Question about the opening of Enterprise episodes...

[Mikey]

They didn't, but I don't suppose I would expect anything else from an American-made series. In other words, I guess you could call it American-centric if you really wanted to, but I don't see any more bias that way than I do UK-centrism in DW - and in either case, it's no more or less than I would expect, and certainly reasonable enough to not bother me.

[Reliant121]

I suppose its about intent. Trek always has pretensions of equality, love of all nations and all that hippy stuff. Doctor who most certainly had none of that, it was purposely designed to be as British as a Margaret Thatcher Tea pot.

[Mikey]

I guess. I just don't see the opening title sequence of a show as the repository of the entire thematic and philosophical content of the series.

[Captain Seafort]

They didn't, but I don't suppose I would expect anything else from an American-made series.

If said US series is about the US, fair enough. If said US series purports to depict the future of humanity as a whole, especially given that the title sequence is depicting a history of major human technological achievement, then I expect them to do a bit better than the stereotypically US view of the world as split into "USA" and "Here Be Dragons".

I don't see any more bias that way than I do UK-centrism in DW

DW has had several stories with prominent US involvement (albeit mainly in the early days and again since the resumption):

The Gunfighters (First Doctor at the OK Corral)
The Chase (First Doctor, included an appearance on the Empire State Building)
The War Games (Second Doctor, the American Civil War was one of several time zones involved)
Doctor Who (Eighth Doctor in San Francisco)
Dalek (Ninth Doctor in Utah)
Daleks in Mahattan (Tenth Doctor, obvious)

Not to mention he's had at least one companion from the US (Fifth and Sixth Doctors).

[Sionnach Glic]

Not to mention he's had at least one companion from the US (Fifth and Sixth Doctors).

Did you forget about Jack Harkness?

[Captain Seafort]

Good point, although he's more of a "future" companion than a US one.

[Sionnach Glic]

Fair point.

[Mikey]

DW has had several stories with prominent US involvement (albeit mainly in the early days and again since the resumption):

The Gunfighters (First Doctor at the OK Corral)
The Chase (First Doctor, included an appearance on the Empire State Building)
The War Games (Second Doctor, the American Civil War was one of several time zones involved)
Doctor Who (Eighth Doctor in San Francisco)
Dalek (Ninth Doctor in Utah)
Daleks in Mahattan (Tenth Doctor, obvious)

Not to mention he's had at least one companion from the US (Fifth and Sixth Doctors).

All true. None of which, however, invalidates the fact that the amount of DW action which takes place in or involves the UK is completely out of proportion with the UK's share of either Earth's surface area or Earth's population. Would it have been all kumbaya-touchy-feely, Gaia view hippy-dippy if the Xindi weapon hit Nottinghamshire instead of Florida? Sure. Is it more likely that the weapon would hit somewhere in the USA than somewhere in the UK? Absolutely.

[Sionnach Glic]

Keep in mind that Doctor Who has for most of its existance had a miniscule budget to work with - keeping the show mainly in the UK was more or less a necessity due to the expense of filming elsewhere.

Shoving some stock footage of Sputnik into ENT's opening credits wouldn't really have the same troubel

[McAvoy]

The problem I see with the opening is that it gives the impression that it was only the American Space Program that led to Starfleet/UFP and so forth. The rest of the world? Eh who cares.

Hell it looks like the Americans/British conquered France long ago anyway, which is a good thing. The French probably surrendered to a bunch of kids playing with water pistols...

[stitch626]

The problem I see with the opening is that it gives the impression that it was only the American Space Program that led to Starfleet/UFP and so forth. The rest of the world? Eh who cares.

That may be semi-accurate though.

Other than the Russians forcing the US to participate in space, they had no direct contributions.

[McAvoy]

WEll they didn't develop warp drive. But who is to say that they did or did not contribute to pre/post-warp flight? ENT sure says they didn't after the first warp flight. Hell you get the general impression that Cochrane developed all the warp technology up to Warp 5.

The Russians did have several firsts in Spaceflight.

[Reliant121]

If the Russians weren't Russ-hing (I know, sue me) to get into space, you Colonials would have taken a lot longer about it. It was the space race that caused it all to happen.

[Lighthawk]

It was the most expensive contest of one-up-manship in history.

[McAvoy]

Yeah well it did put a man on the moon. So far no one has done the same yet.

So I think if they truly wanted to show mankind's evolution of space travel, they could have deleted some of the scenes of HMS Enterprize and the Wright Brothers and so forth. Added a couple of stock footage or even pictures of Russian space travel.

Or they could have created their own starting from the Pheonix to a Random ship 1 to Random ship 2 to Daedalus class to NX class being contructed to Enterprise launching to stock footage. Or something like that.