Would Enterprise be a better show...

[Captain Robert April]

I think Bakula works as Archer in the sense that Archer really wasn't suited for the job (not really a knock; the first guy to step up for something completely new is usually the wrong guy), and found himself having to play the badass when he's really not that kind of guy. He did kind of lose himself during the Xindi arc, and it's a safe bet that Starfleet started rewriting the standards for who gets command of its starships.

If they wanted someone who was born to captain a starship, Martin Sheen would've been an interesting choice, although he'd have to whip himself into shape first.

 

[Admiral Shran]

^ Exactly. Whoever got the command was going to be wrong for the assignment and have to learn on the job - which is what I think they were going for. They just needed some better writers to properly convey that.

 

[BillJ]

For me, he never had that 'leadership presence'. Of course he was going to make mistakes, that was the point of the character.

He seriously reminded me of Opie in Outer Space.

 

[T'Girl]

I think Bakula works as Archer in the sense that Archer really wasn't suited for the job ... If they wanted someone who was born to captain a starship, Martin Sheen would've been an interesting choice, although he'd have to whip himself into shape first.

Given what Earth apparently (and wrongly) thought they would find, Archer was perfect. It would have been interesting if Starfleet command had replaced him just before the xindi arc with a different personality type. Now could TPTB have afforded someone of Sheen's caliber? Unlikely (maybe Charlie?).

On the other hand, if TPTB had decided to go with a Enterprise series than showed ship exploring a universe of wonder and discovery, stange life and worlds, Archer just as he was would have been the perfect fit.

Might have beens.

... nothing says the Romulans came out of nowhere for their major war, maybe they were the major power in space at the time secretly playing ...

An alternate possibility would have had the Romulans being one of the potential founders of the Federation, but things fell apart leading to the Romulans and their political coalition walking out, things disintigated into war over whose faction would form the Federaton's ideological policies and foundations.

Sort of a pre-Federation civil war.

Problem of course is the whole no-one has ever seem a Romulan thing, but it wouldn't be the only time something major was set to the side in Enterprise.

 

[Captain Robert April]

In light of what we did see in ENT, that observation should be modified to "knowingly seen a Romulan." When Mark Lenard comes on the screen in "Balance of Terror", take another look at Spock's reaction. His reaction is more of a "so that explains it" as he starts connecting all those loose ends in the history texts, and how in the briefing, he's suddenly quite the authority on how to deal with the Romulans.

They were just missing that last piece of the puzzle...

 

[ClayHefner]

Something like that would have been extremely cool.

Like we frequently hear about the Romulans from the start and throughout season 1. How they are good friends with the humans and generally considered friendly people and big proponents of a future galactic alliance, and viewers would go "wtf is going on here [cannon violation!]"

then, maybe at the end of season one Archer is going over to some Romulan vessel and we see... some insectoids or something, who are presented as Rommies, and old acquaintances of the crew. And we'd go "wtf" again.
Then, we enter the war and humans realize they were fooled somehow and they were just fighting the Rommies' mercenaries and vassals.
The humans know the Romulans are somehow interested in Vulcan for whatever reason, but they can't put the pieces together. Then peace comes, the neutral zone is established, both sides mind their own business and the Romulans' true identity remains hidden.

 

[xortex]

Something like that would have been extremely cool.

Like we frequently hear about the Romulans from the start and throughout season 1. How they are good friends with the humans and generally considered friendly people and big proponents of a future galactic alliance, and viewers would go "wtf is going on here [cannon violation!]"

then, maybe at the end of season one Archer is going over to some Romulan vessel and we see... some insectoids or something, who are presented as Rommies, and old acquaintances of the crew. And we'd go "wtf" again.
Then, we enter the war and humans realize they were fooled somehow and they were just fighting the Rommies' mercenaries and vassals.
The humans know the Romulans are somehow interested in Vulcan for whatever reason, but they can't put the pieces together. Then peace comes, the neutral zone is established, both sides mind their own business and the Romulans' true identity remains hidden.

I have to laugh. Leave it to the Trek BBS to solve the mysteries of the universe. That is absolutely brillant. I had that idea a while ago but I couldn't express it quite so. I thought it would be cool if a hostile alien said he was a Rommie. And in my mind he appeared insectizoid too. I wonder if either the Suliban or the Xindi could have claimed to be the Romulans. FG was supposed to be a Romulan anyway. I have an idea he wasn't a pure Romulan or Klingon but that is another story. Much in the same way Daniels wasn't a pure Human and constantly trying to maybe ethnically purify himself by travelling back in time. The Vulcans kept silent anyway as to the fact that Romulans were an offshoot of Vulcans and were essentally Vulcan which would have been quite an omission considering how many lives were lost in that war or like you said they could have been mercinaries fighting for the romulans or how about this, mind controlled to fight for the Rommulans.

 

[Saquist]

The show simply was a bad idea.
They knew how cranky and anal Trek fans are about their canon.
Plus the writing and the acting just blew all sorts of asteroid sized chunks. Nothing could have saved this show once it was conceived.

 

[ClayHefner]

The Vulcans kept silent anyway as to the fact that Romulans were an offshoot of Vulcans and were essentally Vulcan which would have been quite an omission considering how many lives were lost in that war or like you said they could have been mercinaries fighting for the romulans or how about this, mind controlled to fight for the Rommulans.

Mind control could really have been interesting, too. They would really be interacting with the real Rommies, who have taken direct control of other beings from a safe distance (maybe with help by some old Vulcan artifact).

This would also have been cool because they would need to fight innocent people, sometimes their own.
Anyway I really thought the whole TCW would turn out to be just a Romulan scheme, smoke and mirrors.

 

[xortex]

Well it makes sense that the sphere builders are the Romulans and future guy who I had pegged as a Romulan/Suliban hybrid was against this war with the Romulan controlled Xindi. Christopher Bennet's new book addresses the TCW I hear by suggesting FG wanted to kill a scientist.

 

[Saquist]

instead of linking S31 back this far in Human history it should have been the vulcans.
The facade that the vulcans trusted the humans explicitly should have been maintained from season one and then gradual reveal an undercurrent of mistrust and then the influences of a group manipulating events on Earth toward Vulcans' understanding.

 

[brian577]

Nothing could have saved this show once it was conceived.

Yet season 4 practically did. It was just too late to do any good.

 

[antiquityscion]

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 against 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.

In other words, the formula for Babylon 5? Probably. i would have been for it.I had always wished they had substituted the Romulans for the Xindi.

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

Very True.

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.

With the way Enterprise unfolded as it was, it would have worked better as having been after the Romulan War.
I also agree the Romulans should have been embraced, rather than creating new threats like the Xindi, Suliban, and the temporal cold war. I wouldn't have minded the Xindi and Suliban being introduced as minor bads, or even part of the Orion Syndicate, though. But yeah, the Romulans (Earth Romulan War), and to a lesser extent, the Klingons and Orion Syndicate (equating the Syndicate to terrorists), should have been the threats that pulled the UFP together.

 

[DarKush]

^
I largely agree with you agreeing with some of my points . I will say though that I wish the Klingons hadn't been part of the show. It would've helped ENT stand out more from the other Treks and actually made it feel more like a prequel if there weren't Klingons. Klingons factored into every other Trek show, and it would've been cool to not see them on ENT (even though I generally liked many of the Klingon-centric shows they did), and it would've reinforced the idea that Earth was relatively new to exploration.

Also, absent Klingons, the writers might have given more spotlight to the Andorians, another warrior race. I also wish they had developed the Orions more. More focus on the Andorians, Orions, and Tellarites might've sated any old line Trek fans desire to see TOS races. Though I still wanted the Romulans to have a shadowy presence looming over galactic events until they were ready to strike. Though I wouldn't have minded ENT also bringing in the Suliban and Xindi as minor bads and/or perhaps as allies of the Romulans, Andorians, Orions, or Tholians.

I really like the idea of fake Romulans at first. I definitely would've been like WTF! That would've been such a cool twist.

 

[DarKush]

I think Bakula works as Archer in the sense that Archer really wasn't suited for the job (not really a knock; the first guy to step up for something completely new is usually the wrong guy), and found himself having to play the badass when he's really not that kind of guy. He did kind of lose himself during the Xindi arc, and it's a safe bet that Starfleet started rewriting the standards for who gets command of its starships.

If they wanted someone who was born to captain a starship, Martin Sheen would've been an interesting choice, although he'd have to whip himself into shape first.

Though I like the idea of a captain having a learning curve, I don't quite agree that this was completely new. Starfleet was already an established organization with x amount of starships. Archer wasn't exactly given the job, he was chosen/selected for it, which to me seems to suggest that he had some leadership skills that others lacked. Unfortunately we didn't get to see much of that early on and it was fitful throughout the series.

I blame it on the writing and Archer's constipated performance. I think Bakula's a great guy, has been a cheerleader for his series, but he played Archer like a wet noodle. I'm not sure B&B knew what they wanted out of the character and so his development came across as slapdash.

All of the Trek captains had a learning curve, yet all of them seemed to possess a gravitas that Archer lacked.

 

[BillJ]

All of the Trek captains had a learning curve, yet all of them seemed to possess a gravitas that Archer lacked.

This.

 

[Saquist]

I think Bakula works as Archer in the sense that Archer really wasn't suited for the job (not really a knock; the first guy to step up for something completely new is usually the wrong guy), and found himself having to play the badass when he's really not that kind of guy. He did kind of lose himself during the Xindi arc, and it's a safe bet that Starfleet started rewriting the standards for who gets command of its starships.

If they wanted someone who was born to captain a starship, Martin Sheen would've been an interesting choice, although he'd have to whip himself into shape first.

Though I like the idea of a captain having a learning curve, I don't quite agree that this was completely new. Starfleet was already an established organization with x amount of starships. Archer wasn't exactly given the job, he was chosen/selected for it, which to me seems to suggest that he had some leadership skills that others lacked. Unfortunately we didn't get to see much of that early on and it was fitful throughout the series.

I blame it on the writing and Archer's constipated performance. I think Bakula's a great guy, has been a cheerleader for his series, but he played Archer like a wet noodle. I'm not sure B&B knew what they wanted out of the character and so his development came across as slapdash.

All of the Trek captains had a learning curve, yet all of them seemed to possess a gravitas that Archer lacked.

I concur in whole.
I think the problem was that B&B saw Quantum Leap and were hoping maybe to draw in some fans. (just speculation) Why else pull that little guest star stunt with his former co star? It makes it kinda obvious.

 

[JiNX-01]

I think the problem was that B&B saw Quantum Leap and were hoping maybe to draw in some fans. (just speculation) Why else pull that little guest star stunt with his former co star? It makes it kinda obvious.

A real "guest star stunt" would have involved time travel.

 

[DarKush]

I also think Bakula's Quantum Leap cred was something that got B&B interested in him. Not going to lie, it also made me hopeful when I heard he was cast. I think B&B even played up to it, a little, when they had Dean Stockwell guest star. Might've been better to have Stockwell portray Admiral Forrest.

I wish they had actually made Archer more like Beckett. Beckett had emotion, he had a pulse, he wore his heart on his sleeve, and he was an interesting character. Archer was ill defined. I once read that B&B envisioned Archer as an Indiana Jones type. The only hint I saw of that was his mouthy introduction in Broken Bow, but even that didn't really strike me as being like Indiana Jones. I don't think they followed through on making him like Jones and he was a mushy character, his development more plot driven than character driven for too much of the show.

 

[Saquist]

I think the problem was that B&B saw Quantum Leap and were hoping maybe to draw in some fans. (just speculation) Why else pull that little guest star stunt with his former co star? It makes it kinda obvious.

A real "guest star stunt" would have involved time travel.

It's hard to believe...but maybe mister Rick Time Travel Berman thought that would be to obvious....

I think I would have chose Michael Vartan
http://withfriendship.com/images/i/40774/Michael-Vartan-image.jpg

Michael Beach
He would have been 26 at the time

http://rexee.vo.llnwd.net/d1/site_images/cards/638/30638_landscape_23474_320x240.jpg

David James Elliott
The star of the TV show JAG

or instead of going white or black....why not latin.

Adam Rodriguez
He would have been 26 at the time and a real explosive actor for the role. Would have been a big girl attractor.

http://static.igossip.com/photos_2/march_2011/febda_a_acfb_csi_miami_tv.jpg


I could see Hill Harper in the role aswell....easily
CIS NY