Season four. Manny Coto seemed to understand that Star Trek needed to have a fun factor. Unfortunately, he took over the series too late for the changes to matter.
I must concur with eyeresist, on this matter. The third season seems so fresh and vibrant compared to the others. When the baton was passed at the start of the overrated 4th season ... somehow, it all went awry. The magic was lost and it just sort of plateaued. The ideas were there, like spending a lot of time on Vulcan. The very thought of which suggests and implies a mysterious, exotic landscape and very regal, authoritative characters and rich, vibrant costumes and customs. And what did we get? Archer and T'Pol filmed in a rock quarry with a red filter over the camera lens. We got a galloping sehlat that wouldn't climb a mild incline to attack them and it was easily chased away by a local with a ridiculous knack for making animal sounds. I mean ... what's with these people making this shite? -ENT- started delivering half-assed attempts at pandering to hard core Trekkies, instead of novel science fiction stories, like they'd done just the season before. Whatever. Praise You, Jesus, that I didn't have to pay for it, out of pocket, like I'm going to next time a STAR TREK series comes along ... that's all I've got to say. I would've been grumpy. Very grumpy, indeed.
I never thought of it before eyeresist pointed it out but I do think season 3 is more consistent. I like season 4 but they were not the most efficient with developing a lot of the character B-plots. First, Home rushed the Archer/Hernandez relationship and the reasons Koss wanted to marry T'Pol so badly. Then there was the half-assed Trip/T'Pol angst. It's not a bad idea but Trip only spent a few days on Columbia. Really, that does the trick? And that's not even getting into the issue of Hernandez letting the best engineer in Starfleet go just like that. Then what was the point of episodes like Observer Effect? It's always disappointing to see easy solutions to dragged out problems. And while I liked the MU episodes, they would have been better placed in the S1 or 2. That way, a whole lot of B-plots would have been more developed.
I like both seasons 3 and 4 but think season 3 had more consistent quality. 4 had some great episodes and some not so great episodes; I think 3 was mostly good across the board, so that's how I voted. But I enjoyed both, for the most part.
Season 3 was awesome. That arc from Azati Prime to Forgotten was the best three episode stretch Enterprise ever had.
So no one liked season 1 or 2? I've gained more appreciation for season 1 over the years. Season 2 also had a number of good episodes, like First Flight.
Season 3. Despite being dubious about a "battle-trek" themed season, I happened to enjoy this one a lot.
I am very much in the minority on this one. I actually really liked seasons 1 and 2. I thought that they very often managed to capture a "Boy's Own Adventure" kind of tone, which was more or less lost for the rest of the show. While Season 3 certainly had its strengths, I was not a huge fan of the story arc, and for me that makes it perhaps the weakest season.
Season 4 was the best for me. It was the best season linking Enteprise to TOS. It felt more like a prequel to TOS. And I liked the innovative three-episode arcs they did throughout the season. Second was Season 3. Even though the Xindi arc could have been shorter or tightened up it was definitely an improvement over what came before.
That's hard to say. It's easier to pick out a favorite episode. Too many episodes in the later seasons were hard to follow. Once in a while you'd see one that didn't make sense like when Jonathan had that disease which was similar to Alzheimer's, and curing him was the only way to stop the destruction of Earth after it happened. I gotta wonder how they managed to do some of the special effects behind some of the Xindi. When the insectoids were conversing in a group with the others, was that done with stop and start? When they'd board the Enterprise and attack, was that CGI? Were the aquatics stop and start? One episode that really stood out pretty good in the Xindi arc was when the captain and a couple crewmembers were on a planet, and they were infected by a virus that changed them into another species, but the episode where T'Pol became a believer in time travel was good too. God bless, Jason Irelan