What is your honest opinion of Enterprise?

[Saxman1]

We've just finished a Voyager re-watch and I have to say, I found it most enjoyable, not the major crap-fest many make it out to be. There were only a handful of eps a season I skipped. I say this as a fan of all things Star Trek (OK, the TNG films not so much, but even there, you have the fun of seeing the crew together once again).

My point? I think we are about to embark upon a re-watch of ENT and I'm keeping an open mind, despite what I've said previously in this thread. One thing that many posters pointed out is the fact that the Vulcans have fallen away from the teachings of Surak until season 4 and that is why they do NOT act like typical Vulcans. Thanks, that explains much and will help with the re-watch!

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I'm on my 3rd-ish watch of Enterprise, ending season 3 now (just watched "The Council".)

I have to say, this series gets SO good, it's sad that the earlier seasons turned so many people off. I admit, I don't like them as much either. But wow, season 3 as a whole is just some of the best Trek to me that I can watch.

Enterprise isn't my favourite series (that's still TNG, followed closely by DS9 I'd say) but season 3 of Enterprise can for sure sit with the best of them. Fantastic television, not just Trek.

Such a shame.

 

[Keith1701]

It was much more of a prequel to TNG than it ever was to TOS.

It was a good series, that needed better directions and better stories.

 

[Spirit]

After seeing Enterprise I was convinced Scott Bakula was a likeable but limited actor. NBC series Chuck changed my mind. Bakula's performance on that show is wonderful!

That pretty much sums up how I feel about Enterprise. Likeable, but limited, and nothing compared to what it could have been.

 

[Saxman1]

After seeing Enterprise I was convinced Scott Bakula was a likeable but limited actor. NBC series Chuck changed my mind. Bakula's performance on that show is wonderful!

That pretty much sums up how I feel about Enterprise. Likeable, but limited, and nothing compared to what it could have been.

I haven't seen Chuck, but he's great on "Men Of A Certain Age." He was also very good on an ep of "Boston Legal," playing an old law school flame of Candace Bergen's character, even though he was too young for the role. He played piano and sang a tune in a bar scene in that ep, doing very well. As some know, Bakula is a trained opera singer and got his big career break in the musical "Shenandoah" on Broadway. i enjoyed him as Archer and wish he'd had at least half the character development Trip and T'Pal received.

 

[ColeMercury]

I've seen all of seasons 3 and 4, but only a handful of episodes from seasons 1 and 2.

Seasons 1 and 2 are... unimpressive. Not totally bad -- nowhere near as bad as the first two seasons of TNG, that's for sure -- but not good either.

Season 3 is excellent, and probably my favourite season on an episode-to-episode basis: there wasn't a single episode of season 3 which I didn't enjoy, which is more than I can say for the others. The only problem with it is that the show is still fundamentally aimless: it's like they had no idea what to do with their show so they were just like "Let's throw this year-long arc in the Expanse in here, that should take up some time!" Great storytelling, but you can tell they had no idea where to go from there.

And that's why season 4 is my favourite overall, despite having a slightly decreased story quality for individual episodes. This season is the one where it really felt like they had got the show on track and knew where they were going: setting up a future conflict with the Romulans, establishing the pre-Federation "Coalition of Planets", fixing the Vulcans' characterisation and making a damn good three-parter out of it, and basically acting like a genuine prequel. It's easy to imagine how a season 5 could have built on it and been even better.

The only huge problem with season 4 is "These Are the Voyages". It's just awful: Braga and Berman hijacking the last episode of the series so they could relive their glory days, back when everyone still liked Braga's writing and admired Berman as an executive producer. "Terra Prime" would have made an excellent finale, but "These Are the Voyages" makes Enterprise go out on a low note.

(And no, I don't like the final montage of all the Enterprises at the end either. ENT deserved to have its series finale to itself, just as TNG, DS9 and VOY did. They acknowledged the shared history and occasionally had crossovers, but each series was rightly regarded as its own entity -- and the finale of ENT should have been the culmination of that series, without these other ships & crews who had already had their last hurrahs butting in.)

 

[Captain Robert April]

Nobody was particularly happy with that last episode. The regular cast was insulted, Frakes and Sirtis felt like they were intruding, and as the comments here show, the vast majority of the fans felt like they'd just been slapped across the face. Even Braga is somewhat embarrassed by the episode these days.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Season 3 is excellent, and probably my favourite season on an episode-to-episode basis: there wasn't a single episode of season 3 which I didn't enjoy, which is more than I can say for the others. The only problem with it is that the show is still fundamentally aimless: it's like they had no idea what to do with their show so they were just like "Let's throw this year-long arc in the Expanse in here, that should take up some time!" Great storytelling, but you can tell they had no idea where to go from there.

And that's why season 4 is my favourite overall, despite having a slightly decreased story quality for individual episodes. This season is the one where it really felt like they had got the show on track and knew where they were going: setting up a future conflict with the Romulans, establishing the pre-Federation "Coalition of Planets", fixing the Vulcans' characterisation and making a damn good three-parter out of it, and basically acting like a genuine prequel. It's easy to imagine how a season 5 could have built on it and been even better.

The only huge problem with season 4 is "These Are the Voyages". It's just awful: Braga and Berman hijacking the last episode of the series so they could relive their glory days, back when everyone still liked Braga's writing and admired Berman as an executive producer. "Terra Prime" would have made an excellent finale, but "These Are the Voyages" makes Enterprise go out on a low note.

(And no, I don't like the final montage of all the Enterprises at the end either. ENT deserved to have its series finale to itself, just as TNG, DS9 and VOY did. They acknowledged the shared history and occasionally had crossovers, but each series was rightly regarded as its own entity -- and the finale of ENT should have been the culmination of that series, without these other ships & crews who had already had their last hurrahs butting in.)

Save for closing montage, that's exactly how I felt. "These are the Voyages..." feels like warmed up left-overs the writers had sitting in a drawer, already prepared to bring out had ENT been cancelled at a much earlier stage. It's something denied of course. The script was incredibily downbeat and basically undermined much of the style, attitude and character development going on in the rest of the season. ENT might have been a series in trouble, but wouldn't know it looking at the fourth year. It's hugely entertaining and very much has a glass half full mentality, even in the closing moments of "Terra Prime".

Berman and Braga (who were already moving on to other projects) should have given the showrunner who'd taken over, free reign to end it how he saw fit. What did it matter to them? They were in no frame of mind to give the fans who stood by Enterprise what they wanted most. Leaving something open ended is always the better option, when a show comes to an unnatural end and that's what happened in comparison to previous series. Fans could then have happily moved on, imagining their favourites having untold offscreen adventures... living on inside their heads or whatever.

That kind of happened in the end, but the novels had to do some considerable backpeddling first (some might say credibility stretching) and probably lost some its potential audience because the intent of "These are the Voyages..." was sadly just too damn final.

 

[Mindcore]

It was much more of a prequel to TNG than it ever was to TOS.

I think you are right about that, but its a good thing. TOS was a piece of history, it changed the world, but I think that TNG and the series which have come since are easier for younger viewers to tap into the Star Trek mythos.

I did not get into TOS until watching a lot of TNG first! It was because the resources being what they were in TOS and the fact that so much of our modern technology had yet to be invented.

Though I would like to give a shout out here to Star Trek TOS and TNG for being prescient about so much technology!

 

[Dukhat]

I think you are right about that, but its a good thing. TOS was a piece of history, it changed the world, but I think that TNG and the series which have come since are easier for younger viewers to tap into the Star Trek mythos.

And that's why, if TPTB wanted to do a prequel series, they should have set it on either the Enterprise-B or the Enterprise-C (preferably the "B," since we already know the ultimate fate of the "C."). That way they wouldn't have had to worry about a premise that they couldn't deliver (i.e. the Romulan War and formation of the Federation), or suddenly create another ship named Enterprise even before Kirk's, that no one had ever heard of before.

I think every Star Trek fan had his or her own idea of how they thought the Federation was formed. I know I did. So creating a prequel show set in the 2150's, while at the same time giving it the look and feel (and the writing) of Star Trek: Voyager was a big mistake. Setting the show in, say, the 2300's or 2320's would have made much more sense, as we don't know hardly anything about those points in time and most likely didn't have a preconceived notion about how it should look.

 

[Mindcore]

I think you are right about that, but its a good thing. TOS was a piece of history, it changed the world, but I think that TNG and the series which have come since are easier for younger viewers to tap into the Star Trek mythos.

And that's why, if TPTB wanted to do a prequel series, they should have set it on either the Enterprise-B or the Enterprise-C (preferably the "B," since we already know the ultimate fate of the "C."). That way they wouldn't have had to worry about a premise that they couldn't deliver (i.e. the Romulan War and formation of the Federation), or suddenly create another ship named Enterprise even before Kirk's, that no one had ever heard of before.

I think every Star Trek fan had his or her own idea of how they thought the Federation was formed. I know I did. So creating a prequel show set in the 2150's, while at the same time giving it the look and feel (and the writing) of Star Trek: Voyager was a big mistake. Setting the show in, say, the 2300's or 2320's would have made much more sense, as we don't know hardly anything about those points in time and most likely didn't have a preconceived notion about how it should look.

I am going through a huge phase of watching this series right now. They have it on SyFy every week. I hadn't watched any Star Trek for years, but I am totally loving it.

I think I may come to agree over time, but I look forward to each episode gleefully. This is my first time to watch it.

I also watch TNG regularly, and TOS occasionally. I also like Deep Space Nine, but its been years. I need to give Voyager a shot, though it does seem to get some of the most mixed response.

 

[Mach5]

My honest opinion... I enjoyed Season 4, but mainly for the fanwank. That said, though, I can't see how any real ENT fan could appreciate TATV as it struck me as a slap in the face of thisshow's fans by making it a weird appendix to "Pegasus" [TNG].

Most of the people I know, who like TATV, hate ENT. On the other hand, those few ENT fans who do like it, like it mostly because they hate Trip.

"These are the Voyages..." feels like warmed up left-overs the writers had sitting in a drawer

Brilliant!

Berman and Braga (who were already moving on to other projects) should have given the showrunner who'd taken over, free reign to end it how he saw fit. What did it matter to them?

Season1 - ENT premiers - most fans think it's meh and blame B&B
Season 2 - a bunch of fans give up on ENT, blaming B&B
Season 3 - ENT improves significantly - fans praise mostly Manny Coto
Season 4 - Manny Coto hailed as the one who saved ENT from the clutches of the *evil* Beebs
TATV - The Beebs seize their chance of getting one back at those ungrateful Trekkie pieces of shit.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

I don't hate Brannon Braga as an individual or anything, and he had some good stuff earlier in his tenure. But I can't help but notice he's about five years behind on everything he ever did wrong. Didn't he just recently semi-apologize for TATV?

 

[Mindcore]

Right now I am watching an episode of Enterprise where T'pol (who is my first crush since I was in my teens) is having a Marvel Comics Wolverine style reaction to hunting a weird Vulcan fugitive played by Bruce Davidson.

This is what I love about this show. It has a hot Vulcan woman who is so amazing, and is having Vulcan black ops flash backs.

I have read that the Vulcan High Command (during this era of the Star Trek mythos), is a totalitarian dictatorship. This was a dark period in the luminous Vulcan history. I love the Vulcans and consider them to be such a great lesson about what can be done with self control.

This show is beautiful to me, and I hate myself for not watching it when it originally came on.

 

[Mach5]

Right now I am watching an episode of Enterprise where T'pol (who is my first crush since I was in my teens) is having a Marvel Comics Wolverine style reaction to hunting a weird Vulcan fugitive played by Bruce Davidson.

Yeah, The Seventh. We killed that piece of shit in the hurt/heal game just yesterday.

Welcome to ENT board, Mindcore.

 

[Alienesse]

After seeing Enterprise I was convinced Scott Bakula was a likeable but limited actor. NBC series Chuck changed my mind. Bakula's performance on that show is wonderful!

That's exactly how I felt about him. Imagine my utter surprise when I finally got to watch Quantum Leap! I was sincerely impressed by his performances and it sent my regard for him as an actor sky high. And I have to say I'll never look at Enterprise the same way again.

 

[Son of Quark]

I liked the show from the time it premiered. Probably my second favorite Star Trek series after Deep Space Nine. Season One was excellent, as were seasons 2 & 3. Season 4 was probably the weakest, in my opinion, but was still a killer season. Reed was a bit annoying at times, but overall I thought it an excellent series. I only wish the Shran was in there more, as he was a great character. Hell, Jeffrey Combs was brilliant in all the different charcaters he played in the Star Trek series.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Wow, Son of Quark, you thought the fourth season was the weakest? I guess that's some strong proof that for every possible opinion in this world there's a believer. No offense or anything, I've just never heard that before. Season four gets crazy praise.

My thoughts on Enterprise... it had a pretty weak cast overall, especially compared to... well, probably the rest of Trek, really. The UPN-esque decon scenes really annoyed me even at the rather influential age I was when the show was on the air. And for every reminder of why I watched in the first two seasons, there was a reminder of why I should stop anticipating Friday nights at 8 on UPN with such enthusiasm.

Then it got better. A lot better. The cast was still largely uninteresting (mainly because so much of it was so damned underwritten) but a little episode called "The Expanse" really opened me up to the show. (Can I get a drum roll?) It dealt with Duras -- something I was enjoying the build-up to -- and it introduced us to a season-long threat. I'd read the previews for season three and I was stoked. And it didn't disappoint, either. As much as I really didn't feel the T'Pol/Trip thing, other than that it was a rollercoaster season.

I was a member of the "Save Enterprise" campaign at the time; I'm not sure how much of that stems from Trek having always been one of those things to look forward to throughout my entire life up to then and how much of it actually came from my enjoyment of the show but as the third season went on it certainly became more of the latter. I bit my nails at the thought of the show ending after three years. I remember hoping for 'just two more seasons, just two more seasons of this quality'.

Ended up with just one more season but hey, the fourth year was certainly great, too. Par for the Trekkian course, there were a few episodes I definitely could have done without, but hey, the same thing could be said even for season three, I suppose. The Vulcan arc and the "United" arc were ridiculously good watching. This is definitely my second-favorite season and I would have loved to have seen more. The writers were really getting a grasp on things.

All good things...

 

[Son of Quark]

Wow, Son of Quark, you thought the fourth season was the weakest? I guess that's some strong proof that for every possible opinion in this world there's a believer. No offense or anything, I've just never heard that before. Season four gets crazy praise.


All good things...

Yeah, I say Season 4 was the weakest, in my opinion, was that Season 4 was my least favorite Season. I'm not saying it was weak, but the other three were better in my opinion.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Wow, Son of Quark, you thought the fourth season was the weakest? I guess that's some strong proof that for every possible opinion in this world there's a believer. No offense or anything, I've just never heard that before. Season four gets crazy praise.


All good things...

Yeah, I say Season 4 was the weakest, in my opinion, was that Season 4 was my least favorite Season. I'm not saying it was weak, but the other three were better in my opinion.

Yeah, I gotcha. I just felt like commenting because I'd never seen anyone say that before.