What would you change in Star Trek: Enterprise to make it better?

[DarKush]

Count me among the many who have also toyed with this idea for a long time now. Changes I would've made:

-Name the hero ship Phoenix, as a nod to Zefram Cochrane (and the very popular Star Trek: First Contact movie). Star Trek: Phoenix could symbolize a rebirth of Trek.
-Phoenix would be under UESPA. I would go for a retrofuturistic vibe when it came to the design. I did like the NX-01 interior so I would keep that.
-There would be Daedalus-class ships in this series in all their glory.
-I would use laser pistols, no shielding, just shuttlepods.
-Keep the ENT uniforms. I liked those.
-Cast a Latino actor as the captain. I think this diversifying fit the trends established by DS9 and VOY. I would've been looking at Esai Morales, Jimmy Smits, or Benjamin Bratt. I was thinking male but not opposed to a Latina lead. I did like Captain Hernandez. My captain is more of a military man.
-Before we get there though, Phoenix would've had a different captain, a Stiles (who I see as Dennis Quaid). The Forrest-mentor kind of role here would've been played by the late Louis Gossett Jr. (a nod to Enemy Mine). Stiles doesn't make it out the pilot and that's how we get a new captain.
-First officer would be a Black woman. I was inspired when I heard that Grey's Anatomy's Chandra Wilson was a Trek fan and she is who I envision as the first officer. Not certain if Wilson was a fan or her Grey's Anatomy character was, but once I heard it, she stuck in my head for first officer. The first officer is more of an explorer/scientist. That way we can get two sides of how to solve problems.
-I'm not sure I would have any aliens onboard. I am inclined to really take to heart the saying "the human adventure is just beginning" in a prequel series about Earth's baby steps into the Alpha Quadrant.
-If I did have a Vulcan onboard, they would be a first contact officer, or maybe in the Hoshi role. The Vulcan character would not wear a catsuit, but if they had to, the ones like T'Pol wore in the last seasons. Generally, though I would have the character in Vulcan robes or looser Vulcan tunics and pants.
-I would have John Billingsley play basically the same role, sans makeup, and just have him married to an alien (s).
-Trip stays the same. Though I would do more to develop his romance with T'Pol or my stand-in character for her.
-Reed is a MACO, who is also Section 31 (and we learn that early on), and is also openly gay. Not sure if he would be married right off, but there would be opportunities to depict him in relationships.
-Hoshi is the science officer and we get more of her assured depiction in the last two seasons over the first two.
-Mayweather is the grandson of Gossett's character. He has a kind of mentor/mentee relationship with the captain that mirrors the captain's and Gossett's character. I would keep a lot of Mayweather's Boomer backstory and he weighs in a lot more about various planets and species he's encountered. I would develop a Hoshi-Mayweather romance.
-I would make the pilot about first contact with the Andorians instead of the Klingons. A similar story but it would be the Romulans instigating behind the scenes and not the Suliban. The Vulcans will have the same fraught history with the Andorians and this is why they are against Earth taking the injured Andorian back.
-Terra Prime would've been a thorn in the side of our heroes from the beginning.

When it comes to other aliens:
-No Klingons until maybe the final season or episode and there is a disastrous first contact.
-Vulcans might be paternalistic, but they are not all jerks, and they are sometimes right and humans are sometimes wrong, and we see the humans get in over their heads and have to eat some humble pie occasionally.
-I would've used the Nausicaans more as a kind of recurring antagonist. Same with the Syndicate. I would establish that there had been a war with the Nausicaans in the past, and our captain had been one of the veterans of that war.
-I was fine with the Xindi and Suliban as antagonists. I would've brought back the "Silent Enemy" aliens. I liked the idea of the series having villains that were specific to it.

 

[YouAreDooomed]

• Screw live action. I would change the filmmaking format into animation. The entire franchise (+ others) should transition; it offers lot more possibilities.
  
  
• Exploratory fleet. central hero ship.
  
  
• Concerning the show's production: replace the showrunners, keep B&B out of it entirely, and hire someone like Manny Coto only as consultant/ writer.
  
  
• The far more primitive technology shall be a lot more distinguishable from the previous shows with significant ramifications: Humanity has no access to FTL sensors; if a starship enters a system and detects another vessel at a distance of 9 light hours, it only sees where that vessel had been 9 hours before and you are also completely blind during warp flight.
  There are no technobabble devices to deal with heat accumulation and time dilation, so sublight speeds are more limited, and crews may need to surrender in a battle in order to avoid getting cooked,
  
  Planetary surveys require way more effort, tons of gear and armies of scientists.
  
  Space combat would work very similar to The Expanse. Replace their missiles with antimatter-fueled kinetic ones with the option of explosive warheads (non-antimatter unless maybe very rare planetary bombardment), plasma weapons instead of railguns and defence lasers instead of PDCs. Opposing ships or fleets exchange salvos which can take minutes to reach their targets.
  Pseudo energy shields are not available; they rely on thick armour.
  Artificial gravity and intertial dampeners can "only" fully handle 50 gees or so. Being unbelted or running around in high-acceleration situations is considered suicidal.
  
  Transporters are limited to inanimate objects; any living beings would not survive the process. Their range is several hundred kilometres.
  FTL real-time communication is usually not a thing unless you are only a couple of ly away.
  
  Space stealth and ECM are important
  
  Warp drives have cool-down periods lasting hours after dropping out.
  
  
• Ship's interior design and uniforms are spot-on in ENT, but nothing resembling any TOS+ starfleet designs except visible nacelles.
  
  
• More clarity of human expansion and the overall state of Earth's galactic neighbourhood at the beginning.
  
  
• No TCW, no time travel. Other time shenanigans (dilation, loops...) allowed.
  
  
• No catsuits/ oversexed crap.
  
  
• No sexual innuendo, no stupid frigging decon-chamber petting. Even for early 2000s, what dafuq...
  
  
• No creeps (esp. Malcolm).
  
  
• The crew(s) shall act more professionally. The ENT characters do have a sense of wonder and eagerness to explore though which should remain.
  
  
• No implications of nepotism.
  
  
• Archer would not be a douchebag; not cry about Vulcans "sabotaging" daddy's engine.
  
  
• Expand on Mayweather's space-freighter background and do more with it; after all he is a space veteran compared to most people on board.
  
  
• Aliens few and far between with each one getting more attention.
  
  
• Kzinti? Yeah, why not.
  
  
• Keep the Xindi but not as a (major) threat.
  
  
• No space wizards at all (ENT has Organians).
  
  
• Standalone and multi-part episodes like in season 4 from the start.
  
  
• MACOs from the start.

 

[Oddish]

MACOs from the start.

That would be awesome, especially their special weapons. In "Fortunate Son", those attacking Naussicans were standing in a cluster. I remember thinking that a single WW1 frag grenade would have turned them into bulkhead stains. The MACOs addressed this.

 

[DarKush]

Just thought about it. The Andorians would be recurring antagonists in the first few seasons but by the end, they would become friends with Earth, not unlike what we did see on Enterprise, but in my take the Andorians would be considered even more of a problem, akin to ENT's Klingons. The series would delve a lot into Andorian history and culture, and I would incorporate things from Trek lit and games whenever I could. When it came to the Romulans, I would also incorporate Diane Duane's take on them when I could, and I would explain the Reman relationship and create other subject species for them.

The series could also explore first contact with other species we see on the Original Series, Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine, especially background ones that didn't get much attention or barely even a canonical name. Lots of room to play with there.

 

[MurphyCooper]

No time travel. No temporal cold war. Have the MACOs be present on the ship from the start, and have Reed actually be a high ranking MACO officer from the start. The ship needs to feel more militaristic, even more primitive in my opinion.

More focus on the Enterprise being very primitive in comparison to other Alien ships. Feature more conflict with the Vulcans. I like the idea of the Vulcans being suppressive of the humans because of Romulan intrusion, maybe in this TL, the Romulans managing to infiltrate the Vulcans and nearly spark a war with Earth is what causes the Romulan War arc.

Maybe I would even have the Enterprise be a little earlier in the timeline as well, with it truly emphasizing the first exploration beyond the immediate stars close to the Solar System. I would also include the Cardassians a lot as well, and show their interactions with Earth, and Bajor before the war.

 

[FredH]

Honestly, I thought Enterprise was fine, then and now, other than the finale. I would have the Suliban continue to be around in later seasons, actually resolve Future Guy (the floated idea of him being Future Archer is terrible and silly, so not that), not go straight from losing a daughter to the end, and a better-written finale. Other than that, there’s stuff I’d personally add, but not much I really think needs “fixing”.

(Actually, in retrospect, I could see Future Guy being a changed alternate-iteration of Daniels/Kovich — probably playing a long-term chessgame against his alternate other self.)

 

[DFScott]

The turn of the last century was right about the time when television producers were learning that dramatic series could take bigger bites, add more ingredients, build bolder stories. The "envelope" was getting bigger, and writers could start pushing out to newer boundaries because they weren't confined to the form factor of broadcast network television.

I honestly feel that Voyager started to push boundaries, but then shrank back and retreated somewhat, probably because the producers and writers got tired of fighting against a pretend network (UPN). So when ST:E started, that lethargy was already present. The pilot episode "Broken Bow" was actually, by my own standards at the time (I can't walk away from my own record), a good show that made me believe there were ways the writers could move the needle. Probably to stay alive, and I can't blame them for wanting to do that (they did make it through four seasons), they didn't push the envelope like DS9 did. But DS9 wasn't overseen by UPN.

For a lot of the commenters on this thread thus far, if all you were handed was the unproduced pilot episode, and it was up to you to make it a program worthy of Showtime (the Viacom empire's big premium service at that time), I think all of you would probably take bigger bites. And I don't mean just casting Esai Morales as the captain (good choice, though) or having Trip and T'Pol make out in a supply closet. You'd say, this is a story of where the human race becomes part of a bigger race, which is a foundational transition in who we are as a people, and wouldn't we want to see that transition step-by-step? You have a story that you know from Star Trek canon leads from a costly war with the Romulans (whom we don't meet face-to-face) to approximately "The Cage." That's a huge gap, a tremendous mountain to climb. You'd create characters capable of getting the human race started, embarking on that massive journey.

So you'd see that Braga and Berman basically shrank and shrink-wrapped the Voyager characters, and re-cast them in 22nd century molds. While they did not do a particularly bad job of that, one wishes they had the opportunity to go a lot further, because then we'd be talking about ST:E in the same company as the best boundary-pushing episodes of TOS, TNG, and DS9.

DF "Bigger Bites" Scott

 

[Oddish]

I think that one thing VOY and ENT had in common was that there were moments at the end of the pilot when the series went back on what it promised to be.

In Voyager's case, it was the Maquis showing up in Starfleet uniforms. Many insiders considered this decision a mortal wound for the series, a rejection of the premise of a conflicted ship.

In Enterprise's case, it was the successful use of the transporter. It similarly rejected the premise of a prequel.

 

[korblborp]

the transporter shouldn't have been there. or if it was it should have been much slower and prone to error.

 

[Oddish]

Something else... if they're going to have Trip go over to Columbia, fine and dandy. But LEAVE HIM THERE for at least 3-4 episodes. Don't just bring him back the very next episode.

 

[knightgrace]

They should have gone with the original idea, that a maintenance routine would occur every five to ten light-years. Which, if you remember involves, the ship essentially opening up like a Transformer Autobot, taking at least a day to fully open up. Then a week of serious maintenance, then a day to collapse back into the familiar NX-01 Enterprise. This would be used to explain the Time Barrier. Maintenance schedules.

 

[Cicero]

I think Enterprise had a few good concepts and a lot of potential, but is plagued with terrible execution and a lot of this potential gets wasted. I would like to ask you here, what would you change? How would you write it?

I think that one of the show's biggest problems was actually Bakula's use of a John Wayne impression for Archer. I didn't realize that it was why his performance was so strange until I rewatched "Broken Bow" a few months ago.

 

[FederationHistorian]

I'd have avoided the whole season-length-arc bovine scat with the Xindi.

Exploration of the Delphic Expanse could have been done in an episodic manner. S1 & S2 do have a soft level of continuity in them, and it could have continued in S3. Instead of exploring to address a threat to Earth, it’s a region of space known for its piracy and lawlessness – especially to Boomers - and a contentious battleground to the Vulcan-Andorian conflict due to the unique resources present. There can be, for example Osaarians, Orions, and K’tarians pirate crews, each crew with their own scarred crewmembers from the anomalies caused by the Spheres. And their versions of boarding an innocent vessel like the Illyrian ship (either murdering or marooning the crew). There are also a crew made up of Osaarians, Orions and K’tarians navigating the Expanse, to serve as a dark mirror for the NX-01 crew regarding cooperation and ethics while tagging along with them for an episode.

There could also be other species used to contrast the Orion slave girls both in philosophy and in competition. While Orions use their pheromones to kidnap the crew and the ship, Oran’taku (like Rajiin) selling the bio-data of the NX-01 crew to the highest bidder; either Vulcan or Andorians, and eventually Romulans. And Nuvians who offer Risian-style hospitality. The NX-01 crew could even befriend a Harry Mudd-coded character or Vash-coded character that’s a friend of Mayweather’s that the crew naively trusts at the beginning (think Kirk and Scotty's inital hero worship of Khan), but is long term harmful for both the crew and the ship.

Archer can still make the ethically questionable choices, but they are for more interpersonal reasons, like Travis or Hoshi being kidnapped. Trip and T’Pol can still fall for each other due to T’Pol being exposed to Trellium-D, and T’Pol can still struggle with addiction. Reed and Hayes can still have their rivalry. And instead of the ship getting turned into swiss cheese, let the ship get destroyed instead. Let the survivors rely on Vulcans or Shran or even the Suliban Cabal to get them back home. And then have Archer and his surviving crew get court martialed for their actions upon returning home, and process the consequences of the mission. Maybe Archer’s nightmare involving the Xindi is reality for someone like Travis or Reed, which bolsters Terra Prime propaganda.

The Andorians would be recurring antagonists in the first few seasons but by the end, they would become friends with Earth, not unlike what we did see on Enterprise, but in my take the Andorians would be considered even more of a problem, akin to ENT's Klingons. The series would delve a lot into Andorian history and culture, and I would incorporate things from Trek lit and games whenever I could.

In hindsight, that makes a lot more sense. It would have allowed for more exploration of Andorian honor, instead of Klingon honor which has been done to death. And it gets around Archer being the first to break out of Rura Penthe by having him break out of an Andorian penal colony instead. It would also allow a peak into which worlds are subjects of the Andorian Empire, and maybe the freedom of these subject worlds becomes a contentious issue when forming the Federation.

The turn of the last century was right about the time when television producers were learning that dramatic series could take bigger bites, add more ingredients, build bolder stories. The "envelope" was getting bigger, and writers could start pushing out to newer boundaries because they weren't confined to the form factor of broadcast network television.

I honestly feel that Voyager started to push boundaries, but then shrank back and retreated somewhat, probably because the producers and writers got tired of fighting against a pretend network (UPN). So when ST:E started, that lethargy was already present. The pilot episode "Broken Bow" was actually, by my own standards at the time (I can't walk away from my own record), a good show that made me believe there were ways the writers could move the needle. Probably to stay alive, and I can't blame them for wanting to do that (they did make it through four seasons), they didn't push the envelope like DS9 did. But DS9 wasn't overseen by UPN.

For a lot of the commenters on this thread thus far, if all you were handed was the unproduced pilot episode, and it was up to you to make it a program worthy of Showtime (the Viacom empire's big premium service at that time), I think all of you would probably take bigger bites. And I don't mean just casting Esai Morales as the captain (good choice, though) or having Trip and T'Pol make out in a supply closet. You'd say, this is a story of where the human race becomes part of a bigger race, which is a foundational transition in who we are as a people, and wouldn't we want to see that transition step-by-step? You have a story that you know from Star Trek canon leads from a costly war with the Romulans (whom we don't meet face-to-face) to approximately "The Cage." That's a huge gap, a tremendous mountain to climb. You'd create characters capable of getting the human race started, embarking on that massive journey.

So you'd see that Braga and Berman basically shrank and shrink-wrapped the Voyager characters, and re-cast them in 22nd century molds. While they did not do a particularly bad job of that, one wishes they had the opportunity to go a lot further, because then we'd be talking about ST:E in the same company as the best boundary-pushing episodes of TOS, TNG, and DS9.

DF "Bigger Bites" Scott

“Bigger bites” is relative. Yes, show them building, but let them fail as well through trial and error. From the admirals all the way down to the chef, through professional and personal stakes of various size.

There are numerous way to get the melodrama needed without going to Showtime levels. And that comes from developing and utilizing a number of secondary and tertiary characters on the ship to make it feel like a community. And playing into the primitive aspect.

It is an open-ended question as to “what does primitive mean?” in this context. Does it mean the crews? The tech? The knowledge of space? How species interact with each other? The interpersonal relationships formed?

Does this crew have a high failure rate they have to overcome, or are they perfectionists that have never encountered failure before? Or is it a mixture?

I think the pilot did what it could. It could not overcome the request for a starship saucer, phasers, a transporter, interactions with Klingons, and humans being out into deep space almost immediatly before the first hour was up.

In Enterprise's case, it was the successful use of the transporter. It similarly rejected the premise of a prequel.

Maybe the change could be the transporter failing while beaming the captain out of the Helix? Though Archer would have to start off as first officer while the captain dies mid-beam out.

Something else... if they're going to have Trip go over to Columbia, fine and dandy. But LEAVE HIM THERE for at least 3-4 episodes. Don't just bring him back the very next episode.

Or have it occur in the penultimate episode before doing a time jump into the future.

 

[TJames03]

I would have killed off Reed and Mayweather, had the ship redesigned to a degree, had the crew dress in uniforms like TOS, and had an Andorian and Tellarite as part of the crew.

 

[Richard Baker]

The show's Enterprise looked good on the screen, swooping and such but it should not look that good through. We are dealing with an embryonic technology and the ship should look like a clunky and bolted together test bed. Have the warp engines unreliable- it sometimes stalls during warp-jump and overheats when used for a long distance. During the course of the series upgrade the engines, learning as they go. Have the improvements be visible inside engineering and on the nacelles.
No beam weapons until the third season, keep the weapons ballistic and kinetic. Thick hulls are the protection and when they fail you get internal damage and death like in 'The Expanse'.
No temporal cold war or time travel at all.
No Transporter- get a prototype in season 2 but it is for inorganics only and will occasionally mess up and materialize an object into useless junk.
If the ship wants to communicate with Earth, have them stop, deploy a long range antenna and wait for the signal to go through the relays and then wait for a reply. No main viewer conversations until later in the series when they figure out how to adapt alien signals to be compatible. Think European PAL and US NTSC broadcast problems and we are both on the same planet. I am sure an alien civilization would have a weird communications technology we would have trouble even recognizing. Eventually some common protocols would be established, but not in Archer's time.
Keep the cast pretty much the same but make use of Mayweather as a boomer much more. He grew up out there, rely on his experience.
Instead of having the Xindi trying to destroy the Earth, make them the big bads for most of the series but in season five have their hubris reduce their race to a footnote in history.
Pike had hand lasers, Archer's crew should have something like a gyrojet pistol.
Instead of an all purpose Tricoder/sensor, give the away teams multiple sensors to carry around, make it awkward to do a complete survey with limited personnel

The idea is to make a show bridging our tech to Kirk's era, but in such away you almost feel sorry for them not having the developed cool technology we know is coming.
Ever watch 'Little House on The Prairie' and watch them struggle with things we just take for granted- that is the sort of difference I would have liked to see.

 

[Tenacity]

Trip and Archer would trade places, retain their own personalities. Captain Charles Tucker.

T'pol would be a Vulcan officer attached to the ship, and act as the ship's science and sensor officer, and she would still be ranked as a sub-commander, but would not be a part of the ship's command structure, not second in command. She would dress basically as we first saw her, Vulcan robes. Never be seen in a Human uniform.

Mayweather would be decades older, new to Starfleet, very experienced. A useful source of advice and knowledge for the captain.

The ship's corridors would be narrower, tight. Always thought they were too wide.

Don't use "Starfleet." Space Command or Space Probe Agency.

Kzinti? Yeah, why not.

Problem there might be that the Kzinti are huge, eight feet tall.

Have the MACOs be present on the ship from the star

But what would they do most of the beginning of the series? Unless you're going to re-write the episodes to feature them.

However lose Reed and replace from day one with Hayes.

 

[MurphyCooper]

But what would they do most of the beginning of the series? Unless you're going to re-write the episodes to feature them.

However lose Reed and replace from day one with Hayes.

I would have Reed be a MACO officer - no Hayes. MACO is basically just the security of the ship provided by Starfleet - really I don't know why they didn't have MACO from the start since the ship needs properly trained combat officers.

 

[tafkats]

A lot of the things that people commonly object to, I don't mind. I like the design of the ship, I like that it's called Enterprise, and I don't mind that the service is called Starfleet (say that Starfleet is a program of UESPA if you want to have that TOS tie-in). I don't even mind the theme song.

The things I would change:

— Get rid of everything that reads like it was written by a horny 14-year-old boy. The decon gel nonsense, the Vulcan neuropressure, all of "A Night in Sickbay."

— Don't be afraid of the premise. Something ENT shared with VOY was a reluctance to fully commit to its original premise, making it seem that what the producers really wanted was to make TNG again. There are some things they did well, especially in the first season: Coming upon lost Earth colonies; portraying space as a vast, unfriendly place that humanity wasn't really ready for; depicting the rocky early relations with Andorians. But there was no need to show Ferengi and Cardassians, for instance. Bringing in TNG-era antagonists just made the galaxy seem smaller. And the technology was largely unaltered from what would come after it: Sure, they had phase cannons, spatial torpedos and magnetic grapplers, but from a storytelling standpoint those were indistinguishable from phasers, photon torpedos and tractor beams. And the idea of the transporter as something new and dangerous was jettisoned after the first couple of episodes.

— I personally would have ditched 90% of the timey-wimey stuff.