How "different" was Enterprise...really?

[Norrin Radd]

When Enterprise was first being hyped, I recall all this hoopla over how the series would be taking a different approach to Star Trek than the previous four.

But, in the final analysis, how different was it?

 

[Praetorian]

The first two Seasons are standard TNG Part 3 or VOY Part 2 business for the most part.

The Third Season actually is unique in Star Trek, it was badly misplaced yes but certanly a different approach.

The Fourth Season was somewhat like DS9 part 2 but I guess that's sufficiently different.

 

[Haytil]

I don't remember it being hyped as "different" - rather, it was being hyped as "back to the original." They were going for more of a TOS feel. Out in the unknown, mysterious dangers to comprehend, no larger Starfleet to fall back on, even a Triumvirate (Archer, Trip, T'Pol) to mirror the original Big Three.

 

[rtc61]

Agree with the comment about 'back to the original' -- the assumption being that it would be 'different' than the spinoffs. But the first two seasons, and the poor performance of Nemesis in theaters, doomed ENT. I wonder if the series would have been more successful if it had started with the season 3 storyline -- humans forced into deep space to stop a horrible threat, muddling their way through and encountering a few soon-to-be-familiar races along the way (Andorians, Tellarites, etc.). The payoff would be, once the Xindi threat was resolved, you're left with the earliest ties to what would become the Federation, plus a post-threat vow to pursue exploration and outreach as a way to build relationships and avoid misrepresentations a la the Xindi. Thus the exploration theme is established post-catastrophe, with new threats (Klingons, Romulans) emerging as humans explore and the evolving Federation grows.

And no Temporal Cold War! That whole idea, and the horrible way it was 'resolved,' still leaves me ... er ... cold.

 

[JiNX-01]

Well, let's see, here are a few differences:

The main characters screw up -- sometimes quite spectacularly -- not as the result of some bizarre alien infection, but because of their own principles and prejudices.

Their uniforms include pockets. I know that's not a big difference, but I have always been at a loss to understand why pockets would cease to exist in the future.

Movie night is a source of entertainment.

Their meals had to be cooked and if you wanted to eat you had to go the the mess hall.

There are no kids on the ship.

 

[SFRabid]

Vulcans are not perfect. (One of my favorites.)

The captain does not always get the girl. (The add should say the engineer always gets the girl.)

The bridge looks a little more like a bridge instead a big budget set with way too much space.

 

[BillJ]

The captain was an idiot.

In the episode Strange New World he decides to head to a planet without doing any type of recon. Ridicules his science officer when she proposes sending down probes first and nearly gets his people killed.

I think of all of the safety checks NASA goes through to put someone in orbit in this day and age and shake my head that Starfleet would send someone as impatient as Archer out into space.

A single line by a writer would have solved this...

Massive gaps in simple logic is what killed this series.

 

[Infern0]

Decon Chamber and bare bottoms!

 

[Mordock]

Well, let's see, here are a few differences:

The main characters screw up -- sometimes quite spectacularly -- not as the result of some bizarre alien infection, but because of their own principles and prejudices.

I think this is the most significant difference. With the exception of Phlox, everyone in the crew was so uptight and tentative and uncertain, to the point that it always seemed like a convincing underdog victory when they finally won the day. Whether it was what Star Trek needed is certainly open to debate (and I would probably say that it wasn't), but it gave the show an edge.

 

[Bluejay]

Their uniforms include pockets. I know that's not a big difference, but I have always been at a loss to understand why pockets would cease to exist in the future.

Or handkies. Whatever happened to that bit of square one can mop one's face with? ... now we all know why uniforms finally turn black in the future ...

 

[JiNX-01]

Well, let's see, here are a few differences:

The main characters screw up -- sometimes quite spectacularly -- not as the result of some bizarre alien infection, but because of their own principles and prejudices.

I think this is the most significant difference. With the exception of Phlox, everyone in the crew was so uptight and tentative and uncertain, to the point that it always seemed like a convincing underdog victory when they finally won the day. Whether it was what Star Trek needed is certainly open to debate (and I would probably say that it wasn't), but it gave the show an edge.

I think it was necessary. Yes, some of the mistakes are truly inexplicable -- like Archer sending people to the surface in SNW without any precautionary measures and then leaving them there overnight was pretty stupid. Starfleet should have had procedures for first visits rather than having the captain "wing it."

But I disagree that such a change might not be needed. The one group of people we have a big investment in are the main characters. To see them make mistakes -- even with the best of intentions -- was refreshing as opposed to the steady diet on other Treks where some nobody we'll never hear from again makes a mess of the things and then the heroes have to come in and save the ship, space station, planet, galaxy, universe, or all of creation.

 

[Mach5]

Vulcans are not perfect. (One of my favorites.)

Second. I don't get people who bitch about imperfect Vulcans. They were interesting!

The captain does not always get the girl. (The add should say the engineer always gets the girl.)

Captain never gets the girl, if the girl is a crewmate (Picard's fling being an exception to a rule).
And then there's that La Forge loser (and since BLT is a girl, Tucker is also an exception).

The bridge looks a little more like a bridge instead a big budget set with way too much space.

Agreed, though the main viewer was unnecessarily too small. They make TV's bigger than that these days..

 

[Gotham Central]

When Enterprise was first being hyped, I recall all this hoopla over how the series would be taking a different approach to Star Trek than the previous four.

But, in the final analysis, how different was it?

It was definately hyped as being different. I distinctly remember the words "not your father's Star Trek."

In reality there was nothing particularly new or unique about Enterprise. NOTHING! The show could have been radically different than any previous version of Trek. Unfortunately what we got was warmed over Voyager (which was itself reheated TNG). Its a shame that various fanfics and novels managed to develop a more interesting version of early trek history than what was ultimately shown on screen.

 

[The Badger]

When Enterprise was first being hyped, I recall all this hoopla over how the series would be taking a different approach to Star Trek than the previous four.

A Starfleet vessel called Enterprise. A mostly human crew with a couple of aliens to comment on human ways. The main characters are a captain, a good friend of his from America's Deep South, and a Vulcan science officer. Weapons that can stun or kill. Klingons. Time travel. Technobabble. Using the transporter to save someone at the last second.


And all of this in the very first episode.

So no, I personally don't think Ent lived up to it's "all new, all different" hype. Later episodes did innovate more, but by that time it was too little too late.

 

[Anna Yolei]

The Vulcans was one of the better ideas this show had, and it was really the thing that hooked me to the show, despite having minimal knowledge of Trek (I didn't even know what the name of Picard's ship was at the time I started watching).

I agree with Jinx on the "crew making mistakes on their own" thing is a pretty nice change. I'm currently watching DS9 and I never really appreciated this aspect of Enterprise until I noticed how...well, sterile the 24th century characters were.

I think the one thign th show should have done was not introduce so many aliens of the week so soon. TOS was filled with lots of alien culture that fans wanted to see more exploration of, and TPTB didn't even attempt this until it was way too late.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Technobabble kept to a minimum and absolutely never any long winded speech used to to quickly wrap an episode up in the last 5 minutes.

Time-travel in this series is pretty much unique in the whole of Star Trek. 31st century temporal agents want our heroes' help and suddenly, they're there in modern day Detroit, the night before the ship's launch or in a screwed up 1944.

On a technical level: Widescreen and now I have a television to appreciate it, high definition.

Something I find quite hard to put into words, is a feeling of "You are there". I've grown up with Star Trek and honestly say Enterprise was the first that gave me that feeling. Perhaps it was set design - the "5 minutes into the future" look with plasma screens, flightsuits and an almost mundane day-to-day interaction between the crew. Some of the characters were not fleshed out very well, but hey that's life. To use a NASA parallel, if Zefram Cochrane was Star Trek's hard drinking, pioneer answer to Chuck Yeager... than the NX-01 shipmates were more a reflection of a modern space shuttle crew. Scientists. Experts in their field. Boring? Dull? Yes, but which one of us is that much closer to the velvet blackness of the cosmos, albeit there as a glorified mechanic? Not us, collectively chained to our desks tapping away at our keyboards, to the rhythm of daily life.

Of course, as a prequel the characters all needed a great destiny each to fulfil and I'll forever mourn not being able to see that come to fruition. Archer had his Federation to form (usurped seemingly by Nathan Samuels in the penultimate story). Reed had the shields, forcefields and armoury to make technological leaps upon. Hoshi entering new languages into her baby - the Universal Translator. Trip should've lived to advise the next class of starships, how to tweak the engines and break warp 6 or maybe 7. Maybe in a fantasy Season 5 onwards he does all of that. So much was coming together by the end and it wasn't as if Enterprise was developing any slower than the others were by that point. It just had the misfortune to be at the tail end of an 18 year straight-run. The plug pulled because of a polictial change behind the scenes at Paramount Television and their new CBS overlords who saw themselves as a new broom.

 

[lceb]

Something I find quite hard to put into words, is a feeling of "You are there". I've grown up with Star Trek and honestly say Enterprise was the first that gave me that feeling. Perhaps it was set design - the "5 minutes into the future" look with plasma screens, flightsuits and an almost mundane day-to-day interaction between the crew. Some of the characters were not fleshed out very well, but hey that's life. To use a NASA parallel, if Zefram Cochrane was Star Trek's hard drinking, pioneer answer to Chuck Yeager... than the NX-01 shipmates were more a reflection of a modern space shuttle crew. Scientists. Experts in their field. Boring? Dull? Yes, but which one of us is that much closer to the velvet blackness of the cosmos, albeit there as a glorified mechanic? Not us, collectively chained to our desks tapping away at our keyboards, to the rhythm of daily life.

Not easy to put into words but I totaly agree with you here.

 

[Praetor]

When Enterprise was first being hyped, I recall all this hoopla over how the series would be taking a different approach to Star Trek than the previous four.

A Starfleet vessel called Enterprise. A mostly human crew with a couple of aliens to comment on human ways. The main characters are a captain, a good friend of his from America's Deep South, and a Vulcan science officer. Weapons that can stun or kill. Klingons. Time travel. Technobabble. Using the transporter to save someone at the last second.


And all of this in the very first episode.

So no, I personally don't think Ent lived up to it's "all new, all different" hype. Later episodes did innovate more, but by that time it was too little too late.

Bingo.

 

[I am not Spock]

I remember 'not your father's Trek' being utilised in the promos as well.

And what we got really was not that radically different to any Trek we had received previously.

Many scripts seemed like leftover Voyager episodes, at least in the first two seasons. Some were remakes of previous episodes, pretty much. 'Terra Nova' was VOY's 'Friendship One'; and 'Doctor's Orders' (?) is VOY's 'One'. We did get some innovation later on, mind you.

 

[Praetor]

It really is a shame they wouldn't let them take a longer pause between series.