Go more so, inside of individual episodes have them be weeks or months. The helmsman says it will take two week to reach a destination, cut to next scene and it's two weeks later. Or, "Captain's Log" we're been in orbit a month now and .... Problem I would have with this is that it small universe. If not the sphere builders from the 22nd centuries future, then a contemporary (to the 22nd century) alien race we've never heard of. But not the Romulans (or the Klingons) who are extremely over used. And have Reed be a member whole-heartedly. Not reluctant. Reed believes intellectually and morally in what S31 represents and their protection of Earth. Yes , but entirely separate from S31, and they don't know about each other. Have it be a small group, instead of a individual. While we're at it, there also a small group of officer and crew who think that Earth would be better off under the control of the Vulcans. They think that the Vulcan way is all that. Have the series start with the ship being in the fourth year of it's voyage? I thought it was a interesting idea that needed development, unfortunately the producers acted like little children owing to it not being their idea. Have it be honest romance and not "a experiment." The two actors definately had on screen chemistry. Have her in a Vulcan robe, give her different ones along the same theme, different colors and cuts. Less flowing than what we first saw her in. Like this but with something like hakama pants. Instead of Archer problem with the Vulcan be that they didn't simply hand Archer Sr. the keys to the palace, have it be that there's a real reason to distrust the Vulcans, there was a scandal involving the Vulcans and Earth's government, or the Vulcans were shown to have been actually spying on Earth and it was proven.
Not sure how to respond to this, either you know what I meant and intentionally chose the strange interpretation of what I said for the sake of being negative, or I have to call into question your comprehension skills. The fourth season is the style of episode that I think should have been the style for the entire series, and quite obviously, if the first season were written in this style, it would differ in that it would be the first season of their voyage. Instead of trying to be Voyager lite which was already TNG lite with bland stories and over-complicated time travel themes, it should have had semi-serialized arcs that celebrated the origins of Trek lore.
If they'd followed Braga's original idea to spend the whole of the first year on Earth preparing for the launch of the ship I doubt the show would have made it past season one. They could have incorporated all the pre-launch stories by producing more flashback episodes like "First Flight" and "Carbon Creek". Someone up thread has already mentioned that Starfleet should have given Archer a detailed mission briefing rather than just sending Earth's most advanced starship off to randomly explore. A slightly more serialised arc would have benefited the series too (not as heavily serialised as season 3, looser like the "Minefield"/"Dead Stop" arc).
Wasn't it season four that was the nails in ENT's coffin? If any format changes made really worked, the show wouldn't have been canceled.
I've had some time to think about this, not that it matters but the sphere builders should have been future Romulans and they should have been tied in with future guy and Daniels who may have been half Romulan and maybe even a double agent. Just a thought.
aspects can be salvaged the last episode is a decade later. the old crew reassembling for the formal federation charter signing this is the first time in years they've all been together. some are still in starfleet, some civilians. the previous decade in seen through flash backs. the romulan war. promotions. leaving starfleet. affairs. marriages. children. success. failure. politics. losing friendship between each other and later regaining it. the focus of episode is on the hero crew and what happen to them. not riker and troi. not shran. family.
I like the idea of Vulcans sabotaging Earth's early attempts to make it to space. That could have been a bone of contention if they were discovered.
For my version of Enterprise, reference 'The Long Sleep' in the fanfic forum. I put a timeline at the front end of it as well to show the background of how my version 'came about,' so to speak. I posted it ages ago, not sure how far back it's buried. This is the intro I wrote at the front of the thread:
I'd probably shoot for something that's narrative closer to what we saw in season four from the start, but aesthetically similar to The Expanse. Obviously, a couple of the season four arcs wouldn't have worked if they were used in season one as they were actually 'fixing' some things. I just mean that it would be more prequel-y from the start. And The Expanse just looks cool, and practicable. But this is all in hindsight, of course, and I have no idea the choices 2000-2001 era me would have made if he was making the show.
Just a few random thoughts from last night: IMO, most of season 4’s stuff came too soon. I for one enjoyed the tensions and constant bickering between Vulcan officials and Starfleet representatives. Remember, there is no such thing like a perfect relationship! In a perfect world, with a full 7 seasons of Enterprise, the Vulcan arc came too soon. Let T’Pol be married to Koss for, say, 2-3 years. Let her fret about the destiny and well being of her mother. Let Trip try everything to get over her, but without much success. He is leaving the ship only to find out that he is dreaming of her each and every night. (I find the day dream thing to be too annoying and dangerous IRL.) Back on Enterprise (after a full year on Columbia), the dreams stop but the two star-crossed lovers are as miserable as ever. A new attractive crew member starts flirting with Trip but he can’t get Polly out of his head. I want to see T’Pol to be torn between her feelings for Trip and her sense of duty. Deep inside she knows that she and Trip have bonded, and that there’s no way back. She might have to speak with Koss, but later. Borrowing some more time for her mothers pension. After a couple of months, there is an urgent message coming in from Vulcan: IT’S TIME ! Reluctantly, she’s boarding a shuttle and going home. Upon arrival, her outlaws tell her that she’s pretty late. Koss has started foaming at the mouth already… Meanwhile, Trip is experiencing intense dreams, scenes of wild disorder. When he can’t stand it any longer, he starts drinking until he fades away into blissful oblivion. It is only after Trip didn’t report for duty the next day that Captain Archer is looking for him. Sickbay, Coma, pretty much everything pumped out, blood replaced, possibly complications. After the blood fever has cooled down a bit, T’Pol feels dirty and is craving for a shower. Her logic returns slowly and she starts wondering just how much Trip might have seen? Trip! She cannot feel him any more! Something must have happened. She needs to have the Talk with Koss, NOW. Understandably, Koss is not all too happy to learn that someone might have witnessed his first Pon Farr. It’s been awkward and embarrassing enough as is, with a wife who is still a stranger to this day. Why didn’t she tell him beforehand? He could have made arrangements, this whole mess could have been avoided. T’Pol is calling Starfleet in order to find out if there’s anything wrong with Trip. Deeply disturbed, she returns to Koss. Calmed down, he promises to release her from further obligations and that he is trying to find a position for her mother where she ain’t dependent on the good will of his family. Yet he is waiting a few weeks (months) before taking official steps (divorce), just in case they both let nature take it’s course… Trip is recovering slowly, his whole personality has changed, he’s become darker, more introverted. [Think: Sylvester Stallone in Rambo 4] T’Pol is telling him the good news, but to no avail. Trip keeps avoiding her, since technically, she is still married and on top of that, she could be pregnant. Phlox and the Captain are worrying that Trip’s alcohol poisoning may have caused permanent damage to his brain and vital organs. T’Pol is blaming herself for the tragedy and is restless, getting on everybody’s nerve. She cannot wait for the month to pass until Phlox can definitely say whether she is pregnant or not. Her only source of information about Trip’s condition is the Captain, because both Trip and Phlox refuse to talk to her about this topic. Then there is the whole Roman War thing. Earth has exactly two Warp 5 vessels at their disposal, three at best. As I see it, the Romulans would smoke the Earthlings in no time… What do they want to fight with? I mean for a start, the Romulans certainly have more vessels, a cloaking technology, heck, they can even cloak their mine fields! Let Vulcan High Command still be influenced by the Romulans. Let Andorians (yes, more Shran !!!) and even Tellurites be more reliable allies than Vulcans! Let parts of the Vulcan society become fed up with official politics and search for spiritual truth - the Syrranite movement. Let T’Les be part of it. At the height of the war, civil unrest arises on Vulcan, Starfleet HQ is getting bombed and Archer/T’Pol have to investigate the Syrranites. The rest of the original Vulcan arc could proceed, with but a few adjustments. I didn’t like the idea that T’Pol was sentenced to death for high treason. Instead, V’Las could have made a few remarks about her origins, that ‘You are one of us!’ or something. After the Kir’Shara has been uncovered and Vulcan society undergoes fundamental changes, T’Pol is being cured of her Pa’nar syndrome. The Vulcan priest & healer even tries to cure some of Trips brain damage. As a result, his everyday mood is getting much brighter, almost like he used to be before the war. But not everything can be magically healed… On Vulcan, an old priest is developing strange new cravings for catfish and pecan pie.
I believe that the idea behind Enterprise was to try to distance the show a little bit from Star Trek to draw in a broader audience, while also refreshing Trek a bit for a more modern audience. I feel like it mostly failed at both goals, but here's the approach I would take: The series begins with NORAD or some similar US military facility detecting the approach of an alien invasion fleet using a bank of futuristic equipment that looks out of place among the rest of the computers that they're using - and that looks like it would have been right at home aboard the TOS Enterprise. The next scene is of a Star Trek trivia contest at Dragon*Con in Atlanta. There are some obviously undercover agents sitting in the audience, and as soon as it's over, the winner and the runner-up are approached by the groups of friends that are at the con with them while they're discussing how weird the audience was. And then, once the panel room has cleared out except for them and the agents, they're all taken into custody by the agents - the winner, his girlfriend, and an older friend of theirs, and the runner-up and her boyfriend, and the guy that was running the trivia contest, Garrett Wang. They're taken to a secret government facility on the coast, and on the way there, it is explained to them that their expertise is needed for a mission of importance to the future of all of Earth. Apparently, Gene Roddenberry actually died in a plane accident in the Syrian desert in 1947, and his identity was used by the government as a cover identity for a time traveler from the future - the year 2370. "Roddenberry" had been just a regular guy from that time named Cree Daniels - the pilot for a civilian Sol System tour ship that had somehow gotten flung backward in time and crashed when it collided with the plane the original Gene Roddenberry had been on. He shared everything he could remember about anything, and then was allowed to live a private if carefully monitored life, occasionally brought back in for additional questions. TOS and TNG and several movies and many books were made with Gene's direct input. Starting toward the end of TNG, other people were just making a lot of stuff up. And really, Gene had, too, for the shows - they were shows, after all. The government allowed it all, because the shows actually helped them cover up what they were working on, and later, they might have served to familiarize the general public with some things they'd need to know. Between the information they had gotten from him and what they managed to reverse engineer from the crashed tour ship, the United States Navy managed to, under the strictest of secrecy and security, build their own ship - the Enterprise, Naval eXperiment 01 of a planned fleet of 13, but the only one operational now. And that's where the convention attendees are being taken. Because the invasion force was Klingon, and there was no way Earth was ready to fight them. So the Enterprise would be sent to make contact with Vulcan, and hopefully get help. Series plotlines: A. The Enterprise crew has hilarious (mis)adventures in space, trying to survive and find help for Earth. B. The Klingons arrive, the governments of Earth promptly surrender, and instead of the glorious battle he expected to get, the Klingon general is now faced with trying to run multiple bureaucratic nightmares from the Oval Office, which also results in comedic situations as the Klingon command staff misunderstands a lot and leans on human White House staffers that may secretly be working against them, "Hogan's Heroes" style. B2. The secret facility on Earth that built the Enterprise trying to remain secret from the Klingons while communicating when they safely can with the Enterprise. (Rod Roddenberry as himself as a recurring character involved here, as well as Vaughn Armstrong as the facility commander, if possible.) Enterprise Main Cast: US Navy Captain Maxwell Forrest, commander Enterprise NX-01 - Pretty much Captain Holt from "Brooklyn 99", including actor Andre Braugher, if he was a captain in the US Navy instead. Chief Engineer "Trip" Tucker - The engineer that figured out the key to building their recreation of the tour ship's warp drive (which has a maximum speed of Warp 4.8, and doesn't use dilithium, though Bisley is still playing with how that part of the system is supposed to work). Trip controls the ship's speed and course by directly manipulating the engine controls - no remote control system has been established on the bridge at this point in the ship's development, but that's under construction. Same actor as on Enterprise - Connor Trinneer - and his pre-show biography is very similar to the character of the same name from Enterprise, as well. Master-At-Arms Malcolm Reed - Extreme weapons enthusiast, and head of the security/protection contingent of military personnel aboard the ship (Military Armed Command Operations - MACOs). Played by Jason Isaacs with an American accent - or Dominic Keating if he can do a good American accent. Jon Archer - the winner of the trivia contest, an IT guy. Brave but unsure of himself a lot of the time. Can get pretty nerdy, but more-or-less passes as a regular guy most of the time. Attempts to be the embodiment of the ideals Trek taught him when he was growing up. Played by Johnny Galecki. "Linda" Hoshi Sato - Jonathan's girlfriend, an elementary school teacher. They originally connected through conventions, and she might be nerdier than Jonathan - she's VERY into languages, natural and invented, and she speaks fluent Klingon. She's also a bit of a hypochondriac, particularly when it comes to phobias. Played by Linda Park. Phil Oxendine - Jonathan and Linda's older friend, a veterinary doctor that works at a research lab that researches pet health and nutrition. Has a colorful past that includes having been the vet for horses in mob-rigged races (which also included doing some off-the-record work on gang members from time to time), and several ex-wives, two of which still live at the home he shares with his current wife under less than clear circumstances. Played by John Billingsley. Jolene Polston - the runner-up of the trivia contest, but actually more knowledgeable of Trek lore than Jon, the questions just happened to be ones that gave him the win. Works as a waitress at a restaurant/bar near Moody AFB in Valdosta, GA, where her boyfriend was stationed. Purple belt in karate, has done a little modelling in local advertisements, both from when she lived in her small midwestern home town. She was dressed in a TOS uniform with Vulcan ears when the group was taken into custody, and has spirit gum with her to reapply them if that becomes relevant. Played by Jolene Blalock. US Air Force 2nd Lt. Travis Mayweather - Jolene's boyfriend, a pilot for the Air Force based out of Moody AFB. Not really into all this nerdy stuff, but very into keeping his girlfriend happy, so he was at the convention with her - and he's a nice guy that gets along with people easily, so he was having a good bit of fun, anyway. The military pushed through paperwork quickly to reassign him to their Enterprise once the group was taken and they realized he was part of it. There are no working transporters aboard Enterprise, only an away craft, and he's the pilot for that, now. Played by J. August Richards. White House Main Cast: General Maltz - the Imperial Klingon general that leads the force sent to conquer Earth, which was supposed to be one last glorious battle that the aging Maltz could die in a blaze of glory in. But instead, Earth surrendered without a fight, almost as if they had a much better idea of what they were facing than they should have. And now the weary Maltz has to actually *govern* this new Klingon servitor world, the last thing he actually would have wanted to do. (Note that Maltz is apparently a name that recurs in his family, much as Worf is for House Mogh.) Played by John Larroquette. Brigadier K'ten - Maltz's Chief of Staff who can't understand why the humans keep laughing about his name. A rotund, human-looking Klingon from one of the Empire's previous conquests. He's easily duped by the human White House staffers on a regular basis. Played by Kevin James. Donna Beedy - the White House staffer that Maltz thinks he has chosen to communicate through. He doesn't realize that she manipulated him into that, and that she's basically got him in a bubble and is really running everything a lot of the time. Played by Sarah Rafferty. Minor plot point - at some point, there has to be a scene where some Klingon troops have hideously misunderstood American supermarkets and it has resulted in them being in a buggy chase where one Klingon warrior is pushing another around in a shopping cart.
I wouldn't want to rewrite ENT so much as, uh ... just present it differently. Like, I'd have people floating like NASA astronauts do, in the Jefferies Tubes. I liked how they'd show people wearing suits and ties and stuff like that, I'd have a more modern day military dress suit of the here & now for ENT than the one they went with. I'd have stations where their computers weren't built into the walls, necessarily. At least some would be laptops on desks and that sort of thing. I'd get rid of T'Pol's catsuits and find something more appropriate for a dignified Vulcan officer to wear. The most radical change I'd make, more than likely, is that I'd get rid of Phlox. I can't stand him and his zoo animal sickbay, I'd never have written him that way. Use him as a guest star in a stand-alone show, but otherwise, get rid of him. I liked ENT Season 3 and I really wish it could've stayed like that. Season 4's pretty flat, to me, and I really wish they hadn't gone to Vulcan. The galloping Sehlat really did it for me.
Holdover from the 7 of 9 era, when they saw how popular that was. Interesting point of view. It took me a while to warm up to Phlox and his menagerie, but once I did I found his character and unorthodox treatments to be one of the fresher things on the show. Different strokes I guess.
I wouldn't have had T'Pol dress like a nun, necessarily. But a catsuit is hardly a practical outfit and it's just one of those constant challenges to my suspension of disbelief, because even someone like Charlie, from Top Gun, didn't dress like a cock tease. She wore normal clothes and she was always hot in everything she wore. Jolene Blalock was only too happy to dress sexy and get naked to further the success of the show. But "they" acted like they'd never seen a woman before and didn't know how to present her. She was a supermodel, fellas ... it's not that hard. But it may have been These Are the Voyages, where they finally -- FINALLY!!! -- let T'Pol look much more natural (comparatively), where her hair and makeup were actually flattering and, in a way, it kind of annoyed me. The reason being that she could have & should have looked like that all through the series, but they just never got her look right until the very, very end. Even in the Mirror episodes (I know I'm alone in this) they never managed to make Jolene look good. Her hair and makeup were different, not better. Yes, she showed a lot of skin in her Mirror outfit, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Its bugging me, now ... I know there was another time when she looked alright. Oh! Her wedding, she looked OK, but again ... that friggin' mushroom wig was determined to screw up her looks. The dress she had on looked like it needed another pass on the drawing board, particularly the upper body part. But it hugged her figure where it was supposed to and didn't make her look like a stripper gone straight. It was damn near pretty.