Talk:Vox Sola

Untitled

Hmm: I assume the Kreetassans do not like watching others masticate in public. --204.4.131.140 (talk) 16:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Whereas we mostly consider public mastication perfectly acceptable. This could be an instance of attitudes "swapped" with those toward...the other thing... (The Kreetassans were thought to have said, though the translation was uncertain, "You eat like you mate"; perhaps what they were actually trying to convey was "You treat eating as if it were mating" — or possibly the more specific "self-mating", as in, something more appropriate for public display.) 2601:545:8201:AB7A:0:0:0:5F65 (talk) 07:19, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

On The Set

Apparently the making of this episode was documented in a show by PBS called On The Set. https://archive.org/details/star-trek-communicator-issue-143/page/n34/mode/1up?q=PBS

Unfortunately so far I haven't been able to find out more. Memory Alpha makes no mention of it[1]. I had thought maybe it would be mentioned on Dawson's IMDB profile with her credited as Herself[2] but nothing there either. Searches as PBS.org either turned up zero results or far too many seemingly irrelevant results. -- 109.79.78.254 (talk) 13:14, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Apparently the TV series for PBS did not happen but the behind the scenes documentary for Vox Sola was eventually included as an extra with the Bluray release of Enterprise.[3] -- 109.79.78.254 (talk) 13:25, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

I watched the documentary, partial transcript and excerpts to follow.

On the Set (2002)
Roxann Dawson 
1m55: "This was definitely the toughest experience I've had"
Onscreen text
2m44: Enterprise Filming schedule: 7 Days <br />Typical Motion Picture: 6 weeks
Brannon Braga
3m10: The whole emphasis for this show was to do a wildly alien, alien. 
Dan Curry
3m48: Living linguine would be a good description
Roxann Dawson 
5m25: ...basically melted saran wrap and bubble wrap, to be really honest that's what it was
5m50: Flashback: Script Problems - Weeks Earlier
Brannon Braga
6m30: There are days when I think pressure makes diamonds ...
6m50: Onscreen graphic, HP Lovecraft book cover "The Tomb"
showing people wrapped up, cocooned in webbing
Brannon Braga
7m45: Overwhelming ... we have to create new worlds every week
8m20: Michael Westmore ... and various other production people
Brannon Braga
10m15: We've never seen a cargo bay on this show, what will the cargo look like? 
Mike Okuda: 
10m25: Onscreen text 
11m20:  Director's Meeting
Roxann Dawson "linguine monster"
12:20: If you don't believe in this creature, this alien life form that has taken over the cargo bay, the show doesn't work. 
all the different departments had to work with each other, normally the declinations are much more clear
17m10: Scott Bakula dancing. 
Onscreen text
18m10:  Several Gallons of "Slime" were used. 
Roxann Dawson 
19m00: We didn't get act 4 until we were four days into shooting
Brannon Braga
19m05: This script has gone through a major rewrite
22m50:	special effect, editing, music still need to be done
23m05:	Dan Curry ... Eden Fx
24m20:	Editing
25m: 	Music
26m40: 	the scene from the episode ...
27m36: 	"and cut"
presenter, end credits 

There's a whole lot of detail and with a source like this there is potential to write a very good article. For the rest of season 1 good sources are harder to find. -- 109.78.194.208 (talk) 20:41, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Braga mentioned the HP Lovecraft book The Tomb and suggested it as a visual reference for the set designers. It was the cover of edition published by Ballantine Books specifically.[4]

The Tomb and Other Tales. By H.P. Lovecraft. New York, NY: Ballantine Books; 1970; ISBN 0-345-33661-5, Paperback.

The cover art was by Michael Whelan, it showed a body cocooned in webbing. It and several other images used as covers for that series of Lovecraft books, were extracted from a larger piece of artwork called "LOVECRAFT'S NIGHTMARE A" which can be seen at the artists website. -- 109.76.142.42 (talk) 20:53, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

TrekCore reviewed the Season 1 Bluray including the special features, and had some comments this documentary. They thought it was a fascinating and picked out quotes from Berman "it's very difficult to make a pile of goo the bad guy" and Dawson talking about the challenge of "directing alien linguine".[5] Noting it here because it might be easier to reference TrekCore instead of the documentary directly. TrekCore also posted a gallery of 310 screencaptures from the 30 minute documentary.[6] It is weird to see how they made the alien webbing using melted plastic wrap.[7]

Editors who don't have access to the Bluray sources might be able to search the web for the "vox sola bts" and find a copy of the video in a Scott Bakula Facebook fan group. You might find it on other free video sites, (Dailymotion "Star Trek Enterprise Season 01 Extra - On The Set") but those sorts of links go dead quite quickly and of course Wikipedia cannot and should not use those kinds copyright-violating video links as references.

Ultimately the existence of this documentary means we have more background information on this episode than almost any other episode and there's lots more potential to improve this article. I might even get around to doing it myself eventually. -- 109.76.132.93 (talk) 00:16, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Episode title explained

The episode is titled "Vox Sola" meaning lone voice in Latin. (It can also be translated as "The only voice" because translation can be subjective, but the intention seems pretty clear.)

The episode page on TrekToday mentions this.[8] TrekToday also links to another article[9](the link was broken but the correct link was guessable) which mentions that the episode had been listed StarTrek.com as "Vox Solis".[10] I was aware of this previous title but I deliberately did not add it to the article. I did not want to rely too heavily on TrekToday as a source, and the archive copy of the StarTrek.com page they were pointing to had already been corrected.
In theory "Vox Solis" can be translated as "Voice of the Sun" but that does not make much sense, the intention is not clear, also since the source did not mention the translation this gets closer to original research.

Memory Alpha the Star Trek wiki episode page for Vox Sola [11] claims that "Vox Solis" was merely a grammar mistake. Based on that and the fact that when pretentious people try to use Latin in English they almost always get the grammar wrong, I deliberately did not add any mention of "Vox Solis" because I felt it was trivial and also leading readers down an unhelpful dead end. Another editor, Starspotter added the detail about "Vox Solis" to the article,[12] but I don't think it should be included.

Memory Alpha also mentioned that "The Needs of the One" had been used as a title for the episode, based on early scripts and tags on costumes. If we can find good enough sources I would like to mention that earlier title. -- 109.76.129.26 (talk) 07:39, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Great research anon, lets hold off on including this until there is better source. Star Spotter (Talk) 23:41, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you.[13]

I've been lucky researching sources about Enterprise, and most of it has been TrekToday combined with the Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive to fix dead links. The Magazine rack also from the Internet Archive has been helpful too but it takes a lot more time to find things. Eventually I might even go through the old Star Trek magazines I have in storage. Takes time but one source leads to another. Thanks for your edits too. -- 109.76.142.42 (talk) 15:04, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

The 2022 rewatch and review from Keith DeCandido at Tor.com included the original title of the script "The Needs of the One" and it is a reliable source so I was finally able to mention it in the Production section without needing to go on a quixotic quest.[14] Yay! -- 109.78.204.126 (talk) 01:34, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Ratings

Trekweb discuss the overnight fast ratings/preliminary numbers for Enterprise "keeping UPN squarely in the fourth place position ahead of Fox's sit-coms"[15] which were reported by Zapt2it[16].

Trekweb explains the final ratings[17] and that the show was getting better ratings than the wrestling "for the first time in a quite a while". (Note1: They used The Hollywood Reporter as their source but I coudln't find a copy of that, but the final rating of 3.4/6 it matches what we know from TV Tango link[18] and the audience of 5.4 million, matches what we can see from the LA Times links[19] #82 Enterprise 5.40 million. Note2: Trekweb mention a column called "Programming Insider" from MediaWeek, but the archive URL for that is no use either, because the column was published at the same URL each week and there was no Archived copy captured for that week specifically.)
Among sci fi or fantasy genre shows that week X-Files was top (7.78 million), Alias, Dark Angel (season 2 finale, ultimately the series finale), Smallville, then Enterprise, followed by Charmed, Buffy, blah blah etc.
Trekweb also note that Enterprise was particularly strong with certain demographics, it jumps to 3rd place ahead of Smallville if you look only at adults in the 18-49 demo, and in the males 18-49 demographic it was in first place in "beating all networks with a 3.3/11 rating." Variety said the same thing: "UPN’s “Enterprise” won the 8 o’clock hour in men 18-49 (3.3/11)"[20] but without all the necessary extra explanation for it to start to make much sense.
From reading all this and articles from Variety[21] Smallville would seem to be a notable competitor to Enterprise, as the WB and UPN networks jockey for 4th place, but it is not a like-for-like comparison and Smallville was on Tuesdays, and Enterprise on Wednesdays so viewers could watch both if they wanted. Anyway I did the digging but still nothing in particular jumps out as important to highlight or provide context alongside the Nielsen ratings for this episode Vox Sola, but I include my notes here in case I maybe I want to revisit it later, or anyone else wants to dig into it. -- 109.78.201.237 (talk) 06:39, 6 April 2022 (UTC)