Episode Report Card Keckler: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Xinderella
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.09.2003
Oh, the song. This version is so atrocious with its random bass guitar, an intermittent strings section that comes in at odd moments, and percussion so outdated it cries out for a bongo drum, that it made me love and yearn for the old one. What I want to know is: Who at Enterprise hates music so much that they would force this down our ears? "And here we have Linda McCartney on tambourine!" The Evil Dr. Mathra announces, dancing out of his study. "Finally a song I can get my teeth drilled to -- that's pure dentist's office muzak!"
In his mailing list, Warren Ellis said it best:
How do you make that theme tune worse?Simple. Keep the vocal line and make a new mix, adding a string section, lots of strummy guitars and a new percussion track, making it into a full-blown oldie AOR nightmare. Also, due to your new and yet somehow festeringly ancient mix, mistime all the sound-to-vision cues in the original, so that the music just sits there totally independent of the visuals.
It really would have been much easier and cheaper for someone to record a voiceover along the lines of "We really don't know what the fuck we're doing here. Hold on, this'll be over in 40 seconds" and run that instead of the music. Using the original mix in the first two series at least made a statement, even if that statement was "We are very old. Is this what the young folk of today like listening to? Does this sound like one of those popular beat combos from the hit parade?" Using a remix -- particularly one this ugly and tired -- just says "We know something's wrong with this, but we don't know what."
Next to him, my bile looks like lavender honey drizzled over cinnamon tea cakes. It's almost like they said, "Okay, you want a change -- here it is. Oh, you hate it? Well, then stop bitching about the other one!" I don't accept that. I will continue to bitch, and in fact, I now vow to bitch harder.
In a room we've never seen before, Quantum steps in and are-we-there-yets T'Pol. I don't catch T'Pol's answer the first time around, because I couldn't hear over the loudness of her new uniform. It's a flame-colored velour suit (more "cat" than "track") with an inexplicable hip belt that isn't holding anything up. Oh, my. She's the Velveteen Vulcan. I've said this all over email and my apartment, but they could have made her look much more sexy and logical if they put her in cargo pants and a tight white t-shirt. But this? It's like the costume department Scarlett O'Hara'd the drapes at some run-down Vegas motel that has seen more suicides than sex. Whoa -- and the hair! It's grown out a teensy bit from the skull-cap and has some logical golden highlights put in. In fact, it looks exactly like my hair when I don't style it. SHOUT-OUT TO MY BEDHEAD! Vulcan hair must act the opposite way human hair does -- it's when they don't sit outside for hours that they get those sun streaks. Of course, I will admit that it does look very attractive on her, and though she does look like she consumed a calorie over the summer (tm starri), she's still too skinny. And speaking of being a starving actor, Dominic Keating looks like he lost weight he really didn't need to lose. It makes his neck look scrawny, his head look bulbous, and the lines on his face more pronounced. Eat a Chips Butty, boy!