[horatio]

Originally Posted by kevin

Unless your Spock and decide you don't want to save the person who destroyed you're entire planet and was threatening another deliberately, of course.

I have recently seen a documentary about a well-known German publicist, Marion von Dönhoff. What I didn't know before is that she was part of this aristocratic resistance cell during around Stauffenberg WWII. She didn't want to make her participation publically known because in her eyes (being a pragmatic, Kantian Prussian aristocrat) it was the natural and logical and necessary thing to do.
She didn't do it because she hated Hitler. So my point is that you SHOULD crush your enemy but not hate him and you know very well that Spock's hatred and revenge and not his intention to kill Nero is my main main issue with this scene in ST09.

Originally Posted by Botany Bay

I was talking about culture, iconography and how politics shape both and are inevietably reflected and present in popular culture. I speculated why the author of the linked article was right about TNG and terrorism and why people 'fail' to see it to be true: TNG spend indeed a great deal of episodes on the subject. So, what happened? Why do we nowadays look at TNG and overlook the references to terrorism? I speculated that we might not see it as references to terrorism because we dont recognize the iconography anymore, because the picture of terrorism changed. Thats all. And when iconography changes so drastically then it usually is the result of propaganda.

Concerning your ENT vs. TNG remarks: I never said TNG was 'liberal' as in Democratic Party or as in leftwing-pacifism. Dont know where you pull that from. I merely indicated that every Trek is a reflection of its own time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4OjyyRQbwY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVgmpr8C5EY&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgo3x...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11BXEMBi1A

By the way,we didnt talk about TOS and terrorism yet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAIA33URHtU

BB, you are implying all the time that ENT is conservative (or following the Zeitgeist which is influenced by neocon propaganda which comes down to the same), now once again with these clips: sending some clips to your soldiers implies conservatism. Sorry, but this is utter crap.
If I produced a show I wouldn't mind to produce such short clips for German soldiers in Afghanistan, independent of my political opinion (which is to get out as it is not feasible to change anything there). It is called common decency to care about people who have a not so nice job.
But hey, I forget that leftish propaganda is that the military and solidiers, especially "imperialistic" US soliders are per se evil. Sorry, but you use the word propaganda so often that I have to serve it back to you.
You are aware that this very show you are watching, no matter which of the five, is about an agency which performs military duties and which is partly modelled after the US navy? Just sayin'.

My point is that ENT is more centrist than the left TNG (and let's be honest, that's why you and I, two leftists, like TNG ) but not as conservative as you claim it is.
To focus you attention again upon story essentials, the main theme of the show was the slow formation of trust between people who initially don't get along too well. It wasn't naive, it showed how unlikely the formation of the Federation is but that it is possible when you have a vision and the goodwill to work together.
Nothing conservative about this, but nothing left about it either. As much as I love the utopian aspect of Trek in TOS and TNG, it sometimes needs a slap back to reality, be it in DS9 or ENT.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by horatio

So my point is that you SHOULD crush your enemy but not hate him and you know very well that Spock's hatred and revenge and not his intention to kill Nero is my main main issue with this scene in ST09.

Of course I do, I was just teasing.

[Botany Bay]

Originally Posted by horatio

BB, you are implying all the time that ENT is conservative (or following the Zeitgeist which is influenced by neocon propaganda which comes down to the same), [...]

When it comes to the question of Iraq and WMDs then yes, ENT followed the 'Zeitgeist', the fashion of its time, during its second and third season. I think thats quite obvious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxnegxNEDAc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUaEt...watch_response

[horatio]

The Xindi arc is in the second, not the third season. Do me a favour BB and watch a show before you comment on it.
If you willingly ignore what happens in a show and just superfically compare it to actual political events (oh my god, the Xindi wanna blow up Earth, it is an allegory for Saddam, sophisticated neocon propaganda) I cannot help you.

For the last time lest I enter a temporal loop, Archer talked with the Xindi and tried to convince them that humans are not the enemy. And nowhere in the entire third season have the "terrorist" or "Saddam" Xindis been portrayed as you claim as nasty beings who don't have a family (Hatchery) and who don't feel and think similarly as we do.

[kevin]

I think, to be fair, a lot of US television shows in the wake of 9/11, spent some time devoting subsequent storylines that reflected events - (er did a storyline about a bio-hazard lockdown for example) - and one could argue that 24 was more than a little influenced by it as well, going so far as to define itself as a series about a character who while acting to defend one system often completely disregarded that same system in favour of his own morality and decisions.

Star Trek: Enterprise wasn't doing anything really that wasn't being done elsewhere in terms of reflecting, irrespective of whether one thinks the storyline itself was well done or not.

[horatio]

Of course ENT'S 3rd season was influenced by 9/11, art isn't created in a cultural void. But if it really was this neocon stuff as BB claims Archer would have gone in Western style: shoot first, ask questions later. Then he wouldn't have gained the help from the two reasonable Xindi factions and he wouldn't have been able to stop the weapon.
It basically said that Bush does harm to America by not practicing multilateralism like Archer.

[kevin]

Which, rather ironically, is probably how Janeway would have acted instead, based on her methodology much of the time.

[horatio]

Yes that's very likely ... but then again she was written so inconsistently that you never knew what she would do.