I officially began my journey through all Star Trek on October 9th...

Like a fungus.

 

Good thing they spice the song up in season 3.

 

Apologies if this is a spoiler, I forget what episode it's from. But there is a throwaway line somewhere involving the Time Traveling Federation future dude where he outright states that Hoshi and Mayweather are completely and utterly unimportant and are totally irrelevant to the timeline or the future. Yeah, they put that in there. Honestly the only really good Hoshi story that I remember is Through a Mirror Darkly. I don't think I could even name a scene that Mayweather was in after that idiotic "gravity sweet spot" bit from Broken Bow. He manages to be more boring and invisible than Chakotay.

 

Well it's not like they really made much use of Mayweather's background except i the odd episode. Hoshi got slighlty more attention than Mayweather.

 

Like I said, Mayweather's whole job was to just sit there and literally stare off into space.

 

Oh that'll change.

 

I say this, season 3, the one that you're going though right now, is the best of ENT.

 

It still amazes me what both the writers and Jolene Blalok managed to do with T'Pol over this series. From the start she should have been horrible. An adolescent Nerds catsuited alien fantasy with no redeeming values. Being played by a hot model. There is no way the character should have worked. And yet she ends up with one of the most interesting and compelling character arcs in all of Trek. And that carries through all the way to the end.

You're probably closing on the end of Season 3. Be warned the tone and format changes a bit for season 4. They changes showrunners with Braga and Bergman being mainly isolated ( save the very end /shudder). The Coto's took over as showrunners. They did an excellent job, and I wish we could have gotten more. Season 4 switches from a full season storyline to shorter 2-3 episode connected story arcs. And it dials the nostalgic nerd porn up to 11.

 

Much as I generally dislike the whole series, I agree with this assessment exactly. I facepalmed when I first saw pictures of T'Pol, but Jolene did wonders with her.

 

I am doing my first watch of Enterprise too and I am just a few episodes into season 4 so right around you!

I generally agree on season 3. It was a big improvement (from what I thought was a soul-crushingly boring season 2, although I did enjoy aspects of season 1). It goes big, smash, pulp extravaganza but at least there is continuity, there is risk, excitement, character growth. Ultimately I think Enterprise began to rely on action too much for my taste in season 2 and in season 3 this definitely continues. However, at least in season 3 the stakes feel higher.
Archer goes so dark, though! What a growth from the naive optimist of season 1!
The Xindi attack (i.e. 9/11) took its toll on that character. I find it quite fascinating actually.

But yeah. The end of season 3. Um. Let's just say...space Nazis. That is what they chose and that is what you get.

 

The first three episodes of Season 4 are the real (and in my opinion better) ending of Season 3. Sure, the space Nazis are kind of lame, but it works better than the big kaboom at the end of Zero Hour. (I didn't like how they abruptly wrapped up a certain long running Enterprise plot though. What a letdown.)

I liked the rest of season 4, it's definitely above average for Enterprise, but some of the episodes feel padded with action (because of mini-arcs budgets I'm sure), and the Season focuses too much on Space Opera politics instead of interesting scifi concepts. And we shall NOT speak of that last "episode". It does not exist. It's fantasy. It did NOT happen.

 

I have heard so much hatred for that final episode of Enterprise that I am hoping that when I finally get to it, it simply can't be as bad as it has been hyped up to be.
We shall see.....

 

As I recall, when they did the space Nazi finale, they had no idea how they'd resolve it the following season, and the new showrunner had to figure out WTF to do.

 

IMHO, it insults:
Fans of Enterprise
Fans of TNG
Fans of certain TNG characters
Fans of Trip Tucker
Fans of a certain TNG episode
Ron Moore
Fans of good writing
Good writers
People with common sense
People
Television
Science fiction

But that may just be me.

 

Oh...dear...

 

Rick Berman called it "A Valentine to fans."
Jolene Blalock is reported to have responded, "Yeah, it's like saying I love you with an assf**k."

But don't let that color your expectations.

 

Ouch.

Well, you are definitely helping to lower my expectations!

 

I saw it for the first time last year when I did a full watch of enterprise after giving up in season two during its original run. I thought, as bad as Enterprise is, there is no way the finale can be as bad as people say.

I was wrong.

 

Well with the dread of the series finale on the horizon, I am nevertheless really enjoying most of season 4 so far. The Vulcan trilogy was great. Reminded me of DS9 Bajoran arcs a bit. And great to flesh out the backstory of the Vulcans (and explain some of the less appealing aspects of Vulcan society we've seen so far on this series). But I think it is actually really good to have this sense of progress on Vulcan. It's not only humans who grow and change their culture over time - Vulcans aren't a static society, they seem to have rediscovered the Kir'Shara and evolved culturally into the Vulcans we meet in Spock's day. Good 'backstorying'.

 

Hoshi is too good for Archer.

 

After a season under Coto's guidance, with some really interesting stuff and some satisfying TOS fanservice, TWTV was a startling, and mean SHOCKING, reminder of just how BAD Berman and Braga were.