Enterprise

Well, I just finished watching it (believe me, my company has a lot to
answer for, making me work on the night a new Star Trek series starts and
not getting things sorted out so I can watch it in the office) so here are
my impressions:

First of all, this looks really good - as with any other programme it can be
hard to judge from just the first episode but I thought it was well written
and the actors are pretty good as well (yes, one of them is British and for
those of you who get to watch the tape, I'll buy a drink for the first
person who can tell me what series he was in back in the UK, when I'm back
in April).

Without giving too much of the plot away, it's kind of interesting to see
how Starfleet started, where it came from and what challenges the human race
had to face to get into space. Of course, it's kind of weird watching a
Star Trek series where the ship can't/doesn't go any faster than warp 4.4
(and starts shuddering at that point!) and seeing that Vulcans and humans
weren't always the best of friends. There are also some "new" aliens - well
I've never seen them in anything before and I even got my updated Star Trek
Encyclopedia out to check.

It's also interesting seeing people's initial reactions to situations -
these humans aren't used to warp travel, aren't really used to seeing aliens
and still have quite a few of the characteristics and prejudices that we
have at the moment.

The other really weird thing (and I apologise if it upsets any of you who
would have rather waited but this doesn't really classify as a spoiler) is
that there is no voice-over in the start credits 'cause it's not an
instrumental theme but instead has someone singing and shows the various
Enterprises there have been up to this point as well as how we got warp
capability.

I think that's about it really - aside from some minor technical stuff:

For those who get to see the tape, I have a few apologies/recommendations to
make:

1) I missed the first few seconds - it didn't have a major impact so I think
I only missed the first couple of sentences - the cable channel appears to
operate on a clock that is about 5 minutes faster than my VCR (which is
automatically set).
2) There's a couple of seconds missing about a quarter of the way through -
the cable channel/company seemed to lose it so there's not a whole lot I can
do about it (especially as I wasn't at home while it was on)
3) I'm not sure if any conversion is going to be done on the tape (i.e. from
NTSC to PAL), but if there isn't (or it's just copied in it's entirety), you
might want to make sure you skip over the adverts otherwise you'll get a
whole pile of information on the new Buffy series that you might not want -
it gives the ending of the last season and tells you what's going to happen
in the first episode of the new season. Also, I don't recommend sitting
through the crappy American adverts unless you're feeling extremely
masochistic or want to laugh at them (although the one for the new Jeep
Liberty is quite funny)

I'm not going to give any spoilers (and if anything I said above is felt to
be a spoiler then I sincerely apologise) but if there is any specific
information any of you want, please feel free to ask me - but please let me
know if you would prefer me to respond privately or if you want the rest of
IFIS to know.

Jacquie