Yup, excellent point.
Why was Enterprise received so poorly?
- Thread starter dcm
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Depends on the accountantI thought "canceled" meant "huh, if we stop production on this it will help our tax reporting".
Not a really coherent post perhaps, this one, just some reactions on some off-hand remarks I found scattered throughout the last pages of this thread.
To be fair, in my (European) country 'Serbocroatian' is also still a fairly normal word to use, even though we know Serbia and Croatia are two distinct (European) countries, so that's not exclusively American.
I didn't like the transporter because it was too advanced for its era for humans to have (in my view). I didn't like the phase pistol, and polarized hull plating because it allowed the writers to basically write a story like it was TNG/DS9/VOY story and then just changing the terms a bit. ('No, this isn't the 24th century! Look! They don't have photon torpedoes, but photonic torpedoes. You see we've really done our homework, these guys are working with radically different technology!').
On the other hand, why change something that basically works well enough? I could see the rank pip system fall in that category. It's simple, and immediately clear to even a casual viewer how it works. Many things that work 'well enough' in real life don't change that much anymore, save for fashion perhaps.
That may be both a strong point and a weakness of Trek. When I was tired of Trek for a while, I turned to some other series that were different. No need for the story to Mean Something in a Larger Context, or conveying a Message. Just simple storytelling for the joy of telling (and listening to) stories. It was very refreshing for a change. After that, it was good to return to Trek.
To be fair, in my (European) country 'Serbocroatian' is also still a fairly normal word to use, even though we know Serbia and Croatia are two distinct (European) countries, so that's not exclusively American.
I didn't like the transporter because it was too advanced for its era for humans to have (in my view). I didn't like the phase pistol, and polarized hull plating because it allowed the writers to basically write a story like it was TNG/DS9/VOY story and then just changing the terms a bit. ('No, this isn't the 24th century! Look! They don't have photon torpedoes, but photonic torpedoes. You see we've really done our homework, these guys are working with radically different technology!').
On the other hand, why change something that basically works well enough? I could see the rank pip system fall in that category. It's simple, and immediately clear to even a casual viewer how it works. Many things that work 'well enough' in real life don't change that much anymore, save for fashion perhaps.
That may be both a strong point and a weakness of Trek. When I was tired of Trek for a while, I turned to some other series that were different. No need for the story to Mean Something in a Larger Context, or conveying a Message. Just simple storytelling for the joy of telling (and listening to) stories. It was very refreshing for a change. After that, it was good to return to Trek.
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I do like the rank pips quite a bit, think that was something the spin-offs/24th century shows improved on the original and it would have felt pretty awkward for a prequel to (have to) return to just stripes, let alone on sleeves, or try to come up with some third original marker. I guess stripes but where pips would be would be a makes sense compromise but not a big deal.
Exactly. If UPN was just going to make another show that basically had all the same elements as the previous show (but with different-but-similar names), then they might as well just have made more episodes of Voyager. Because there was nothing inherently different technology-wise than the previous show.
The thing about the rank pins is that thanks to this retcon, you now have rank pins in the 2150's, then sleeve ranks in the 2250's, and then back to rank pins in the 2350's. It's not a logical flow of development. Sure, one can come up with any manner of justification as to why it flip-flopped, but the bottom line is that it wasn't original because it was clearly a holdover from the previous 24th century-based shows.
Well, I actually liked their grappling hook, and that it had its limitations (for example, that it could miss). Or that at least in the beginning, they were very hesitant using the transporter (even if they shouldn't have had it at all, in my opionion) - unfortunately, that didn't last long of course.
My only issue with the pips is that it invariably makes TOS/TMP look like even more of an outlier. It basically shows that rank sleeve markings were a one off idea in the period of Starfleet, that never caught on and was just let go of it.
Makes sense though. It’s easier to check pips on the neckline at a glance than to count stripes on someone’s cuffs.
Fashion is often cyclical to some degree. Some trends come back after having been out of fashion for, say, 50 years. An in-universe justification of some mid-24st costume designer that checked some old 22nd century pictures and thought, 'actually those old rank pips on the neck were quite neat' would be enough.
Of course, I agree that the real reason probably was that they were a bit lazy and took that element straight from the 24th century shows.
Say what you like, but the amount of detail on screen generally in ENT is very high. Some thought has gone into the set design and quite obviously the uniforms. Even down to flipping command back to yellow like in TOS.
I don’t think it’s right to say the decision was lazy. It was a creative decision. Whether or not they made the right call is another matter.
Regardless, I don’t think it’s a biggie. Very much the least of ENTs various woes.
Yeah, sure, but… so what? It doesn’t actually affect anything. Maybe they flip back to cuffs in the 26th century? But, well, not to be rude but why does it matter?
I don’t see really how it’s anything to, as you said, have an ‘issue’ with.
I don’t think it’s right to say the decision was lazy. It was a creative decision. Whether or not they made the right call is another matter.
Regardless, I don’t think it’s a biggie. Very much the least of ENTs various woes.
Yeah, sure, but… so what? It doesn’t actually affect anything. Maybe they flip back to cuffs in the 26th century? But, well, not to be rude but why does it matter?
I don’t see really how it’s anything to, as you said, have an ‘issue’ with.
I do agree that considerable thought must have gone into the uniforms and into the sets more in general. I like that they're more 'workman-overall-like' than those later uniforms for example, giving off a more 'their technology is more primitive and needs more of a hands-on approach' vibe. Outfitted with pockets and such (which I'm sure the 24th century would have relabeled 'diminutive object retention technology' or some such terms had their uniforms had them). Similarly, I like how most doors don't open automatically and the sets in general have a more 'claustrophobic' or submarine feel, which, again, you would expect in the very first truly interstellar Starship back in an era when construction technologies and safety backups still must have been comparatively primitive (no emergency force fields, no structural integrity field, most probably, etc.). But I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't really put that much thought into a small detail such as the ranking pips.
And I agree this one is hardly worth having an argument about. I don't like, as I said earlier, how many technologies were still functionally equivalent to their 24th century counterparts, sometimes just with (slightly) different names, or how for the first two years we basically went back to the 'random alien adventure of the week' format rather than focusing on the pre-history of the Federation. Much bigger issues than those rank pips, IMHO.
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I actually liked Enterprise. It was the first Star Trek show I actually watched from beginning to end during its entire run. But yeah I was rewatching some of the new special features on the blu ray and it looks like this show was doomed from the start. It had it detractors but I was engaged during the third and fourth seasons and was crushed when it was cancelled.
I think that franchise fatigue is a real factor here, and difficult to decouple from a balanced view of the positives and negatives of the show. It might be of interest that Enterprise S1 was the most watched Trek show on Netflix this year, and is roughly as popular as TNG and Voyager:
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report
So maybe Enterprise really was just a victim of being at the end of a 14 year run of Trek, and once enough time has passed to flatten off the relative novelties of each series, Enterprise was, on balance, a pretty good quality show?
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report
So maybe Enterprise really was just a victim of being at the end of a 14 year run of Trek, and once enough time has passed to flatten off the relative novelties of each series, Enterprise was, on balance, a pretty good quality show?
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The first two seasons of Enterprise are more Voyager made by the Voyager production team for the Voyager audience, who were tapering off because they are loser quitters with zero character.
Money?
Wang could leverage for more money than Montgmery because he had a braying fanbase that would freak out if he was fired, to save a buck... Multiplied by everyone that worked on Voyager.
Jeri Ryan could have asked for her pay stub to triple to do an 8th season of Voyager.
Linda Park worked for scale and was grateful (exaggeration!) to work on a show that was almost certainly going to be canceled after 2 seasons.
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From S1 to S2, 1.9 M viewers peel away. From S2 to S3, only 800K peeled away. And then from S3-S4, another 600K peeled away.
On one hand, something about S1 is very appealing to viewers and something about S2 drives a sizeable chunk of viewers away, even though it still has higher viewership numbers than S3 and S4. OTHO, considering that DS9’s Netflix viewership was middling despite being praised as the best Star Trek series, maybe a serialized Star Trek show does not hold mass appeal to casual viewers of Star Trek. War arc or no war arc.
Meaning mostly episodic seasons with a dash of S4 storytelling might be the way to tell Star Trek stories in the future.
Maybe. Though I'm thinking that people tended to gravitate towards something like SNW. Episodic, but evolving.
At the time, this really was my biggest issue. You had phase pistols and communicators that felt like they could be placed in TOS or TNG with no issue. Combine that with other shows doing the episodic/serialization balance better (Stargate, primarily) and ENT became less interesting by the second episode. It just didn't work to hook me back in.
Some mention it was quite a white leading cast, but now everything is opposite of that today. A little conservative in that outlook about it being mainly white male characters taking the lead.
But the first officer certainly got out and about.
But the first officer certainly got out and about.
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