Thoughts from a first time viewer

So, I am working my way through ST. Started with TNG, then DS9, VOY and now ENT.

Enterprise has some really interesting moments and I think that it could have been a much better show. I have no problem with the acting, though I think DS9 had far and away the best actors of any show I have seen, nor do I have a problem with the characters.

I have really enjoyed seeing how things that we just took for granted in the earlier series came to be. It has a wild west feel that is intriguing and I wish they spent more time on being space cowboys and learning new technology, etc. For me, that would have been a satisfactory show.

Where I think this show went really wrong was the whole temporal cold war and time travelling. The entire show was based around something that the viewers never got to really see. Viewers get invested in shows when they have someone to root for. The viewers in ENT don't even get to know anyone that they are supposed to be rooting for. The factions? Who cares? This was a poor plot line from the writers, who really should have known better.

I have mixed feelings about the Xindi. I loved the idea of several sentient species evolving on the same planet and how their interactions went. But, the sphere builders were just nonsense. I don't know how else the writers could have created the Xindi story without using the sphere builders, but it just became another time travelling story.

I just finished Storm Front II last night and I am really hoping that ENT stays in the present for the remainder of the series.

 

I agree with you on this 100%. This aspect was totally unnecessary and distracted from the real reason to have a prequel series - to show how the Federation began. If only the whole series had been more like season 4...

 

Season 4 was fun, but it went overkill on fanboyish references.

Kor

 

I've been rewatching season 4 again and enjoyed seeing Stormfront part 2.I hope to watch some more Enterprise shows soon.

 

I honestly think the whole time travel aspect of the show would later become a way of "intergrating" the show with post Nemesis Trek. There isn't any proof of this but it's just the feeling I got from it. Wouldnt at all have been surprised if they launched a 2390s show and had some crossover involving Daniels.

Regardless, I really like Enterprise, Trip, T'pol and Phlox are amongst my all time favourite characters, and I actually praise the show for "pushing the envelope" a bit with the romance/sexual stuff.

My favourite episodes were in a mirror darkly pt 1 and 2 and carbon creek

 

The TCW has always been a hot topic for debate. I think Manny did what he could to wrap it up and move on.

It's funny that the highest rated episodes are the TCW ones.

 

Well, since you started with TNG - if you make it to the last episode on ENT S4 - you'll get to see a TNG episode made 11 years after that series was actually cancelled.

 

I had thought at that time that the TCW was a pretty cool idea. We viewers knew more about the future than Archer did. I kinda thought you HAD to have some kind of time travel element because it was a prequel and there was so much Trek already in the can. Ignoring the other 4 series seemed to be a waste. They could have done a few things better though.

 

ENT has been the second Star Trek show that I watched completely after TOS. I liked it a lot quite from the beginning and don't understand why it is often seen as being so different from other ST series. I liked Archer a lot as captain, he actually reminded me of Kirk in some ways, and I think ENT has lots, lots of episodes that speak about moral and philosophic things in the vein of classic ST, such as "Dear Doctor", "Detained" or "Observer Effect", just to name a few.

I just have some issues with season 3, which lots of people seem to see as the best one actually. It had also great episodes and the Xindi conflict also brought some interesting topics with it like prejudices or doing wrong and irrational things out of fear, but all in all, it was too much action in my opinion and didn't really feel like ST anymore. Gladly the last season improved things again and brought up some of the show's very best episodes or episode arcs in my opinion.

 

The whole TCW was a studio mandate, IIRC.

You're 100 percent right, however. I never got into that war, Berman fought against it's inclusion and only addressed it as little as possible to keep the studio off his back. Which was fine by me, because I hated this anyway and to this day I still can't be assed to care who Future Guy (the shadowy figure that appeared in a few episodes) was.

 

Also, this.

On a purely technical standpoint, nearly everything else was an improvement: no more decon chambers, Archer being a leader worth following and the more underutilized characters becoming more rounded.

But the episodes themselves felt less like Enterprise and more like self-insert fanfiction. Excellent fanfic, yes, but these were the attention-grabbing stories that should've been done in season one. We just saw the crew literally save Earth...why did we never address all the ramifications of that until the series finale?* I needed an explanation on Klingon ridges like I needed a Borg episode in season two or a Ferengi episode in season one (and I say this as someone who had to watch "Profit and Lace" twice to get why people hated it so much)--which is to say not at all.

That said, I did post here first-run and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what a breath of fresh air it was to have a showrunner in Manny Coto that was happy to be on the show and treated fans with respect rather than the contempt we were getting from Bermaga (imagined or otherwise). Just knowing that is probably what made that season seem better than it really was in retrospect.

But my favorite episodes we're less the ones addressing TOS lore but ones that made it fit into ENT's history. The Vulcan arc, for example.

*Because Enterprise ended with "Terra Prime." Obviously.

 

I'm also watching Enterprise for the first time! What I'm shocked by is how much fun and sometimes cute the show can be. I'm talking about Travis sitting in the captain's seat after Hoshi egging him on in Cold Front. I was expecting bad writing and annoying characters without much depth, tossed in stories I had seen before but in the past. But instead, it's more mediocre writing with extremely amusing characters whose character acting makes up for their lack of depth. The really hamfisted themes in every episode are the perfect level of ham, and while the individual episodes are pretty by the numbers, I'm feeling pretty entertained. And the general premise of humans bumbling through the galaxy getting pissed at aliens for not being human. It's hilarious!

I 100% understand why I couldn't stand this show at 16, but at 33 now, I'm glad I can appreciate it for what it is. I guess considering it just a small corner of the Trek universe rather than 'omg THIS is how they're continuing it?' took a lot of the hate and pressure off.

 

I enjoyed season 4, and yes, I'm one of those that enjoyed the fanboyish stories like the why Klingon's look like humans in the original series. But in all fairness, they sort of opened that can of worms on Deep Space Nine and this was a way to close it. And I thought it was a pretty good explanation, I always assumed it was something genetic. To me, it was the last major loose end in continuity of Star Trek. And I thought those were good episodes even without the 'explanation'.

I just wish, and always thought, season 4 should have been more what season 1 to 2 were, at least once the show was more or less established in the first couple of weeks. The tie ins, the prequel stories, all that, should have been done earlier. After all, their stated intent was for this to be a prequel, for it to link the events of First Contact with the original series. It would make sense that it should in some way be a bridge.

The 4th season is where you started to see how Enterprise might lead into what would become the original series. That's when it all seemed to start coming together.

That's not to say there weren't good episodes in seasons 1 and 2. I just thought they missed an opportunity there. I also enjoyed season 3 but I had hoped the show would depict the Romulan War and the founding of the Federation ultimately. But they just never got to that point. By the time the show found it's legs the network had already decided it was over. In retrospect it probably would have been better to substitute the Xindi with the Romulans and make the Xindi arc instead focus on the Romulan War (though it would have been longer and obviously involve different stories).