I am finding it difficult to argue with your list, for sure though on number 6, who is Tran? Also, I think that the tone and look of the NX-01 was right in line with an evolution from the NASA style space program, with the jumpsuits. I would modify it slightly, especially with the rank insignia, but I do like the feel of it. Also, the technology references, less on the phase pistols, and more on the Laser style pistols, equipment rigging and more casual jumpsuits.
First of all, I would have rewritten Hoshi. Skittish, frantic characters are just not interesting to me. Much later in the series: (reference: Observer Effect): We belatedly get this: Hoshi and Tucker are in Decon: Hoshi has wrapped a blanket around herself. TUCKER: You ever see The Andromeda Strain? HOSHI: Strain of what? TUCKER: No, it's a movie. Mid-twentieth century. HOSHI: Let me guess. Doctor Andromeda builds a monster, and it kills him in the end. TUCKER: It's about an extraterrestrial disease. HOSHI: All your movies are the same. I can't keep the stories straight. TUCKER: This reminds me of my dorm room at Starfleet Training. Got into a lot of trouble at old STC. HOSHI: I got kicked out. TUCKER: Well, you can't stop there. HOSHI: In my second month, I had a difference of opinion with the Company Commander. I broke his arm. TUCKER: Can I ask why? HOSHI: Poker. TUCKER: You broke his arm playing cards? HOSHI: He tried to shut down a game I was running for some of the recruits, and a couple of the training staff. TUCKER: Hold on. You ran a floating poker game at STC? HOSHI: The way the regulations are worded, gambling was an honour violation only if it took place during duty hours. So I ran the game on weekends. One night my C.C. showed up, tried to sweep all the chips off the table, and I. Well, I have a black belt in aikido. I think he was just upset that I hadn't invited him to play. TUCKER: What happened? HOSHI: I got a bad conduct discharge. TUCKER: How the hell did you end up on Enterprise? HOSHI: Starfleet needed language specialists more than they needed to make an example out of me. They let me back in on probation, and here I am.
1. Well obviously obliterate the theme music in an attempt to save human civilization. 2. Up the pace and make it less boring. Basically, make it a lot more like Season 4 (rather than the cheap attempts to woo an audience with military porn like they did in Season 3). The earlier Seasons had their moments but the goodies were too few and far between. 3. Make it sexier. TOS had a more than healthy dose of sex. Outer space was alluring and mysterious like the Orient was to explorers of the past (OMG, I can sense Edward Said railing his fist at me from beyond the grave!). By contrast Enterprise was about as sexy as, well, Scott Bakula... Just having a token glamour doll was on the one hand mildly offensive and on the other not an adequate substitute. 4. If you are going to do a temporal cold war type thingy then at least deliver and make it mean something rather than just abandoning it in a half baked 'whatever' sort of way (even if you do decide to wrap it up prematurely -give some kind of attempt to adequately explain it).
Good lord, no. The only thing "sexy" in TOS was the barely-there costumes William Ware Theiss made for the women-of-the-week. The catsuits, decon-gel scenes and T'Pol's masseuse sessions were just over-the-top nonsense catering to those 14 year old horny boys tafkats mentioned earlier. Plus, reliance on "sexy" does not a good science fiction show make.
I think I would have made the ship a space boomer ship, instead of a ship officially sanctioned by a governmental agency, such as Starfleet. That, or make the distinction between Starfleet and UESPA more explicit, with Starfleet being the exclusive domain of the UFP. In either case, I think the ship should have been crewed by civilians. We've never seen civilians as the main crew before. Their diplomatic naivete would be much more believable, especially if some of the things they do piss off the Romulans, and then they learn to befriend the Tellarites and Andorians, along with the Vulcans in the Romulan War. Either that, or I would make the show about diplomats or politicians with no home ship. By divorcing the regulars from a ship, it's about being ferried from planet to planet in the leadup to the forming of the UFP. Another option would be to go slightly closer to First Contact and make it a show about how the Earth governments consolidated and a new economy formed in the wake of WWIII. Regarding the song, I would have skewed more toward They Might Be Giants as a direction to go because I think they could strike a balance between optimism and not being too sappy. Their brand of quirk and energy would be just enough to avoid schmaltz.
I was thinking ditching the phase cannons and photonic torpedoes in favor of the aforementioned nukes and machine guns would be ripping off Battlestar Galactica, then remembered Galactica started up three whole years after Broken Bow premiered So, yeah, do that. Sure, firing nukes off would be a clunky delivery vehicle for ships that can travel faster than light, but when they actually DO impact, they're devastating (as in the Cylons nuking one of Galactica's launch bays). It would also make the shootouts more dangerous, since pistols don't have "stun" settings like the phase pistols do. Also, ditch the transporter.
My main issue with ENT was that Berman's notion that the first year should be set on Earth was not implemented because the folks higher up in the food chain were too conservative / risk-averse. The fourth season did work not at least because it played in Earth or Earth's neighbourhood, there was little deep space exploring and more cruising around the block. It was more about human problems (xenophobia, remnants from genetic experimenting gone out of hand) than meeting new folks.
RE: "Starfleet". (Sorry, can't resist.) In Goldstien & Goldstein's 1980 "Spaceflight chronology", Earth's pre-Federation space agency was called Solar Fleet Command. Would have named it that, or any other catchy alternative to Starfleet. Solarfleet Earthfleet Solarnavy The Agency even UESPA would've been better
I had some problems with important races like Denobulans and Suliban being introduced when we'd never heard of them before. What I would have preferred was referencing planets and races we heard of in TOS or the later shows, but had never seen. In "Civilization", there was a Malurian agent on the planet. I thought this was an excellent namedrop, because we knew that in 100 years, Nomad was going to wipe them out. If they'd just chosen names of other unseen races for the Suliban and Denobulans, it wouldn't have bothered me as much. Instead, we got aliens we'd already seen before but couldn't be identified by name because of "continuity", due to established first contacts which hadn't happened until 200 years later.
Actually, this was an example of a lazy name drop, since in "The Changeling," it's implied that the Malurians are a primitive people the Federation is studying. "Civilization" shows that the Malurians were far more advanced than even the Federation of 100 years hence.
1. Drop the catsuit, decon gel, adolescent titillation stuff 2. re-name the ship 3. focus on the actual founding of the Federation from the beginning, not waiting until late in the series' run 4. Fix the character of Archer-he comes across as incompetent and unfit for command in the early seasons 5. make it more of an ensemble show with more focus on Hoshi, Travis, etc. 6. Drop the Vulcan-Human conflict stuff that needed to be fixed with the Surak arc
I would have had T'Pol as strictly an advisor and not part of the chain of command which would have been 1.>Archer 2.>Reed 3.>Trip Archer can still be the wide eyed idealist, but Reed could have acted as a counterpoint to that.
* Change name of show (Include Star Trek) and ship * I like the design of the ship so keeping it * Spacial torpedoes NEVER Photonic. Pulse Cannons with limited usage due to heat build up and I like the Hull plating idea. * Transports only safe for cargo for season or two but used in rare emergenices and limited to 1 person at a time * More build up of hostilities between Humans n Klingons * Season 1 should contain flashbacks aka LOST type showing early Vulcan/Human interaction, Humanity recovering from WW3, NX01 program and backstories of main cast There are many things I would change but I did like the show and I would keep some of the episodes but maybe re work a few of them of course to avoid TCW for example.
Interesting that a lot of people are proposing major re-writes. I actually was kind of befuddled by Enterprise because I thought the overall plot was incredible, but that they execution of it was terrible. That said, yeah, temporal cold war should go... But generally, otherwise, I stick with my claim!
Re-watching the pilot at the moment on Netflix and I wish they had kept the Pulse Pistols that they had on Rigel instead of going to the Phase Pistols. However I frogot how much I love the grappler and the look of Enginnering/Warp Core.
More: sex, violence, death, recurring non-senior staff crew characters, other NX ship interaction, story arcs, continuity, untamed-space regions flavor. Less: Treknobabble, casualty-free engagements, overall-plan-free writing. Replace, rewrite, and improve: Park, Montgomery, and Keating. Just as much: Porthos!
A lot of the things I would have changed, have already been said: 1. Archer should have been written more like season 3/4 from the beginning. I actually liked Mirror-Archer, better. 2. I wasn't offended by T'pols suits, but narrative they made no sense. She should have had a Vulcan uniform similar to this: http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m193/ARealSuperHero/TVranCaptain.jpg 3. I didn't mind the temporal cold war, but it just dragged on. It should have been resolved by the end of season 1. In fact, each season should have had its own story arc it had to resolve. 4. I would have liked to see the Earth Romulan War a lot more than the Xindi arc. 5. T'Pol/Trip= The only Trek romances that were worse were Chakotay/7 and Worf/Troi
But isn't that in the Job Description to be conservative and risk averse. That is until someone else takes a change on being the opposite of those things and it works, then it's all jump onto the bandwagon.