Would ENT work better with Archer being more like Coulson?

I just never bought Bakula as a pure Kirk type action guy. I would have loved to have seen someone who is more like an accountant in his mannerisms, or he could been bit more quirky.

 

Coulson? I have no idea who that is, or why this isn't in Enterprise forum.

 

I don't know who that is either - what show is that person from?

 

^^ Avengers or Agents of Shield. I'm assuming.

I never thought they were going with a Kirk vibe with Bakula.

 

In other words, we still don't know who OP is talking about. It's not any character Bakula has played from what I can tell, and Wikipedia gives me no clues to a fictional Coulson.

 

He's a rather popular character from Marvel's Avengers movies and the Agents of SHIELD TV series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Coulson.
I can't really say much about the character because I'm not an Avengers fan, so I never saw the movie and he hasn't come up in conversations with friends who did either.

That being said I think Enterprse would have done much better if Archer had been written/portrayed in a wide number of ays other than what we actually got. Or better yet ditch Archer and make Reed the captain.

 

I saw the first few episodes of SHIELD and it was very dull and that Coulson character looked like a man waiting for his proctologist so he seems as dull as Archer was.

 

Archer went through the same kind of personality changes as Janeway due to bad writing. It wasn't Scott's fault.

 

I think they were right to try to do an adventure-type captain.

 

I know I'm in the minority, but I think Archer was well-suited for ENT. As captain of Earth's first Warp 5 starship, he was a trailblazer and the lessons he learned (both good & bad) were passed on to benefit later captains like Kirk, Picard, etc. I think he was supposed to be less perfect and polished than his successors, IMO.

As far as Bakula, I think he did a great job conveying Archer's initial sense of wonder and naiveté when dealing with the unknown as well as eventually dismay, but he doesn't do "fierce" very well. He really can't "bring the thunder down" convincingly with his naturally gentle voice. In that sense, he was miscast for the role, but the writers could have played to Bakula's strength by having Archer be an easygoing captain that generally keeps his cool and let others like Reed and Mayweather handle all the action chores.

 

I'm in the minority with you!

I thought Archer was wonderfully flawed. And he was very naive, which was something he had to get over during the Xindi arc. I think Enterprise was initially meant to be a ship of exploration, thus Archer as captain. Had it been a more militaristic vessel, Reed would have been a better choice for captain.

I think the crew really had to go through some growth when it became obvious that that the exploration mission had changed. Oh, and Archer had to navigate a lot of new and tricky moral territory without benefit of the Prime Directive. Granted, we know that the other captains were known to bend the Prime Directive , or totally ignore it at times - yet it DID exist. Archer was on his own, and he didnt appear to be the most experienced captain anyway.

 

I did right off, this thread is a hypothetical of a character from another series being transplanted into a Trek seies, we've actually done quite a few of these Melakon through the years here.

Coulson is a very calm and confident leader, who takes adversity in stride. A low drama kind of guy, in a high drama environment. There's no expectation on his part that he's going to be in complete control. As a starship Captain, someone similar would have been interesting, and perhaps superior to the character of Archer.

With it's phase canons, and torpedoes and lot's (and lot's) of hand weapons ... what are you talking about?

It could have been a complete unarmed civilian vessel, but it wasn't.

And that is one of the greatest flaws in the original concept of the character. Starfleet is a large enough organization that it possesses multiple Admirals, later we see multiple (slower) starships, and we are told that Archer is a test pilot who apparently has no experience commanding a large vessel. And yet he is the one chosen to be captain of the Enterprise. He wasn't transferred from command of a one of the existing starships, he basically comes out of no where.

 

I think Archer was intended to be a flawed character that exhibited less development than Kirk. Presumably, Archer would be far less exposed to other species so he would have less history, training and experience from which to draw.

However, I have never thought the role suited Scott Bakula very well. That's not to say that Bakula's a bad actor. He just didn't have the command presence for the role. At times, he just wasn't believable.

 

Coulson's a bit too cartoonish for my liking, especially on Agents of SHIELD. He's comically boring with appeal built on that and his "I'm a hopeless loser" shtick. Granted, he has more screen presence than most the Enterprise cast (but that ain't hard) but no, I don't think Enterprise would have benefitted by making Archer more like him.

 

Well, that's great that you and others seem to understand it. I've not seen broadcast television since the early 2000s, so my cultural awareness in that regard isn't where it should be. But OP still hasn't come in to explain what he's talking about.

 

Given the OP talks about a character who is an "accountant type" it most likely is Agent Coulson of the Marvel movies and Agents of SHIELD he is referring to. The character is basically an intentional "boring loser" with a bland personality who is always wearing the same suit regardless what he's doing. In fact, one episode of SHIELD even showed that he had multiple identical suits in his closet.

 

I'm currently rewatching Enterprise from the beginning, I'm almost at the end of season two right now. Archer gets angry..a lot..and I know it only gets worse in the next season.

 

I didn't get a Kirk vibe from Archer. On the other hand, no, I don't think Enterprise would have worked better had Archer been more like Coulson - a tactician, calm and collected, unflappable. I don't see how such a person would be put in command, or want command, of one of the first Earth starships. This was a beginning, a first. The captain would have been very eager for exploration. He really wouldn't have been a seasoned veteran of anything. After all, they had only had contact with a scant few alien species. Most of space was still the great unknown. The captain would be a green rookie that makes a lot of mistakes in comparison to Kirk and Picard. I can see a Coulson type of captain in a 23rd or 24th century starship, but not on a 22nd century one.

Enterprise would have been better had they made the whole show like the last season. Had they visited the various aliens we saw in TOS, showing first contact with these species, visiting locations we would see again later in Trek, and basically laying a foundation that TOS, TNG and DS9 would build upon, Enterprise would have been far more successful than it's 4 seasons allows for.

The Xindi arc was a mistake, in my opinion. A knee jerk reaction to 9/11. Depicting a 9/11 in space was the exact opposite of everything Trek was about. Trek was about a better future, a brighter tomorrow. Yes, there would be strife and conflict. Yes, there would be parallels and analogs to 20th and 21st Century issues, but the overall theme of Trek had always been that Humanity would overcome it's problems and build a brighter future.

They started Season 1 off with the whole Suliban and Temporal Cold War arc. That really didn't go anywhere and it was fed to the back burner with the Xindi. Changing horses in mid-stream is rarely successful.

My only complaint with Season 4 was it was too much in a short time. Ever episode or every other episode hearkened to TOS or TNG era Trek. Those nods and homages and out-right call outs should have been liberally sprinkled through the previous seasons. That would have made Enterprise more attractive to the hard core fans.

OK, that's not my only complaint. By the time Enterprise had come around, the well was running dry. The powers that be and the writing had gotten old and stale. They had gotten themselves into a rut as to what Trek was supposed to be and they couldn't get out of that mindset. Trek needed fresh ideas and fresh thinking. I pretty much hate the Trek 09 reboot, but they did hit on the right idea of new writers, new directors, a new powers that be.

I didn't have a problem with Archer or any of the crew. I had a problem with the writing and the creative mindset.

Actually, I hated the idea of a prequel series. I knew they would quickly paint themselves into a corner and have difficulty avoiding the pitfalls and landmines that come with continuity issues.

 

Thanks, that gives me a clue at least. Having no reference on the character, there wasn't any way I would know the personality in five seconds. Accountant type didn't really tell me much, that could be Ward Cleaver or Wally Cox.

 

He didn't come out of nowhere. His family connection to the Warp 5 engine aside, Archer was a senior command-division officer in the NX Program and was one of only a few on the shortlist to command the first NX-class starship. We don't know what made Starfleet ultimately decide on Archer, but it may have been that they deemed he was more willing to embrace the unknown or quickly adapt to changing situations than the other candidates (even if only slightly more). It may even have been because Archer wasn't afraid of no Vulcans or something.

And the Starfleet of Archer's day was a bit different back then. Although Starfleet ships and personnel were armed with weapons for self-defense purposes, it was probably closer to being like NASA. For an experimental exploration starship in 2151, Starfleet was probably looking for a captain that was more like the astronauts of old.