Starting from the beginning--when does ENT get good?

Archer is a trained pilot and Trip is a trained engineer (what about the diplomatic skills of Scotty, O'Brien or B'Elanna?). They have not gone through a holistic Starfleet Academy education, had any diplomacy courses ... and above all nothing on how to deal with aliens because, guess what, humankind has no experience with aliens except the Vulcans.
They have no textbooks to study, they have to write the textbooks. As you are criticizing the first season you seem to skipped over the episodes that deal with what will later be called the Prime Directive.

So I think that this character criticism misfires as it is oblivious to the actual lessons these inexperiences people learn on their journeys. Last time I checked this is what Trek is partly about.

 

Well, first, you're wrong about them having no experience with aliens. It's mentioned in S4 that there are numerous alien species that live and work on Earth. So much so that there is an anti-alien group that wants to kick them out.

But even before that, we have programs like the Medical Exchange, which brought Phlox to Earth. So they're there, even if we don't see them.

If you want to say that humans had no experience with aliens outside of Earth, where humans have "home court advantage, that's more fair to say. Though not absolute, as we have the freighter crews that run the cargo spacelanes and have more experience than most.

The less said about the development of the Prime Directive the better. Most of that came from the execrable "Dear Doctor" and Phlox' phony "dillema".

 

ST: ENT, like all series before it, has much of its storylines based in character development and growth.

The friendship of Spock and Kirk - Spock's sometimes begrudging acceptance of his human half. Data's quest for his humanity - Picard's personal introspection. Sisko's personal spiritual journey - Odo's search for his roots. The Maquis' transformation from renegades to trusted colleagues - Paris's struggle to overcome his dishonorable discharge from Starfleet. In the case of Archer, his growth from only representing and preserving his father's legacy to the acceptance of his place in history and representing all of humanity during its first steps into the galaxy.

Archer's initial impulses to blame the Vulcan's for holding back his father's warp engine project are somewhat childish, but this reflects humanity to some extent. Archer was chosen to be the first NX captain not only because of piloting skill, but because of his passion rooted in his father's accomplishments and his drive to see his father's dreams come true.

Transformation - from what we were to what we will become is at the root of all ST.

 

Actually it came from the Vulcans. It was established in ENT (and before that in First Contact, really) that the Vulcans had a policy to avoid contact with pre-warp cultures long before Starfleet existed. For the most part, when Archer chose to avoid interference over the course of the series, he was following T'Pol's advice.

 

Dear Doctor is actually quite a good episode, except for that horrible resolution.

 

In my mind it is one of the best ones of the show. The slow development of what was later called the Prime Directive was one of the best elements of the show and the fact that so many fans still have an issue with a counterintutive ethical rule shows how sublime it is.
I also appreciate that the characters seriously mess up in the show. There is no superhero Kirk who can talk computers to death or polymath Picard, there are only folks who excel in their specific discipline but apart from that are fairly ordinary. Of course this is not per se an asset, many fans miss the slightly theatrical element of Trek which they got with above-average, literary characters like Kirk and Picard.

 

I'll let you in on a little secret, OP. It doesn't.

It's good from the beginning.

 

This ^

 

Thanks for your enthusiasm, HR!

 

Wonderful analysis and perspective. I agree!

 

HopefulRomantic- your last long post summed up how I feel as well.

 

I'm hoping to get into this very soon. I watched it when it first aired but I didn't like it much and didn't watch every episode. I remember liking Trip, T'Pol and Dr. Phlox but I hated Archer and I barely remember what the rest of the cast looked like let alone acted like. It always came across as a poorly conceived idea that didn't know whether it wanted to be a prequel to TOS or another incarnation of TNG/VOY.

Needless to say the series finale is burned into my brain for the rest of eternity. Even with me not being a fan of the series I felt sorry for the cast and the fans of Enterprise. Hopefully I'll manage to appreciate the series upon my second viewing.

 

Good way to approach the next viewing, so I applaud you for keeping an open mind. Remember, there are stinkers from every series - TOS and TNG included - so take what you can from them and move on to the next episode

I also agree with your assessment of TATV (the last episode). Unfortunately one cannot un-see things.

Let us know how your next experience viewing ST:ENT goes.

 

I certainly will. Expect me to pop up in this forum from time to time

 

Season four.

The first two seasons were poor with occasional highpoints. I really disliked seaon three and the whole Xindi arc (a lot of people liked it), but after the Nazi season opening for season four it got good. Very good in places.

Avoid as much as possible of the temporal cold war...

 

That was certainly the producers' policy. The whole time-travel aspect was forced on them by the network over their objections, so they dealt with it infrequently in season 1, barely used it in season 2, rebooted it as the Xindi saga in season 3, and then hastily wrapped it up for good at the start of season 4 (even though a time-travel war waged by factions from the future should logically have no clear endpoint).

 

I liked yours...