This Enterprise rewatch is making me appreciate a lot the show, despite the failings and the stumbles, I feel like they were trying something, and I’m feeling a lot for the characters this time around, like
This time I actually feel very sorry for Archer? I think that despite the rough edges and the dumbassery, Archer is a very idealistic person, often to the point of naivety - often to the point of, quite frankly, foolishness.
Archer genuinely wanted to be an explorer, to honor his father’s lifework and to put humanity out there as peaceful explorers of the universe, and despite the mistakes along the way I think he showed it often that he had the heart (eh) in the right place.
And then the Xindi arc cames and the man gets destroyed. He goes from goofy captain who takes his dog in diplomatic missions and wants to befriend all his subordinates to hardened man with (quite literally) the weight of the world in his shoulders, commiting horrible actions on the way. By the time of Azati Prime, he is all but ready to commit suicide, and I don’t think he would ever fully forgive himself for the truly horrid thing he does with that innocent crew in Damage.
The direct comparition in the Trek universe I could make is with Sisko, but it doesn’t feel quite right because when we meet Sisko, we’re meeting him as a hardened man, as he loses his wife amid battle, so we meet him as he’s losing this innocence and becoming a man who knows grief and hardship quite well.
No, I think I feel more temped to compare Archer to Bashir - Bashir, who comes to the station wide-eyed and full of enthusiasm, talking about “frontier medicine” and “wilderness” without an once of tact, who gets a little more quiet, a little more taciturn and worn down as the Dominion war gets worse.
“Funny, I joined Starfleet to save lives”, Bashir sadly points out in Siege of AR-558 as he powers his weapon to hit the enemy. “Enterprise was designed to be a ship of exploration”, Archer wrily answers Degra in The Forgotten when he shows surprise that Enterprise had such detailed scans for a military vessel, like he still can’t believe this was what his mission has turned into. Two idealistic, cocky wide-eyed men, both hardened and worn down by their wars; two sides of the same coin.
superhiki:
Real quick: No permission to repost unless you link back to this post and include the caption since it’s necessary to understand what this picture is supposed to actually be about. I’m sincerely teetering on the edge of adding super ugly water marks to everything I post LOL.
This started first as a sketch to work out the betrayal children feel towards neglectful parents, and finally meandered to Claudia since I think she is a good representation of “I didn’t ask to be made and you still screwed me over like this?” Figuring out how to color fire over a white bg was pretty tough and a fun challenge, lots of going back and forth to make this image super bright since I wanted to convey she’s burning up in a sunny place. That and the transition of flesh to skeleton and then ash while also making sure her green dress is visible and still matches the shape of the garment made this one of my favorite pieces I’ve done this year.
This isn’t exactly what I imagine her final moments were in the well, but it’s supposed to be the image Louis sees when he thinks of her death and torments himself with it. This is both the anger of a child and the way guilt warps reality. I think Louis might allow himself to imagine the impossible: that Claudia would use her final moment to blame him instead of the reality, which is that she had fallen asleep when the sun rose.
Worked out a lot of my own parent issues here, LOL. I’m experiencing a very belated rebellion stage and so if the anger in her face seems juvenile that’s the point. I looked at a lot of references for children having tantrums to get the ‘snarl’ right but then tweaked what I had to look more betrayed than just hurt.
This is pencils and photoshop, something easy to draw and then color as I’m recovering from surgery.
lowyelling:
“Meat Throne” + “The Lonely Detective
Both Hannibal (as a Francis Bacon painting) and Will (as an Edward Hopper painting), side by side and w/process gif.
one of the things i always deeply disliked about the AOS films was the decision of destroying Romulus in the prime verse and Vulcan in the Kelvin timeline because like… this is such a huge thing, not so easily brushed off, and the films because of their structure and because of the time itself could never hope to truly portrait the impact it would have
and tbh this is one of the things I’m liking the most about Star Trek: Picard, the fact that it did have a huge impact in the universe, that it’s still having repercussions, that what happened with the Romulanss resulted in other messes happening, like the whole Mars thing with the androids, and the role of the Federation on it all
all the Star Trek flirted with the idea of the Federation having a dark side, even TOS, and ofc no one did it more than DS9, but now we’re really seeing the Federation being really upfront about this dark side, no subterfuge necessary and i’m finding it so interesting to see familiar characters in this new world
when we had Picard in TNG being hopeful and optimistic in a perfect world it didn’t mean a whole lot - easy to be a saint on Paradise, and all that - but seeing him still believing in those principles in a much darker world…. really makes me enjoy him much more in this new lightning tbh
me, halfway through Midsommar: oh this is just like the star trek: the next generation episode Half a Life, but bloodier
If you don’t kill him, you’re afraid you are going to become him.
Yes.
There are means of influence other than violence.
