Would Enterprise be a better show...

[Joe Washington]

If it was five seasons long and those seasons were structured like so?

S1: The year is 2154. The series opens with the launch of the Enterprise. The Romulans are a mysterious, shadowy presence lurking in the background with little interest in humanity other than an object of observance.

S2: The year is 2155. The Romulans are developing into an active threat aganist the Enterprise crew when its mission conflicts with the interests of the Romulan Empire from time to time.

S3: The year is 2156. The season opens with the outbreak of the Earth-Romulan War. The Enterprise goes from being a ship of peaceful exploration to a ship of warfare.

S4: The year is 2160. Three years has passed since the end of the third season. The Earth-Romulan War rages on and is taking a costly toll on those involved. The season ends with the Battle of Cheron which brings the war to its end.

S5: The year is 2161. The aftermath and lingering consequences of the Earth-Romulan War unfolds. The series ends with the signing of the treaty and the decomissioning of the Enterprise.

 

[Shatnertage]

Possibly--a lot of it depends on what you've got going on in the individual episodes.

 

[Skywalker]

I liked not introducing the Romulans right away. ENT would have been a better show if B&B had been allowed more freedom to do what they wanted with it. Most of the show's biggest problems were because of UPN.

 

[JiNX-01]

I don't think I'd want the entire series to be about the Romulan War.

1. You can be sure there would a faction of fans who would be bashing it as a ripoff of DS9.
2. There wouldn't be much opportunity to write light, fun episodes that would give the series some variety and balance.
3. How can you tell the story of the Romulan War almost exclusively from the POV of a single crew?

However, I would be willing to use the prequel setting as the basis for a lead-up to the war.

Season 1:
Exploration and first contacts (involving species mentioned or seen in TOS). Some become friends right away (e.g.: Andorians, thanks to Shran). Others (such as Tellarites) are slow to warm up to the humans.

Season 2:
The first indications that trouble is coming. The Orions and other aggressive species are becoming more active closer to the Solar System Vulcan, Andorian and other allied territories. Alliances are established and become the first sign of Federation building.

Season 3:
Stirrings of trouble for human and allied colonies. Boomers are having more confrontations than has been typical in recent years.

Season 3 finale: Human colonies on Alpha Centauri are hit by an armada of unfamiliar ships. More than 3,000 killed. More than 10,000 wounded.

Season 4:
The war has begun. Enterprise and Columbia are dispatched to secure alliances with previous "first contact" species that haven't committed to friendship with humanity. Some refuse, choosing the ally themselves with the Romulans. By the end of season 4, some will see the error of their choice when the Romulans use them as cannon fodder.

Season 5:
The Klingons open a second front against the Romulans.

 

[creek_chub]

I think one of the things that really intrigues me about Enterprise is the juxtaposition of new-fangled and old-fashioned. Let me explain:

I'm relatively familiar with TOS and in many of those episodes, so many procedures and pieces of technology were in place that we never got too much of a sense that these people were truly risking their lives to go exploring. And where procedures and technology failed, the Miracle of Kirk (whether his physical prowess or his mental prowess) would intervene and everything would be hunky-dory again.

Yet in ENT, many of the storylines, as well as the set dressing and lighting, help convey that these people are floating in the middle of nothing, heading towards who knows what, while being minimally protected within a hunk of metal. They all have to work together to run things effectively and, because they're so new at exploring space, they often run into problems (big and small) that they've never encountered before (and maybe never even knew existed) requiring them to take the knowledge they have and somehow make it come up with a solution they've never come up with before. I guess what I'm saying is that they're flying by the seat of their pants.

At the same time, the technology portrayed is still so far ahead of our own at the moment. It then ends up being quite a dichotomy to know you're watching something that takes place in the future, but that has such a feel of happening in the past.

I think if the show had focused solely on the Earth-Romulan war, we wouldn't have gotten as much of an exploration into the "what ifs" that occur when one thinks of long term space travel and human nature. As it is, I think the show could have used MORE of that aspect, although some is better than none.

 

[xortex]

Kirk's physical prowess made evrything better? Yea, for the babes of the week.

The Romulan war should have been tied into the TCW somehow as Braga had said it was going to be and intended FG to be a Romulan - as one could probably already tell by the sliminess in the tone of his voice. Bad guys have to sound evil. But bringing in future Klingons and aliens et al. would have been interesting,

 

[Rojixus]

Enterprise would have been a lot better if we had actually seen the foundation of the Federation instead of seeing a holodeck simulation of an event that, paraphrasing from Deanna Troi, "would lead to the birth of the Federation".

 

[Joe Washington]

A part of the show will gradually show and explore the perspective of the Romulans and their side of the buildup to the war and the war itself. Maybe show the war's impact on the empire after its conclusion.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Personally, one of the gripes I had about ENT was that it was set too close to the Romulan Wars and the birth of the Federation. I'd rather the series be set at least 20 years before that, which would still have allowed us to see how all the seeds were planted without having to actually deal with the war during the run of the series. I wish the Romulans had been introduced in the pilot episode as a mysterious new threat that would scare the crap out of our heroes much like the Borg did in their first appearance in TNG, but would never be seen again after that...

 

[xortex]

I have to agree. The show should have taken place earlier somehow and more importantly had multiple POV's like any other show - This is what the crew thinks and this is what the aliens think going back and forth. It was all too static and subjective. No objective perspective. Objective perspective. Wow, say that five times fast. Also the pacing sucked. Too formulaic. And what do you think Mr. Mott? Well if you want my opinion? It just wasn't realistic and believable. People like to be taken out of a situation, removed from the 'reality' even as it were. Maybe some overhead shots, a crane, I don't know, something creative and more light. The bridge was too big and looked like a gym with a sauna. I could go on about TNG especially, and the uniforms sucked in every show. TOS wasn't even a uniform, it was black slacks and a cool gold shirt and black boots. Anyone can get away with looking like that it was cool - instead they had them wearing leotards like a bunch of unsuccessful acrobats. and red and black no less - military colors. Sheesh.

 

[SFRabid]

I still like the idea of season one being about building the ship and getting the crew together. The next four seasons as they are, just clean up some junk in the first two seasons. Then season 6 and 7 about the Romulan War.

I WOULD NOT want to give up seasons 3 and 4 of Enterprise. They are some of the best in Trek.

 

[BillJ]

I still like the idea of season one being about building the ship and getting the crew together.

I found that part of Broken Bow insanely dull. Not sure could've handled a whole season worth of it.

 

[DarKush]

The Romulan War and what to do about it feels like a big elephant in the room. I would've loved to see the show deal with the Romulan War but I'm not sure I wanted them to devote four years to it. Perhaps do a TV movie or miniseries, jumping the show a few years ahead between seasons or something to the conclusion of the war.

Better yet, Enterprise might've worked better taking place shortly after the Romulan War. It seemed like B&B were reluctant to do something with the Romulans anyway. Surely there's very little that happened on Enterprise that couldn't have taken place after the Earth-Romulan War, except the stuff like the Coalition of Planets (but those episodes could've easily been turned into the formation of the Federation episodes).

That being said, since Enterprise was based a few years before the war, I wish the Romulans had been the big bads right off the bat instead of Future Guy and the Suliban. Once B&B embraced the Romulans as viable baddies on Enterprise, they produced some solid episodes like the Babel and Vulcan Reformation arcs.

 

[JiNX-01]

I still like the idea of season one being about building the ship and getting the crew together.

I found that part of Broken Bow insanely dull. Not sure could've handled a whole season worth of it.

I didn't mind the setup on BB. But I totally agree that I would NOT want an entire season of sitting in spacedock and screening prospective officers and crew.

 

[DarKush]

^
More focus on United Earth, and perhaps bringing Terra Prime in earlier as an adversary might not have been a bad thing. It could've helped build a stronger foundation for the series and set it apart from the other Treks by focusing more on Earth.

 

[ColeMercury]

No, I don't think so. Too much war, too much of the time.

Starting the show with the year 2151 was a good choice: gave them room to breathe and play around a bit. The problem was they took that breathing room and wasted it. The Romulans should've been set up as a mysterious new hostile force from the first season. The Vulcans starting off as uptight hypocrites was an intriguing beginning, as it sets up their development into the Spock-like beings we admire in the 23rd century... but then they stayed that way for the next three years until Manny Coto swooped in and had them fix it within three episodes (three really good episodes, but it was still obviously a patch job). The Tellarites, a founding member of the Federation, didn't appear until season 4. The Orion Syndicate, a potential ongoing villain, were also ignored until season 4. Terra Prime would've been great to have in the background from the beginning, but the idea of a xenophobic terrorist group didn't even occur to them until season 4. And so on.

If they were going to do the Romulan War, though, I'd recommend doing it in movie form. Maybe a trilogy. That's about five or six hours, rather than thirty or forty.

 

[Shatnertage]

They should have let Archer sing. That would have made everything better,

 

[I am Surak]

They should have let Archer sing. That would have made everything better,

A duet with a Gorn captain perhaps?

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

If it was five seasons long and those seasons were structured like so?

S1: The year is 2154. The series opens with the launch of the Enterprise. The Romulans are a mysterious, shadowy presence lurking in the background with little interest in humanity other than an object of observance.

S2: The year is 2155. The Romulans are developing into an active threat aganist the Enterprise crew when its mission conflicts with the interests of the Romulan Empire from time to time.

S3: The year is 2156. The season opens with the outbreak of the Earth-Romulan War. The Enterprise goes from being a ship of peaceful exploration to a ship of warfare.

S4: The year is 2160. Three years has passed since the end of the third season. The Earth-Romulan War rages on and is taking a costly toll on those involved. The season ends with the Battle of Cheron which brings the war to its end.

S5: The year is 2161. The aftermath and lingering consequences of the Earth-Romulan War unfolds. The series ends with the signing of the treaty and the decomissioning of the Enterprise.

Didn't we get this show ... it was called "Babylon 5"?

 

[John O.]

It was just the wrong set of writers. Pretty much anyone you ask - besides the casual observing pansy who "doesn't like aliens or space battles" - will contend that DS9 had better writing than Voyager. Deeper characters, more compelling political dynamics, more engaging interpersonal relationships, not to mention a deep bench and a huge encore cast.

Voyager, on the other hand, had crap like the Warp 10 episode. And aliens who beamed your organs out of you. And more time traveling episodes than a time traveling time traveler who does nothing but travel through time traveling time machines. I'm not saying Voyager was all bad, for one thing they shared some writers - but speaking in general, it was the inferior writing. And it was essentially the Voyager writers that found their way to Enterprise.

The folks at the helm of Enterprise were just from an expired time period. They had one formula for writing episodic TV that you could tune in and follow and tune out for 3 weeks and still follow. It worked in TNG because that's how a lot of TV was written. There was a perception that more people would tune in if they didn't HAVE to watch it every week. DS9 was criticized for being serial but by the time Enterprise came around, serial television had all but wiped out episodic TV shows. Nobody wanted to just tune into something they knew would return to the status quo at the end of the 40 minutes - they wanted substance, they wanted to be engaged. Brannon Braga and Rick Berman simply don't know how to (or didn't care to put the brain power into) figuring out how to do that.

What kills me is that Braga needed another job after he sank Enterprise so CBS stuck him on "24". Nowadays you'll see him claiming "24" as his accolade when his name gets on something - nevermind the fact that he got patched onto the last season after it was already a blockbuster hit (and Manny Coto was working on it too lol).

Topically

They hit the right topics they just took too long getting there, people lost interest.

Clearly they were trying to tackle topics like Birth of Vulcan-Human Diplomacy, First Human-Vulcan Pairings, Birth of the Federation, First Contact with Unknown (hostile, peaceful), Growth of Starfleet into Something Resembling a Fleet, and eventually the Romulan War. These are really the only topics they can cover in the time period they chose.

If you look at the fact that the show started in 2151 and every other show had run 7 seasons, and that no other show jumped more than a few months into the future between seasons, it's reasonable to assume they planned for the show to run in universe from 2151 to 2158. Since that only takes you halfway into the Romulan War, it's a good bet that they intended to either end the show with it as a cliff hanger or; in the event that the show did spectacularly well, leave the door open to have done a Romulan War film. Knowing Braga and his prickish vengeful streak, he was probably aware of the fact that DS9 was always more popular than Voyager and had no intention of mimicking its war-time storytelling run. The show probably intended to leave it for another day.

What baffles me is that they obviously didn't plan to do anything very compelling, then. Invent an alien race we've never heard of or seen before that threaten Earth's existence? YERP A DERP ROKAY.