Enterprise is what Deep Space 9 was.
- Thread starter Aslan ch'Shran
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I liked DS9 when it was new, and after a zillon rewatches, I even like it more.
I liked/tolerated ENT until season 3. Hated season 3. Liked stuff from season 4, but found it uninspired and boring overall.
And every time I rewatch an episode from ENT I find more stuff that I find annoying. The writing isn't good. Their ideas aren't that great, considering they have a rich canon to draw from (something the DS9 guys mastered).
The FX are awesome, but what gives?
One problem with ENT is probably that they had the bad ratings problem breathing down their neck, so they had to pull some desparate stunts like the Xindi Schmindi arc, Space Nazis and some three parters that should have been two parters.
DS9 was sailing in safer waters, being a syndicated series and all.
I liked/tolerated ENT until season 3. Hated season 3. Liked stuff from season 4, but found it uninspired and boring overall.
And every time I rewatch an episode from ENT I find more stuff that I find annoying. The writing isn't good. Their ideas aren't that great, considering they have a rich canon to draw from (something the DS9 guys mastered).
The FX are awesome, but what gives?
One problem with ENT is probably that they had the bad ratings problem breathing down their neck, so they had to pull some desparate stunts like the Xindi Schmindi arc, Space Nazis and some three parters that should have been two parters.
DS9 was sailing in safer waters, being a syndicated series and all.
I didn't find Kira attractive, and Sisko has a kid thats nearly my age(or maybe he was by the end of the show) so he's a little old for my taste - maybe thats why I didn't see him as attractive.
Dax and Julian, though, I would have to agree with you there. But thats the extent of good looking people in my opinion. And I mean main actors.
With emotionally free Vulcans you had Sybok from Final Frontier, and I believe Spock in one of the TOS episodes; you also saw Picard acting out some of Sarek's emotions on TNG, and I'm sure that Tuvok had at least one episode where he showed emotion/lost emotional control. And Trek had dealt with addiction before, the main example that comes to mind is Barclay's holo-addiction. Though I concede that we had never seen a Vulcan addict before, though DS9 and VOY gave us both Vulcan psychopaths ("Field of Fire" and "Meld"), which was perhaps more chilling. To be honest, I thought ENT botched that T'Pol storyline, the way it was written it came across like T'Pol was taking the trellium to experience emotion. It didn't make much sense. All she had to do was just lower her own self-imposed restrictions if she wanted to be more emotionally free. I always thought it would've made more sense for her to take the trellium to build up an immunity to it so that they could use it to line the hull, etc. I could see her wanting to be selfless and not deny the ship needed protection, and that she would be willing to put her health on the line. The side effect would be a loss of emotional control, which I would've made permanent.
I also don't recall seeing people being sucked out of hull breaches, however death during combat was something Trek had been dealing with from day one almost as well, and I think what is more important is how the characters react and/or how those deaths impact the crew and that's something that has been covered quite a bit. The visual effect hasn't been, but dealing with death has. I would argue that DS9 surpassed ENT in terms of having massive battle scenes, perhaps the only thing that came close on ENT was when Trip tried to prevent a Vulcan-Andorian war in the Vulcan Reformation arc. I was expecting a big Starfleet response against the Xindi weapon in "Zero Hour", but we didn't get it.
As for the Temporal Cold War, perhaps not as many episodes centered on it particularly but it cast a long shadow almost over the show's entire run, and for it to be so important, so influential, I wish the writers had fleshed it out better, had at least knew who Future Guy was. Though personally I wish they had just chucked it and spent that time laying the groundwork for the Earth-Romulan War.
I will say that ENT at least attempted to push the boundaries regarding sexuality. Showing T'Pol's backside in "Harbinger", and all those decon scenes, but it felt inorganic to me and gratuitous, which highlighted how the show was out of step with its contemporaries, which didn't exhibit too many hang ups about showing adults as sexual beings. I would argue that Archer's descent in Season 3 was a way the show pushed boundaries, though there had been examples of previous captains doing similar things, desperate measures tactics (Sisko with the Eddington stories and Janeway and the Equinox come to mind); however, with the backdrop of 9/11 and the War on Terror, Archer's actions might have had more societal relevance. However, I don't think the writers pushed it far enough, but I give them credit for at least having Archer continuing to be haunted by his experience in the Delphic Expanse in "Home".
I wonder if how each show would be perceived if ENT and DS9 could've switched places. The more I think about DS9, the more ahead of its time the show seems to me. I think DS9 would've worked better as a 21st century show, and I could see ENT perhaps fitting in a little bit more easily in the 90s.
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This was also something that dulled out Enterprise for me. I have never been a fan of time travel in any Star Trek. It feels like it just postponed the show, a filler of some sort, just to waste my time and not have to actually progress in the real timeline story. I wish Enterprise had just found a way to use it less.
For example as why I view it as a time waster, the ep with Archer when he gets stuck in the future and had to get back - that felt like a big waste of time. The nazi time travel one also was a waste.
Brooks was too old, but Bakula wasn't? Brooks was 44 at the start of DS9, Bakula was 46 at the start of ENT.
And for the record, I find Kira more attractive than either of the Daxes. It's all a matter of taste, so quite pointless to discuss. I don't think that ENT had more good-looking main actors than DS9, they're about the same. DS9 just had more main actors.
Umm...do you have any proof for this gross generalization?
I loved Deep Space Nine. Everyone I know loved Deep Space Nine. We enjoyed the fact they tried to do something different within the formula. All my friends and I got together every week to watch DS9, and we know many people who considered it must see TV.
And we are huge Trek fans.
Comparing the ratings of modern Trek series against each other without considering other factors and trends is not meaningful data. The period of what? 18 years? between TNG's first season and ENT's cancelation is a period of massive transformation of the television market, including a drastic decline in ratings for all shows on network television due to the rise of cable. There was also an important increase in the number of sci-fi/fantasy shows on television throughout this period. (Not to mention the rise of the internet).
A more meaningful comparison is with shows that were on at the same time, i.e. the shows that Trek was competing against. DS9, for example, always had higher ratings than VOY and B5, and was the highest rated show in syndication for most of its run (I think it was eventually overtaken by Hercules and Xena, which were having their moment in the pop culture sun around that time.) Even Voyager was reasonably successful from a ratings standpoint (not much lower than DS9, and I believe slighter higher than B5).
The problem ENT had is that by the time it aired the TNG/Voyager alien of the week formula was no longer viable. Viewers had seen too much of it, and there were too many other more interesting shows out there for people to watch. By the time ENT got around to doing a story arc in season 3, it was too late. This wasn't the fault of "the fans." It was the fault of the producers of the show, who hadn't adapted quickly enough to a changing market.
Obviously a show like TNG or DS9 would not have survived in the same market either, if they had started out slowly as they both did when they aired. But that is somewhat irrelevant: they were built to succeed in the market of their era.
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That's hardly a glowing recommendation. It's not "AS" bad as I thought. That's like saying the punch in the gut wasn't as bad as it could have been.
I agree. Holodeck eps sucked too.
But I did not compare the ratings of DS9 to other ST series. I just looked at the ratings for DS9 over the 7 year period. I agree that in a time that American Idol and Dancing with the Stars is batteling for #1, ratings does not mean quality or lasting value.
That alone isn't meaningful either, for the same reason: it doesn't take into account overall trends in the tv market over that same period. These trends include a sharp drop in ratings across all network shows regardless of genre, and increased competition with the realm of sci-fi fantasy (including of course Trek competing with itself).
However, I understand that your point was "people sometimes draw this type of conclusion," not "they are correct in doing so."
My intent was not so much to disagree with you as to make the additional point that looking at the ratings of Trek shows or a single Trek show in a vacuum is not especially meaningful.
Similarly, it doesn't really matter that ENT did a few things that other Trek shows hadn't done: ENT wasn't competing against other Trek shows. To succeed it had to be compelling when compared to the other shows that were on the air at that time. ENT's problem is that it wasn't, at least at first.
Deep Space Nine only had one episode like that.
Would that be one of the baseball episodes or one of the Dick Fontain episodes?
Not every episode with Vic in it is a holodeck episode...
Besides, which was series with a holodeck finale
?!
The Baseball episode, yeah, that one was unnecessary and should not have been made.
But "Our Man Bashir" is like the perfect holodeck episode. So is "It's only a paper moon". TNG never got them right, but DS9 did.
What ENT did 100x better than DS9 was the Mirror Universe.
The ENT guys recaptured what the MU was about.
Besides, which was series with a holodeck finale
?!The Baseball episode, yeah, that one was unnecessary and should not have been made.
But "Our Man Bashir" is like the perfect holodeck episode. So is "It's only a paper moon". TNG never got them right, but DS9 did.
What ENT did 100x better than DS9 was the Mirror Universe.
The ENT guys recaptured what the MU was about.
I LOVE Take Me Out to the Holosuite, personally...way better than Our Man Bashir overall, tho I like both. Though I also think that the MU was always a terrible, stupid idea every time it was used.
I didn't like it at all, and I didn't start seeing it 'til last year, and believe me when I say I'm not a Roddenberry Canonite. Very far from it. I find that a lot of his ideas are stupid, and I'm glad that later TNG and DS9 as a whole felt free to ignore him.
I found it impossible to really care about anyone in the show except Travis, and everyone else was just completely bland, or someone I actively hoped would be the victim of a console explosion. This is the biggest difference from DS9 for me. DS9's cast was THE reason to keep watching even if I didn't love most of the plotlines (which I did), especially with how well they did the juggling act with the recurring characters. Seasons 1 and 2 were mediocre at their best, and while S3 was better, I just couldn't bring myself to really care, so I dropped it a bit into the third season.
What gets me is that whenever the topic of not liking ENT comes up, someone always goes "Oh, it's just people who whined about canon". There are people who gave it an honest shot and just really didn't like what they saw.
And it's hard for me to see ENT as "what DS9 was" since it started off as just being another generic Trek show, only this time it was a prequel. We don't have shields and phasers! We have hull plating which can go offline (facepalm) and phase pistols. Of course it's named the Enterprise, and most of the first two season have plots that'd be interchangeable with TNG with only minor tweaks.
DS9 and Voyager, for the faults they have, really tried to be unique throughout the show and for a little while (respectively). DS9 took the station idea and ran with it, and while a lot of the meat of S1 seem like rejected TNG scripts, there are some gems like Progress and Duet, and S2 found its footing and we had more DS9-centric stories. And VOY did have a good sense of isolation which set it apart. ENT was just more TNG, only not. And by the time it tried to be something different, it was just too little too late. But, as evidenced in this thread, your mileage may vary.
I didn't like it at all, and I didn't start seeing it 'til last year, and believe me when I say I'm not a Roddenberry Canonite. Very far from it. I find that a lot of his ideas are stupid, and I'm glad that later TNG and DS9 as a whole felt free to ignore him.
I found it impossible to really care about anyone in the show except Travis, and everyone else was just completely bland, or someone I actively hoped would be the victim of a console explosion. This is the biggest difference from DS9 for me. DS9's cast was THE reason to keep watching even if I didn't love most of the plotlines (which I did), especially with how well they did the juggling act with the recurring characters. Seasons 1 and 2 were mediocre at their best, and while S3 was better, I just couldn't bring myself to really care, so I dropped it a bit into the third season.
What gets me is that whenever the topic of not liking ENT comes up, someone always goes "Oh, it's just people who whined about canon". There are people who gave it an honest shot and just really didn't like what they saw.
And it's hard for me to see ENT as "what DS9 was" since it started off as just being another generic Trek show, only this time it was a prequel. We don't have shields and phasers! We have hull plating which can go offline (facepalm) and phase pistols. Of course it's named the Enterprise, and most of the first two season have plots that'd be interchangeable with TNG with only minor tweaks.
DS9 and Voyager, for the faults they have, really tried to be unique throughout the show and for a little while (respectively). DS9 took the station idea and ran with it, and while a lot of the meat of S1 seem like rejected TNG scripts, there are some gems like Progress and Duet, and S2 found its footing and we had more DS9-centric stories. And VOY did have a good sense of isolation which set it apart. ENT was just more TNG, only not. And by the time it tried to be something different, it was just too little too late. But, as evidenced in this thread, your mileage may vary.
I LOVED the baseball episode because it was more then just a error with the holodeck or a adventure in it(which put me to sleep). It was part of character development.
If time travel episodes to the past or future added to character development in any shape or form I'd of liked it more. For Enterprise, the time travel to the past and future resulted in the captain having hissy fits about wanting to go back and barely(only sometimes) using the advice given to him. Because the all mighty captain knew more about the future then future guy, apparently.
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