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Happy 25th Birthday, Enterprise! "Broken Bow" aired 25 years ago tonight

The evening of September 26, 2001. Another torch was passed, and a new era of Star Trek was born.
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Oh yes, two things annoy me about the setup.

1) the needless nepotism. Make Johnathan a student/mentor of Henry Smith, not a son.

2) Cochrane really should have split his infinitive and boldly go where no man has gone before. Happy with the no man, it’s not sexist, it’s mankind.
 
There were elements of Enterprise that I really liked, and I thought the makeup and production values were top notch at the time.

But I can never forgive the way the show betrayed its own premise straight out of the gate in the first episode. First contact with a Klingon Empire before even encountering the Andorians, and 80 hours to the Klingon homeworld? Vulcan was farther way than that. And the TCW. Ugh!

But some of it was really good.
 
> I'm gonna pretend that last episode never happened

What are you smoking? Demons/Terra Firma was a great episode, and I know it was a bit campy but I liked In a Mirror Darkly too.
There was a reason why Terra Prime and These Are the Voyages aired on the same night. I've always found Terra Prime to be the proper last episode of Enterprise. It's probably why I'm not as hard on TATV as most people, though why the hell did they kill Trip like that. Still kinda bothers me.
 
I watched the whole series as it aired and I've watched the occasional episode from the blu ray box set I bought, but I still don't get much enjoyment out of Enterprise. The Temporal Cold War was a mess that never added up to anything. The third and fourth seasons did try to find new directions, but the Xindi Arc and Captain Archer the Space Pirate, his vengeance-seeking sidekick, and their badass MACOs often felt pretty far removed from my idea of Star Trek. The fourth season, meanwhile, spent too much time revisiting elements of past Star Trek instead of telling new stories that would actually set up the decades before the original series. Hell, the Vulcan arc was just Enterprise retconning its own retcon of the Vulcans.

But unlike the Kurtzman haters, I don't think it should be removed from canon or anything like that. It's part of the great tapestry, as references in Star Trek Beyond and Lower Decks (both of which I like) demonstrate.
 
I've made that observation and had people say, no, it's a touching Star Trek story of different peoples coming to an understanding, not a revenge fantasy. Well, maybe if you skip most of the season.
 
I've made that observation and had people say, no, it's a touching Star Trek story of different peoples coming to an understanding, not a revenge fantasy. Well, maybe if you skip most of the season.
It's both. It starts off a hellbent quest for revenge that turns into a lesson of tolerance.
futurama-it-can-do-other-things.png
 
The Temporal Cold War was a mess that never added up to anything.
Agreed. I tend to ignore it. I always thought the writers/producers felt that they MUST have a long-running arc and unfortunately, came up with this. It always felt forced and poorly executed.

Compared to the TCW, I thought the Xindi arc was far more interesting, while I certainly had misgivings about it at the time.

I'm a huge fan of Ronald Moore's BSG relaunch, which is, perhaps, the best post 9/11 allegory of all.

I watched "Broken Bow" last night, and it had been a few years since I watched the whole thing straight through. This too, has aged well.

It introduced us to the cast organically. Bakula shone, giving us a mixture of impetuousness and a "By God we're going to get the job done!" attitude that was not without thoughtfulness.

I'm not crazy about how the Vulcans were portrayed as such adversaries throughout the series, but the friendship between Archer and T'Pol got a good start. The initial friction probably helped the way it came across.

And on a lighthearted note, I know it’s not him, but Future Guy’s voice always makes me think of John “Dean Vernon Wormer” Vernon, also of Dirty Harry (1971) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) fame, to name but a very, very few.
 
I had not watched Enterprise from the beginning, but I binge-watched the first 3 seasons the summer before Season 4 aired. I was so new to the Trek online community, I had no exposure to the fan criticism at all, but I did get a better sense of character and story arcs seeing it all at once. I loved the characters from the get-go - even when the writing was uneven, there was character interaction to enjoy. I loved Archer, and the potential of Trip/T'Pol to symbolize the burgeoning human/Vulcan alliance. I adored Phlox. I got a kick out of the portrayal of Vulcans as conniving, deceitful powermongers, and the Vulcan Enlightenment that explained so much. I thought the Xindi arc was great - and I especially enjoyed the more off-topic episodes of Season 3 like "North Star" and "E2." The production values were stellar, the music was beautiful, and there are a lot of really great episodes to treasure. Enterprise is my favorite of the post TOS shows (I put the original in its own category of wonderfulness).

I would really have enjoyed the three season we were robbed of, but I'm glad for what we got, considering the chaotic run it had, with fake network UPN interfering, the endless preemptions, the lack of decent advertising. If DVR had been a thing back then, the ratings would have been better, I think. As someone upthread put it so well, the show is part of the Trek tapestry. (Except for that last waste of an hour, the Thing. :ack: )
Happy Birthday, Enterprise! :beer:
 
I'm not crazy about how the Vulcans were portrayed as such adversaries throughout the series, but the friendship between Archer and T'Pol got a good start. The initial friction probably helped the way it came across.
The Forge, Awakening, and Kir'Shara made me appreciate how the Vulcans were portrayed throughout the series. Vulcans have always been arrogant, but the prequel made them even more so. It also made me love Soval's arc from this annoying ambassador to trusted ally.
 
25 fucking years.... Probably about the time we'll have to wait for a new series after SNW and Academy burn off the remaining episodes....

But as has been pointed out, there's plenty of Trek to (re)watch, and I'm putting Enterprise on that list. Probably first!
 
The two redheaded bastard stepchildren in the old Trek basement are now becoming more valued members of the family, especially ENT. The prequel series took off with new streaming fans in a way I never saw coming even a decade ago.
 
The two redheaded bastard stepchildren in the old Trek basement are now becoming more valued members of the family, especially ENT. The prequel series took off with new streaming fans in a way I never saw coming even a decade ago.
I just created a General Discussion thread.

Did I use the right tag?

I would like to have User Replies enabled.
 
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