There are some that say ENT hurt the ST franchise, and that the New Trek movies are here to revive things. Well if you want to know where they got the idea for the Romulan ship in the new Star Trek movie, watch ENT: Babel One and you'll see it. They practically copied the ship from the TV episode and made it 100 X larger. So much for ENT not adding anything to ST or being off the beaten path.
Those who hate ENT don't have the slightest clue what it's really about and why the episodes are done the way they are. Berman is Roddenberry Junior, it doesn't get any better than that.
I really enjoy Enterprise and think it is third after TOS and DS9. I think the problem with Rick Berman is he stayed on too long. Even Gene Roddenberry only oversaw so much Trek, Berman was around for at least 18 years. Once Manny Coto was allowed to take over Enterprise after season three, the show became what it should have been all along.
First of all, guys likes Sussmann or the Reeves-Stevenses probably contributed as much to the fourth season as Coto. Second, it have been Berman and Braga who set up the show which includes all the characters, the Andorians, the Vulcans and so on. It is hard to imagine the Vulcan and Coalition of Planets three-parters in the last season without the slow buildup done by B&B in the former seasons.
Now it's Berman was around too long. This is precious. Do you people even try to enjoy the shows, or do you flip channels based on who the producers are?
People are just analyzing the development and stagnation periods of the Star Trek franchise. Doesn't mean people don't watch the shows.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree that ENT has some decent-to-good content, but it also did have a lot of reused content and some very bland content. I'll take bland over silly (looking at you, 70% of Voyager), but still. The Human-Vulcan-Andorian relations was indeed the best of ENT, along with, as you said, those Klingon episodes; but the formation of federation ethics and alliances was very sparse before series 4. They mostly focused on the technological birth of the federation, rather than the socio-political birth of the federation in s1/s2... and that's not enough to justify the premise. Technology is there to serve the story, not the other way around. (and it did have less allegorical content than say, TNG, at least intentionally so)
I do not follow you here either. The amount of technobabble in ENT was not just below the level of VOY but even below the level of TNG and DS9. There is no story at all that depicts the "technological birth of the Federation". The Daedalus, seemingly the first Federation starship is mentioned in the last episode and all the episodes that actually deal with the slow formation of the Federation, i.e. Andorian Incident, Shadows of P'Jem, Cease Fire and whenever Soval appears, are about people (not to mention that T'Pol is always on the ship and that her relation with Archer reflects this theme as well) and politics. You also might have missed episodes like Dear Doctor and Cogenitor which are about the slow formation of Federation ethics. Perhaps you refer to the beginning of the second season which leans a bit towards technology with the Romulan minefield and then the automatic repair station but even these seemingly technology-heavy episodes never go nearly as far as some VOY episodes in which technology saves the day. Would you mind to point out which episodes are too techy?
No doubt some sit around with notebook taking note of each show and analyzing them to the nth degree. Probably even know if the hair stylist changed. I believe some folks around here believe they know more than the people who did the shows.
I remember sitting in a group of a dozen friend and family, watching each episode intensely, completely pulling it apart during commercials, discussing the good and the bad. Loads of fun.
That Romulan ship was a slightly modifed reuse of a guest-ship-of-the-week from Voyager. The internal colour scheme, consoles, exposed pipes and cables everywhere, are noticably similar to those on the Narada, tho.
I couldn't agree more Right again! And don't think for a minute that all their criticisms (nit picking and complaining depending on your POV) didn't play a significant role in the series premature cancellation and the a major reason why we are getting the pablum feed to us in JJ Abrams' Trek. Truly a disappointment. Note: There is no such thing as bad Trek, it's just that some Trek is better than others.
Smallville had an equally bad online reception to that Enterprise got, yet it went ten seasons and smashed records. TPTB couldn't care less what angry internet fans think, only what makes them money.
People say that because it's true. Whether or not airing a TV series with declining ratings to the point that it's cancelled does damage to a franchise isn't debatable; it does. Nor is whether nuTrek has revived the profitability of Star Trek for the studio; it simply has.
Yep, as Jim Rome (a sports talk show host in the US) says...if someone says it isn't about the money...it's about the money.
By this line of reasoning airing the third season of TOS did damage Trek. Business executives are not infallible gods. Despite the bad ratings of TOS about fourty years ago Paramount still makes money from it. Rating have nothing to do with DVD sales and streaming stuff like Netflix which become more and more important. Furthermore ratings are influenced by the time slots in which a series airs. We all know the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of putting the third season of TOS on the bad friday night slot. Unlike the last season of TOS the last season of ENT was good and is even liked by people who are not particularly into the show. That's all that matters. If a studio cannot sell the good stuff it produces this is not a quality but a marketing problem.
I think Enterprise had the potential to be the best, but it never came anywhere close to it. It was too caught up in the mythos of Star Trek canon (and rewriting it too). They should have gone back to the Golden Age of science fiction writing for stories (the whole theme of exploration and encountering new life and civilizations) with maybe one or two two-parters each season that delved into official canon (meeting the Andorians, Klingons, etc., etc.). Forget the whole Temporal Cold War nonsense (although a Dr. Who crossover or introducing a similar time-traveling type character who made an appearance or two each season (ala Q) might have been cool!) and the idiotic Xindi arc.