Fans, what don't you like about ENT?

[Nerys Myk]

Well the producers of a prequel are alway between a rock and a hard place. they can't make it too different becuse it wouldn't really be "Star Trek" , especially to the casual viewer. On the other hand if its too similar to past versions the jaded, more "sophisicated" fans get turned off.

The casual viewer wasn't tuning in. They were thinking, "Oh, it's just more of that Trek stuff." They had to try something that could make the casual viewer think, "Hey, what the hell is this? Looks kinda cool."

The fact that viewership and particularly the mainstream was slipping away and tuning out shows they were doing something wrong. "Same old, same old" wasn't cutting it anymore.

Of course they had no idea how their ideas would play out until they got on the air. Thats how TV tends to work. They thought it was different enough/same enough to grab the casual viewers. They wanted a TOS flavored show (or what they thought was TOS). The suits wanted a time travel element. Maybe there were too many cooks: The producers, the network and the studio. They retooled the show in the 3rd and 4th seasons in response to the lagging ratings. Though I'm in the minority, I liked seasons 1 and 2 more.

 

[Warped9]

^^ Less familiarity in earlier seasons, right?

I think there's been enough water under the bridge Trek wise since the '80s that you've now got a sizable body of work to look at and say, "This works and we can build on it, and this don't and no way in hell are we gonna do that again."

 

[Admiral2]

Another companion thread. I'm compartmentalizing in an effort to avoid derailing the main subject matter of the threads.

Seriously, though, as much as we love our favourite shows there are always things we're not content with, wholly or in part. There are always things we feel could have been better.

So what didn't you like about ENT?

-Season four.

-It's not that I didn't like T'Pol, but I saw no need for her or any Vulcans to be aboard. It was as if B&B thought you can't have Trek without a Vulcan around somewheres. On that subject -- a human built Earth's first warp engine. So why exactly did we need the Vulcans to build the latest one?

-The design of the ship grew on me, but I always felt it was built more to lead into TNG than TOS.

Those are my main gripes.

 

[Praetor]

-It's not that I didn't like T'Pol, but I saw no need for her or any Vulcans to be aboard. It was as if B&B thought you can't have Trek without a Vulcan around somewheres. On that subject -- a human built Earth's first warp engine. So why exactly did we need the Vulcans to build the latest one?

That's about the most elegantly I've ever seen that put.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^^ Less familiarity in earlier seasons, right?

Less familiarity? No, I liked the episodic structure (even though there was an arc it was more of an ubder current), the characters and the setting/timeframe. It was TOS like. The characters wer less perfect, they made m,istakes. With Season three they went arc happy with the Xindi War and I was tired of arc based TV. Seemed every show was running an arc, even sitcoms. Season four was fun and it feed my inner geek but and the same time I felt pandered to.

I think there's been enough water under the bridge Trek wise since the '80s that you've now got a sizable body of work to look at and say, "This works and we can build on it, and this don't and no way in hell are we gonna do that again."[/

Thats probably the problem. TNG was a rousing success. It worked. DS9 less so. So with Voyager they tried for TNG again (with a slight twist which as time went on was more or less forgotten) With ENT they tried a blend of TNG and TOS and used the prequel as a hook. It could be that TNG was a once in a lifetime thing, the right time and place and its success can't be duplicated. The evidence seems weighted to that conclusion. But I'm sure the studio, network and producers see that success and say "lets do it again!!!!"

 

[Warped9]

^^ I, too, generally prefer episodic over arc based storytelling. Presently I'm catching up on Stargate: Atlantis reurns being syndicated daily on SPACE here in Canada. I like that it's essentially episodic with some loose plot lines running periodically through episode-to-episode, but you don't feel lost because you might not have seen everything that came before. This is my preferred format for a series. It's easier to assimilate and easier to get into for a new viewer. And I feel it's a fair compromise between the two approaches. I also think you get to cover more ground this way.

 

[Peter the Younger]

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4) Resistance to expanding on what was already established in Trek's background. Why create the Xindi the Delphic Expanse, when you already have the Zenkethi and the Typhon Expanse sitting there waiting to be expounded upon? In order to do a prequel justice, you have to be the sort of person who loves to fill in the blanks with interesting stories, who goes to the encyclopedia and asks, "Is there anything already established that I could use here?" Again, Coto got it right, but sadly he was given control only after the show's fate was already sealed.

What I find interesting is fans of XI mention that ENT producers felt constrained by all the backstory of Trek and didn't understand why they introduced new elements yet that is exactly what Abrams has done.

Mainly because Abrams said right up front that was what he was going to do, and actually made it a part of the story. If the ENT producers had used the TCW to change Trek history right from the first episode, and made it clear that's what they were doing, I would have had no problem with the changes. But instead, they did the usual spineless weasel doubletalk. I have a problem with writers (or more specifically, showrunners) who don't have the discipline and courage to follow their own premise where it leads.

I loved much of ENT in spite of this, mind you. Just as I loved ST XI despite its flaws.

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[commodore64]

A problem I had with the Vulcan arc it was supposed to be about T'Pol's story ark and they instead they have her captured arrested and ignored for the last 2parts.I found that really disappointing. I would have like to have seen more about T'Pol dealing with the aftermath at what happened after the attack on te Takeraeth sacnctuary and what happened to her mother and how it affected her and all the changes occuring on Vulcan.

I agree. I think T'Pol had the most amount of change introduced with the least amount of resolution. I think in many cases, they worried too much about how she supported the captain or her relationship with Trip than her own emotional journey.

 

[Welshie]

Bad acting from at least half the cast, and some truly atrocious stories, like that awful 'Dear Doctor' episode, where Phlox and the captain choose to be a party to genocide instead of thinking things over for more than half a minute.

 

[Mach5]

Bad acting from at least half the cast, and some truly atrocious stories, like that awful 'Dear Doctor' episode, where Phlox and the captain choose to be a party to genocide instead of thinking things over for more than half a minute.

I do agree on "Dear Doctor," that ep really was an atrocity, but I can't agree on acting. Sure, some of the cast members were people of questionable talent (like Blalock, who clearly wasn't hired for her acting 'abilities,' or Montgomery, for whom I still don't understand why he was hired in the first place), but all of them were up to the task, if you ask me.