Season 4 is what ALL of Enterprise should have been, which is our point. There were 3 seasons of sub-par, Suliban, TCW, Xindi filled mediocrity before we got to the gem of a fourth season.
If Season 4 was Season 1, and the rest of the show continue on in the same way, maybe we'd still be watching it today.
I can't bring myself to watch season 4 again because of the awful mirror universe rubbish. That and the ending which was an abomination. I can't remember any of the other stories since I only watched it once years ago.
Well there was a lot more to it than that! I personally loved the Mirror Universe, and thought that 'In A Mirror Darkly' was a fantastic two-parter, definitely one of the best episodes imo.
The finale, dear god, was beyong an abomination. But the rest of Season 4 was great (though I too, have only seen it once, and its been years for me as well) - they had lots of 3-part story arcs, there was Arik Soong and the Augments, the Klingon story (with the forehead issue finally 'explained'), the story arc set on Vulcan with Surak's katra, and the two parter with... Terra Prime, or whatever they were called, the xenophobic Human terrorist group.
Using an established race for a "Dominion" like mystery role wouldn't work, because WE would already know the truth and would just be annoyed at the show for trying to make them all mysterious when we already know everything.
THAT was why they used the Xindi, because there was an ACTUAL mystery for the audience.
It's the same reason the Romulan War wouldn't work either, too much depended on them not knowing anything about the Romulans even though we already know all there is to know about them. Trying to make an artificial mystery is just annoying.
I thought a prequel was a bad idea from the start, and all this talk about using the Romulans and stuff is just reinforcing that belief.
As for "pandering" to the audience, all that does is give us stuff like Heroes season 3.
We already know everything there is to know about the Romulans, really? Since when? They're an off-shoot of Vulcan, they have an Emperor and a Senate, they have a secret police organisation known as the Tal Shiar, they use cloaking devices and have warbirds, they have a Neutral Zone between them and the Federation - that is pretty much all we've learned about them, in 700 episodes! I maintain that they could do
plenty with the Romulans.
But okay, say they don't use the Romulans - what about the Gorn? Or the Tholians? Those are two races established in TOS, who have one episode each - we know NOTHING about them, except what was established in those episodes. Why not use them? You can't say they're not mysterious enough!
And you can't fault us for the prequel idea - it wasn't ours! The OP asked us how we thought it could be a better show, we're just working with what we've got.
I've never seen Heroes, so I still maintain, its a television show, they're supposed to pander to their audience, thats the point.
But Federation has way more worlds and races than those that were shown in TOS and TNG, why would we only see those? Especially when you take out all those that were only encountered in TOS or TNG. And the planets that Earth ships would be likely to encounter in the 22nd century must have been those closer to Earth. They could have featured a few more races that were mentioned in TOS, but I don't think it would have made much of a difference, since in TOS we rarely got to see an alien race that didn't look 100% human (due to budgetary constraints). Was there any episode other than Journey to Babel where we actually got to see Federation races, other than Vulcans, that actually looked alien?
Okay, I can see that you feel very strongly about this issue - and I can agree, to some extent. Seeing more Federation worlds would have been good, but I just don't think the alien-of-the-week format worked for Enterprise. TNG and Voyager could get away with it, but I personally don't think Enterprise should have used that format as frequently as it did.
I think a closer connection between Earth/Starfleet Command (did they still call it Starfleet Command, I can't remember...?) and Enterprise should have been shown - if they're close to Earth (which I agree, would make sense) then they can't just meet alien-x-of-the-week and fly off into the sunset! Starfleet should have made them follow up on those encounters, and try to establish closer diplomatic relationships (or maybe they'd send a slower ship to do that, but then Enterprise would need to come and save the day).
Anything to indicate that they were already building relationships with other worlds, which could eventually lead to trade agreements, then alliances, then joining the Federation.
I'm fairly certain that we saw plenty of Federation worlds in TOS and TNG that were never heard from again (they were those shows aliens-of-the-week) - Enterprise discovering those worlds and making first contact would have shown that this was a
prequel andit would still have been interesting!
I agree that it would have been great to have seen the Romulan War. If the first two seasons had been different and seasons 2 or 3 had featured a setup for the war, they could have had the Romulan war as early as season 4. But that was not possible after the way the show had gone for its first couple of seasons. With the lack of direction of the show in the first couple of seasons, especially season 2, they obviously needed something like the Xindi arc to revitalize the show, and it couldn't have been the Romulan war because it hadn't been set up properly. You couldn't have a start of the war and then go back to the Augments and Klingons and Orions and whatnot. The Romulan war would have been very different from the Xindi arc, they couldn't have been any mystery to the enemy and their motivations, and it wouldn't have been over in a season. And it would have been too big to ignore, so if they had started the war, the rest of the show would have to be all about the war. (I also wonder if that could have worked at all, on the budget they had.)
I can understand where you're coming from - but again, the OP asked us what would have made it better, I'm trying to re-work the
entire show. I'm proposing my ideas as if we were remaking it from scratch, but still using the original premise and characters.
Also I wanted to disagree with both you and Anwar on the lack of mystery to the Romulans - or even the Klingons for that matter. This is the 2150s, Humans are new to the galaxy, the Federation doesn't even exist yet! If that's so radically different, why are you assuming that the Klingons and Romulans are the same as in TOS or TNG?
The Klingons changed and developed from TOS, through the movies, to TNG, DS9 and Voyager - and I don't just mean their make-up!
I think it would have been interesting to wonder 'what are the Klingons/Romulans like in 2150?', and 'what changes did they undergo to get where they are in TOS?'.
The Romulans could have been warriors, expanding and conquering surrounding space - until they came across the fledgling Humans, with their Vulcan and Andorian buddies, who put them in their place! Maybe thats
why the Romulans are so xenophobic, and closed off their borders by the time of TOS.
The Klingons might have been space bullies, with no code of honour whatsoever - again, going off the assumption that they're exactly the same as in TOS and TNG is the wrong idea. The whole idea of a prequel is that we see what came before, we find out what events and circumstances led to the familiar universe of TOS and TNG. I don't think Enterprise did that as well as it could have.
