Been a Star Trek fan for as long as I can remember but was never in the fandom until I got into TOS and Spirk rewired my brain. Now I need a place to dump Star Trek thoughts and opinions so I stop weirding people out.
It’s fascinating hearing how other people think. My dad says he has to think of a full sentence word for word before he says it whereas I don’t know what I’m gonna say until I’ve already said it.
sorry to be a broken record every month but christ menstruation is a stupid concept. oooooh excuse me for not getting pregnant, why the fuck is there goo falling out of me about it? grow the fuck up and reabsorb that shit for nutrients.
Star Trek: Enterprise Season 1 | Episode 3: Fight or Flight
I don’t intend to watch every Enterprise episode, much less review them all, but I do have to say: OMG you can’t just leave Sluggo on a random planet! You could disrupt the entire ecosystem! JFC what are they teaching these exobiologists in the 22nd century?
I’m SO glad starfleet academy is giving us Girls girls - like I fucking adore the girls growing their own friendship separate from the men, and having it be so genuine and warm.
Had to pause because I couldn’t figure out who Archer’s dad is. Of course it’s fucking Duck Phillips. I never thought about the fact the faces made for Mad Men are also faces made for Trek because they’re all going for the same aesthetic. Megan Draper is def one of Kirk’s exes.
Star Trek: Enterprise Season 1 | Episode 1: Broken Bow
Okay so that was … surprisingly good? I can tell there will be things I don’t like about this show but for a pilot it was enjoyable. Anyway, is it spoilers if the show is 25 years old? Well, if so, there are spoilers under the cut.
So we open with a nice cliche flashback of Jonathan Archer trying to build a model ship or whatever with his dad. Then we jump forward thirty years and have a Klingon crash landing on earth with a species we later learn are the Sulibans (but right now just give Doctor Who vibes) in hot pursuit. The Klingon manages to dispatch his pursuers before some Oklahoman stands his ground and shoots him with a shotgun laser. A laser shotgun. Whatever.
GOOD LORD this intro is bad. Like, I knew it was bad. But wow. My partner was in the room and we joked that the song sounded like some kind of Bryan Adams or Rod Stewart mashup. Little did I know it’s a cover of a Rod Stewart song. Which explains why the lyrics seem to have no connection to the show. I’m kind of offended that they didn’t make an original opening theme. It just feels … wrong.
Anyway, after we make it through that aural assault featuring nautical imagery, we get to the action. Archer is quickly called away from inspecting the newly minted Enterprise with Trip Tucker to meet with some mucky mucks of both the human and Vulcan variety (including T’Pol). They’re standing outside of a medbay watching Phlox work on the Klingon. The Vulcans insist the best thing to do is let the Klingon die and return him to his people. And this scene made me nervous about the direction the show will take.
Trek is always balancing on a knife’s edge between whether Starfleet comes off as a science and exploration institution or a military force. Most shows have flopped back and forth depending on what they felt like that week. This initial interaction felt like they would lean toward the military view. It felt like dick swinging and posturing. It felt like it’s not going to be a show for me. But once we get the top brass to give Archer three days to assemble a crack team to take Enterprise and return the Klingon ALIVE to Kronos, I’m willing to give it a chance.
And I ended up really liking a lot of the episode! Obviously we have to tolerate some front loading of exposition and introduction of characters. I wish more of the characters had been introduced like Hoshi Sato, because I’m a sucker for the “assembling a team” trope and despite it being tired I still find it to be a fun way to introduce characters.
The actual plot was fun, with the genetically altered Sulibans trying to manufacture drama between Klingon factions and the behest of some mysterious benefactor from the future as part of some “Temporal Cold War.” We get to see Sato trying to translate the ramblings of a delirious Klingon. We get both ample fist fights, phaser fights, and space ship fights, so that’s nice. We get Archer getting injured to save T’Pol, and Trip convincing T’Pol to carryout Archer’s plans while in command. We get them going back to save the Captain. We get the corny flashback to Archer and his dad flying the remote control ship they built.
Things I didn’t love:
The aforementioned theme song and aforementioned dick swinging.
I 100% could have lived without the initial cattiness between Sato and T’Pol. I know realistically you’re not going to like every coworker and T’Pol is meant to be generally abrasive, but when there are only two women on the main cast, having the characters hate each other is … a choice. By the end of the episode there was some begrudging respect so I hope that grows with time.
It’s pretty drab. This is true of the set and lighting of 90s shows that preceded Enterprise, so I’m hoping that, like its predecessors, the aliens of the week make up for it with outlandish costumes. I feel like none of the shows have really captured the colorful prettiness that TOS pulled of with glitter, lighting gels, and a prayer.
The shower scene. Jeezie Creezie it’s so heavy handed. No one has belonged in horny jail more than Rick Berman belongs in horny jail. I’m not opposed to or immune to seeing actors look sexy and glistening! But the rubbing each other down was a bit much. A simple Silkwood shower would have done it.
Other commentary:
Look, I want to say I hated the stupid butterfly-eating burlesque show or whatever caught Malcolm Reed’s attention, but truly that shit is part of Trek’s legacy. At least the colors were pretty. And I appreciated that Mayweather could keep his shit together.
The same goes for Melinda Clarke being on screen for 1 minute and kissing Archer, a complete stranger, on the mouth, because she can sense if he’s trustworthy but only through close contact. I can’t even be mad because that’s Trek, baby! And also playing unnecessarily sexy characters is Melinda Clarke’s bread and butter. Let the woman have a career.
I think I’m going to like Phlox. He seems fun.
Honestly, watching Scott Bakula kind of just makes me want to revisit Quantum Leap.
Verdict: I’ll give it another go. Especially since we get canon MPREG in season one. Gotta at least watch that. God, the Trek fandom cannot be weirder than the actual writers of the show.
Had to pause because I couldn’t figure out who Archer’s dad is. Of course it’s fucking Duck Phillips. I never thought about the fact the faces made for Mad Men are also faces made for Trek because they’re all going for the same aesthetic. Megan Draper is def one of Kirk’s exes.
by the way it's fine to like sexual content just for the sake of it. "we can't ban porn because other stuff will get banned" "sometimes nude art has value" "the government will classify queer people as sexual" this is all true but it's okay to just like porn. its okay to not want porn to be banned because you like it.
since I’ve already exposed myself massively, I want to come out and frankly admit that I wore this pair of shoes nearly every day from 5th grade to 8th grade
my Gorillaz hyperfixation lasted from the time I was 11 to 14, nearly every article of clothing I owned was Gorillaz merch. It started before that. Feel Good Inc came out in 2005 and I remember wanting to bring Demon Days to show and tell in preschool and my parents vetoing that. my gift for my 16th birthday was seeing them live in Atlanta
This was my question as well. But I should have intuited the answer because in 1997 I, a 14 year old girl that was 5 ft nothing and weighed 90 lbs, wore adult men’s Dickies because they weren’t making them for teenaged girls.
I can’t help but feel like the the human condition would be greatly improved by the ability to remove our spines, whip them around to get the kinks out, and put them back in again.
I must note that this came across my dash in 2026 while I am recovering from two level spinal fusion. I don’t even need to whip it around. A gentle untangling, like a necklace you’ve left drift around the bottom of your purse for a month, would be equally nice.
using violence to liberate people from sweatshops, unsafe mines, and grinding poverty isn't the same as using violence to impose those things on people. the idea that violence is morally repugnant regardless of context is a belief that every oppressor throughout history would love for the oppressed to hold
Two truths that you've got to hold in your head at once:
-violence is the worst tool for building a better world
-sometimes it's the only tool you've got for stopping the oppression of the current one
Pacifism is a good default, because it's good to train yourself to see the nonviolent solutions first and to be extremely reluctant to turn to violence. But it shouldn't be an absolute, because there are times when fighting back is the only way.
Once you've bought yourself the room, that pacifist mindset should lead you back to the real work of rebuilding. Because hopefully you still remember that a gun is the worst possible tool for building a better world.
Unfortunately violence is a bit addictive, because we've seen a lot of justified fights turn into unjustified vengeance. That's not gonna help. Put the gun down.
theartofmadeline
dededos
origamiaround
kaledo-art
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
ellievsbear
