We're Losing Power And I Don't Know Why!!

(headline said with a thick Scottish brogue)

With the Cub game rained out, I spent the time watching the two episodes of "Enterprise" that I had taped last week. I have missed a lot of the third season of the new Star Trek series, and frankly, after watching these two episodes, I haven't missed much, and I sadly have to say that after 37 years, the entire series might have run its course.

First of all, I think the producers made a mistake in the first place by making this series a "prequel" -- the technology looks too advanced to be 200 years "behind" the first ST series. And we know too much about the history and the characters and the technology to start learning it all over again.

But that pales in the face of the poor scripts. The first episode was a "talker" -- all flashback, a story told by Captain Archer to T'Pol about how the first warp spaceship got into space in the first place, piloted of course by himself, after one of his colleagues got the job ahead of him and recklessly wrecked one of the prototypes.

The second one was -- well, it was allegedly about some dread disease that had been brought on the ship, which had trotted out a case of the good ol' Vulcan mating ritual "pon farr", but in reality it was simply a way to put co-star Jolene Blalock in skimpy clothes, muttering vaguely sexual remarks, for an hour, thus appealing to what is apparently the series' new target audience, horny teenage boys. There was a subplot about the captain being kidnapped, but who cared?

It's too bad that the legacy of Gene Roddenberry is being squandered this way. At least we have the old series to watch. I'm still hoping they'll squeeze one more good feature film out of either the Nextgen or Voyager crew since the last two have been so mediocre.