Enterprise is a better show than Discovery

[JirinPanthosa]

False.

Discovery has many problems, but it also has a great core cast and new ideas of its own.

Enterprise was Voyager lite for the first two years and didn't have a single great episode until mid season 3.

Disovery oscillates between awesome, unique and terrible, whereas Enterprise was stuck as an imitation of itself desperate to plug the hole in the ratings dam that started in 1995. Trying transparent stunts to broaden the audience ignoring that only the devoted niche still gave a shit.

Discovery has, at the very least, correctly identified the audience that gives a shit.

 

[Toril Toran]

I just really wish Enterprise had been given more time to get better. I think it could have been at least a good show (although I admit probably not great).

 

[The Wormhole]

I do prefer how ENT largely kept to the visual aesthetic of other Trek series and movies more than DISCO did in its first two seasons.

Largely because it made more economic sense for them to, and even then, this still didn't go over too well with others with many shitting bricks over the fact the Klingons had forehead ridges as opposed to looking like TOS Klingons. But of course, you can't please everyone as proven when Enterprise did do the storyline explaining the forehead ridges more people shit bricks over them actually acknowledging that TOS Klingons were different than the others.

I have to wonder how things would've turned out if DISCO had been the series that followed VOY. If the edgier, more serial-storytelling series had debuted in 2001, while it certainly would've been controversial, it might have fit in better with similar fare like nuBSG.

Pointless to engage in such a hypothetical since a show like Disco could not have happened in 2001. Remember, Berman originally had intended Enterprise to be a much different and serialized show, which UPN rejected saying "that's not Star Trek, we want Star Trek" resulting in the TNG/Voyager Lite show we ended up getting. And even then, Berman and Braga still had an uphill battle to fight to prevent the shipboard boyband from being a thing, and by not doing that they suffered a dramatic slash in the show's budget. As it is, the serialized third season only happened as a result of the sagging ratings at the end of the second season and the popularity of 24.

I just really wish Enterprise had been given more time to get better. I think it could have been at least a good show (although I admit probably not great).

You keep saying that, but how much time does a show need to become good? Shows like Nu BSG and Farscape are often held up as examples of sci-fi masterpieces, and they only lasted four seasons, with fewer episodes than Enterprise. Hell, the old chestnut of the Berman era shows is that they didn't become good until the third season, so with four seasons, Enterprise definitely had time to prove itself by that metric. The bottom line is if Enterprise couldn't get its shit together in four seasons, an extra three wouldn't have made a difference.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Episode count is a better guage. 96 episodes on ENT. If ENT was a modern show that would be 8 to 9 seasons.

It would also mean that by today’s standard, ENT’s story is complete. Since that would cover the entire decade leading to the birth of the Federation.

 

[fireproof78]

You keep saying that, but how much time does a show need to become good? Shows like Nu BSG and Farscape are often held up as examples of sci-fi masterpieces, and they only lasted four seasons, with fewer episodes than Enterprise. Hell, the old chestnut of the Berman era shows is that they didn't become good until the third season, so with four seasons, Enterprise definitely had time to prove itself by that metric. The bottom line is if Enterprise couldn't get its shit together in four seasons, an extra three wouldn't have made a difference.

Indeed. If it didn't get good after four I'm not inclined towards thinking 7 seasons is somehow it's magical.

 

[Tuskin38]

It did get good with 4, but it was far too late.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Season 3 was peak Enterprise, season 2 was peak Discovery. IMHO. YMMV.

 

[Greg Cox]

Bottom line: DISCO is basically the show I wanted ENTERPRISE to be. A fresh, twenty-first-century take on STAR TREK that didn't feel like yet another cozy retread of TNG, complete with 90s-era pacing and directing.

 

[StarMan]

Season 3 was peak Enterprise, season 2 was peak Discovery. IMHO. YMMV.

Yeah. ENT S4 had its moments, but S3's high points exceeded anything S4 delivered.

As for Discovery, season 1 was troubled, but ambitious. It peaked midway thru the Mirror Universe arc, until Lorca devolved into moustache-twirling villain. Season 2 started with a noticeably lighter tone and more "humor", but I'll admit the mystery box still held my interest. If Memory Serves was the clear highpoint and where I thought the show had finally turned a corner.

I think it was Klingon time crystal or some junk after that. Unfortunately, I haven't been much of a fan since. I liked the darker, more mature effort in season 1 and wish they'd stayed the course.

Discovery wins on (initial) ambition. Enterprise was the last gasp of creative team that were exhausted. They should have taken a break after Voyager, reassessed the landscape and gone from there. Unfortunately, the corporate imperative won out and they ended up killing Trek on the small screen for over a decade.

 

[somebuddyX]

I keep expecting someone to say either mirror Lorca or regular Lorca pops up at the end of an SNW episode.

 

[Lord Garth]

I keep expecting someone to say either mirror Lorca or regular Lorca pops up at the end of an SNW episode.

I don't think that's going to happen. SNW will only reference the first two seasons of DSC in the broadest strokes. Things like there was a war with the Klingons, Discovery disappeared into the future... Things that can be summed up in a sentence.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I don't think that's going to happen. SNW will only reference the first two seasons of DSC in the broadest strokes. Things like there was a war with the Klingons, Discovery disappeared into the future... Things that can be summed up in a sentence.

Dude, they spent the whole first season flashing back to Pike choosing his fate on Boreth. His entire arc spins off of one episode of Discovery.

 

[Lord Garth]

Things that can be summed up in a sentence.

Dude, they spent the whole first season flashing back to Pike choosing his fate on Boreth. His entire arc spins off of one episode of Discovery.

"Klingon monks showed me I'll meet a horrible fate, seven years from now, while saving Starfleet Cadets."

Boom!

 

[ScottJ85]

I keep expecting someone to say either mirror Lorca or regular Lorca pops up at the end of an SNW episode.

I don't think that's going to happen, Jason Isaacs probably has other things going on right now.

 

[The Wormhole]

I don't think that's going to happen, Jason Isaacs probably has other things going on right now.

Jason Isaacs has said he'll gladly return if they want to tell the story of Prime Lorca, but that's the only circumstance. Indeed, he turned down returning as Mirror Lorca in Terra Firma in season 3.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I just really wish Enterprise had been given more time to get better.

4 Seasons is more than enough time.

Ideally a show should hit it out of the park in the first season and develop from there. Most successful shows do.

 

[The Wormhole]

Ideally a show should hit it out of the park in the first season and develop from there. Most successful shows do.

First seasons can be hit or miss. There's a lot of successful shows which last for many years that have first seasons that leave much to be desired. But certainly if a show is still struggling in the second season then that's a good indication the show is itself troubled.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Ideally a show should hit it out of the park in the first season and develop from there. Most successful shows do.

ENT did okay ratings wise the first season. And all post-TOS Trek shows start hitting their stride in three seasons.

Also most, if not all, successful shows don’t have a “A Night in Sickbay” episode in the following season that drives the audience away past the point of no return because most of them could no longer take the stupidity of it.

 

[Rahul]

DIS has the best cast since TNG. The four-member-band of Burnham, Tilly, Stamets & Saru is nothing but awesome and should have been able to carry the series alone. Together with the rotating Captains (Georgiou, Lorca, Pike) it might be the best casted Trek series of them all.

It's also the 2nd worst Trek series (only ahead of PIC), because nothing makes sense, every scene's only purpose is to achieve maximum audience emotion, even if it directly contradicts the previous scene. The red angel is an all-powerful mystery being, stronger than the technology of the entire planet Kaminar & the Discovery combined, and the next day it's a 20 year old, derelict Starfleet technology. The spore drive requires just a bit of 23rd technology + a single gene therapy OR a pet tardigrade, and yet it's the most powerful technology thousand years into the future that no other species or future human ever was able to develop on their own. It can be used to jump through the entire universe, multiverse & timestream at an instant, and yet it's only ever used to fight local Klingons or re-visit old Federation planets.

---

ENT has the most bland cast of them all, and Archer's incompetence and unlikeability in the first seasons is staggering. And yet, it tells stories that are internally consistent, where you can follow the plot, revelations make sense in retrospect, characters act logically. And importantly after a change of writers the characters became actually really likeable in the end.

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So, yeah. ENT is very middle of the road, with a few highpoints (S3 is Trek at it's best, and S4 is a perfect prequel series, but S1&2 are grating to watch).

DIS on the other hand is nothing but extreme - extremely good in a few spots (cast/actors, effects, action), but also the absolute bottom of the barrel in others (plots, world-building, characterisation).

So in conclusion, I agree with the title of the thread. YMMV obviously.

 

[thribs]

Well obviously