One of many things you've said in your post that I absolutely agree with, Ghemor. I often got the impression that the show attempted (somehow) to cater to several different audience groups -- the ones the studio executives targeted, the ones the network executives targeted, and the Trek fans the writers were aiming for from the beginning -- not simultaneously but in succession. The results, including the pilot, were shows that one moment appeared somewhat intelligent and the next moment was going for the Maxim reader.From Nerys Ghemor:
Which brings me to a problem I had with the show: the obvious attempts to pander to the shallow end of the male demographic. The whole decon and neuropressure massage thing was gratuitous.
In a way, that makes Enterprise not all that dissimilar (and folks will think I'm completely bonkers on this, but follow me for a moment, please) to the Today Show. Not any one segment of the Today Show, mind you, but the whole four-hour telethon. Imagine yourself being cooped up in a hospital bed, for instance, next to someone who one morning insists on watching the whole Today Show from 7 am to 11 am. One moment there's a discussion on Colonel Khaddafi. The next, the weatherman is being shouted by the crowd as though he were Monty Hall. The next is the tragic story of children who perished floating down a river. And then there's two women babbling for an hour, talking over one another about Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen...
Any one moment might be bearable in itself. It's the sequence of events, that ping-pongs your mind from one extreme to the next while bombarding you with ads, that makes the program as a whole excruciating. And Enterprise at its worst reminds me of the Today Show. One moment we're debating the morality of introducing unknown technology to a planet whose citizens are starving, the next moment we're petting the dog, and then we're fawning over T'Pol's breasts, and finally we're blasting away a terrorist threat.
Now, it wasn't always at its worst, and that's why I don't simply forget it exists like I do with some other spinoff of CSI or Law & Order. But the show appeared to try to be all things to all benefactors, which may be why even the perfect choice for the captain -- Scott Bakula -- appeared miscast at times. One moment he gave us a flash of the same greatness he showed consistently in Quantum Leap, and the next moment he was like David Gregory in a cooking segment with Martha Stewart.
Frankly, I've stopped blaming anyone in particular for these shortcomings, including and especially Rick Berman. I think the climate of network television since the last decade has rendered it difficult, at the least, to produce a one-hour serialized drama of quality for any sustained amount of time. And with all the many masters that a Trek show would have to answer to -- more so than, say, yet another crime drama about scientists with guns backed up by babes with attitudes -- it would have been the most difficult network show to produce of all. More so than even another maudlin morning marathon.
DF "More About the Devastation in Haiti a Little Later, But First, Do These Jeans Make Your Hips Look Fat?" Scott