While,all the trekker I know in real life said they appreciate ENT and feel awful for it being cancelled,there seems to be lots of people who don't like it at all.Some say they hate the theme song while others say it is too American centred.
Do you like ENT or not,why?
- Thread starter SS.Scientific
- Start date
I like ENT quite a bit. I didn't really care for it at the time it was released, but that was more on me because I was kind of burned out on Star Trek at that time of my life.
Put in a bubble, removing it 20 years from its original airing, and judging it completely on its own merits without having it airing back-to-back/concurrently with other series........it's actually quite an entertaining little sci-fi show.
Count me as a fan, although not a passionate one.
Put in a bubble, removing it 20 years from its original airing, and judging it completely on its own merits without having it airing back-to-back/concurrently with other series........it's actually quite an entertaining little sci-fi show.
Count me as a fan, although not a passionate one.
I like it.
I don't really know why.
I don't really know why.
It's a fine show as it is.
Though I think it came too soon after Voyager and was too much of the same bland Berman stuff. They should have spent a couple of years defining what they want of the series and building solid story arcs. At the same time let the audience hunger grow.
The first season should have focused on Earth, building the ship while dealing with problems such as the Terra Prime movement, as was planned. (But no boy bands!)
Though I think it came too soon after Voyager and was too much of the same bland Berman stuff. They should have spent a couple of years defining what they want of the series and building solid story arcs. At the same time let the audience hunger grow.
The first season should have focused on Earth, building the ship while dealing with problems such as the Terra Prime movement, as was planned. (But no boy bands!)
I liked it in its original run, looking back it could have been SO much better with a great premise. but still ocasionally rewatch it.
It's my third favorite series behind TNG and DS9. I actually started a rewatch of it the other night. I will say some of those early episodes are a little meh, but Fight or Flight is a terrific second episode.
As for the theme song, I don't particularly care for it but they took a chance, instead of going for the conventional orchestral choice, and I appreciate that in itself.
Too American centred? Well, this is 130 years closer to our time than even Kirk's time is supposed to be, so I could imagine the world at that time to be less unified than in later centuries, and traces of the old countries to still be more of a thing than in Kirk's or Picard's time. So given that Earth Starfleet apparently seems based in America (or at least has a major presence there), maybe it attracts more 'American' people.
That said, I would have hoped for Enterprise to show more of how the Federation came into existence, and we got precious little of that, save for perhaps a few snippets in Season 4.
I genuinely loved Enterprise when it was airing, but I still knew it was flawed. Much like Voyager totally wasted its entire premise and instead tried to be TNG-lite, Enterprise somewhat wasted its own potential with run of the mill storytelling in the first couple of seasons.
Granted, there's a few gems in those first couple of seasons. The Vulcans were different from what we expected, which made them interesting. The Andorians were certainly standouts with Shran stealing every episode he was in. They even managed to make a sequel to First Contact and make the Borg feel threatening for the first time in ages.
But they also got bogged down in the whole temporal Cold War. Plus, they just couldn't resist the low hanging fruit that was the Klingons. Again with the Klingons. All that, combined with a great many mediocre episodes, I can't blame alot of fans for abandoning the series.
What kept me going was a genuine love for the cast, or atleast the ones that actually got interesting storylines. Sorry Hoshi and Travis.
With Archer, I saw exactly what they were going for, and I liked it. The boy scout that was in over his head, but with a big enough chip on his shoulder that he wouldn't let anyone hold him down. Out of all the Captains, he's the only one who feels like an explorer, who's not afraid to show that he still has a sense of wonder about the universe he's seeing for the first time. I like Captain Archer. Alot.
Then you have the Ying and Yang of Trip and T'Pol. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about those two when the show first started, but by the end, they were just as important to me as Archer. The charming southern "good ol' boy" was a act I was sure I was going to hate. But, he won me over.
T'Pol was the same. And admittedly, I was a little slower to warm to her. But, just as she warmed to the crew, so did I with her. Her emotional journey throughout the series was one of it's highpoints. Watching the loyalty she formed to Archer, and he to her, was heartwarming. TATV is an about trash heap of an episode, but when Archer went back to hug T'Pol......
While the rest of the crew certainly didn't get anywhere near the level of character development as the "big three," I liked them all. Reed with his stiff upper lip British attitude that slowly thawed. Phlox with comedy and warmth of character. Hoshi with her initial fear that turned into courage. Even Travis with his naive, if not optimistic outlook.
Thankfully, the show seemed to turn a corner with its third season. I enjoyed how they took this bright and sunny crew and took them down the road of darkness, but they were still able to come out the otherside having learned a great deal about themselves. The weight put on Archer was especially good. Here we saw the boy scout pushed past his limits to nearly the breaking point. The boundaries he had to cross seemed to forever change him in a way few Captains have been changed. But, he was still able to hold onto that boy scout attitude, if only a little.
The 4th season is where we finally were starting to see the potential in the shows setting. Indeed the beginnings of the Federation and the Romulan War is one of my favourite era's of Star Trek lore.
But alas, it was cut short before we were truly able to explore it.
To this day I still hold out a sliver of hope we may someday explore that era again. To see the Federation forged in fire. Humanity pushed to the brink by the Romulan War. Who knows, maybe someday in someway.
TLDR: I liked Enterprise.
Granted, there's a few gems in those first couple of seasons. The Vulcans were different from what we expected, which made them interesting. The Andorians were certainly standouts with Shran stealing every episode he was in. They even managed to make a sequel to First Contact and make the Borg feel threatening for the first time in ages.
But they also got bogged down in the whole temporal Cold War. Plus, they just couldn't resist the low hanging fruit that was the Klingons. Again with the Klingons. All that, combined with a great many mediocre episodes, I can't blame alot of fans for abandoning the series.
What kept me going was a genuine love for the cast, or atleast the ones that actually got interesting storylines. Sorry Hoshi and Travis.
With Archer, I saw exactly what they were going for, and I liked it. The boy scout that was in over his head, but with a big enough chip on his shoulder that he wouldn't let anyone hold him down. Out of all the Captains, he's the only one who feels like an explorer, who's not afraid to show that he still has a sense of wonder about the universe he's seeing for the first time. I like Captain Archer. Alot.
Then you have the Ying and Yang of Trip and T'Pol. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about those two when the show first started, but by the end, they were just as important to me as Archer. The charming southern "good ol' boy" was a act I was sure I was going to hate. But, he won me over.
T'Pol was the same. And admittedly, I was a little slower to warm to her. But, just as she warmed to the crew, so did I with her. Her emotional journey throughout the series was one of it's highpoints. Watching the loyalty she formed to Archer, and he to her, was heartwarming. TATV is an about trash heap of an episode, but when Archer went back to hug T'Pol......
While the rest of the crew certainly didn't get anywhere near the level of character development as the "big three," I liked them all. Reed with his stiff upper lip British attitude that slowly thawed. Phlox with comedy and warmth of character. Hoshi with her initial fear that turned into courage. Even Travis with his naive, if not optimistic outlook.
Thankfully, the show seemed to turn a corner with its third season. I enjoyed how they took this bright and sunny crew and took them down the road of darkness, but they were still able to come out the otherside having learned a great deal about themselves. The weight put on Archer was especially good. Here we saw the boy scout pushed past his limits to nearly the breaking point. The boundaries he had to cross seemed to forever change him in a way few Captains have been changed. But, he was still able to hold onto that boy scout attitude, if only a little.
The 4th season is where we finally were starting to see the potential in the shows setting. Indeed the beginnings of the Federation and the Romulan War is one of my favourite era's of Star Trek lore.
But alas, it was cut short before we were truly able to explore it.
To this day I still hold out a sliver of hope we may someday explore that era again. To see the Federation forged in fire. Humanity pushed to the brink by the Romulan War. Who knows, maybe someday in someway.
TLDR: I liked Enterprise.
I like it! I even like the theme song! I couldn’t watch it as it aired because I was living in Japan where it never aired but I assumed I could catch up when I got back stateside. Sadly, it got canceled instead.
I love the characters and wish we could have seen more of their journeys. Some people on here have suggested some changes to the premise or some ideas for the seasons that we never got that sound very interesting. However, since I don’t care a great deal about the plausibility of plot lines, hate watching battles, and find fisticuffs (and their more metaphorical brethren like debates) extremely dull, a lot of what bothers other viewers doesn’t bother me. It’s all about the characters. I’ll happily read/watch characters baking cupcakes if I care about them. (Do you hear that TPTB? I would have cheerfully watched Travis show off his collection of souvenirs from the planets he visited as a kid and gleefully listened to Hoshi expound on glottal stops!)
I love the characters and wish we could have seen more of their journeys. Some people on here have suggested some changes to the premise or some ideas for the seasons that we never got that sound very interesting. However, since I don’t care a great deal about the plausibility of plot lines, hate watching battles, and find fisticuffs (and their more metaphorical brethren like debates) extremely dull, a lot of what bothers other viewers doesn’t bother me. It’s all about the characters. I’ll happily read/watch characters baking cupcakes if I care about them. (Do you hear that TPTB? I would have cheerfully watched Travis show off his collection of souvenirs from the planets he visited as a kid and gleefully listened to Hoshi expound on glottal stops!)
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I love ENT. It's one of my favorite Trek series of all time. (SNW is my actual fave but ENT is right up there.)
I've always been a sucker for prequels, and ENT fits the bill quite nicely. Scott Bakula knocks it out of the park, I think the other characters are really cool as well (most notably Reed and Trip) and I love the building of the friendship between Archer and Shran.
So is this...
Unfortunately, meddling by the UPN bean counters kind of poisoned the well a bit (they insisted that ENT have transporters and the Temporal Cold War, both of which the showrunners did not want; also UPN vetoed the idea of having the entire first season set on Earth before the launch of the NX-01), but that's the nature of the beast.
I've always been a sucker for prequels, and ENT fits the bill quite nicely. Scott Bakula knocks it out of the park, I think the other characters are really cool as well (most notably Reed and Trip) and I love the building of the friendship between Archer and Shran.
So is this...
Unfortunately, meddling by the UPN bean counters kind of poisoned the well a bit (they insisted that ENT have transporters and the Temporal Cold War, both of which the showrunners did not want; also UPN vetoed the idea of having the entire first season set on Earth before the launch of the NX-01), but that's the nature of the beast.
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I don't like it.
I like some of the characters, the production design and enjoy some episodes but the show as a whole is not that good.
The first two seasons mostly felt like rejected TNG scripts, the third one was more ambitious and actually pretty good but then they messed up again with the fourth season which was way too much fan service,
I like some of the characters, the production design and enjoy some episodes but the show as a whole is not that good.
The first two seasons mostly felt like rejected TNG scripts, the third one was more ambitious and actually pretty good but then they messed up again with the fourth season which was way too much fan service,
I didn't care much for it at first, but the third and fourth seasons I did like and those changed my opinion of the series. I've gone back and looked more in-depth at some of the first season episodes and the series holds up better in retrospect. By the end of the fourth season I was sad to see it go. I would not have been sad if it had been canceled in the first season.
While I liked the production values from jump (and I also liked the pilot "Broken Bow" a lot), I found the characters largely bland and the stories uninvolving until the second season, and especially the second season finale).
While I liked the production values from jump (and I also liked the pilot "Broken Bow" a lot), I found the characters largely bland and the stories uninvolving until the second season, and especially the second season finale).
No argument from me.
I do like ENT for a lot of reasons actually.
I really like Scott Bakula. So that's an immediate win.
I like the general aesthetic of the show.
The regular cast, aside from one absolute dud, are quite good.
I think the various shake-ups they had may have ultimately brought about the end of the show, but I also appreciate ENT for the fact that it evolved. Season 3 is a shake-up and so is Season 4.
ENT at least does not go quietly into that good night.
I really like Scott Bakula. So that's an immediate win.
I like the general aesthetic of the show.
The regular cast, aside from one absolute dud, are quite good.
I think the various shake-ups they had may have ultimately brought about the end of the show, but I also appreciate ENT for the fact that it evolved. Season 3 is a shake-up and so is Season 4.
ENT at least does not go quietly into that good night.
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I don’t like ENT, but the fundamental problems I had with the show existed long before it was even produced. That started halfway through VOY, when UPN made the decision to ‘play it safe’ (i.e. remove any tension between the characters, completely disengage from their premise of the tribulations of a ship lost in unknown space, and become episodic TNG Jr. rather than create any realistic sense of isolation and emotional distress from being in their situation.) And when UPN got sick of the show and ended it, they had no realistic idea of what to do next that was any different from what they did before. They weren’t willing to give Berman time to come up with a more original premise or develop a show that actually had any kind of overall arc. They also didn’t even have enough faith in Berman’s ‘Federation formation’ prequel idea to green-light it without making him come up with the ill-conceived Temporal Cold War that was barely developed and not even wanted by B&B. And everything went downhill from there. For the first two years ENT was just more of the same format from the previous Trek show, only now with more of a frat-boy mentality, gratuitous displays of skin, and a cute puppy. The characters were barely developed, the plot was barely developed, and the ship design was barely developed. UPN didn’t have a clue what the show was actually supposed to be about, other than trying to cater to the lowest common denominator for viewership, as their ideas to make the show ‘sexier’ and to have a boy band play on the ship every week showed (thankfully at least that didn’t happen.) When a network stops taking their flagship show seriously, you know you have a problem. And relying on past crutches like Klingons, Romulans, Borg, Ferengi, Risa, Starfleet, cloaking devices, etc. totally ruined any kind of originality a true series about forming the Federation should have had.
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Really enjoying the positive comments about Enterprise, a show dear to my heart. Extra yays for those of you who appreciated Archer and/or Bakula's performance, I grok you. 
Special mention to @HotRod - your views are so similar to mine, and beautifully said.
Agreed - I really enjoyed the character interactions. I've said before that I have found something to love in every episode... even the mediocre eps invariably have some good character moments. (Er, TATV... um... wellll... T'Pol's hair, that was nice. And Archer's dress uniform.)
Of course I love that you really like Bakula, and also your appreciation of T'Pol. I thought Blalock's work was amazing.
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