Why was Enterprise received so poorly?

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I’m not quite sure whether you’re being sarcastic or not, because I’m talking about the world-building aspect (or in this case, the lack of world-building), not the stories. Because the stories would be the same whether they used a phaser or a gun that shoots bullets.

I'm being serious. You start with shoddy world building, the story absolutely changes since the world informs the story.
No transporter changes many episodes outright, for example. Remove the "Polarization down to 12%" style fighting and the story would have to change around that.

Meanwhile, circling back to where I first entered, colours on a uniform aren't even mentioned, it's an aesthetic thing that really changes nothing if it's there or not.

 

[panyasan]

The use of technology and the design of the ship has an effect on you as viewer. It took me out the story in the beginning. Because in the back of my mind I was thinking “why does all the technology and the ship look like TNG? And not like TOS? Isn’t this supposed to take place before TOS? So why doesn’t it look like something between our technology and the technology of TOS?”

Than I simple pushed those thoughts away and tried to enjoy the stories. As for the stories, for me they’re okay until season 2, then they started to assassinate T’Pol’s character (I already didn’t like the cat suit, someone can be a beautiful woman without tight clothing or cleavage).

And in season 2 they run out of ideas for Travis, Reed and Hoshi. In season 1 you have episode as Fight of Flight with Hoshi, Shuttlepod One with Reed and Fortunate Son with Travis and you see much of them in the other episodes like Reed and Travis breaking the ice in Breaking the Ice.

For me, the showrunners ran out of ideas and leaned too much on previous Star Trek shows, mostly TNG, but greatly improved in season three and four – with more stories unique to Star Trek Enterprise (and finally dropping everything of the Temporal War).

 

[Sci]

One of the things that hurts ENT is that the world-building is inconsistent. Is the United Earth Starfleet a well-developed institution with a fleet of ships and a history of extra-solar exploration, or is Enterprise NX-01 the first dedicated extra-solar exploration mission? Does United Earth have extensive trade ties with alien worlds, or does it barely know what's in the neighborhood? Has Earth been unified long, or are there still meaningful divisions among Humans? Do Humans have well-developed permanent extra-solar colonies, or has Humanity barely left the cradle? ENT tried to have it both ways on a lot of those questions.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

This thread is an interesting read.

I remain convinced that race/nationality was not the reason for the failure of the show.

People were just sick of Star Trek changing the desktop wallpaper but otherwise not doing anything new.

 

[Sci]

This thread is an interesting read.

I remain convinced that race/nationality was not the reason for the failure of the show.

People were just sick of Star Trek changing the desktop wallpaper but otherwise not doing anything new.

Yeah. I don't think the forced whiteness of the casting choices helped, but as I said in my original post in this thread, ultimately the biggest problem was that the showrunners were creatively burnt out and that reflected in every other aspect of the production.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Something that's always worked for Doctor Who is that every few years it has a turnover. The cast change, but more crucially, the people behind the scenes like producers and writers change and for better or worse, create their own spin on it.

Star Trek had a Berman Burnout.

There's one thing I think is sad:

Berman/Braga and a vision of what the show would be like, but they were hampered at every turn. They didn't get the Earth-bound season they wanted, which actually would have been mould-breaking. They had story elements foisted upon them. They had design elements foisted upon them.

FFS, they had to fight to not use the 24th Century Akira class as their ship. The final NX-01 is a compromise. In his day, Gene Roddenberry would have strangled that idea at birth, but Berman had to fight. An unreasonable level of interference.

I can't imagine that Akiva Goldsman has to have those kinds of conversations with Paramount and in the case of ENT, the execs should have left it to experienced hands and let the people making the show make the show they wanted to make.

A lot is made of Berman being creatively dead by the point of ENT in his Star Trek career, but it's truer to say he was creatively hamstrung. In a sense, we are fortunate that ENT is as good as it is.

The rot started to set in in VOY, at least in terms of a higher-ups concept of what a Star Trek show should be like. VOY, which had itself inherited its template from TNG, became the template for Star Trek, leading to executives pissing their pants, fretting that a Star Trek show needs transporters/phasers and that Starfleet ships need saucers.

I so wish we'd got a Daedalus or something like it for the NX-01.

I think it might have been @cooleddie74 who recently said that (paraphrasing) VOY put the bullet in the head of the franchise. ENT was the resulting four seasons of a cooling corpse.

They themselves said they were too burned out to do ENT, going so far as to ask for a time out, but UPN said "If you don't do it, we will find someone else to do it"... So they did it. They had a choice between making a mess and letting someone else less experienced make a mess.

 

[panyasan]

Yeah. I don't think the forced whiteness of the casting choices helped, but as I said in my original post in this thread, ultimately the biggest problem was that the showrunners were creatively burnt out and that reflected in every other aspect of the production.

Look, in the time that ENT was produced around 70% of the American population was white/of European descent. The US was their main audience, next to Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, countries in which the majority of the people were of European descent. So it would be natural to have a more people of European descent in the cast. So I don't think we can talk about "forced whiteness" in the casting. Times has changed and so does our perpective.
(I must admit my own perpective on this subject has been greatly influenced by the discrimination my laws faced in Asia, because of their partly European roots).

But I agree with you that the biggest problem was that the showrunners were tired and the network was making their live difficult to make the best decisions for the show.

 

[Sci]

Look, in the time that ENT was produced around 70% of the American population was white/of European descent. The US was their main audience, next to Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, countries in which the majority of the people were of European descent. So it would be natural to have a more people of European descent in the cast.

*sigh* It is frustrating when people treat a parenthetical aside as though it were the main point. Okay, let's do this:

No, that is not "natural." That is a deliberate choice to falsely depict humanity as being majority-white when it is of course not.

You frame it as "natural" to have a majority-white cast if the audience is majority-white. But another way to describe that behavior is to say that it's a deliberate decision to appeal to the (at best unconscious) biases of a white audience who wanted to see themselves depicted as the center of the universe.

So I don't think we can talk about "forced whiteness" in the casting.

It was absolutely forced whiteness.

But I agree with you that the biggest problem was that the showrunners were tired and the network was making their live difficult to make the best decisions for the show.

Absolutely we're agreed on that. ENT needed showrunners for whom the idea of telling action-adventure stories set aboard a starship in deep space was still exciting, not showrunners for whom it had become old pat.

 

[panyasan]

Hi Sci, thank you for responding. And yes, I did understand you adressed a side point and it was not your main argument, but how does that expression goes "it stuck out like a sore thumb". Thinking that you're the center of the world, isn't a typical "white" thing, it's a human thing. I have been in many countries China, Japan, Thailand, Brasil, Turkey and everyone thinks their country the best and everything surround their country. The kanji for China even means "centre of the world" and in television shows there is hardly any room for minorities.

Anyway, what we do share is the love for Enterprise and the wish that the show was handled with showrunnner who had (still) the same passion as the fans.

 

[Sci]

Hi Sci, thank you for responding. And yes, I did understand you adressed a side point and it was not your main argument, but how does that expression goes "it stuck out like a sore thumb". Thinking that you're the center of the world, isn't a typical "white" thing, it's a human thing. I have been in many countries China, Japan, Thailand, Brasil, Turkey and everyone thinks their country the best and everything surround their country.

Okay, but that doesn't make the forced whiteness of the ENT cast any less of a deliberate decision to appeal to the white audience's (at best unconscious) bias of wanting to see themselves depicted as the center of the universe. All what you're saying is, is that every culture is ethnocentric. It would be just as much of a decision to appeal to audience bias if a Chinese show that's supposed to depict a united humanity depicts humans as majority-Chinese, or if a Japanese show depicts humanity as majority-Japanese, etc etc etc. Ethnocentrism may be common, but it is still ethnocentrism. It is still a form of racism.

 

[Disposable_Ensign]

*sigh* It is frustrating when people treat a parenthetical aside as though it were the main point. Okay, let's do this:

No, that is not "natural." That is a deliberate choice to falsely depict humanity as being majority-white when it is of course not.

You frame it as "natural" to have a majority-white cast if the audience is majority-white. But another way to describe that behavior is to say that it's a deliberate decision to appeal to the (at best unconscious) biases of a white audience who wanted to see themselves depicted as the center of the universe.



It was absolutely forced whiteness.



Absolutely we're agreed on that. ENT needed showrunners for whom the idea of telling action-adventure stories set aboard a starship in deep space was still exciting, not showrunners for whom it had become old pat.

You will note that ENT was not a world show, but an American show, and represented the approximate diversity of America at the time. Your issue should be with the nationality of the characters, not the color of their skin.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Backula was not sexy enough anymore.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You will note that ENT was not a world show, but an American show, and represented the approximate diversity of America at the time. Your issue should be with the nationality of the characters, not the color of their skin.

Enterprise started in 2151.

The United earth was founded in 2150.

These people are the last generation of humans to know nations, and thanks to Hoshi, the last generation to know accents or foreignness.

Even aliens from thousands of light years away sound like their nearest and dearest neighbors.

 

[Dukhat]

You will note that ENT was not a world show, but an American show, and represented the approximate diversity of America at the time. Your issue should be with the nationality of the characters, not the color of their skin.

Exactly. B&B were more interested in copying TOS’s formula than any kind of racially motivated reasoning.

White guy as series lead: Kirk/Archer
Generic American southern guy as lead’s best friend: McCoy/Tucker
Vulcan with pole stuck up ass: Spock/T’Pol
Token UK guy: Scott/Reed
Token black: Uhura/Mayweather
Token Asian: Sulu/Sato

Their roles on the show were different, and TOS utilized their diversity in arguably a much better way, but what they have in common is that neither show was trying to send a message of white ethnocentrism to a white audience. That’s just trying to take something out of context to argue a point that doesn’t need arguing because it doesn’t actually exist.

 

[Sci]

You will note that ENT was not a world show, but an American show, and represented the approximate diversity of America at the time.

ENT is supposed to be a show about all of humanity's future, not a show about America's future. It's the United Earth starship Enterprise, not the United States starship Enterprise.

So, yes, when a show that pretends it's about humanity's future instead depicts the nation of its creators as the default setting for the human race, that is indeed ethnocentrism.

Their roles on the show were different, and TOS utilized their diversity in arguably a much better way, but what they have in common is that neither show was trying to send a message of white ethnocentrism to a white audience.

Both operated on the unquestioned feeling that white guys are the default setting for the human race. That makes both works ethnocentric.

That’s just trying to take something out of context to argue a point that doesn’t need arguing because it doesn’t actually exist.

ENT literally got criticized for being too white-dominated at the time it was created.

 

[Dukhat]

Both operated on the unquestioned feeling that white guys are the default setting for the human race. That makes both works ethnocentric.

No, that's your interpretation, which isn't related to what the producers of either show intended. On the contrary, TOS went out of its way to show minorities in equal postitions to 'white guys,' something that was rarely done at the time. And ENT was just trying to ape the TOS cast. They weren't thinking anything about race. They barely even developed their show or their characters, much less them having some sort of racial agenda.

ENT literally got criticized for being too white-dominated at the time it was created.

So? Again, that's someone's interpretation. And I would be happy to see a source for this.

 

[Sci]

No, that's your interpretation, which isn't related to what the producers of either show intended. On the contrary, TOS went out of its way to show minorities in equal postitions to 'white guys,' something that was rarely done at the time. And ENT was just trying to ape the TOS cast. They weren't thinking anything about race. They barely even developed their show or their characters, much less them having some sort of racial agenda.



So? Again, that's someone's interpretation. And I would be happy to see a source for this.

It's very simple:

If all people are equal and your goal is to depict humanity's future, then your obligation is not to depict humanity as looking primarily like the culture you come from. Because the culture you come from can only ever be a minority of the human species.

If you instead decide to depict your culture as the norm that the rest of humanity is a deviation from, then you're being ethnocentric.

That's not a matter of interpretation. That's just objectively what you're doing.

 

[Dukhat]

If all people are equal and your goal is to depict humanity's future, then your obligation is not to depict humanity as looking primarily like the culture you come from. Because the culture you come from can only ever be a minority of the human species.

And I agree that that's what ENT did. Also, TOS, TNG, VOY and all the CBSTrek shows as well, whose casts were shown to be primarily white actors, because these shows were produced in the US.

If you instead decide to depict your culture as the norm that the rest of humanity is a deviation from, then you're being ethnocentric.

That's not a matter of interpretation. That's just objectively what you're doing.

Nope. That's still just your opinion. If these shows have any faults, it's that they depict American society over, for example, Chinese society. If a Chinese television company decided to make a show like Star Trek, and have their cast be made of primarily Chinese actors, I'm not going to accuse them of racism.

 

[Sci]

And I agree that that's what ENT did. Also, TOS, TNG, VOY and all the CBSTrek shows as well, whose casts were shown to be primarily white actors, because these shows were produced in the US.

Yes, Star Trek has historically been far more ethnocentric than we often like to imagine.

Nope. That's still just your opinion.

No, it's really not. The only way depicting your culture as the default setting for the entire human race could possibly not be ethnocentrism is if your culture makes up the vast majority of the human species. But no one's culture or race does.

If these shows have any faults, it's that they depict American society over, for example, Chinese society. If a Chinese television company decided to make a show like Star Trek, and have their cast be made of primarily Chinese actors, I'm not going to accuse them of racism.

I'm sorry, but it would by definition be such. The vast majority of humanity are not Chinese. If you're depicting humanity's future rather than China's future, then you should not depict Han Chinese as the default setting for the human race. If you're depicting humanity's future rather than the United States's future, then you should not depict whiteness as the default setting for the human race.

 

[Dukhat]

We are going to agree to disagree about this, so there’s little point in continuing the discussion.