The Branching Point occurs well after those events. The TCW occurred before Kirk by, I don't know, decades, a century. ETA quote
DSC has never been in a position where it needed rescuing… At least not in the way ENT did. DSC has never had the axe wavering above it, while ENT felt that for much of its run.
Still doesn’t change the fact that when it comes to broadcast tv, what happened with Discovery after airing on CBS only to air on streaming from that point on was the equivalent of TNG after the first season being only accessible on PPV. TBF, that's the comic book world. Characters have been killed off and resurrected all of the time. That's what they do over there. It was building a connection right up until ANiS. After that, the ratings were never that high again. I would argue that a brand new cast member was exactly what they needed then. Unfortunately, they were waiting until S5 and that was too late. What do you think having Discovery jumping to the 32nd century for S3 was? To their credit, then figured it out then and there. It if was those that were in charge of Enterprise, they’d only now be planning a jump to the 32nd century, along with all of the promotions and new crew additions that happened. And there no shame to say that DIS was rescued either. Worf was brought onto DS9 to rescue it. Seven and her catsuit were brought on to rescue VOY. And for whatever reason, it was decided a season long arc was the answer to rescue ENT instead of the tried and true method of a new addition to the main cast. Oh, and less usage of the decon chamber, while giving T'Pol a plunging neckline with a new catsuit.
Tpol looked better in the standard Blues uniform than her cat suits. I just want a telling of the Romulan War. The book series was.. ... crap.. ( havent read after 2161 stuff, so no hit on Chris) Doesn't have to be with the Enterprise crew, some new people would be fine, but a nice movie/limited series wouls be nice.
Except, that ignores how the market has changed. ENT was on broadcast TV competing with other shows and not holding up. DSC was built to come in to the streaming market and compete there. Was it? I would argue that it had good will as being Star Trek and then the low brow style comedy and very odd character choices in ANiS led to that good will being eroded, which is difficult in Season 2 of a show. In addition, they rarely utilized their secondary cast, like Mayweather or Hoshi, so why would a new character help when they have characters there to expand upon?
At it's start you had some franchise fatigue because second generation Trek had been running nonstop since 1987 and for all seven seasons of DS9 there were two Treks on the air. 52 episodes a year, every two years an at best average film. Trek wasn't special. You had writing that took no real chances and felt like warmed up leftovers. There was no real grit. Nobody got fucking killed until the third season. Where No Man Has Gone Before killed nine people in Act 1. Space is meant to be an adversity and it's just a stroll down the street. Terra Nova is pretty much Miri. Oasis is Shadowplay and maybe even a bit of Forbidden Planet. Oh look it's the dipshit Ferengi. No matter what you think about the design of ship or sets I'm sure there were some hated the fact that it didn't look like a primitive version of the TOS ship and sets. You also had a lot of other good science-fiction shows come in during it's run, like Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Doctor Who and Firefly. You had Star Wars prequels come in. Nobody cared about Star Trek. I would have liked things a bit more gritty, more gnarly. I like the astronaut vibe the show has but it wouldn't have been my choice. I'd have liked more issues, more moral arguments. At the time it was 150 years away and humanity was closer to us than the perfect people of TNG so you could have these fallible people learn some lessons and do allegories about racism through xenophobia, or challenge views and fears about sexual identity and sexual attraction just with more visibility of minorities. but they just sat on their hands and write shit like a dumb fucking episode about trip getting pregnant. I think you could still do the Temporal Cold War but you can't write something like that without some idea of knowing where you're going or what the point is and why people should care. I would bin most of season 1 save "The Andorian Incident" and "Cold Front" and move them right up the front, get back that Michael Piller open door policy for scripts, get in a Manny Coto type several years early. I think if the show had come out of the gate running in focus you wouldn't need season 3 and 4 reboots. It was like going one extreme to the other. There could have been a middle ground where you had some mild continuity and do your one and dones and have them be about something. I like this quote Ron Moore had about Voyager and I think it applies to Enterprise: You can put things into that context because they don’t threaten the audience the way it does if you set it in contemporary Los Angeles. Wrap it in science fiction, wrap it in STAR TREK and you can do just about anything you want. You can have flat out racism on television. You can have real thoughtful discussions on racism and what are at its roots. But you have to choose to do it. You have to want to talk about those things. You have to have a point of view. You have to have something to say. Are you telling me STAR TREK can’t afford to fall on its face periodically because it is trying too hard? I’d rather have the show try too hard, and fail, then just not try at all and just kind of settle for more of the same. I think that is where we are. We are settling for more of the same. It’s just very safe story telling. In the end, the show got 4 seasons and 98 episodes and that's much much more than shows like Journeyman or Awake or Crusade or Odyssey 5 or Minority Report or Firefly got.
One part of the three isn't uploaded to YouTube but it's a great one from the series' Bluray extras. Plus the first footage shown is the Gazelle Speech. So there's no way you can't win.
Because Moore's frustration with UPN about their 'play it safe' attitude and how unrealistic Star Trek Voyager became is well known.
"Star Trek Voyager" was unrealistic by playing it safe? "Voyager" played it safe as much as the other Trek shows. Including "Star Trek Deep Space Nine". Ron Moore should have taken a gander at the latter. One of the most frustrating aspects of "Deep Space NIne" is that Moore and his fans kept bragging about how daring it was. And yet, every time it had the opportunity to take the series on a dangerous path, it back tracked. Always. The whole coup thing from Season 4 didn't last beyond two episodes. There was never any follow up or consequences to Sisko and Garak's plot to drag the Romulans into the Dominion War. After the revelation of Section 31's plot to commit genocide against the Founders, this arc regarding a Klingon Civil War popped up out of nowhere, surprising actor Robert O'Reilly. "Playing it safe" is the motto for the entire Trek franchise. To accuse one series in particular of playing it safe strikes me as hypocritical on a major scale.
But it depends on the degree and the timing. TNG played it safe, somewhat, and had the occasional dangerous cliff hanger but then a return to the status quo. But, TNG was also the first so it gets a pass because it set the stage. DS9 did some things different, and worked hard to embrace some consequences, but not always consistently. VOY and ENT were trading on familiarity with the TNG formula but lacked the characters or commitment to what made them more unique, i.e. a stranded ship and being a prequel. It's not hypocritical to look at shows that had the stated goal of being different by their own admission and then failed to live up to that premise because they played it safe.
And CBS was confident in what they were producing could be aired on broadcast tv. A show that was doing the things that ENT didn’t or wouldn’t do. Only to find that the audience wasn’t receptive to it, and forced them to retool DIS by having them jump to the 32nd century, far away from the constraints of canon. Thus, indirectly vindicating Enterprise that its non-BSG direction or the use of the decon chamber or the show’s theme song or not using Star Trek in its main title for the first two seasons weren’t the problem with the show per se. Its that Star Trek is synonymous with competence and the audience don’t want to watch an incompetent crew or incompetent writing. Ironically, ENT was able to get away with some incompetency, but only because the prequel concept allowed them to have an otherwise competent crew that did not have all the answer yet. Its also why ANiS and "Precious Cargo" were panned, since they weren’t seen as competent stories. Simply because Mayweather and Hoshi clearly were not being used, and there was a devotion to a big 3 strategy in the vein of TOS. The least that could be done if they weren’t going to be developed any further – which was a mistake discussed over and over, since they both could have developed into very interesting characters considering their backgrounds - is to kill them off or have the Xindi mission affect them to such a degree that they no longer worked in Starfleet upon returning home. I mean, it was a prequel. It was established in the show that the exploration class was separate from the military class during this time. Why not have it hit home to the viewers during the Xindi arc that Starfleet basically sent astronauts into the line of fire instead of a full-on military force to deal with the threat and they weren’t prepared for this since its not their expertise? They had a bunch of faceless crewmembers die over the season, and losing either Mayweather or Hoshi or both would have driven that message home. Finally, the new character indicates a breath of fresh air, and with it a change in the show’s directions and that the audience should tune in for both. You don’t think it’s a good idea for ENT? Tell it to those that wanted to make Shran part of the main cast in S5. And also tell those that added Worf to DS9 and Seven to VOY that they were wrong to do so too.
I will take your word for it. Because that's a new take I have never seen before. Ok. They were. I did not find Worf enjoyable on DS9, though he was less insufferable on that show than TNG. Seven is...not my favorite character and I find her addition a detraction than an addition. And Shran is annoying. Starts out as a racist belligerent and then is treated more as an ally than the Vulcans. WTF?
What would have saved Enterprise: Better Writing. Period. The premise was good, the cast was good, the Vfx were going into pure CGI and could do more interesting things, so that was good. The back office stuff? Crap. A producer and network that didn't want to veer away from what was done, and didn't want to try new or interesting things. That translated into sub par or even recycled scripts. Maybe the show runners, or writers wanted to do this or that, but weren't allowed to. But in the end, it was the behind the scenes people that torpedo'd the show with sub par effort. The show didn't need a "Refresh" with a person being killed, or new person joining. Kind of had 2 refreshes with the Xindi 3rd season, and the mini arcs 4th season. I'm an Enterprise fan, and I hardly ever rewatch the xindi season. 1,2, 4. Owell, thats 20 years ago, no much can be done.
It was an interview he did back around 2000 when asked why he left Voyager after three episodes. It was part of a whole discussion about TNG, DS9 and Voyager and at the time his experience on Voyager was still pretty raw so he let rip. Those episodes you brought up about not having consequences are not good examples because they never intended those stories to go beyond those episodes. This is no comeuppance for Sisko. He did a bad thing and got away with it. As for no consequences, I think the Dominion War, the exploration of characters and backstories, the changing politics of the Alpha Quadrant, and the story of Bajor, the Prophets and Pah-Wraiths all show growth and change.
That's a big assumption. We don't know any of that for certain. As a theory it certainly holds some weight, but we don't know that the larger part of the audience was unreceptive or that the jump to the 32nd Century was a move to free the show from canon constraints. I'm not saying you're wrong. There is some weight to what you say and certainly signs of retooling based on audience reaction as early as the beginning of season 2, but equally the jump to the 32nd century could just as easily be attributed to the creatives behind the show wanting to take things in a new direction.
Which is what it comes down to. There is a lot of assumptions around why ENT was less positively received and how DSC made it's own choices.
DOCTOR WHO (2005) premiered in late March of 2005, which ENTERPRISE was already canceled at that time. So we can't really use them as a comparison. However, you do bring up a good point... there was a LOT of other scifi shows ENTERPRISE had to compete with. TNG never really had to compete in that regard. It's part of the reason why it took off as well as it did. It's easy to stand out in a crowd when the crowd is less than the amount of fingers on one hand. DS9 was fantastic in part because it was left relatively alone by the suits. It was never a flagship show, or the launcher of a network. This actually helped their quality, though not their popularity at the time. VOYAGER suffered the same problem ENTERPRISE did... too much network interference. But they did not have quite as many shows to compete against at the time. I think two factors that hurt ENTERPRISE the most was the network interference AND the amount of scifi competition. As stated, there were a LOT of scifi shows they had to fight with for attention. And this is before the streaming era where a viewer can watch a dozen shows at the same time and the network still not feel threatened. Couple all that with the widespread movement away from broadcast tv, and I can honestly say that ENTERPRISE had an uphill and losing battle from its inception. I personally think Berman was right... there should have been at least a year off before starting a new show. You can't miss something if it's never gone. And if we're being honest, the name STAR TREK proves it has a LOT of staying power, given ENTERPRISE was able to make it to 4 years and almost 100 episodes.