If you found yourself in the Voyager forum at some point in the last seven months then you probably saw the thread about the "hater" (now "semi-hater") who decided to revisit that show, rate each episode and come up with a numerical average to determine whether he still thought it was a below-average show. Well, I am that hater, and on Tuesday night I finally watched Endgame and ended my rewatch. Roughly one season into that thread I started getting requests that I use the same format to judge Enterprise, and even though I'm not an Enterprise hater I agreed to review it once I was finished watching Voyager. So here I am. 
Some background info: I have only watched Enterprise once, and that was while it was airing on TV. I have seen some of the episodes two or three times, but for the majority I only watched them once as they aired on Sky One, so this will be my first rewatch of the show. I liked Enterprise in many ways, although it certainly had its rough patches; I think season 1 was okay, season 2 was pretty bad, season 3 was pretty good and season 4 was average. I currently rank the Trek series like this:
DS9 > TNG > TOS > ENT > VOY
The format works as follows; I watch an episode (usually one a day, but that can fluctuate) then I rate it between 0 and 5 stars, including half-stars. At the end of each season I create some graphs, determine the average score for the season, judge the individual writers and detail how I would have done things differently had I been the head writer. (Here's an example.) This is a scale I once wrote up to explain my scoring mechanism:
0: Not worthy of my ridicule
½: Awful
*: Bad
*½: Poor
**: Meh
**½: Average
***: Enjoyable
***½: Good
****: Very good
****½: Great
*****: Exceptional
I also have a controversial rule where I deduct half a star from episodes which I deem as TNG episodes. Enterprise is a different series from TNG and it has the unique opportunity to show us how humanity first ventured into deep-space and began the formation of the Federation, so I view every episode that could have been easily adapted to work on TNG (or any other Trek series) to be a wasted opportunity. If an episode contains some element which can only have been used on Enterprise, or where the characters drive the plot as opposed to the plot driving the characters, then there is no problem. Some people considered this rule to be unfair, but I think it is a valid complaint about an episode and it is one I am going to stick to.
I also like to count things, and on Voyager I counted the number of photon torpedoes they fired (96 from a supply of 38), shuttles they lost (16) and the number of times we saw Ensign Kim die (a disappointing 3 times). On Enterprise I've decided to count the number of space-faring alien species they encounter who magically disappear by the TOS or TNG era, such as the Suliban and the Tandarans. I'm not going to deduct points for these, I'm just going to count them, so if you have any suggestions for other Enterprise-specific things I can count then tell me and I'll keep a look out for them.
If all goes as planned then tonight I'll be settling down to watch Broken Bow as the beginning of my journey, and I hope that this thread is as successful at sparking interesting discussions as the Voyager thread was.
Some background info: I have only watched Enterprise once, and that was while it was airing on TV. I have seen some of the episodes two or three times, but for the majority I only watched them once as they aired on Sky One, so this will be my first rewatch of the show. I liked Enterprise in many ways, although it certainly had its rough patches; I think season 1 was okay, season 2 was pretty bad, season 3 was pretty good and season 4 was average. I currently rank the Trek series like this:
DS9 > TNG > TOS > ENT > VOY
The format works as follows; I watch an episode (usually one a day, but that can fluctuate) then I rate it between 0 and 5 stars, including half-stars. At the end of each season I create some graphs, determine the average score for the season, judge the individual writers and detail how I would have done things differently had I been the head writer. (Here's an example.) This is a scale I once wrote up to explain my scoring mechanism:
0: Not worthy of my ridicule
½: Awful
*: Bad
*½: Poor
**: Meh
**½: Average
***: Enjoyable
***½: Good
****: Very good
****½: Great
*****: Exceptional
I also have a controversial rule where I deduct half a star from episodes which I deem as TNG episodes. Enterprise is a different series from TNG and it has the unique opportunity to show us how humanity first ventured into deep-space and began the formation of the Federation, so I view every episode that could have been easily adapted to work on TNG (or any other Trek series) to be a wasted opportunity. If an episode contains some element which can only have been used on Enterprise, or where the characters drive the plot as opposed to the plot driving the characters, then there is no problem. Some people considered this rule to be unfair, but I think it is a valid complaint about an episode and it is one I am going to stick to.
I also like to count things, and on Voyager I counted the number of photon torpedoes they fired (96 from a supply of 38), shuttles they lost (16) and the number of times we saw Ensign Kim die (a disappointing 3 times). On Enterprise I've decided to count the number of space-faring alien species they encounter who magically disappear by the TOS or TNG era, such as the Suliban and the Tandarans. I'm not going to deduct points for these, I'm just going to count them, so if you have any suggestions for other Enterprise-specific things I can count then tell me and I'll keep a look out for them.
If all goes as planned then tonight I'll be settling down to watch Broken Bow as the beginning of my journey, and I hope that this thread is as successful at sparking interesting discussions as the Voyager thread was.
