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 13 - Repentance
Star Trek: Voyager - season 7 - 14 - Prophecy
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TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. So far, we've seen 609 episodes, and we have 117 episodes and 2 movies more to go - and 1 days left to complete our mission.
We've just finished the Sixth Season of Star Trek: Seven Of Ni... Sorry, Star Trek: Voyager. I get mixed up with things, most of the episodes seem to be about Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) - being captured and needed as a trade item, or Seven of Nine being somehow broken or something... It's all about her. Not to say that she wouldn't be the most interesting character, but it's really not carrying the series alone. There was a bunch of shit episodes in Sixth Season, but all in all, as a whole, I think it was a fine season. We're next moving up to Seventh Season, and first episodes seem to be about Borg issues.
We're going to give ourselves some more time. Actually, we're giving us 68 more days to finish Trekathon. Why 68? That's exactly the amount of shooting days we've had during Trekathon - and I assure you, shooting days are days when watching *anything* from a telly is virtually impossible. You're so absorbed with the stuff you're shooting. So we feel since it's fair to give us that leavage. But, to be honest, we're not giving us 68 days - we're giving us exactly 59 days, starting 8.3. when we started this run a year ago.
Thus, the last day of Trekathon will be 6.5.2011 - and to conclude that, I will run a half-marathon wearing a Star Trek shirt on 7.5.2011! I've been running constantly to prepare myself for the Helsinki City Marathon of 2011 in August, so half-marathon is a wonderful test before that date. And after that, we'll be going to Cannes to celebrate the end of Trekathon!
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Episodes we saw yesterday:
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 16 - Collective
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 17 - Spirit Folk
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 18 - Ashes to Ashes
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 19 - Child's Play
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 20 - Good Shepherd
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 21 - Live Fast And Prosper
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 22 - Muse
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 23 - Life Line
Star Trek: Voyager - season 6 - 24 - The Haunting of Deck Twelve
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TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. So far, we've seen 594 episodes, and we have 132 episodes and 2 movies more to go - and 2 days left to complete our mission.
We've been crunching through the Voyager's Sixth Season, but the days are running short. Only few more days to go officially in the Trekathon Marathon; but we're not going to drop the ball, although we'll go overtime for sure. Sixth Season has been much better than the last bit of Fifth Season, but there's been stupid episodes as well. Yesterday's episodes were Tsunkatse and Memorial; Memorial was a bit stupid episode, another mindfuckisode where the crew of Voyager started to experience strange dreams, and finally found the reason to be a big totem built as a memorial on one planet, but the first thing we both shouted when we saw the memorial stone was "I AM KIROK!". Something reminded us of the memorial obelisk of Amerinds from the TOS episode The Paradise Syndrome.
The other episode was a bit better, with a winning cast - called Tsunkatse. We had Jeffrey Combs (Weyoun, Brunt), J.G. Hertzler (Martok) and The Rock fighting against Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), who - obviously, kicked their asses. The episode was a bit better, the idea of intergalactic fight was a fine idea.
TREKATHON is a blog about two film nerds who set on a mission to watch all of the material ever released under Star Trek franchise in just one year. So far, we've seen 585 episodes, and we have 141 episodes and 2 movies more to go - and 4 days left to complete our mission.
