Was 4 years a little short for this series run?

Firefly, one of TV's greatest sins. A true example of a network getting in their own way.

 

I was sad when it was cancelled. Watching season 4 now on TV, makes me sad that I know only a few more episodes of the show.

 

Did Firefly blow it? I mean, they were cancelled, right? Or any other show that didn't get 7 full seasons? Do only "quality shows" avoid getting cancelled?

TOS was cancelled twice, and almost thrice, and we don't even know why. It was NBC's highest rated program in their most important age demographic, and that's season 3, which I always hear sucks, and it was airing at terrible times.

 

I loved Serenity so much that I'm cool with Firefly being cancelled.

The seven season version of that story could never have been as epic as those concentrated 2 hours of awesomeness.

 

I think Enterprise showed what it could have accomplished with the fourth season. I'm also of the mind the problem was we were just getting to the Good Stuff of the Romulan War and Federation forming.

 

I always figured Enterprise should have started in 2154 not 2151. This way the show could end with the Romulan War and the founding of the Federation.

 

I found season 3 an improvement over the two prior seasons. I wish they hadn't focused on what has been called the 9-11 analogy but even the wrong focus was still a focus and improvement did result. The improvement in season 4 was due to benign neglect from the front office.

 

The premise itself was excellent, but like with Voyager no one really seemed to be interested in it until season 4.

Also how did they make space feel so small with such slow warp engines.

 

I like how so many people here say things like "screw canon, I just want a good story" but when the show bends over backwards to adhere to canon in season 4, those people criticize it for doing so, regardless of the story's quality (unless you also think the shows were legit bad).

Enterprise season 4 is one of my favorite seasons in all Trek, partially because of the world building, but also because of how good it was. I'll concede that it's flaw was that it still lacked a 10/10 episode, but the consistency was just so high that I would honestly say it had the highest quality-per-episode ratio of the entire franchise.

 

Syndication is likely the biggest reason the show even got a fourth season to begin with. 98 is short of 100, but still a better sell than 76.

Plus, we were still at least five years away from the beginning of our new TV golden age. In 2005, I'd say that least 50 percent if not more of the TV shows that premiered that season were reality shows that were cheap to make. Apart from Smallville and Buffy, no one was going for genre shows, and even those examples were at least within the demos that WB were aiming for. Online streaming was a pipe dream.

What sunk Enterprise was Paramount refusal to look ahead at what was happening in TV. Apparently, Berman asked that the show spend more time on Earth before going into deep space but was turned down, as was his and Braga' s request to become more arc-centric.

 

No.

Discovery is 13 weeks because no non-network TV series gets more than that today. And that's still longer than most HBO seasons. Enterprise was the last show on network tv on a 26 episode schedule.

I'm glad for the shorter season. If rather get a good season with focus than more episodes with padding stuff like "North Star." Seriously, why did we need a Western episode in the middle of season three? Anyone? Bueller? Season three should've been 24 episodes from the jump to get rid of crap like that.

 

I thought season 3 was 24 episodes.

 

If DISCO does time travel, perhaps we'll see some sort of continuation?

 

Four seasons was two short for a series that really only had two good ones. There was a lot of hubris from Berman and the guy with glasses who kept thinking that all they needed to do was recycle mediocre stories from previous Trek shows to keep it on the air. The Temporal Cold War arc was tired and needless. They could have met with the same kind of adversaries without time travel interfering with the story. It was also a big mistake to cast Bakula. He's likable in some things but was entirely wooden in Enterprise. It was a so-so concept badly executed for too long.

 

....sigh

 

I'll agree with what some other posters have already said.

Probably they thought they would have 7 years to tell their story and therefore were not that much in a hurry to 'get on track'. Which is a pity, since to me it feels like they wasted a lot of the first 2 years fooling around with inconsequential 'alien planet of the week' episodes. And with respect to longer arcs, why invent a Temporal Cold War arc that ultimately lead nowhere when you've already got your work cut out for you ? (Meeting the Romulans, deteriorating relations, war, ultimately resulting in a war and the start of the Federation...) That's not to say that there wasn't good stuff in all that, I was entertained many times. But still.

It definitely got better in the later seasons, but probably it was too late by then. What I really did like about Enterprise is how it painted the 22nd century relations and 'stellar neighbourhood of Earth' as very different from the 'Federation-dominated space' we were familiar with from the 23rd and 24th centuries.

 

It was too short, and the last episode was terrible and tacked on. It would be great if CBS could make a mini-series to give the series a better closure.