Have you ever given up on a Trek series? If so, what was the last straw for you?

[Tallguy]

IMHO both Enterprise and Voyager had fantastic premises. Some of the best in Star Trek. And the shows started running away from them before the pilots were even over. (That's an exaggeration for Voyager. It isn't for Enterprise.)

The people paying the bills just wanted more TNG. And it showed.

 

[fireproof78]

IMHO both Enterprise and Voyager had fantastic premises. Some of the best in Star Trek. And the shows started running away from them before the pilots were even over. (That's an exaggeration for Voyager. It isn't for Enterprise.)

The people paying the bills just wanted more TNG. And it showed.

Unfortunately, with lesser characters leading the charge so staying interested when the premise was abandoned was very difficult for me. I moved on to other shows.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

Part of my problem with ENT is that there was this gaping chasm between the hype and the reality. We were told going in that ENT was going to be this fresh new take on Trek: faster, edgier, rougher around the edges, getting back to the adventurous "Final Frontier" spirit of the Original Series.

What I inferred when ENT was announced was that it was going to be NCC-1701s pre-Pike era when the Enterprise was first commissioned. That dovetails with what you just said. The ending with Riker holobinging just confirmed the TNG bias of the writers.

In the TMP novelization, Kirk wrote about the first crews who went out were seduced away by more advanced cultures and that his class was picked because they weren't quite as bright as the first adventurers were. That's what ENT should have been about.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

IMHO both Enterprise and Voyager had fantastic premises. Some of the best in Star Trek. And the shows started running away from them before the pilots were even over. (That's an exaggeration for Voyager. It isn't for Enterprise.)

The people paying the bills just wanted more TNG. And it showed.

If Berman and Bragga had been allowed by Paramount to let the franchise rest for a year, so they could recharge their batteries, instead of rushing Enterprise, and if they had stuck to their guns about the first year being somewhat Earth bound and dropping the time war subplot, Enterprise might be more fondly remembered.​

 

[Some Sort of Lemur]

so they could recharge their batteries

he primary issue with early ENT, for me, is that the leads were mostly unappealing people—and not in an entertaining way—who made terrible decisions—decisions which the scripts described as the correct ones. Wthout any space-action distractions, a whole season relying on early ENT character dynamics sounds like torture.

B&B (that takes me back) just did not have a good handle on how to write convincing people and just didn’t have wide enough experience to pull off such a departure for Trek. The issue with ENT, I think, is not so much that they needed to recharge their batteries as that they were the wrong batteries for the job.

 

[CoveTom]

he primary issue with early ENT, for me, is that the leads were mostly unappealing people—and not in an entertaining way—who made terrible decisions—decisions which the scripts described as the correct ones. Wthout any space-action distractions, a whole season relying on early ENT character dynamics sounds like torture.

B&B (that takes me back) just did not have a good handle on how to write convincing people and just didn’t have wide enough experience to pull off such a departure for Trek. The issue with ENT, I think, is not so much that they needed to recharge their batteries as that they were the wrong batteries for the job.

That's an interesting point. Enterprise was the only show of the Berman era where Berman and Braga were solely responsible for creating the characters. With TNG, all the characters were created by Roddenberry and the early team of writers/producers. For DS9, Michael Piller was creating the show with Berman. And with Voyager, you had Piller and Jeri Taylor.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I still have no idea how starting Enterprise with 26 episodes set on Earth was even supposed to work, especially if it was going to lead to them getting out into space to have normal weekly sci-fi adventures. The episodes that visited Earth were typically pretty decent, but they couldn't haven't gotten away with doing First Flight over and over.

 

[Starflight]

he primary issue with early ENT, for me, is that the leads were mostly unappealing people—and not in an entertaining way—who made terrible decisions—decisions which the scripts described as the correct ones. Wthout any space-action distractions, a whole season relying on early ENT character dynamics sounds like torture.

I've always felt that you're generally not meant to side with Archer/Trip during early Enterprise; the most common model of story seems to be:
1. Enterprise discovers a new thing
2. T'Pol urges caution
3. Archer laughs in her face, ignores her, and does the opposite
4. Utter catastrophe follows
5. T'Pol bails them out

Unless Berman and Braga were extremely oblivious to how it was coming across, the message felt to me like "T'Pol is right and Archer is a headache", though it is still often annoying to watch.