Root of all the ENT bashing/hating?

[Trekwatcher]

While I am a longtime poster on this BBS, and know that some extreme opinions get bantered around, and a lifelong Star Trek fan, I am constantly amazed at the level of negative sentiment and hostility directed towards the entire series of ENT.

I am a die-hard TOS fan, and have really enjoyed all of the different series. I also really, really loved ENT. I thought the show was original, creative, and did some things that no prior Trek show had done before. I also felt they were cancelled at a time when the show was really hitting it's stride. I am especially a huge fan of the Xindi arc, and think that in S3 they just knocked it out of the park!

That having been said, I have read many of the complaints about the show, mostly in other forums, but I was wondering what people in this forum really thought about this topic-

Why is ENT treated so harshly?

 

[number6]

ENT didn't satisfy fan preconceptions AFAICT. Most thought that the ship was too "modern." Some were pissed that they "copied" a design from a ship that spent less than 20 seconds onscreen. For some it was the decon scene and for most it was the metal ballad that opened the show every week. Some wouldn't have been pleased if GR had constructed a time machine to go back and produce two more years of TOS.

I loved ENT, but I saw fandom at its saddest and most venomous during its run.

 

[DeafPoet]

Who knows. I've read all the stuff Number6 just mentioned and more. Most of it centers around the prequel concept though. Either it wasn't 'prequelly' enough or there was too much 'fanwankery'. Another big gripe I see is that Archer was an idiot, and several variations on the theme. I thought he was suitably inexperienced and got better as time went on. Different strokes.

I thought it did a great job of handling the logistics of producing a series 40 years later that was supposed to take place 100 years earlier. Let's be honest, there's no way to do that perfectly. But they did a good enough job that I could suspend my disbelief most weeks and go along for the ride.

 

[Kegek]

In part, it'd become habitual. Berman and Braga were being vilified long before ENT was announced - at the time, for Voyager. This started out as criticism early in the series and went to full-blown vilification, oh, somewhere around season five when Braga became more prominent in the show and the phrase 'Berman and Braga' was probably coined. That was a phrase not held in high esteem... and to see the words 'Created by Berman and Braga' - was not a plus.

There was also the issues of continuity and canon - problematic even in VOY's run, witness the fury over the warp movement limitations mentioned for the first and last time in 'Fury' - and what were percieved as many, including myself, of many poor choices visible right from the pilot - be it the irritating title theme music, the decon scene, or the Vulcan of Nine character.

Considering the fodder for criticism that many poorer outings of the first two seasons provided, it is scarcely surprising that bashing continued to escalate.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Next to the Star Trek I grew up watching (TOS reruns), Enterprise is my favourite. I find it all the more rewarding with repeated DVD viewings.

Hardcore fans already had a glut of Trek on their plate by the time Voyager ended and so predictably a 5th series was always going to be in trouble. They needed a hiatus to bring in new blood and map out the 22nd Century before a single scene was shot. Although ENT later hit upon the perfect prequel formula, it began by getting off on the wrong foot with nearly everyone. Attempting to appeal to a broader, younger audience and daring to reinvent the wheel, it turned off too many loyalists.

Season 3 felt like it took inspiration from 24 and nuBSG, with a greater serial format. It's a shame Paramount didn't syndicate the show earlier to gauge audiences beyond UPN. I'd have loved to have seen how ENT would've evolved by 2007/08.

Looking at all modern Trek, the differences between earlier and later seasons are always dramatic. Perhaps that simply comes down to us learning more about the crew. Although the casual interaction between the actors was perfect and the character potential was there, they barely seemed to scratch the surface in four years.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I stayed out of this forum until I had a firm grasp of Enterprise. I think I do.

Season one was great. They kept track of time and distance. They were exploring the nighbourhood. Bookending with the TCW, and the fabulous Coldfront in the middle there abouts was really whetting us for an insane seaosn two where Archer is just being made a canker meat puppet for several factions in the TWC using the Tewnty second century as a front while the Klingons are still pissed about the Civil War they tried to start in broken bow, the Suliban having there own civil war, and Dean Stockman's lot taking point to defend the 22nd century for all the native 22 second centurians againt the point of view of all the other damn centuries, even the last 4 episodes before shockwave, were all about getting to Risa so the crew could get laid.

Season two was directionless taking no clues from what went before and then seaosn three, although for the most part inventedon the fly with no forethought, it was quite awsome, but an utter reboot... Then season 4, That was a different show like some sort of frankenstien limb transplant. Season Four was a prequel to TOS by forsaking the previous three seaonss of Enterprise almost. And that's quite thankless no matter the neatness of some of the episodes and the interconnectedness of the entire season.

All that being said, Archer was an idiot.

 

[gblews]

Trekwatcher said:
I am a die-hard TOS fan, and have really enjoyed all of the different series. I also really, really loved ENT. I thought the show was original, creative, and did some things that no prior Trek show had done before. I also felt they were cancelled at a time when the show was really hitting it's stride. I am especially a huge fan of the Xindi arc, and think that in S3 they just knocked it out of the park!

I agree with what most have said in the thread. A lot of the venom was directed toward ENT because of the Beebs and because of ENT's unique (to Trek) premise.

THe first two seasons didn't help much. But the last two defined ENT as the most compelling Trek series since DS9 and possibly since TOS. IMO, this will be ENT's legacy.

 

[startrekwatcher]

The internet has always been an arena, much like talk radio, where extreme polarized opinions come out.

People who might have disliked the show but wouldn't get all worked up over it would lash out more strongly to counter the fans' response.

Then there were those who looked for certain things and didn't get them. Some are canon fanatics obsessing over every little throwaway line so if ENT fudged a little they would come unhinged. There were those who couldn't stand seeing someone enjoy a Trek series that they didn't and would feel their taste or Trekkiness if that is a word was put into question.

Then you have some who for whatever reason only liked one Trek series and no other Trek series would satisfy them and made their opinions known loudly and sometimes obnoxiously.

There were some who hated B&B so much that they wouldn't give the show a shot no matter what unless Behr or Moore penned it. Some might have felt burnt for sticking by VOY for seven years and then seeing some of the same mistakes crop up they voiced their opinions.

Then there were some level-headed people who genuinely didn't care for it because it was sub-par at times but wasn't loud and obnoxious. Others weren't engaged in the characters. Those posters would calmly and intelligently articulate their issues but not get themselves worked up in a frenzy.

But a lot of this isn't localized to ENT or VOY. I've been around long enough to see the same thing occurs with any show--Lost, BSG etc.

 

[Captain X]

My concern mainly had to do with the fact that I knew continuity would go by the wayside, from the look of things to actual established events, chiefly because I knew B&B's trak record already with VOY, which couldn't keep its own internal continuity straight. Turns out I was right on that count. I was also never on the boat with the TCW, and when I tuned in for a bti and saw T'Pol, I was more than a little disgusted at what I saw as a Seven clone, and a sorry excuse to get another female character into a catsuit, which made even less sense because she was supposed to be Vulcan. I also noted that her eyebrows were wrong. Eventually I got over it, but mainly because I've started to think of ENT as AU so I could enjoy it more.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Never really understood the continuity complaint. ENT probably violated it less than TOS. It might have gone in directions unthought of by some fans, but is that a violation of continuity or expectations? As for T'Pol and the Catsuit. She's not the first Vulcan in a catsuit or even the first Vulcan dolled up to look sexy. STII's Saavik lacked the classic eybrows too. So what is the problem?

 

[Captain X]

Who was the first Vulcan in a catsuit then?

As for the eyebrow problem, Saavik might've had it too, but that isn't an excuse either. The look had been long established by the time ENT started, and all the other Vulcans seen on ENT had them.

Re: "Unthought of directions" - I have to disagree there. If anything ENT went where one or more of the series had gone before

As for continuity, I'll again have to bitch about the ship being 200 years out of time, and an example of what I was afraid of as far as continuity going by the wayside. Storywise, a huge continuity error was the first contact with the Klingons being too soon, and hardly disasterous as described by Picard. Then, of course, there was the Ferengi and the Borg, both of which "preserved" continuity by merely copping by not mentioning their names. I've heard all the arguements for those episodes, but they fall short, and again don't excuse ignoring TOS in favor of TNG. And this is coming from someone who liked TNG a lot more than TOS. My point is, if you're going to do a prequel, do a prequel instead of trying to do TNG in the 22nd century, or as it turned out in some cases, Voyager mark II.

 

[Anna Yolei]

As a lot of others have said, a lot of the hate initially (Pretty much in the period between the show's announcement and when it first aired) had a lot to do with Berman and Braga's status with Trek fans at the time...and there were fewer and fewer fans that were willing to sit through any more of their stuff after Voyager. Why should they, after that show's godawful run? I wouldn't have, either had I been a Trek fan before Enterprise, to be honest. That whole "fool me once..."mentality is why I didn't bother to see SW:Episode III in theatres. And unfortunately, the first two seasons of Enterprise (while hardly the worst of Trek, IMO) seemed like more of the same of Voyager. To quote Jammer's review of ANISB, "...the writers are not treating this as season two of a series, but rather season nine (or later) of an aging dinosaur." It's probably the most ill-timed episode in Trek history since TNG's "The Naked Now."

That said, there were quite a few people who looked for any reason to hate this show. Plenty of folks were willing to dismiss the show offhand because of something as minor as the ship being "too modern." Because Enterprise should have been created out of popsickle sticks and 2-dimention construction, because of a ship on a show that was created four decades earlier. Okay. That sort of thing made everyone who had legit criticism of the show look bad, IMO.

 

[ancient]

I'll pop in, I'm not a basher, as a matter of fact I almost never post in here, though I am critical of many elements of the show.

#1 reason: False advertizing. It wasn't 'new' or 'fresh' to long-timers. It was yet another TNG series with slightly different window dressing and slightly different technobabble. Life on a 22nd century starship was almost exactly the same as life on a 24th cent starship. It was McTrek.

 

[startrekwatcher]

Captain X said:
Storywise, a huge continuity error was the first contact with the Klingons being too soon, and hardly disasterous as described by Picard.

Hardly earth-shattering. Most people wouldn't even remember a throwaway line. And I think that just shows the disconnect between internet fans and the general viewing audience. They don't get caught up in the little irrelevant details to the point that it prevents them from enjoying the show.

Internet fans tend to fixate on things that your average viewer doesn't. The bottom line is they want to be entertained. They want engaging characters, interesting well-written stories and thing like nice visuals are a bonus.

There were plenty of things to criticize ENT over but catsuits, the distance between Kronos and Earth, the first contact with Klingons, T'Pol's eyebrows, the ship design, the portrayal of the Vulcans aren't in my eyes really worth complaining about. Things like recycled plots, lacklustre characters, weak dialog--those are really ENT's weaknesses that are worthy of discussion.

Thankfully ENT managed to improve greatly with the Xindi arc and season four. Finally the plots improved. There was a sense of urgency, suspense, mystery, intrigue. You had interesting twists. There was epicness to the storytelling whether with a struggle to save Earth involving multiple players or in season four with the audience being witnesses to historically important and relevant events to the Trek universe.

 

[Kegek]

^
It wasn't a throaway line. It was a throaway speech from 'First Contact' (the episode, not the movie), wherein Picard uses Klingon first contact as an example of the worst case scenario.

But that never really bothered me, nor did the other numerous continuity contradictions. Trek's been doing that since forever, and the fans are always more forgiving if they like what they see. Indeed, if there's any anger about the discontinuity between, say, TNG and DS9 Trill, it's directed at the TNG Trill - even though they came first and it was DS9 which blatantly rewrote every aspect of their continuity. TOS's continuity could be notoriously sloppy when it came to what organisation they were part of, whether they were an Earth ship, and other concerns that nobody gave a damn about because the series didn't and it gave us good entertainment to match.

The thing is, a lot of ENT simply wasn't good. Some, like me, will resort to criticism based on quality. Others will criticise it on that basis because, well, I guess it's less epehemeral than quality. I think ENT did a fairly good job with continuity overall, though sometimes they had a problem with flat-out ignoring interesting things (Romulan cloaks), or slavishly adhering to it (Klingon foreheads).

 

[Pensive]

No matter how many of these threads come up, there's no accounting for taste.

 

[Tino]

I LOVED Enterprise but felt that many of the second season's stories were

- lame
- unemotional
- reclycled

 

[Turd Ferguson]

So far I've liked what I've seen, but I've only seen mostly the second season. One complaint I have are the stories seem to revolve around the same premise. And that's either somebody getting taken hostage/taking somebody hostage/hostages taking even more hostages then a member of Enterprise gets taken hostage.

A little more variety would be nice.

 

[Stardate]

I found Enterprise better then DS9 and VOY. I liked all the cast with the exception of Bakula as Captain. Enterprise problem was it was a prequel. Prequel just docent work. It will hindered or strict creative writing because the writers has be careful not to violent canon and continuity all the time.

 

[Captain X]

startrekwatcher said:
Hardly earth-shattering. Most people wouldn't even remember a throwaway line. And I think that just shows the disconnect between internet fans and the general viewing audience. They don't get caught up in the little irrelevant details to the point that it prevents them from enjoying the show.

If people want to be mindlessly entertained, there are a lot of other franchises out there. The entire point of Trek is that it's supposed to have some actual thought put into it. In any case, why would the "general audience" care one way or another if the writers actually stuck to things they'd already established? So TPTB would be much better off to do so because the people who would notice would give them kudos for it instead of criticizing them for not doing even the least amount of research into their own franchise, and everyone else would just be entertained anyway.

Internet fans tend to fixate on things that your average viewer doesn't.

Look, I don't "fixate", I just have attention to detail, and I've had it since long before the internet was a twinkle in Al Gore's eye.

There were plenty of things to criticize ENT over but catsuits, the distance between Kronos and Earth, the first contact with Klingons, T'Pol's eyebrows, the ship design, the portrayal of the Vulcans aren't in my eyes really worth complaining about. Things like recycled plots, lacklustre characters, weak dialog--those are really ENT's weaknesses that are worthy of discussion.

It's all worth criticizing.

Thankfully ENT managed to improve greatly with the Xindi arc and season four.

Both of which had plot holes big enough to fly a Galaxy class starship through.