If Enterprise launched with the Xindi saga...

[zenophite]

In those two episodes I think they did more to make the Romulans seem interesting than in most of their appearances in subsequent series IMO. Sorry, I guess I'm jus holding a drudge for the formulaic "forehead-uniform-okudagram" aliens of the TNG+ era. While there were some exceptions, most of the aliens depicted were simply based on swapping around those three things. The only halfway interesting thing they came up with was in Unification - but that arc was never touched again (maybe the new movie deals with it within the constraints it has - but i don't think they'd have room for that)

 

[Anwar]

Few reasons for that:

1) Makeup budget got cut around S4, that's why we had much more impressive looking aliens in S1-S3 of TNG. They didn't want to waste money making impressive aliens that wouldn't be seen more than in one episode.

2) Why bother making the aliens all deep and stuff when they'll never be seen again after one episode? Sure, we got some great one-shots (The Malcorians, the Cardies were portrayed great enough they became regulars) but for the most part you can't really give races all that much depth in one episode. They were just super-lucky they got such great actors to play the Romulan commanders in the two TOS episodes.

As for the Rommies, they were treated in TNG the way the Klingons were in TOS: generic fascist baddies. We had deeper Romulans (Tomalok, the female Romulan Captain from "Face of the Enemy", Bochra) like we had Kor and Kang, but for the most part they were just baddies.

The Cardassians were what the Romulans likely would've been if they made more appearances on TOS.

 

[SFRabid]

No matter how it started, 40 percent of the population of the United States did not have access to the show because it was only on UPN stations. It is hard for shows to make it with that disadvantage, which is one reason UPN eventually went under.

 

[SFRabid]

I do agree with those that say a Romulan war would have been better.

 

[Anwar]

Well, they shouldn't have set the show in the 2150s, maybe the 2130s would've been better.

 

[Trekwatcher]

SFRabid said:
I do agree with those that say a Romulan war would have been better.

I always felt that S5 could have been the Earth-Romulan war if they had wanted it to be. That would have been a great year!

 

[Anwar]

If they stuck to what Spock said in BoT it wouldn't be that good. No communications, slow primitive weapons and not much else to make it interesting. I'd be like watching a fancy PONG game.

 

[MattJC]

I'm sure Coto and his staff would have found a way to make it fit with what was established in Balance of Terror.
Remember, they had the Reeves-Stevenses on the staff, and they are well versed in Trek mythology.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, but could they make it fit in a way that still would've been interesting to a modern day audience? Big difference.

Even in Galactica they had fighters so that we could have fast intense fights while the bigger ships were bricks in space.