Could Enterprise have survived with better writers?

[Vulcanian]

Some were a bit more successful with the fans than others *Looks in Archer's direction*

I actually liked Archer. Scott Bakula's acting was great and they ulitized his character better in the fourth season with Manny Coto (as with all the others, too). I do admit he had his stale moments, but he was a good character. He is like Kirk but with out all the annoyingly immature side of him.

Hoshi's bad-girl past came from one episode, way in season four, where the show was on it's last legs.

Hoshi was a bad girl? I don't remember that episode, can you be specific? Yes, I loved what they did with her and one of my favorites was "Affliction" with the famous Phlox and Hoshi scenes.

 

[Vulcanian]

ChristopherPike said:
There were also a huge number who simply didn't care about what happened before Kirk and Spock.

Agreed, some fans hate prequels just because they are going backwards. I too, would like a series in the 25th century, but I am thinking "What?! You aren't a bit curious about what happened to Borg after FC, the Romulan Wars or how the UFP was founded?" Pretty dramatic stuff if you ask me.

Yet another silly fan cliche like hating CGI no matter the quality since the original can't be touched and kid characters to name a few. Quite illogical

 

[Anna Yolei]

Vulcanian said:

Some were a bit more successful with the fans than others *Looks in Archer's direction*

I actually liked Archer. Scott Bakula's acting was great and they ulitized his character better in the fourth season with Manny Coto (as with all the others, too). I do admit he had his stale moments, but he was a good character. He is like Kirk but with out all the annoyingly immature side of him.

I liked him too, season one aside, but that first season of being an asstard really killed it for most people on this board.

Hoshi's bad-girl past came from one episode, way in season four, where the show was on it's last legs.

Hoshi was a bad girl? I don't remember that episode, can you be specific? Yes, I loved what they did with her and one of my favorites was "Affliction" with the famous Phlox and Hoshi scenes.

IT was the episode where the Organics took over Travis and Reed's bodies and infected Hoshi and Trip with an illness to see how the humans would respond. I don't know what the name was.

 

[Vulcanian]

^ That's "Observer Effect" with the Organians. No she wasn't evil, just possesed.

 

[Trekwatcher]

I just watched "Silent Enemy" and "Dear Doctor" this morning, both from S1. "Silent Enemy" has it's slow spots, and is not their best outing, but has some great moments, and the painful business of finding out Reed's favorite food is made worth suffering through by the nicely done coda with the pineapple cake.

Conversely, "Dear Doctor" is, IMHO, well written and acted from start to finish. A very strong episode.

 

[Thena]

Vulcanian said:
Hoshi was a bad girl? I don't remember that episode, can you be specific? Yes, I loved what they did with her and one of my favorites was "Affliction" with the famous Phlox and Hoshi scenes.

In "Observer Effect," Hoshi tells Trip that she got kicked out of Starfleet training for breaking her commanding officer's arm. Why? She got caught organizing a weekend poker game for new recruits and when her CO disagreed with him, she broke his arm in the ensuing argument.

Guess you can't mess with a pissed-off linguist.

 

[Jack Bauer]

Thena said:

Vulcanian said:
Hoshi was a bad girl? I don't remember that episode, can you be specific? Yes, I loved what they did with her and one of my favorites was "Affliction" with the famous Phlox and Hoshi scenes.

In "Observer Effect," Hoshi tells Trip that she got kicked out of Starfleet training for breaking her commanding officer's arm. Why? She got caught organizing a weekend poker game for new recruits and when her CO disagreed with him, she broke his arm in the ensuing argument.

Guess you can't mess with a pissed-off linguist.

Or a cunning one.

 

[3D Master]

Trekwatcher said:
Conversely, "Dear Doctor" is, IMHO, well written and acted from start to finish. A very strong episode.

Are you telling me the episode that has "I'm right, and you're wrong, because I think I can perfectly predict the future" Phlox is well written and is a strong episode?

 

[number6]

^^ It would seem so, and I would agree. Not everyone has to hate Star Trek as much as you seem to.

 

[Trekwatcher]

3D Master said:

Trekwatcher said:
Conversely, "Dear Doctor" is, IMHO, well written and acted from start to finish. A very strong episode.

Are you telling me the episode that has "I'm right, and you're wrong, because I think I can perfectly predict the future" Phlox is well written and is a strong episode?

Actually, I do think it is a strong episode. Phlox is finally given something important to wrestle with, and he handles it well. His comment to Archer about the Neanderthals sums up his position well. He also was pointing out that it was not really a disease, but a genetic issue that was part of a larger evolutionary issue, hence his stance. It doesn't matter if I agree or disagree with it, it matters if the characters are internally consistent, and Phlox was.

 

[Vulcanian]

Trekwatcher said:
I just watched "Silent Enemy" and "Dear Doctor" this morning, both from S1. "Silent Enemy" has it's slow spots, and is not their best outing, but has some great moments, and the painful business of finding out Reed's favorite food is made worth suffering through by the nicely done coda with the pineapple cake.

I agreed that Enterprise had some really good S1-S2 episodes that I enjoyed. If Enterprise was done right it was better than Voyager.

Fight or Flight, Breaking the Ice, The Seventh and Regeneration were some that I had some real honest fun with. :thumbsup:

 

[commodore64]

Another one word answer (woo hoo): yes.

I liked much of what Mike Sussman did, and believe he was one of the best and also liked the Reeves-Stevens duo. I think the other writers weren't nearly as good.

Joss Whedon, a writer who's great at dialog, character creation and consistency and intriguing plots would've been able to really kick out some great stuff for ENT and think we'd still be enjoying it.

 

[Pheon]

CaptainHawk1 said:
The problem with the discussion that I see is that there is a tendency to combine two different issues. The first being why ENY failed and the second being what were the problems with ENT. The problem is that fans think that they are intertwined and this is not the case.

There is no way that ENT could have survived regardless of writing because it was on UPN and frankly the format was old. It's not even necessarily that the writing was bad (which it really wasn't for the first two seasons, it was just mediocre) but it comes down to the format of every episode being exactly the way TNG was in 1987 and every other Trek that followed.

It's not that the audience was tired of Trek it's that the format was tired. For a series to succeed it needs to change with its audience. A prime example of this is Law and Order. Current L/O is nothing like it was in 1990 or evn the mid to late 90's and this is by design. By the same token, the 2 spinoffs have completely different formats than the original L/O and each other.

Trek doesn't like change and another issue that they have is that in the age of 300 cable channels, they are seriously niche programming. Trek is not major network friendly anymore period and syndication for science fiction is increasingly questionable. For Trek to succeed in the future on TV it's going to need to find a home on a niche channel like SciFi and its sucess will need to be measured on those terms where getting 3 million viewers a week is considered a success so they'll need to tighten their collective belts regarding budgets.

So, I don't think ENT's success had anything to do with the quality of the writing because if that were the case CSI would have been cancelled years ago. Trek's just tired and a generation behind.

-Shawn

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, and I’ll even go as far as to echo other comments and say that I don’t think the writing was much of a factor either way.

Although they did try out of more out of desperation really to change the format in Season 3, but it really was too little too late at that point. And let’s face it with the shows on today there has being a literal revolution over the past couple of years in both the style and tone of what’s on TV.

The regime change probably did put the final nail in Enterprise and it’s era of Trek WAY before Season Four had even begun. It seems they just wanted somewhere close to a hundred episodes to make for a better package deal for syndication purposes.

But onto the thread question specifically, I was actually quite surprised by the vast amount of negativity against Enterprise online when I first joined the internet community, which was probably around say during the season one and two break.

Up to that point I was fairly happy to sit through and watch the show as a bit of casual entertainment, as I had with Voyager’s rather meagre latter seasons. So I didn’t really notice any difference at all with the writing quality of Enterprise season’s one and two, with let’s say TNG Season 4 or 7, and the same goes with Voyager. Which does harken back to what CaptainHawk1 said in his post.

But ultimately to finish up, I do believe Enterprise would’ve have kept a larger number of its original audience had it tried to do something more innovative with the show and the era it was set it. Or if B&B would have just respected the fans and continuity more, because I DO think they were pretty arrogant and I DO think they expected Trek fans in general to eat whatever they held out in their palm.

Whether this potential increased number of viewership would have swayed new regime’s decision, I have no idea.

 

[3D Master]

Pheon said:
But ultimately to finish up, I do believe Enterprise would’ve have kept a larger number of its original audience had it tried to do something more innovative with the show and the era it was set it. Or if B&B would have just respected the fans and continuity more, because I DO think they were pretty arrogant and I DO think they expected Trek fans in general to eat whatever they held out in their palm.

It's not actually B&B - at least not directly them. The original concept of B&B was going to be set 30 years earlier, there was no temporal war, and it was going to be actual primitive - the tech, or lack there off, would truly by prequel and fitting with 22nd century as depicted on Star Trek.

It's the suits that told they couldn't do that and had to make a carbon copy of Voyager.

The failure of B&B then, was not putting up enough of a fight for their original vision, and then not quitting when the suits refuged to budge. They went, "Yes, sir, of course sir." When they should have gone, as they walked out the office for the last time, "Up yours." Metaphorically at least, if not literally.

 

[KayArr]

I loved Enterprise from Day One. I thought that the characters were great, and I enjoyed their interaction. All of the characters seemed far from perfect--all had flaws. I loved the exploration angle--it seemed closer to TOS to me than any of the others. Previously, TNG had been my favorite after TOS--but frankly, Enterprise made TNG seem rather sterile and one-dimensional.

The writing never bothered me with this show--I think that it was always fairly well written, much better than the dreck of most of TNG seasons 1 and 2. Watching the first two seasons was a joy, the occasional recycled plot didn't bother me overly much (ever watch a classic like The Avengers--they sometimes recycled whole scripts!). Season 3 was o.k., season 4 was o.k., but my least favorite. It became all prequel, and the characters that I loved on the current show just faded into the background and did little but serve the "links to TOS" feel. "Links to TOS" wasn't what I was personally after--I liked Enterprise fine the way it was.

If there was ever a silly plot, it was the Temporal Cold War--that was my least favorite aspect of the series.

I never really got into DS9. The Middle East is all over the news, why do I want to watch fictional allegories about it? And after it becomes all about the Dominion War--well, that's just not why I watch Trek, is it? I just finished watching the Captain's Log dvds, and I must say that Far Beyond the Stars and In the Pale Moonlight were so obvious as to be boring. There was nothing surprising or innovative about either of those stories. But--if you loved those characters like I loved the Enterprise characters, then those are great episodes. They're not inherently great--nothing is, art is all about taste and finding what you like. Very, very few works of art are really and truly timeless and universally liked, and maybe none are!

Enterprise had clunkers, no doubt about it, but what show doesn't? The Archer/Trip relationship was interesting and one we hadn't seen before, the captain was an ass, but I found him interesting, there was a lot more casual crew interaction than in TOS or TNG, I liked the new-style Vulcans...I could go on and on, but I'll just stop there.

Enterprise writing was no better or worse than any of the other shows. I vote with the "public is tired of Trek" explanation--and making season 4 all about prequelitis didn't help bring in new viewers. Add to that the preemptions and other scheduling problems of season 4, and you have a canceled series.

Perhaps the real problem is that Enterprise was the first series truly born in the era when internet forums shape fan reactions. Back when most folks couldn't talk to more than a few people that they knew about a series, they just enjoyed it and went along for the ride if they did. But the internet is an echo chamber--the most extreme reactions gain steam, others jump on board, and forums like this actually start to shape opinion. T.V. in the internet age is a whole new beast--we won't really know the impact for years, then folks will start to study it, and we'll see what they say. Would TOS have survived in this age? I think not--maybe not even a season. The uniforms for women? The needling of Spock? The Rodenberry/Nichols affair? Who knows how forums would have reacted to that sort of stuff.

If you read these boards, you'd think there is 100% agreement that Enterprise seasons 1 and 2 sucked, 3 was better, and the series would have survived if season 4 had been the starting point. I don't think so--if it had started out with season 4, I'd have tuned out--the stories were fine, but the present day characters were bland. I stayed with season 4 as the final season because I had 3 seasons of character backstory to make the final season acceptable.

Using forums like this to judge true public opinion isn't a good idea--it's a very small, self selected group. That makes for fun and stimulating discussion, but no historian will take this board's word for it 100 years from now that DS9 was the best Trek, 7of9 ruined Voyager, or anything else. These boards represent only one group of opinions among many.

 

[Vulcanian]

It's not actually B&B - at least not directly them. The original concept of B&B was going to be set 30 years earlier, there was no temporal war, and it was going to be actual primitive - the tech, or lack there off, would truly by prequel and fitting with 22nd century as depicted on Star Trek.

It's the suits that told they couldn't do that and had to make a carbon copy of Voyager.

I never heard that story. It's not like you can please everybody, Berman even confessed to not being "a fan"

Perhaps the real problem is that Enterprise was the first series truly born in the era when internet forums shape fan reactions.

Not true. It's not like everyone on planet Earth reads this.

Using forums like this to judge true public opinion isn't a good idea

What is a good idea is to see what other people think and judge for yourself. That's how you grow.

 

[Anna Yolei]

Perhaps the real problem is that Enterprise was the first series truly born in the era when internet forums shape fan reactions. Back when most folks couldn't talk to more than a few people that they knew about a series, they just enjoyed it and went along for the ride if they did. But the internet is an echo chamber--the most extreme reactions gain steam, others jump on board, and forums like this actually start to shape opinion.

You probably got a point, there. I remember scouring through the Trek News archives looking at some older posts from '01 and it seemed some had made up their minds to hate Series v, be it a series in the 29th century (as ti was rumored to be early on) or a prequel (a hate that only got worse then TPTB dare make an Enterprise that pre-dated the ones on TOS! Oh teh noes!!!!111!!1

But to some extent, those online were folks who actually still cared enough about Trek to discuss why it was going south. There have probably been maybe five hundred regular Enterprise posters in the six-year history of this forum. Five hundred out of, ten million who dropped off watching this show, and I doubt most of them cared to think why they didn't like the show besides "This sucks." I know that's what happened to me in season two, and I didn't post here or know who was in charge of the writing. When I discovered that the episodes I liked least were fr more often than not, written by B&B, I kind of put two and two together for myself.

Using forums like this to judge true public opinion isn't a good idea--it's a very small, self selected group. That makes for fun and stimulating discussion, but no historian will take this board's word for it 100 years from now that DS9 was the best Trek, 7of9 ruined Voyager, or anything else.

Indeed not. C/7 ruined Voyager!

But on a serious note, you're right. I remember being really new and coming into a discussion here on why Enterprise wasn't canon, for some stupid reasons that I can't even remember now. That sort of crap is why Trek fans get laughed at and slagged off as wankers. But I think the folks that criticize writing and character development may have had some good points. Why have a cast of seven when only three of them get 90 percent of the stories? I think that single-handedly led to some of the polarization on certain character-related issues in this forum's past--there wasn't enough info for anyone else to get invested into another character.

In any event, welcome to the forum.