I've been re-watching Enterprise on Netflix, with better quality I'm picking up on details I never noticed before...haven't watched the series entirely since first run... This time around there's something that just keeps on bugging me...the LCD monitors! In today's world these props are so primitive! It amazes me that the newest Trek show features an element that to me, immediately dates it. We're right now in an era with paper thin retina touch screen devices...interestingly TNG era screens don't have the same effect on me, maybe because they still seem futuristic. Anyways, just amazing how fast technology has progressed, I don't think the same could be said of TNG 10 years after. The screens on Enterprise were bulky, back light was visible, and obviously low resolution (evident on pixilation on closeups). Anyone know what make or model they were?
I agree that TNG's smooth Okudagram control panels look more timeless. But then again the point of ENT was that this is 22nd century technology and if you watch In a Mirror Darkly you will notice that LCD monitors look in-universe wise older than the technology of TOS.
When Enterprise first aired, wasn't everyone complaining that the NX-01 and it's bridge looked too advanced to be 90 years before TOS, considering the technology used in TOS had knobs and buttons and stuff. As I recall it was a big uproar amongst the die hard TOS fans.
I don't think there was quite that big of an uproar about the bridge and its knobs and buttons. I think a number of people had commented that the back area of it could have been closed off as a separate room and asked why did Archer have a ready room when Kirk didn't (the general feeling being that the producers were just used to having one on TNG, DS9*, and VOY, IIRC). I do recall that some thought the bridge displays were more overdone than anything else, but by the fourth season not only were they more toned down but had adopted a color scheme closer to that of TOS. *Technically, a ready room is just a captain's office and Sisko did have one on Deep Space Nine, even if it wasn't called that.
Unless you wanted gears, pulleys and levers on ENT I don't see how there's any foundation to complain. TOS was made in the 60's. The perception of the future has changed from then to now. Heck TNG looks dated as all heck as my cell phone has more advanced features than them at times. I really had no issues with Enterprise's set. It was advanced looking at the time. Their engine room especially looked nice. A big scary piece of equipment you're not quite sure what it does and all. They could've been more clever with the names. More than polarize the hull(shields), phase pistols(phasers), photonic torpedos(photon torpedoes) to be sure though.